Best engineering chief?

[Nerys Ghemor]

O'Brien...yeah, he's not an officer, but as they say in the military, he works for a living! And indeed he does...he's probably the most hard-working of any of the engineers (only Scotty comes close), and the most willing to really get his hands dirty. Not only that--he had engineering challenges every day to deal with on DS9 that none of the commissioned officers on the list had to deal with, and he pulled it off fantastically.

[Carcazoid]

Scotty kept the Enterprise flying even though Kirk repeatedly beat the living bat crap out of her.

[Sector 7]

Takeru wrote:

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Scotty sucked! Sorry Scotty fans but it's true, when was he ever a shown to be a good engineer? He did an okay job but only seemed great because he flat out lied to his superiors.

BLASPHEMY! It's blasphemy, I tell you!

[Nightdiamond]

Cmon, Scotty often saved the day using band-aids and a wrench.

One of my favorite scnes with him is in That Which Survives when he has to crawl into that chamber to fix something or the ship will be blown to bits.

The dialog between Spock and Scotty is priceless;

Lt. Cmdr Scotty : [working in the service crawlway] I'm so close to the flow now that it feels like ants crawling all over my body.

Mr. Spock: Mr Scott, I suggest you refrain from any further subjective descriptions. You now have 10 minutes and 19 seconds in which to perform your task.

Mr. Spock: Mr. Scott, you have accomplished your task.

Scotty: You might at least say thank you.

Mr. Spock: For what purpose, Mr. Scott? What is it in you humans that requires an overwhelming display of emotion in a situation such as this?

'Scotty' : [muttering] Never mind.

Mr. Spock: Two men pursue the only reasonable course of action, and yet you feel that something else is necessary.

[Edit_XYZ]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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As already pointed out, and correctly, by Maurice upthread, that was a joke. Playful banter between two old friends, Kirk and Scotty.

It was also the advice he gave to Geordi in 'Relics' - and he was shocked Geordi wasn't regularly inflating his timetables to make himself look good.
It was also corroborated by all the times when he needed unrealistically less time than he reported to his superiors for completing a task.
If that was a joke, well, Scotty put the joke into praxis repeatedly.

As for 'best engineer' - it's a tie between Tucker and O'Brien, the most realistic engineers on the show.

Laforge and Torres are disqualified by their technobabble solutions - command of the laws of nature by technobabble would be nice, but it's not in the cards in the real world; as such, it's cheap.

[NrobbieC]

Sector 7 wrote:

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BLASPHEMY! It's blasphemy, I tell you!

Truth hurts, bro.

[Mr_Homn]

Since no one answered, I'll ask again:

Since when is O'brien chief of engineering? I've never heard of him having that title. He was Chief of Ops and Transporter Chief. I haven't seen 100% of ds9, so if I'm wrong, and he holds that title for a short time, please correct me.

[NrobbieC]

Mr_Homn wrote:

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Since no one answered, I'll ask again:

Since when is O'brien chief of engineering? I've never heard of him having that title. He was Chief of Ops and Transporter Chief. I haven't seen 100% of ds9, so if I'm wrong, and he holds that title for a short time, please correct me.

I raised the same point a while back, he is an engineer and seems to serve as chief engineer of the Defiant but is technically DS9's operations officer.

[Xhiandra]

R. Star wrote:

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I'll agree with this one, if just on the technobabble point. LaForge and by proxy the TNG writers used it how it was meant to be. Sparingly and never to the point where you're confusing the audience.

Voyager not only threw out entire paragraphs of Technobabble at a time, they made it major plot points.

Indeed. Technobabble is meant to serve the story, but in Voyager (and especially early Voyager), it often seemed to work the other way around.

But I have to stand up for LaForge as a character, as well.
I liked Geordi! I'm not sure why that is, but he seems to have that aura of friendliness to him.
I'm sure LeVar Burton is for no strange part in that, for instance there's one line in Descent (don't remember which part) where he tells Data he'll regret mutilating him... you can tell he really cares about how Data will feel.
Had it been any other character/actor on the table, it probably would've felt like a more self-serving plea to be released.

He's the guy you'd like to have a beer with, is what I'm trying to say.
Then again, that's pretty true of Scotty and O'Brien as well. I got nothing.

[Deimos Anomaly]

Mr_Homn wrote:

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Since no one answered, I'll ask again:

Since when is O'brien chief of engineering? I've never heard of him having that title. He was Chief of Ops and Transporter Chief. I haven't seen 100% of ds9, so if I'm wrong, and he holds that title for a short time, please correct me.

He isn't. But DS9 doesn't have an engineering chief best I can tell, and O'Brien's job on the station seems the most equivalent to a starship's engineering chief out of all the main characters on the show. That's why I put him in the poll.

Whether he would ever be chief of engineering on a starship I don't know. Is there a requirement that the head of engineering must always be a commissioned officer? Can an NCO hold the position under any circumstance? How is it in the USN? (Most ST rules and guidelines in this area are modeled on USN ones)

Who is over engineering on the Defiant?

[Nightdiamond]

The whole thing is confusing--Harry Kim is listed as the Chief Operations Officer on Voyager, which ran separately from engineering. The same with Data on TNG.

Obrien is the Chief Operations Officer, yet all he does is engineering.

He has to be a chief engineer of some sort, because he is the only officer giving orders in engineering when he is on the Defiant.

And yet he isn't called an engineer.


Because of all the techno babble, I think Geordi was the nerd's engineer, and Scotty was the Sci Fi's engineer.

One particular thing I like about Geordi was how we got to see him grow throughout his time on the Enterprise. Scotty didn't have that advantage.

Geordi is one of my top favorite characters, but Scotty is one of my top favorite engineers. No matter which way you flip it, Scotty would get the top award.

[MacLeod]

Maybe Starbases don't have a position of Chief Engineer, instead the role of Chief of Operations includes the role of Chief Engineer.

[CorporalCaptain]

Edit_XYZ wrote:

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It was also corroborated by all the times when he needed unrealistically less time than he reported to his superiors for completing a task.

Name one example.

[Edit_XYZ]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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Name one example.

That would be:
[Playful banter between two old friends, Kirk and Scotty.]
It was also the advice he gave to Geordi in 'Relics' - and he was shocked Geordi wasn't regularly inflating his timetables to make himself look good.
It was also corroborated by all the times when he needed unrealistically less time than he reported to his superiors for completing a task.
If that was a joke, well, Scotty put the joke into praxis repeatedly.

As for examples - watch TOS; you'll find plenty. I don't feel like going over TOS episodes just to entertain your butthurt.

[CorporalCaptain]

Edit_XYZ wrote:

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That would be:
[Playful banter between two old friends, Kirk and Scotty.]
It was also the advice he gave to Geordi in 'Relics' - and he was shocked Geordi wasn't regularly inflating his timetables to make himself look good.
It was also corroborated by all the times when he needed unrealistically less time than he reported to his superiors for completing a task.
If that was a joke, well, Scotty put the joke into praxis repeatedly.

As for examples - watch TOS; you'll find plenty. I don't feel like going over TOS episodes just to entertain your butthurt.

Thank you, I've seen every TOS episode many times over. But at least we've established that you have no examples.