Why Was Riker Demoted?
- Thread starter CoveTom
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Probably not, unless she underwent a sex change (like Spot).
DAX: Captain Shelby owed me a favour. Actually, he owed me several. In fact, how would you like to have another two days off?
It's from the transcript. Well, I checked the video and you're right. Odd, I was sure she said: "she".
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In Star Trek, we have seen a number of temporary promotions to CO position when the previous boss is presumed dead. So we know that as a rule, these do not involve a promotion in rank.
It would be prudent, then, to concentrate on thinking up reasons why Riker was promoted in an exceptional fashion here, and why such reasons might not stand the test of time. Say, the loss of Picard to the Borg was shocking, and might have called for a propagandist promotion of the next man, not so much for keep-calm-and-carry-on, business-as-usual reasons, but for making it extra official with fries that Picard was well and truly dead (and to be shot at sight if nevertheless witnessed droning about).
There would be no such need were Picard actually killed, such as in "Gambit". But as long as his death was from a Kenobian "certain point of view" only, Starfleet needed that empty coffin and the fourth pip on Riker's collar, so that the filthy traitor could be honorably buried and subsequently ignored.
When Picard bounced back after all, all of this would become irrelevant and outdated, indeed downright embarrassing for Starfleet. Perhaps even more embarrassing than quickly backpedaling and demoting Riker back to his expected rank.
Timo Saloniemi
It would be prudent, then, to concentrate on thinking up reasons why Riker was promoted in an exceptional fashion here, and why such reasons might not stand the test of time. Say, the loss of Picard to the Borg was shocking, and might have called for a propagandist promotion of the next man, not so much for keep-calm-and-carry-on, business-as-usual reasons, but for making it extra official with fries that Picard was well and truly dead (and to be shot at sight if nevertheless witnessed droning about).
There would be no such need were Picard actually killed, such as in "Gambit". But as long as his death was from a Kenobian "certain point of view" only, Starfleet needed that empty coffin and the fourth pip on Riker's collar, so that the filthy traitor could be honorably buried and subsequently ignored.
When Picard bounced back after all, all of this would become irrelevant and outdated, indeed downright embarrassing for Starfleet. Perhaps even more embarrassing than quickly backpedaling and demoting Riker back to his expected rank.
Timo Saloniemi
Or, they just thought, "You know how, in the event of a captain's presumed death, we usually just let the next in command take over at their current rank & leave it at that, until proper arrangements can be made? Well, this time, we have a confirmed sighting of his mutilated corpse being used by the Borg, with no known way to undo that, so... he's more than just presumed dead.
PLUS, we're all shitting ourselves that the end to our way of life is imminent, so maybe we should take our two most experienced Borg specialists, one of whom already ought to be a captain, & might very well be soon enough, who are already at the site, & officially promote them, to run the ship at the tip of the spear, instead of pussyfooting around about it, extreme circumstances calling for extreme measures etc..."
Nah, I don't buy that. I mean it's logistically a possibility, but I find it the least likely of scenarios. It's more likely that other people or more people than just Picard didn't want him holding the rank in that position, especially since Riker turned his nose up yet again, when the damn fleet had just lost a slew of ships, & could certainly use a qualified guy filling a void somewhere. In other words...
"Fine, hide in Picard's shadow if you want, but you aren't getting to keep any standing that we offered you in the hope that you'd permanently rise to the occasion"
Riker's demotion is on the same level of inconsistency as for example Data who can memorize hundreds of encyclopedias worth of knowledge but is incapable of using a familiar expression without substituting ordinary words with unusual ones. He once says (to old McCoy if memory serves) that he remembers every fact he's been exposed to (or something like that) but expressions are also facts.
But Data being Data probably would have spend a minute reading a "common phrases and expressions" book and some colloquialisms collections after he encountered them. At the start of the show he had already been living among humans for years but he still acts like he just discovered figurative language is a thing.
Nothing about Data's quirks make sense.
Like why would he need to type on a keyboard very fast when he could just interface with the computer and send his... data a billion times faster!!!
Who says that they've had such stuff available to him? They all act like the holodeck is new in season one, & most of his access to ship's databases on colloquialisms is encountered in there. That may in fact be the only time he's ever come across a database for referencing colloquialisms. It's easy to not find something if you aren't looking for it, & on top of that, there just hasn't been much out there to even suggest you should be.
Remember that while he is not new to them, he is unique to Starfleet. It's they that haven't got the ability to interface, not until him & Geordi begin doing such experiments, least of all would he have the ability to just line-in at any terminal he wants. The typing fast thing is just something he does. The needing to type it into the system is probably because it's been the simplest solution for not being able to line-in, at will. Why would Starfleet have thought to design ways for him to do so? Any time you've seen him direct lined into something, it's been a very special project to do so.
Besides, the whole point of Data is that he doesn't want things to heighten his artificial nature. Most of the time you see him on a terminal, he's typing normally. Only when someone needs him to type fast, does he do it. So to would it be less of an interest to him to always be hooked up to machinery, looking like another piece of equipment, & not experiencing the human interface of having to manually do things. He's supposed to present as human.
If there's ONE THING that we know how to do TODAY it's get computers and computer-like machines of different sizes, shape, brands, operating systems to communicate much faster than Data types on his KB. It's called the Internet!!! One would think that in the 24th century we will not have de-evolved (sic) to the point where interfacing a robot with a computer would seem like a nearly insoluble problem... Remember that it's easy to do TODAY, wireless at that!!! Geordi Interfaces Data with cables!!! Let's face it, data's limitations are inexplicable.
For all intents and purposes, Data is a robot.
You're adding that "he." It's not spoken by Dax nor is it in the script. She's just saying "ActualLY", but you're hearing "actual, he", which is wrong.
http://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/scripts/531.txt
According to Ron Moore, it was meant to be the same Shelby as BOBW --
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Memory_Alpha:AOL_chats/Ronald_D._Moore/ron073.txt
I sourced mine from
http://www.chakoteya.net/DS9/531.htm
which says
DAX: Captain Shelby owed me a favour. Actually, he owed me several. In fact, how would you like to have another two days off?
I listened to this fragment just now for several times, and on a surface level, the quote from chakoteya.net seems more accurate than the quote from http://www.st-minutiae.com. For example her word order most definitely is "actually <he> owed me several" , instead of "several favors, actually".
I put the <he> between brackets since it's a bit difficult to hear whether she says "actually, owed me several", or "actually he owed me several", but after listening several times to it, and the cadence of how she says it, I still think it's the "he" version.
I know of the Ron Moore quote, but I simply cannot reconcile it with what I hear in the actual recorded scene.
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I would like to know that, too. The minutiae site claims "A collection of the official teleplays for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A very handy reference!" I cannot verify whether that is true (if they really are official).
But even then... if it doesn't match with what Dax actually says on screen, I'd still be tempted to take the screen material as the final version, and the "official teleplay" as how it was intended to be.
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