It doesn't need to. I just treat it as its own thing, it still hangs on whether or not it is entertaining.
Kelvin Timeline all but confirmed
- Thread starter captainkirk
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It doesn't need to. I just treat it as its own thing, it still hangs on whether or not it is entertaining.
Once, in Where Silence Has Lease (TNG).
(We're in "Transporter room")
RIKER: Our sensors indicate no life forms.
WORF: Still, the tactic is sound.
RIKER: Agreed. Aft station, Lieutenant.
OBRIEN: Aye, sir.
RIKER: Phasers on stun. Energise.
Given that he's been referred as "Chief" in the bulk of 52 episodes of TNG that he appeared in and all 173 (give or take) episodes of DS9 (and most critically, referred to as Chief O'Brien (not Ensign O'Brien) throughout the past segments of All Good Things, confirming that even if Colm Meaney's initial character "CONN" was an Ensign and "Transporter Chief" was a Lieutenant, "Miles Edward O'Brien" was always intended to be a (Senior) Chief Petty Officer*.
*Hypothetically, O'Brien should probably have been wearing the all-silver comm badge later worn by Acting Ensign and silver or bronze pips rather than the usual gold ones. If so, 1 coloured pip is likely either Crewman 1st Class (same rank held by Simon Tarses in The Drumhead) or Petty Officer 2nd Class, with Petty Officer (1st Class) wearing one coloured pip and one black pip, Chiefs wearing two coloured pips, Senior Chiefs wearing two coloured pips and one black pip, and Master Chiefs wearing three coloured pips.
So do you consider every single new series or film which in no way jibes with others a totally separate reality?
TOS looks nothing like any other aspect of the Trek universe.
TMP looks a good century more advanced than anything in TOS.
The remaining TOS films studiously avoid mentioning TMP at all, including no mention of Decker, Ilia or what's to become of V'Ger.
TNG is so unlike TOS or even the TOS films even aesthetically that it might as well have rebooted the franchise.
ENT is, well, ENT.
And of course the Kelvin films are openly a different timeline.
See, for myself, I count all the TV series and movies, barring the Kelvin movies, as part of the same timeline. I don't worry about whether they fit together aesthetically or with tech-level, because if you're consistent in your insistence (and most who try to do this really aren't) that's a short ride to crazy-town. But I can't accept that "they're all just different timelines/reboots" because that would mean they have no effect on each other, when they clearly do.
They really don't. And I'm quite sane, and have no problem separating things and keeping them separate from each other. It is really quite easy.
TOS/TAS is its own thing.
The TOS movies are their own thing.
The Abrams movies are their own thing.
TNG/DS9/Voyager are their own thing.
First Contact leads into Enterprise.
Discovery is its own thing.
Much like the DC multi-verse, they have commonalities but each piece stands on its own. Not seeing a problem? At least not for me.
Just seeing them all as different and basically standalone "versions" of Trek is a lot less of a headache than trying to rationalize everything to fit together into a coherent universe. And to me, TOS is the standard. All the others are outlying, broad-strokes variations.
Kor
Kor
The background for this is that O'Brien was initially just a regular extra, who didn't get a name at all until "Unnatural Selection" and before that was considered a nameless lieutenant who ran the transporter. I think, though I could be wrong, that there was a second episode where he was addressed as "Lieutenant". Regardless, as he was a transporter chief, everyone kept calling him "Chief" instead of by his rank.
Then came Ron Moore, who wasn't really concerned with keeping track of rank pips and liked the idea of O'Brien being a fellow enlisted man. Thus in Family Sergey Rhozhenko refers to him as a "fellow enlisted man" and thus, it was now canon.
The reason for it onscreen? There's never been one, and we're just supposed to accept that he always was.
Various people addressed someone as "Lieutenant" in the same scene as O'Brien, however, a review of the scripts suggests that this was usually directed at someone else, typically Worf.
As far as the "rank pips" go, I agree in the sense that he didn't feel that wardrobe's decision to give him lieutenant's pips wasn't the deciding factor but rather what served the story and the intent of the writers. Frankly, it also makes more sense for a transporter chief to be senior enlisted or an ensign (as at most they are a section/shift leader reporting to the ops manager) than for them to have the same rank potentially as the chief engineer (a position at least two levels above them in the heirarchy). Ironically, the reverse is true of his assignment on DS9, which should realistically have gone to a LT or LT-CMDR.
You think TMP looks more advanced then TOS?
On TOS that had full color high resolution Graphics screens. On TMP a lot of these were replaced with CRT monitors going monochrome vector graphics <-- That's MORE advanced to you?
(And yes, I know production wise on TOS the 'monitor' displays were colored back lit plastic overlays - but the REPRESENTED high resolution flat color graphics displays 'in universe')
I agree that wardrobe should not dictate writing. Absolutely. Just means I have to ignore that O'Brien used to wear the pips of a lieutenant.
Rank and position appear to be relative things. Worf was clearly the fourth in command of the Enterprise despite La Forge outranking him (I'm not sure when this started, though, perhaps by the fourth or fifth season, but we do know that when Data took command in "Gambit" it was Worf, not Geordi, who was his acting first officer. We know there were lieutenant commanders aboard both Kirk's and Picard's ships who weren't considered members of the senior staff while men like Sulu and Worf were.
As for the last, I have always seen O'Brien as more like the chief of the deck department, which would mean he's a senior enlisted man. Enlisted men can and often are put in positions of authority where they don't make decisions that affect administration.
Perhaps O'Brien's original pips were a different color, slightly?
I know this is hard to read onscreen...but as we now know, DSC's rank pips are even harder to read.
I know this is hard to read onscreen...but as we now know, DSC's rank pips are even harder to read.
My focus was on pretty much everything else. You focused on the one thing that appears to be a step back. Although I have no doubt the TMP screens are just as capable of full color.
If I could change one thing about DSC, it would be the iconography and ranks. Why not use some variant of Kirk-era braids?Perhaps O'Brien's original pips were a different color, slightly?
I know this is hard to read onscreen...but as we now know, DSC's rank pips are even harder to read.
At least have something that the viewer at home could read. What's the point of having rank insignia that no one can see?
Someday when we all have ten-foot 16K TVs, then we will see those details more clearly than we ever thought possible, or even wanted in the first place.
Kor
Theoritically, the lack of sleeve braids (like the "blues" overall) is to avoid looking too much like the KT films. But as they use medium and narrow silver braids, they could've still used TOS-style full and broken gold braids, or the collar insignia of the TNG-era (and the UESF Desert Uniform).
Did you guys make all that up, or does it come from somewhere?
Wow, is it just me or does the guy who runs EAS, have way to much time on his hands and take all of this way to seriously?
I will confess I do refer back to the bridge layouts on the site, so I won't deny that it is interesting and useful, but putting this site together must have taken an incredible amount of obsessiveness.
I've always assumed what we got at the end of the TCW was the Prime timeline for the rest of Trek.
It's all one big universe for me, I'm more than happy to just overlook the changes or inconsistencies, since most of those are very minor compared to the ways they do line up. So far I have not seen or heard anything that makes me want to push DSC out of the Prime Universe.
This might partly come from the fact that I am a big fan of the Trek books, which are constantly weaving the shows into each other and connecting them more than they ever were on screen. Hell, the Titan book series alone includes characters from TNG, DS9, and Voyager all serving together on the ship, and has included appearances Spock.
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