I disagree with the whole transferring off the flagship = a huge step down. Look at Riker, who ended up with Titan. Than again, he turned down a lot of earlier chances at promotion.
My bad - he was Ensign Ashmore - I was thinking of him instead of Ayala. A comprehensive list is here: http://www.loony-archivist.com/lowerdecks/crew.html
But Vorik was just an ensign. He was never shown to be high-up in engineering. In fact, it was explicitly noted that lieutenant Joe Carey was B'Elanna's immediate subordinate. And I recall reading an interview with the actor who played Carey that he would have wanted more appearances. I don't think it was because he was too busy. It was odd they brought him back years later just to kill him. I guess they thought it would add emotional weight. But after such a long absence, most people probably didn't know he wasn't a one-time extra. And yes, Chell did make a couple reappearances, but he looked like a completely different person. They really drastically changed his Bolian makeup.
TNG era generally cocked up the concept of the characters' ranks because non-coms rarely feature as characters. However, as an officer, Vorik would have been quite high up the command food chain. chief petty officers would have been far more experienced but he would have authority to order them about. Often in TNG there are too many 'chiefs' i.e. smokin hot young inexperienced ensigns and not enough 'indians' i.e. crewmen and experienced older non-coms like petty officers and chief petty officers.
Considering that Mr Kim, an ensign, occasionally was in command, being an ensigt in Engineering must quite high in the ladder there.
Wasn't Harry suppose to be like gifted in the field? Didn't he graduate at the top of his class or something? Wasn't that implied in "Non Sequier"
And yet he didn't graduate as a Lt(jg) like Kirk, NuKirk, NuUhura etc. Kim is the Chief Operations Officer - as far as I can tell he didn't inherit the role from a senior officer. Each key position requires three officers (one for each shift) so Kim would be the main man with two people (most likely ensigns) lower than him in the chain of command but of equal or lower rank - it seems that helm and ops are staffed by officers (Helm = command; Ops = engineer) usually but occasionally by chief petty officers (O'Brien, DiFalco - although she was technically navigation rather than ops). Engineering is a bit different because you have a lot of crewman carrying out standard maintenance and repairs at all times, supervised by officers or senior non-coms. On a ship the size of Voyager I can't imagine that they can have much more than half a dozen officers to supervise the various shifts and key positions overall. Vorik most likely filled the role of assistant chief engineer when he was on duty. Carey, as a more senior officer would be in charge of shifts when Torres wasn't on duty, which is why we rarely see him, with a different ensign or CPO as his number two.
I figured he was an Ensign because while he had textbook knowledge of Engineering and acted all his tests, he lacked the actual field experance. He hadn't earned a rank higher than Ensign yet. Didn't nuKirk & nuUhura eran their rank in the field? We don't know what Kirk did at the Academy to graduate as a Lt. but it must of required field experance due to his ambition.
Yeah, Vorik didn't usually take much initiative. And simply because he was an ensign and would outrank all enlisted crew doesn't tell us his relationship vis-á-vis other engineering officers. It seemed there were quite a few officers there. The best — only one that I recall — counterexample is in DS9: Starship Down, in which the engineering staff consisted entirely of enlisted technicians, not even true engineers. Worf was the only officer to direct them (and that was because he was the only officer stuck down there). And Kim's rank of ensign was strange. He was explicitly referred to as a "senior officer" and all Ops people reported directly to him. That was highly unusual, I suspect. I can't believe that on a newly commisioned officer's first duty would be to run Ops on a significant vessel. Harry acquitted himself so well, and so many officers died, that I have trouble accepting Janeway's rationale for never promoting him. How would it hurt to make him a lieutenant? Obviously she couldn't promote everyone to commander, but why not upgrade Kim?
.....because the ship still needs worker bees. If everybody is a Lt., then who's the grunts? I saw Harry's position as something similar to an intern. He's titled as a senior officer due to him over achieving at the Academy, so he's got the status but lacks the experience for the actual rank. So he's working a job to achieve the experience for a future position in command. Being on the bridge puts him around that element.
And when Riker was offered a command in "The Icarus Factor," one of the "cons" Picard cited was that he would go from being second-in-command of the most prestigious posting in the fleet to being captain of a starship no one had ever heard of posted out in the middle of nowhere. Granted, XO is a command position. It probably would be quite different for less experienced officers, such as Vorik, since they would have to get experience somewhere. Can't always count on the officers superior to you on your current ship to resign/die/etc., because you still may not get the promotion if a more experienced, more senior officer elsewhere in the fleet is interested in transferring to your ship -- something I bet would be quite common with an Enterprise.
Kim should have been promoted even if only to Lt(j.g.) half way through the series. It would have had no major impact on the command structure and would have recognised his large contribution. Officer's with far less experience gain promotions on other ships and Tuvok got a promotion during the run so it's not as if Janeway had no authority to do it.
I agree. After the requisite years — during he performed admirably — he was due for a promotion. Worse, in the casualty lists there are many dead, high ranking officers. One of them was even a full commander! Given the many deaths, his tenure and performance, I don't get he had to remain an ensign.
I wish we had seen more of Vorik in the series, but he does play a pretty prominent role in the after-Voyager books.
His actions in eps. like "The Disease" shows Harry still isn't disappline enough yet. Harry follows behind someone as undisaplline as Tom Paris. Whatever Tom does, Harry does. A promotion depends on allot more than just being able to do a job. Harry also has to learn to lead by example. Having an affair against regulations, covering up an STD and being insubbordiate to the captain, speaking out of term, isn't going to get you squat for a promotion. Didn't Harry get a written repremand too? Wasn't Tuvok's promotion a compesation for being passed up as commander? Tuvok is also the only official senior Starfleet bridge officer & the only senior ranking member besides Carey left when everyone else died being pulled into the DQ by the Caretaker. Chakotay, Paris & Be'lanna aren't "officially" Starfleet officers anymore. His service to Starfleet preceeds all on Voyager.
Still, officers in navies automatically receive promotions every few years (especially low ranking ones). My uncle went from ensign to lt. jg to full lt. in three years simply because of the timetable. Of course, if you have a lot of reprimands etc., then you don't get promoted. But after so many officer causalties, they would be short on lieutenants anyway. I agree that by at least halfway through, he should've received a promotion. And why did Tom outrank him? He wasn't the model officer, had been demoted (and wasn't even in Starfleet at the time). Plus, aren't conn guys usually ensigns? Unlike Harry, Tom wasn't in charge of a dept with others reporting to him.
Not really. If you go back over Voyager, most of the casualties happened in reset eps.. So the death count isn't as high as you think.
True. There were, however, on screen and dialogue references to several deceased, mid and high ranking officers. But I get and concede your point. Hey, what this: should I start a poll? I'm thinking along the lines of whether Harry should have gotten a "box in his chair" around the same Tom got his "special box".
Tom's rank made no sense really. Helm is often manned by ensigns, he'd done nothing to deserve a senior rank, and his leadership skills were definitely inferior to Kim and Torres, especially considering the number of times their engineering skills benefitted or even saved the ship.