Oh, I should have known. But Roddenberry didn't have anything to do with that.
I like the combo USAF-Starfleet stripes in the avatar! I wish they had really had some kind of enlisted insignia in TOS.
Ranks and duties on the Enterprise
- Thread starter herofan
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Oh, I should have known. But Roddenberry didn't have anything to do with that.
I like the combo USAF-Starfleet stripes in the avatar! I wish they had really had some kind of enlisted insignia in TOS.
There is no doubt that there has been a ton of on-screen evidence to demonstrate that a combination of the naval and police model is where they ended up. But whatever the rank system, whatever you call it, someone has to be on the bottom.
I like the existence of the non-coms. I just wish that more of them were utilised. Yeoman Zahra (a petty officer most likely) was bumped up to a full lieutenant in the nu-Trek comic when she became a security guard and Keenser is a lieutenant(!) i.e. a senior officer, despite being treated and acting like a grease monkey. I don't think I've ever seen him give an order in the movies or comics. He should be enlisted - a CPO at best IMO.
I meant those specific crew numbers did not come from Roddenberry. AIUI, GR approved what FJ had done in the course of trying to make a deal for Lincoln Enterprises, but his editorial input was minimal.
I am out of step with the times, but I liked the old school MSgt with all six stripes on the bottom. My late grandfather-in-law was a CMSgt and flight engineer on B-50s, KC-97s and C-141s.
FWIW, in the US Navy, the people whose jobs consist mostly of janitorial work on a ship are called "undesignated strikers", which are people who have yet to attain ("strike") a rating (which I think is just "position" in Starfleet parlance). There's also undesignated firemen, who work in the engine department but are similarly undesignated and thus spend most of their time cleaning. But really, pretty much everyone who's not a commissioned officer does janitorial work—if you don't have anything else to do, you clean. Navy ships are generally clean as a whistle (especially as compared to merchant ships) because of the fact that basically everyone is cleaning all the time. I'm not sure if the same thing is true for the Coast Guard, but I would suspect so. In the Merchant Marines, cleaning is mostly done by Wipers in the Engine department and Ordinary Seamen in the Deck department.
I don't think being at a bridge station would necessarily make you a department head. While Spock may have been the Sciences department head, most other stations seemed to be occupied by people whose job was to operate that station. For example, Uhura was in charge of operating the communications station (which would seem to be a combination of the Navy Radioman and Signalman ratings, with a dash of Sonar Technician thrown in). She probably wasn't in charge of every piece of communications equipment on the ship; so if the actual subspace antenna needed parts replacing or if some modification needed to be done to some handheld communicators, my guess is that would be handled by a machinist's mate (or whatever the equivalent in Starfleet is) from the Engine department. She probably did train lower-ranked communications officers, though, and she was apparently a line officer as she had the conn on at least one occasion. I also suspect that, like on a submarine, everyone is trained to be able to do everyone else's job, which is why you'd occasionally see her jump on helm or navigation.
I'd say the same probably goes for Sulu—he's probably not a department head, and probably is not in charge of all the steering equipment onboard. On the other hand, he seemed to double as a Weapons Officer, since weapon firing commands were sent through the helm station until the "tactical station" or whatever it was called was introduced in TMP. So who knows? Maybe he was in charge of the gunnery department. If so, then yeah he'd be a department head. My gut feeling is that he wasn't, though. And, apparently, he was also a line officer.
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