Star Trek: The Next Generation/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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Deep Space Nine:
* The science officer is Jadzia. She's left in command of the station fairly regularly and also captains the ''Defiant'' for certain missions. At the beginning of Season 6, when the station is occupied, she's Sisko's full-time first officer on the ''Defiant'' until Ross transfers Sisko to his staff, at which time Jadzia becomes the captain.
** Jadzia is considered to have large amounts of seniority despite her (relatively) low rank. This would naturally affect how often she is placed in command.
* The engineer is O'Brien. He's not an officer so perhaps it's unfair to consider him. He's left running Ops on the station for a little while in the pilot, when all the other Starfleet and Bajoran characters are in the Wormhole, but that's it. And he was never in command on TNG, either, by the way.
** O'Brien is not technically an officer, but his status as a Chief with large amounts of seniority clearly places him at a certain place in the chain of command. While he's technically the lowest-ranked person in the room at any given moment, it's pretty clear that no one except Sisko or his acting XO would ''dream'' of giving him an order (at least with any hope of having him just merrily follow it), and that in fact in the event of the first two or three members of the command crew becoming incapacitated, he probably ''would'' be put in command (at least in a combat situation).
Voyager:
* There is no science officer on the ''Voyager'' crew. However, we know from Janeway's backstory that she used to be a science officer and that, like Spock, she was promoted to captain and transferred directly from Science to Command.
** The ''Voyager'' is a "fast escort"... while like all Starfleet vessels it has science facilities, it may not have rated an entire science division, placing the sciences under Engineering or Ops instead. Either that or the CSO died when the Caretaker yanked them into the Delta Quadrant and Janeway simply didn't have any particularly qualified staffmember to replace them with, or didn't bother due to the shifted priorities of their mission. (Meaning, when they did sidetrack for science, she probably filled in as CSO.) It's implied that in later seasons, Seven became the defacto leader of the science department.
* The chief engineer is Torres. I've watched most Voyager episodes at least twice, and I don't remember ever seeing her sit in the captain's chair, which makes her unique among all the Starfleet characters, including the Doctor. Seven and Neelix never took command either, but they were civilians.
** Torres is technically not a Starfleet officer, despite being part of the command staff, and out of said command staff only she and Chakotay are Maquis. Chakotay is also technically not a Starfleet officer, but previously held a commission and is XO, meaning that he ''has'' to be allowed to take the conn. Even if B'Elanna's status as a provisional/Maquis officer didn't disqualify her from taking the conn, any situation that so heavily decimated the command staff would probably require her to be busting her ass in Engineering to keep the ship from exploding anyway. Besides, she was elevated to the command staff and a department head purely on merit of her engineering skills... she has neither the training or mindset to command a ship, meaning that even an ensign who'd actually completed their Academy courses would be more suitable than her.
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