Security Chief Kim...really?

[Carcazoid]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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Security was folded into tactical with Tuvok.

Was that because Tuvok was so awesome that he could wear two hats or was it just that the ship was so small? If it was just because the ship was small, does that mean that Kim is such a dunce that he has to wear half a hat?

Worf also wore two hats. Well, three if you count his Merry Man lid.

Guy Gardener wrote:

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You'll remember the bald girl in the navigators seat on the bridge?

She was Miss India once upon a time.

I doubt she would have still won with such a shorn doo.

Hmmm. There's an alien name for ya. The Shorndoo. Mediocre navigators, but excellent at the celibacy.

[Carcazoid]

teacake wrote:

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Riker is ... just a big, ape-ish, barking putz.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[Bry_Sinclair]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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Ops on a tiny ship like Voyager is a job for an ensign, which is why they gave it to an ensign.

Ops on Enterprise, which is almost 10 times the size of Voyager, and expected to do anything, anywhere (Ops is also about resource management of the ships stores. The Ops officer is the quartermaster as well as traffic controller for everything else.) is not a job for an ensign green straight out of the academy, even though there were extras in those seats all the time.

Besides.

This isn't a question of just sitting at the Ops station.

This is about the person, Harry or whoever, being a section head.

Commanding staff responsibly.

How much staff, floaters and fixed do you think these two very different Section heads of Ops have to roster and organize on there respective ships?

3 or 4 shifts a day depending on what era we're talking about, then redundancies they can put into play and then green buggers they're still training up.

Data probably had 20 to thirty lieutenants in his stable of Ops officers at any one point. Kim on the other hand probably had 4 or 5 enlisted personal to push around in his ops department because no one above the rank of Ensign during the original "mission" can (without a grain of salt) work in ops on Voyager because Kim can't give them orders or write crew evaluations on his superiors recommending advancement or demotion or transfer, unless you believe that he has magic rank from being a section head like how O'Brien does.

besides if Kim had a huge staff, then why do we almost never see anyone else sitting at the ops station unless he wanders off to do something important like an away mission?

I would always see Operations as being one of the larger departments on a ship, when you consider all that they would need to cover. On my fanfic ships I have it that Ops covers more than just the Bridge station, but also communications, computer management, sensor monitoring, transporters, cargo, logistics.

But that's just me.

Anyways, the point I was raising was: does anyone, anywhere bye Kim as Security Chief? Was there anything in an episode that makes you think he could handle the job, or should he just have remained at Ops and someone else promoted/brought in to replace Tuvok.

[JirinPanthosa]

Kim as a security chief is a really weird choice. I can see him as tactical or engineering, or even command track, but not anything like security.

[Josan]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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Kim as a security chief is a really weird choice. I can see him as tactical or engineering, or even command track, but not anything like security.

Count me as another that thinks Kim as a security chief makes no sense. Tactical, yes. Engineering, yes. Command track... I have to disagree with that one.

[teacake]

I'd like to see him as the holodeck pin boy.

[Josan]

I don't know what a pin boy is but if it's demeaning to Kim, I'm all for it.

[Guy Gardener]

Before automatic pin setters in bowling alleys, they used to use child labour to pick up the pins between turns.

The title is still used for the mechanics who maintain the pinsetting machinery.

[R. Star]

Pin boy? For some reason that just makes me envision Janeway holding a Harry Kim voodoo doll and stabbing it repeatedly.

[teacake]

My third job was as a pin boy. It would be hard to come up with a less suitable job. I had applied at a bowling alley (a place I'd never set foot in before.. that or any other bowling alley) and was instantly hired. I thought I would be at the counter giving people the ugly shoes and telling them where the toilets were but the boss (who was pretty much George Costanza's father) led me down alongside the alleys to a mysterious door and into the secret world behind the pins. The bowling machines were huge, they were like 8 feet tall and and full of gears and baskets and pulleys and they made terrible noises scooping up the pins, popping them into their holders, setting them in place.

At this point in my life I couldn't so much as fix a bike chain, I was mechanically retarded in the extreme and I knew it.

Mr Costanza waved his hand at this long hall of monstrosities and said, "these are the machines.. you will be in charge of them."

Terrible, terrible things would go wrong, buzzers would sound and I would have to CLIMB to the top of the machine after turning it off (very important) and wrench the ripped up pins out of the system and try and figure out what belts had slipped. If I didn't fix it in like three minutes Mr. Costanza would be barking on the intercom, "Machine number six, machine number six!!!"

That part was very stressful. However many hours would go by uneventfully. I had to paint the broken up wooden pins with this thick white goo which was fake wood but that didn't take long. During that summer I read the first five books in Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series which were left in the drawers in the back room next to the stack of porn mags. I've always been very fond of Edgar Rice Burroughs though after book number two in every one of his series they go down hill rapidly.

So. Harry can fix stuff holographically and whack off while waiting for something to go wrong. That way the bowlers don't have to dirty their hands during their recreation time.

[Josan]

Ah, well, now I know what a pin boy is. I probably should have worked it out on my own.

Star Grinch wrote:

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Pin boy? For some reason that just makes me envision Janeway holding a Harry Kim voodoo doll and stabbing it repeatedly.

This image, with a maniacally cackling Janeway, makes me smile.

[Blip]

^ me too - must be something to do with just having replayed Monkey Island 2....

[JirinPanthosa]

Josan wrote:

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Count me as another that thinks Kim as a security chief makes no sense. Tactical, yes. Engineering, yes. Command track... I have to disagree with that one.

I wonder how they decided security chief was a good choice for Kim. They must have asked themselves, which important job on the ship requires a skill set that bears no relation to Kim's personal skills?

Kim at the end of Voyager probably wouldn't have made sense for command track. He has the skills but not the temperament. But I think after a few years of maturation he could have made a good command officer.

[Guy Gardener]

He Let the universe fade away in Endgame when they gave him a ship.

Even Geordie was a proper Captain compared to Kim.

Sure he failed because he's a muppet.

But at least he tried repeatedly to kill Kim when he was attempting to upend time.

[Josan]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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I wonder how they decided security chief was a good choice for Kim. They must have asked themselves, which important job on the ship requires a skill set that bears no relation to Kim's personal skills?

Kim at the end of Voyager probably wouldn't have made sense for command track. He has the skills but not the temperament. But I think after a few years of maturation he could have made a good command officer.

I couldn't really see Kim ever rising above Lt. Cmdr and a dept. head in an engineering/ops capacity.