Enough with this "permanent or temporary" nonsense. There is such a thing called a "temporary duty assignment," TDY. If Starfleet Command considered Jellico's command of the ship a TDY assignment, they would have told him, Picard and the crew it was a TDY assignment.
There was a Change of Command ceremony, where Picard was relieved of his command of the
Enterprise and Jellico was ordered to assume command of the
Enterprise. Nobody had to walk around saying "temporary this" or "temporary that" because the only people with the right to say that - their mutual superiors - made Captain Edward Jellico the rightful commanding officer of the Federation Starship
Enterprise, and anyone with half a brain would have to accept that assignment as permanent unless and until there is another Change of Command ceremony. If their intention had always been to return Picard to the center seat on
Enterprise, then you have no idea when or if that second ceremony will take place because you don't know if Picard's going to live through the mission he was sent on, so you have to assume the assignment is permanent because Command hasn't said otherwise and circumstances may force the issue.
Also, I'm getting a little tired of people talking about how "hard" changing procedures aboard the Enterprise would be because canon proves otherwise. We are talking about episodes in season 6 of TNG. If you'd been watching the series straight through the past five and a half seasons you know that the technology aboard the
Enterprise-D is
designed to facilitate change. The Galaxy Class starship and the systems inside her are the epitome of an Open Design Architecture. You can configure each control surface to whatever set-up you need. You can change the way the main deflector and shields operate for any given situation. You can make the Bussard Collectors expel material instead of attracting it. You can redesign systems using the holodeck and even create new systems there and tie them into the operation of the ship. In five and a half years the crew of the
Enterprise has reconfigured the ship's systems to do things that I'm sure the engineers at Utopia Planitia would have told you to go pound sand if you'd suggested making them standard functions when they built the thing, and they often did those things under serious time pressure.
So the notion that the changes Jellico wanted them to make in a day or too would have been "too hard" is utter bullshit. They could do it, because they have done things just as hard and in just as little time, and the only reason it was harder in this instance was because they spent more time whining about the changes than actually making them.
"But Jellico was mean! He shouldn't have been mean!"
Pay attention: In the history of human beings being called "Captain" and being given command of ships, never once has being nice been a job requirement. He doesn't have to be your friend, he doesn't have to be your bro, he doesn't have to join you and the other officers for poker, he doesn't have to be your father figure. His only function is to make decisions and issue orders based on those decisions, and it is the job of his subordinates to follow those orders, period.
(Got that off my chest...)
