Why was a Captain in command of Voyager?

[Locutus of Bored]

Is anyone going to listen to my repeated reminders that the Intrepid class is actually larger than the Constitution class, 344 meters long vs. 289 (305 for the refit)? That's also slightly bigger than the largest aircraft carrier in the world (the Gerald R. Ford class at 337 meters). It's not a small ship. It's actually very large. It's just not as gigantic as a Galaxy or Sovereign, or as the self-indulgently oversized designs of the modern movies and shows.

I know this is going to come as a great shock to you given how often repeat it (you say "Again..." more than anyone I've ever heard), but people aren't actually required to take your word as gospel, or to keep a database of your every utterance in a thread.

 

[Oddish]

The term "rate" in the old Royal Navy was not quality, it was size and firepower. A first rate warship had about 110 guns. A third rate was a mid sized 74 gun frigate. They went down to sixth rate, sloops with only a couple dozen guns.

The Galaxy class ship, huge and versatile, basically a mobile small town, would be like a first rate.

Voyager, a fast, versatile, and capable vessel with smaller size and fewer crew, would be a third.

 

[Timo]

This would have made a lot of sense, but unfortunately it’s not canon in any way and screen evidence seems to suggest otherwise.

Well, the ship had several officers of LCDR rank or above, killed in action in "Caretaker" (or else they would have made an appearance in the following episodes), as we learn from that Okudagram in "Imperfection". If anything, we are short of positions for these high-rankers. One of the LCDRs is the unnamed Chief Medical Officer, but we're still left with at least two, and the one Chief to survive is Chief of Security so that's out, as is the XO whose name is not one of those on the list. Odds really are that Kim's boss kicked the bucket while Janeway was giving the junior arrival a few bridge duty hours.

What's weird here is not that Kim gets a top position. It's that despite him getting that (and no promotion to go with it), people outranking him continue to serve at Ops - Ayala for one!

(That, and the fact that one of the Okudagram casualties outranked the XO. The CMO could plausibly do that and not rattle the chain of command, but we know he was a mere LCDR. Perhaps Janeway's original Chief of Sciences was the full Commander, and didn't have the Line qualifications Spock once did?)

What is canon is that several department heads died. What is also canon is that the head of Sciences never gets mentioned in past or present tense and sense, just like the putative original head of Ops never does. So there's demand, and supply, and sense galore. All we really miss is a name. Was Kim's boss LCDR Ziegler or LCDR McCarry, or just LT Seaborn or Lyman?

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Claudia_Craig?file=Voyager_casualty_list.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Yes, but even so, the Intrepid was larger than other classes in use contemporaneously, whether older designs like the Constellation, Miranda, and Oberth or more modern ones like the Defiant, Nova, Saber, or Steamrunner.

Just to put the record straight, the only modern ships the Intrepid manages to outbulk are Nova, Saber and Norway (but the latter has bigger nacelles and is equally long; she just lacks a secondary hull). The Akira is way bigger, say. As is a New Orleans or Cheyenne or other such kitbash from the era, those best defining "medium" for us.

We could perhaps charitably say that Intrepid defines the upper limit of "small"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

people aren't actually required to take your word as gospel

Huh??? It's not my word. I just looked it up in the readily available reference sources, like this one:

https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/schematics/fleet-chart.jpg

So kindly don't shoot the messenger.

The term "rate" in the old Royal Navy was not quality, it was size and firepower. A first rate warship had about 110 guns. A third rate was a mid sized 74 gun frigate. They went down to sixth rate, sloops with only a couple dozen guns.

Ah, I see. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[Timo]

So kindly don't shoot the messenger.

Blam.

You should know better than to argue on basis of side views... In 3D, Janeway's ride indeed is a midget.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Huh??? It's not my word. I just looked it up in the readily available reference sources, like this one:

https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/schematics/fleet-chart.jpg

So kindly don't shoot the messenger.

Only if you choose to define small by comparison to ships of the Constitution Class era rather than many other mid to late 24th century ships where the Intrepid Class is midling size at best.

 

[Maurice]

Is anyone going to listen to my repeated reminders—

The most unintentionally revealing post ever.

 

[Christopher]

where the Intrepid Class is midling size at best.

That is my point, that it's medium-sized rather than small.

 

[Oddish]

So there's demand, and supply, and sense galore. All we really miss is a name. Was Kim's boss LCDR Ziegler or LCDR McCarry, or just LT Seaborn or Lyman?

That would make perfect sense. Kim should have been introduced to, say, Lt. Seaborn, who would greet him in a friendly fashion and ask if he wanted to man the ops station for Voyager's departure while he attends to some last minute work in sickbay. Harry agrees, and Seaborn's broken corpse is later found amongst all the dead medical staff.

But, there would have been more to it than that. Suddenly, Harry is thrust from second in command of ops to head of ops, hence his status as senior officer. But there should have been some difficulty, a period of adjustment, like if you took a third grader and stuck him in an algebra class. It's not that he's unintelligent or incapable, he's just supposed to go through all these other levels of math before he attacks algebra. Harry has to hit the ground running and try to survive. In short, we get the same character development as Nog, Jake, or Bashir, but with a new spin: the Academy grad who is just in over his head.

Sadly, that would have involved CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, and unless you were a hologram or ex Borg, Voyager didn't have much of that.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

That is my point, that it's medium-sized rather than small.

"Middling at best" meaning small to medium size are both open to interpretation.

But that's besides the point. I was just making note of your frequent calls for people to pay attention to what you are saying like a professor lecturing a class.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Crew size, Voyager is a small ship, a third the size of Kirk's.

 

[cooleddie74]

Voyager is longer than Kirk's Enterprises but has roughly one-third the crew complement, so either the NCC-1701 and Enterprise-A had a lot more open space on the inside or Voyager had a lot more cargo bays and labs than we thought.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Somewhere to build all those extra shuttles.

 

[cooleddie74]

Those photon torpedoes aren't going to store themselves.

 

[Gov Kodos]

And almost 7 years worth of leola roots.

 

[Markonian]

On a related note, shouldn't Cavit and Chakotay have been full commanders, given that they were XO?

 

[Oddish]

And less than 15% the complement of the Enterprise D. I think that despite the teaser for TNG, the original Enterprise was more like a small town in space than a vehicle for deep space exploration: it had pets, kids, schools, a bar, a barber, an arboretum, and who knows what else. Voyager, with her sleek design, minimal crew, and light armament, seems like an explorer.

 

[BillJ]

It was an elite class of ship, which might be why it was able to hold up so well under the kind of abuses that were more crippling for the Equinox.

Or Voyager was the "star" and the Equinox was the "guest" of the week.

 

[Timo]

That would make perfect sense. Kim should have been introduced to, say, Lt. Seaborn, who would greet him in a friendly fashion and ask if he wanted to man the ops station for Voyager's departure while he attends to some last minute work in sickbay. Harry agrees, and Seaborn's broken corpse is later found amongst all the dead medical staff.

On the other hand, we never saw the corpse of the Chief Engineer, and never learned his, her or its name. Nor did we meet the engine boss in an introductory scene before the mayhem. So it's a pretty good match of the treatment Kim got, only without the part where some later main character would get a stint at Engineering right before the Caretaker beam hits.

Perhaps we should think that most of Janeway's crew (or indeed all of it, save Tuvok) was brand new, and nobody really knew each other, and didn't really care? There no doubt was a big funeral at some point, since the corpses should still be there unless the Caretaker somehow took care of them. It just wasn't worth showing to the audience - and not worth discussing between the characters afterwards!

But, there would have been more to it than that. Suddenly, Harry is thrust from second in command of ops to head of ops, hence his status as senior officer. But there should have been some difficulty, a period of adjustment, like if you took a third grader and stuck him in an algebra class. It's not that he's unintelligent or incapable, he's just supposed to go through all these other levels of math before he attacks algebra. Harry has to hit the ground running and try to survive. In short, we get the same character development as Nog, Jake, or Bashir, but with a new spin: the Academy grad who is just in over his head.

Perhaps so. But every main character is suddenly a department head, and only Torres with her Klingon (lack of) patience has any trouble coping. Paris takes it in the stride, the EMH seems born to lead despite the truth explicitly being the very opposite, and there appears to be no problem relating to Janeway losing her sciences chief (or, indeed, the whole department) and doing all the work herself or with Torres.

Quite possibly Kim would be exceptionally well equipped to cope, not having spent a full day at not being the king of the world. He studied being a heroic commander, he immediately is a heroic commander, he doesn't see anything wrong with it. Oh, some underlings may be difficult, but they're Maquis scum so that's only to be expected...

Timo Saloniemi