If a crew member of a Starship that was on a 5-year mission had put in the time and sweat, could the Captain request that the crew member be advanced in rank, especially if it was moving up from ensign? If not, what is the process for moving up in rank?
Perhaps I have oversimplified it in my mind, but I thought it was at the captain's discretion to promote officers under them.
Be good at your job, have your superior officer recommend you for a promotion based on performance and meeting certain competency criteria, have the XO or CO approve.
I see Starfleet as kind of similar in nature to the US Navy. In the USN, you start as an ensign. After 2 years, unless you've screwed a legion of pooches, you make LTJG. It's essentially automatic. After 2 more years, you're an LT. A minuscule percentage of officers don't make the cut. After 5 more years, you CAN be promoted to LCDR. About 20% of LT's are passed over for promotion. After 5 or 6 more years, you can make Commander. About 30% of LCDR's, or 45% of officers in general, are passed over for promotion. After another 5 or 6 years, you can make Captain. Only about 50 percent of CDR's are chosen this time, or about 27% of officers in general. Only about 8% of captains, or 2% of officers in general, make admiral. These promotions are based on accomplishment, evaluation by superior officers, and (at higher levels) whether you kissed the right butts. On a competently run show, even if Janeway had been a stickler for rules and not field promoted anyone, Starfleet would have read their crew evals and directed her to promote a number of her people. Harry Kim would have been the most visible, but probably every low ranking non-Maquis (aside from the Equinox survivors) would have gotten at least one extra grade. The Maquis would probably have been pending Starfleet review of the legality of their field commissions, while the E5 would have been facing formal charges.
Everyone that complains about Captain Janeway not promoting Ensign Harold Kim should be glad Mr. Kim didn't serve under Captain Rudy Ransom of the Good Ship Equinox. Rudy lost the bulk of his crew (hell, we only see, like, seven during the two-parter) and his CHIEF ENGINEER is Ensign Marla Gilmore. Noah Lessing doesn't even GET a rank. So, you have Captain Ransom, Lt. Commander Burke, then an ensign, a crewman and a few rando crewmembers. At least on Janeway's ship it could be argued there are too many crewmembers to advance in rank, but on Equinox, there's literally like seven people and Captain Ransom can't be bothered to promote anybody
Or that Picard idiot, who couldn't even be bothered getting a real ensign to steer the ship, so he got a fake one to do it.
Well one can't have too many officers with higher ranks serving on the same ship we'll just forgot about the Enterprise A with the likes of Captain's Kirk, Spock and Scott, Commanders McCoy, Uhuru, Sulu and Chekov. But in the case of VOY using the excuse of there was no higher rank positions on the ship is a pretty poor reason in the case of Kim he was an Operations officer he took part in senior staff meetings so we can infer that he was the most senior operations officer to survive the trip to the DQ so was a de-facto department head which would surely deserve a promotion to at least Lt (JG). Promoting officers on VOY wouldn't really change anything in regards to chain of command, duties etc.. B
perhaps ransom had qualms in formally promoting people in an organization whose principles he violated on a daily basis.
Janeway knows how to hold a grudge, and she never forgave him for that "Ma'am" he gave her pre-Badlands.
Addressed that one, too. Tom Paris throws insouciant "yes ma'am's" at her right and left, and gets promoted back to lieutenant.
I do have to wonder if there is a divisional ceiling that stops officers from advancing to CMDR if say they're a yellow shirt, which could be one reason besides bigotry for why Data never advanced in 15 years, despite extensive command experience. While LaForge does advance all the way up to LCDR in that time, he too never rises above it. I can't think of any yellow shirts who have. Am I forgetting someone? Apart from the obvious command redshirts, we do also see many blue shirts in a commander rank, including both of the senior ones on the 1701-D
I can't think of any 24th century commander yellowshirts, but Commodore Oh and that Admiral from DS9 both wore yellow above commander, so there might theoretically be a gap, but it can't be a ceiling.
We saw a yellow shirted Admiral on DS9, Commodore on Picard, and a Commander on Voyager. In TOS and Enterprise, where red is the same as a yellow shirt from the 24th century, where there's Trip, Kelby and Collins from Enterprise, who were all Commanders. TOS had two Commodores in red, Stone and Stocker Jett Reno on Disco holds the rank of full Commander and wears bronze, which is the colour worn on that show for those who are red on TOS and Enterprise or yellow on the 24th century shows. So there's clearly no ceiling that prevents these personnel from advancing past Lt. Commander.
My theory is that there are yellow shirt berths above lieutenant commander, but they're all shoreside. That's why Data, after SAVING THE FRICKIN' FEDERATION FROM BORG ASSIMILATION in "Best of Both Worlds II" remains a mere LCDR. Personally, I think this is BS. Data was third in command of the Federation flagship, and denied the Number One spot only because Riker irrationally refuses to accept his own command. And why the hell should he have to call DEANNA FRICKIN' TROI "sir", anyway?!
Assuming Harry continued his career in Starfleet, he would surely get promoted at some point. Once the ball got rolling and his performance was good, could there be a “catch up” situation? Since he had already served 7 years as ensign, could his stay at the next rank be much shorter before moving to the next?
It's a regular thing for posters to gleefully state that Harry was an ensign until he was 82, or some such nonsense. I've done it too, so no judging. But simply put, once Harry was no longer under Janeway's command, he advanced quite well. * In an alternate timeline, he was considered potentially promotable after only 8 months as an ensign. * In another alternate timeline, he was a full lieutenant. * In a third, his rank is unknown... I thought I remembered seeing him as a commander in "Timeless", but my memory could have been playing tricks on me. * In a fourth, he's a captain. * In the non canonical "Online" game, same. The simple truth is that Harry was likely evaluated after Voyager reached Earth. He was an exemplary officer who had been doing lieutenant level work for seven years, with one ding on his record ("The Disease"). He would have almost certainly been given a multi-grade promotion, and his choice of assignments.
Perhaps if he's promoted something wrong happens…I guess that season 2 of Picard will show an alternate timeline in which Harry is head of starfleet but the federation is a fascistic government on the brink of being annihilated by the romulans.