Hellllooooo, Nurse(s)!
McCoy's rank
- Thread starter MarsWeeps
- Start date
A few other nurses had the Red Cross, too. And there were two styles: Red Cross superimposed on the sciences symbol and Red Cross without the science symbol. More info here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130211013107/http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/?p=1557
All those pictures look like the red crosses were added on existing ones. Some were done better but I don't think any "originals" were made.
Like Scotty, McCoy's rank is also Lieutenant Commander, and the braiding is only seen when he wears a long sleeved blue tunic or his full-dress uniform. The difference between the two men is that McCoy is not an "officer of the line" as Scotty is. The episode where McCoy verbalizes this is A Taste of Armageddon IIRC.
I stated in another thread that McCoy frequently has his nerve criticizing Spock for how he deals with whatever the current crisis is whenever Kirk is away from the ship. The doc is wonderful, but he would be a disaster trying to command the Enterprise in an emergency. Give me Spock, Scotty or even Sulu any day....
I stated in another thread that McCoy frequently has his nerve criticizing Spock for how he deals with whatever the current crisis is whenever Kirk is away from the ship. The doc is wonderful, but he would be a disaster trying to command the Enterprise in an emergency. Give me Spock, Scotty or even Sulu any day....
Read Diane Duane's Doctor's Orders. McCoy actually does a pretty good job. Watching Kirk all those years had to have taught him a thing or two.
Chapel wore a different patch starting in the middle of the second season. It was a Red Cross *not* superimposed on the Science symbol. Just the Red Cross:
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Image not showing up.Chapel wore a different patch starting in the middle of the second season. It was a Red Cross *not* superimposed on the Science symbol. Just the Red Cross:
Read it, good book. Maybe if TOS had gotten another season, we would've seen McCoy in command.
Not likely. Medical officers aren't supposed to be in the chain of command, a fact McCoy himself even states as much. I never read that novel, so I won't comment on it, but the main reason we saw Dr. Crusher take command on TNG was because the writers were embarrassed the by the fact no women actually had command authority on the show.
In the book Kirk directly states that McCoy has had Line Officer's Training, not the full command course, but enough to know what to do.
Don't they even address this directly in 'Thine Own Self' where Troi needs to pass that command qualifications test? Crusher has the command training, even though her position does not directly require it. It is beneficial for Starfleet to have at least some medical officers who are also trained as line officers to act as captains of hospital ships such as Pasteur.
Again Thine Own Self was just trying to rationalize how Crusher could be in command. An really, the whole thing f Deanna getting command training was again, writers were embarrassed there were no women with command authority on the show. It is an actual rule in most Navies (including the US Navy which Starfleet is largely based on) that medical officers can't take command of a ship, or even a bridge watch, which as I pointed out earlier McCoy himself even said this (though embarrassingly, I forget the episode at the moment). DS9 also adhered to this, not once did Bashir ever have command, though there is the weird time he had to fill in as the intelligence officer in Worf's absence. Voyager did have the Doctor take command, but that was a result of him getting "ECH" programming added to his system.
If that was done to get the ladies in command, it's fine by me. And I really see no purpose in having a strict rule stating that a medical officer cannot take the command. Sure, medical officers don't need to be trained as line officers, but it doesn't mean that they can't. So if one has the command training it makes sense for them to take the command, regardless of what other training they might have.
In any case, I have an impression that TNG era Starfleet handles things differently in this regard than TOS era Starfleet. It was implied that McCoy never went to the Academy, but Bashir did (and I think Crusher did too.) So while in TOS era medical doctor might have been trained elsewhere and merely commissioned as an officer by the Starfleet, by TNG era Starfleet seems to prefer to directly train their medical officers.
Crusher went to the Academy, Bashir attended Starfleet Medical School which is apparently different than the Academy but is still in San Francisco.
There is real-world experience on this. President Theodore Roosevelt wanted Navy medical officers to have command of hospital ships, which at that time were crewed by contracted civilian mariners, and in 1908 the regulations were written to allow that. But in WW1 the Navy was greatly expanded, and took over running the hospital ships.
In 1921, the hospital ship USS Mercy was under the command of Cdr William Garton, Medical Corps, USN. The top line officer was LCdr Athol George, USNRF. Off the coast of California, LCdr George was on the bridge trying to navigate safely in a heavy fog, on soundings, with a steamer's whistle somewhere close by. Garton requested that George sign the report of the ship's noon position. George said, basically, we're in fog, I'm not sure of our exact position, and I've got my hands full trying to not wreck this ship, I don't have time for this. Garton put the order in writing, same result, so he charged George with disobeying an order and George was court-martialed. In the trial Garton testified that although he was commanding officer of the ship he knew nothing about navigation.
LCdr George was found guilty of disobeying an order under the letter of the regulations that said Garton was in command, but the opinion in the Navy was that the verdict didn't meet the common-sense test, so the Secretary of the Navy overturned the conviction and the regulation was changed. Even on hospital ships, the line officer had to be in charge.
That seems like an odd idea to me. Would there be a purpose in having a rule that line officers don't go in to sickbay and start treating patients? And if a senior attending physician is not around, would you want a junior resident MD to take charge in the emergency room, or a more senior hospital administrator?
Every day when the physician goes to work for whatever-number of years, they are gaining experience to make them a better physician. Same with the line officer. Every day they do their job as division officer, watch officer, department head, executive officer etc. they are gaining experience that makes them better able to take command.
Military command is a profession in its own right, it goes far beyond what could be gained in completing a course. A US destroyer captain today, commander rank, has close to 20 years of officer experience and at least one and often two graduate degrees.
Yeah, in TOS's day, over 25 years into the draft, I think the audience had a better understanding that there could be different sources of officers other than the military academies. In TMOST Scotty was also said to have come up from the ranks. TNG seemed to go with the idea every Starfleet officer (and possibly enlisted) in the entire Federation came from the Academy on Earth. The OS makes more sense to me.
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But this situation presumably occurred because Garton was not also trained as line officer in addition of being a medical doctor.
If the line officer happens also be a qualified medical doctor, I see no reason to prohibit from treating patients even though that may not be their primary job on the ship at the moment. (This presumably would only occur in a situation where there was a temporary shortage of medical staff for some reason.)
Sure, yet Spock's primary job is being the science officer but he is second in command (and eventually becomes the captain) of the Enterprise. Similarly Scotty is an engineer, yet he is third in command.
Well, everyone who serves on a starship must have at least some basic understanding of the regulations and the technology involved, so they need to attend at least some courses. It might as well happen in the Academy.
Oh, one thing. IIRC, in the real world navy doctors are usually directly commissioned with a rank of an lieutenant. Bashir's rank of lieutenant JG at the beginning of DS9 implies that this would be the rank Starfleet doctors are commissioned with. However, Doctor Helen Noel in TOS 'Dagger of the Mind' has no rank stripes, so she can be an ensign at most... Maybe Bashir was commissioned as ensign as well, and was just swiftly promoted. Of course such policies can easily change over the years.
I would like to see a character who is a genuine polymath, with many advanced degrees in medicine, hard sciences of all kinds, engineering, social sciences, liberal arts and humanities, as well as top marks in Starfleet Academy's command course, not to mention expertise in martial arts, music, painting, and gourmet cuisine. So one week, this character could be performing delicate brain surgery, the next week coming up with brilliant engineering solutions, the week after that leading a tactical security detail on some hostile planet, the week after that taking command of a fleet of ships, and finally preparing a fine gourmet meal for the senior staff.
Advanced humans centuries from now will be smarter.
Kor
Advanced humans centuries from now will be smarter.
Kor
Of course he wasn't.
Neither is a field that lends itself well to part-time practice. Why would you want a surgeon who had spent part of her career learning to be ship captain, or vice versa, rather than one who had concentrated their entire career on one or the other?
Those are their jobs on the ship (though I admit Spock's two hats is odd), but they are still line officers. McCoy is not.
Why? That seems like a big bottleneck if, say, things had to be scaled up in wartime. Not to mention if it were obliterated by a V'ger etc. Why not have it decentralized with the equivalent of ROTC, OCS, merchant reserve, boot camps etc., or even multiple Academies? It just seems imagination-constricted, like "We know these Starfleet characters went to the Academy, so they all must have."
