My father was an officer ... he quit before they were about to promote him to major.
Was Bashir guilty of sexual harassment in season 1 with Dax?
- Thread starter Jayson1
- Start date
No, I think the problem was that he did not belong to the universal homogenizing character development force. Perhaps the US Army allows for more diversity of career development than Starfleet.
It speculative on fans' part, but presumably Starfleet Medical teaches you how to do at least emergency medicine on many kinds of species you might encounter and how to wing it if you find something they haven't covered. Also how to relieve the commanding officer if s/he's not fit for duty, command protocol, etc. Makes them Starfleet officers, not just MDs.
Even the doctors in MASH got some indoctrination into how the Army does things before sending them into a military situation and issuing them some costume jewelry.
Yes,my father received training as well. That's how he was able to assume tactical responsibilities. He would laughingly tell us about how he was so bad at an exam that he had all the soldiers firing at one another. During the Cold War, he would have coordinated with field commanders and commanded soldiers of his own in order to evacuate civilians from Alaska. He had to study maps of routes and special tunnels, as well as be familiar with how such evacuations might be hindered by the entry of supplies. I guess that made my dad a soldier, no?
Perhaps even more to the point, many, if not most, soldiers who receive advanced degrees do so outside institutions of military education. Indeed, a colleague of mine, retired from the Army, was a West Point cadet, went to the University of Chicago for his MA and PhD, taught at West Point, served in Iraq, and reached the rank of lieutenant general. If this were Star Trek, he would have done all this within the academy.
I'm trying to point out how really unrealistic it is to assume that physicians in Starfleet would have all their educational experiences confined its academic institutions. I can't account for every country, by the United States draws its officers, including its physicians, from numerous academic institutions. Most of them--some of them students of mine--go through ROTC. And the more advanced professions almost universally earn their undergraduate and graduate degrees outside the military. The programs of each branch to promote the pursuit of medical degrees for the graduates of academies is very small.
Similar threads
