^That was more to do with whether there was a war on at the time. If you're not currently fighting the French, there's no reason to keep all those ships staffed and their crews paid to sit in port. For the sailors in the Napoleonic era, those short-lived treaties and truces put their livelihood at stake.
Very interesting! Starfleet's motivations for supporting a similar system would be different, of course, but perhaps no less practical or valid. Odds and ends: To Kirk's knowledge, yes. But Spock might see no obstacle to returning to active duty once he got rid of those pesky emotions for good, whereas humans might take the going-to-monastery thing the wrong way due to cultural bias... Indeed. The only thing that makes the leave of absence unusual is that Sisko says he doesn't know how long he will be gone. But that may simply mean "I don't know if my quest will take all of my allotted leave, or be completed in a few days already". It's a bit funny that Starfleet allows its personnel to use runabouts for civilian errands, but there's plenty of precedent. The O'Briens did that in "Tribunal" for one. And Sisko was on a holiday trip in "Jem'Hadar". And never mind the times Sisko used the runabouts or the Defiant for missions of his own making (such as sorting out Dax' past in "Equilibrium"). Timo Saloniemi
I'm not familiar with military stuff in general but one thing I don't get is that crew member in "The Drumhead" who didn't want to wait 4 years to become an officer. Does that mean despite serving on the enterprise he would always be stuck at a low level position because he skipped ahead? I'd like to think Starfleet didn't make that guy resign just because of his half-romulan deal
I hope not... Yes, I left out half the paragraph, but only because I was going to speculate along opposite lines while agreeing with the hard facts in the part that I retained. Spock would naturally do things properly if he were to actually resign, but my interpretation was that Kirk jumped to conclusions there, and misread Spock's intentions, and no resigning had actually taken place... I doubt it - why should he be stuck at any specific position? But unless he takes the academic studies at some point, he can't get the commission to officer rank. He can only become a higher-ranking enlisted man. It's relatively rare for anybody who enlists to actually pursue the studies needed for getting a commission. The very point there is that the person didn't want to become an officer, a line of work very different from those available to enlisted personnel! But long-serving enlisted men may be "mustanged" into commissioned rank on occasion; this seems to have happened to Janice Rand, who was enlisted until ST4 at least, and then was seen wearing the insignia of a commissioned junior Lieutenant in ST6. (The actress also played a character with Commander insignia in between, but that probably wasn't Janice Rand, as such a career development would make no sense.) Timo Saloniemi
The problem is Simon Tarses knew he was half-Romulan, rather than half-Vulcan. He lied on his application to Starfleet. That's why he would have been punished.
While he certainly would have gotten some kind of reprimand, I doubt they booted him out. For one thing, Starfleet has let people get away with a lot worse, up to and including attempted (and even successful!) murder. Lying on an application about something that is completely irrelevant to his suitability for the job is a small blemish on what looks like an otherwise good career record. We even see another character with exactly the same crime who gets off scot free - Julian Bashir. For another, it would look absolutely horrible. Picard would make as stink and under the circumstances his desires would have quite a bit of weight. I imagine that if Tarses fought the discharge his lawyer and the press would have a field day. "My client hid his heritage because he feared illegal discrimination based on race, and then the moment a witch-hunting admiral and her mind-raping minion discovered the truth poor Crewman Tarses was immediately thrown out because of that very reason!" Maybe that explains Starfleet's willingness to sweep the Bashir case under the rug as well.
RE Sisko's Runabout... Is there anything in season 7 to suggest it's what he came to Earth in and it's just been sitting in the Star Fleet long term car park for three months? I'd have assumed he came to Earth via other means (or if he did come in a DS9 Runabout it would have been either sent back or put into the general car pool), then when he had his big vision he went through usual channels to hire a Runabout for an Official Mission (possibly using a bullshit reason so as not to get refused on grounds of being a crazy man. Maybe claiming he needed transportation back to DS9? Or even getting Dax to requisition it on some spurious reason?).
To be fair, having visions does not make you a crazy man in Starfleet, especially when godlike aliens have previous caused you to have accurate visions. There's probably a field on the requisition form where you can put things like, "the aliens who saved our asses by making the entire enemy reinforcement fleet disappear into the ether are asking me to go dig around in a desert."
One reason for thinking that Sisko's ride during his desert walk was a DS9 runabout is that runabouts supposedly were more or less tailor-made for DS9 style frontier applications, and indeed the very category of craft was suggested to be new in "Paradise". Sisko trying to get one of those at Earth might be like Benton Fraser trying to requisition a Bombardier snowmobile in Chicago, then. Picard in "Timescape" did seem to have access to a nameless Danube class craft from some sort of a rent/ditch-a-runabout service, though... Timo Saloniemi
Maybe there's a grace period when your resign: You resign, you're listed as "inactive" or "reservist subject to recall" for "X" weeks/months after which time if you don't return you're out completely.
Yeah, I have to say Tarses wouldn't have been booted. One he didn't lie out of malice, but to save himself from persecution... justifiably when Satie comes after him the way she did. Picard took up for him that episode, and I can't believe he wouldn't pull the same strings that he did for Sito. In the novels he later became a full doctor and worked on DS9. So he was never kicked out there.
Picard would have most likely put in a word for him, as he was a member of the crew. And if Starfleet had any brains, they would have just put Tarses on a probationary period, and then transferred him into Intelligence so they could place him as a spy on Romulus, continuing the deception.
Another interesting case study is Tuvok. He joins up as serves as an Ensign on the Excelsior in 2296, apparently doing very little to disguise his feelings of distaste for the Starfleet life. He then resigns, spends half a decade doing whatever (raising a family on Vulcan mostly), and then returns to the service in 2344, apparently with a greater understanding of what Starfleet can give him in his life. I have often wondered if, for example, Tuvok would have returned as an Ensign? It seems like officers who resign and then come back seem to pick up pretty much where they left off career-wise.
That's good to know. The episode kind of made me think his career was going to be over. I think Wesley screws up a lot worse in that episode about the flying accident at starfleet academy.
That was one of my favorite Wesley episodes actually. The super smart kid saving the day or even messing up some technobabblewhatchamacallit to mess things up for the week but sorting it out gets old. This was a solid character piece, about character coming from adversity, fully fledged out with consequences.
It seemed to me the TNG writers were unable to write Wesley convincingly until after Wil quit the show. I thought "The Game" was some of his best work.
Something else to think about, Jadzia Dax was a host for two years when she came to DS9 as a Lt. So I guess she did not go through starfleet academy. Kurzon was a negotiator for the Federation, apparently in Starfleet so I wonder how that works?
She states her age as 28 in Emissary. So if she got the symbiont at age 26, there's nothing to say she couldn't have gone to the Academy before she was joined. Plenty of time in the 18-26 period.