Why Was Riker Demoted?
- Thread starter CoveTom
- Start date
You know, I actually hadn't thought of that. That's a pretty good hand wave for what otherwise was an unrealistically quick return to duty... never mind that it gets completely undone by the First Contact movie, where Picard is now inexplicably having dreamy communion with the Borg Queen, & he's like the Borg whisperer all of a sudden. Couple that with his Ahab obsession, & he seems awfully damn compromised there.
But before then not so much, once he had a good cry about it with some family. I feel like that movie did a lot to undermine his state of mind as the captain we've known
Joking aside, the best answer I've read here (and agree with) is it was only a provisional field promotion, and Riker never took it further, ie going before a board meeting for making the role permanent. Once Picard was returned safely to the big chair, Riker's provisional promotion lapsed. Which Will was perfectly happy about.
Combination of factors, I suppose:
1) Picard was coming back as the captain (not thinking it would be that likely that quick, but that's another discussion)
2) Riker liked working under Picard, apparently more so than pursuing his own command
3) Apparently the "captain as position" and "captain as rank" are one and the same concept in the Star trek universe. If that hadn't been the case, there would have been no reason to not let Riker stay a captain (by rank), and perhaps give Picard a promotion as well so he still outranks Riker (and not only by seniority).
1) Picard was coming back as the captain (not thinking it would be that likely that quick, but that's another discussion)
2) Riker liked working under Picard, apparently more so than pursuing his own command
3) Apparently the "captain as position" and "captain as rank" are one and the same concept in the Star trek universe. If that hadn't been the case, there would have been no reason to not let Riker stay a captain (by rank), and perhaps give Picard a promotion as well so he still outranks Riker (and not only by seniority).
That's a really good question that bothered me since i first saw these episodes. I never found an explanation for the demotion that makes sense, if one considers Spock in TUC.
Which - while backed up by most of canon (with the exception of select references from DS9 s3 onwards and TOS) - is totally bogus compared to modern day naval practice worldwide and causes more problems than it solves.
Think it's only carriers and not the first officer. You have the ship's commanding officer who will be a four strip captain as will be the commander of the air group (CAG) and possibly a captain of engineering but the later two won't be in the ship's chain of command unless things get really bad (you've lost the CO and the XO and other senior command officers).
As for Spock he was probably a rare case. He was captain of the Enterprise after Kirk was promoted so had time in rank before the events of STIV and Kirk's demotion. As Spock hadn't screwed up in anyway there were no grounds to reduce him rank though he could have voluntariliy requested a demotion back to Cmdr to continue to serve on the Enterprise. After all as he told Kirk "I am a Vulcan, I do not have an ego to bruise".
Easy.
Admiral Hanson promoted Riker over a phone call.
Everyone assumed that everything was in order aboard the Enterprise until after the crisis was over.
Then they found out Hanson never filed the official report to Starfleet before the ship went down with all hands onboard and any offline records if there even were any.
As far as Starfleet was concerned he was still a commander and first officer.
Guess how pissed Shelby was when she heard that her own promotion was null and void, too, because Riker couldn’t ever really give her an equal rank.
Admiral Hanson promoted Riker over a phone call.
Everyone assumed that everything was in order aboard the Enterprise until after the crisis was over.
Then they found out Hanson never filed the official report to Starfleet before the ship went down with all hands onboard and any offline records if there even were any.
As far as Starfleet was concerned he was still a commander and first officer.
Guess how pissed Shelby was when she heard that her own promotion was null and void, too, because Riker couldn’t ever really give her an equal rank.
While certainly not universal, I'm pretty sure that if the ChEng is a "captain-by-rank" then the XO would be one as well, given that the XO is senior to the ChEng in the chain-of-command (XO is always 2-i-C, ChEng can be anything from 3-i-C down to many 6th or 7th [though a four-striper would always be 3-i-C).
The whole "our entire senior staff is made up of captains and commanders" thing may have been an extreme aberration, made possible only by Kirk's influence and willingness to wield that influence to get his way. I can easily imagine higher-ups in Starfleet rolling their eyes every time they thought about it ...
It didn't seem to matter for Data on the Sutherland, though.
It is standard for the XO on a US carrier to have the rank of captain. The difference between the CO captain and the XO captain is several years of seniority; the XO is pretty much a brand new captain. This has also been the case in more recent years on big amphibians, LHD or LPD.
The CAG and deputy CAG (also usually a captain) are not in line of command for the ship, because the air wing is a separate command. There are also other captains aboard, the admiral's chief of staff and the destroyer commodore and deputy, who are, again, organizationally separate.
With an aircraft carrier, things are a little different because by law only naval aviators or naval flight officers can take command, so the line of succession skips over officers who don't wear wings. There are always brown shoe (aviator or NFO) commanders heading the Ops, Air, Navigation and AIMD departments, and maybe others too. The Ops Boss is almost always next in line after the XO. It used to be common for the reactor officer to be a full captain, but he (males only back then) was always a surface or submarine officer, so not in line of command for the carrier. I think this still happens sometimes but it is much more common today for the reactor officer to be a commander. The nuclear carrier's chief engineer (all machinery and electrical except the nuclear plant and main propulsion) has always been a commander AFAIK.
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In fact, that's what I've been saying. Not a demotion, but a stepping down, because it wasn't an option to hold the position he wanted as Picard's 1st officer, & still keep the rank. Maybe it was an option in other circumstances, for past commands like Kirk & Spock, but that's really the only example, & could easily have been a standalone situation that no one wanted repeated.
It would have been interesting is Admiral Hanson made Shelby captain instead of Riker becuase:
- Shelby has more experience researching the Borg.
- He had a hard on for Shelby (an old man's dream
)
- He figured Riker is just going to refuse a command anyways (like he did with 3 other ships) so why bother.
LOL
- Shelby has more experience researching the Borg.
- He had a hard on for Shelby (an old man's dream
)- He figured Riker is just going to refuse a command anyways (like he did with 3 other ships) so why bother.
LOL
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