What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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The first two were okay enough and I still think the Klingons in STID were the best we've seen since ENT went off the air in 2005, but the third act of the film just crapped all over anything and everything good about the first two.
Disagree. While I've outlined my problems with the identity of Khan/John Harrison, I think the first two acts of STID are well constructed.
Too bad. I'm normally not wild about same-sex romance (not saying it's bad, just not my preferred entertainment), but I liked those two.
Mild one, but I think it'll be controversial: there are too many captains.
In a Federation with ships that house hundreds of officers, it makes sense that not everyone makes it to captainhood. Not enough chairs for those who'd sit in them.
Yet, whenever the occasion arises (alternate timelines, usually), we see lower-ranked officer characters promoted to captain or admiral. Captain Beverly Crusher in All Good Things, Captain Harry Kim in several timelines, Captain Sulu in the movies (though that one makes sense, I think), Admiral Scott in Relics, Admiral McCoy in Farpoint, and others I'm forgetting.
Wouldn't it make more sense to only have command-track officers reach those ranks,with engineers, scientists and physicians maxing out at Lt. Cdr or Cdr?
And even then, not all command-track officers, only the best ones.
In a Federation with ships that house hundreds of officers, it makes sense that not everyone makes it to captainhood. Not enough chairs for those who'd sit in them.
Yet, whenever the occasion arises (alternate timelines, usually), we see lower-ranked officer characters promoted to captain or admiral. Captain Beverly Crusher in All Good Things, Captain Harry Kim in several timelines, Captain Sulu in the movies (though that one makes sense, I think), Admiral Scott in Relics, Admiral McCoy in Farpoint, and others I'm forgetting.
Wouldn't it make more sense to only have command-track officers reach those ranks,with engineers, scientists and physicians maxing out at Lt. Cdr or Cdr?
And even then, not all command-track officers, only the best ones.
All due to the desire to show beloved characters end up well. If some hobby fiction writers have it right, Beverley and Bashir and the EMH must all be heading Starfleet Medical, presumably as some sort of timesharing job? Who'd want to read or see that Scotty('s career) utterly went to waste because he couldn't stay off the booze? We'd rather see he made Admiral. And so on.
That's exactly my point. It goes against worldbuilding and introduces a "small universe syndrome" as well.
Me! That has potential as a story. But that's not necessary. Maybe Scotty just maxed out as a commander, remaining chief engineer until his retirement. Which I think works better with Scotty's character: what he cares about are his engines, not commanding fleets.
In fact, that's what he asks to see as soon as he's on the D: the engine room, not fleet deployment charts.
Wasn't he a 'captain of engineering' at some point during the movie era? I wonder what the difference between his job description and that of an ordinary 'chief engineer' of commander rank would have been. Perhaps none, and the 'captain' bit was mostly just in recognition of his contributions to Starfleet. If so, perhaps he might have been granted an even higher rank without an actual change in his job.
He was a Captain of Engineering with a Captain's rank insignia by Star Trek III, so he held the rank for five consecutive movies through GEN and then into "Relics(TNG)."
Scotty maxed out as Captain (of Engineering) in Star Trek III, and it is this rank he possesses even in Relics upon retirement. A rare and justified use of a staff Captain rank, especially given his earned status as a miracle worker and his equally adept command capability showcased in TOS (but nowhere else, sadly).
I don't think it would make any sense at all to have a pure command track officer commanding a medical ship like the one Crusher was in charge of. Probably also less than ideal to have pure command track officers in charge of science vessels, or ships designed primarily for engineering purposes (if there are such ships) and so on and so forth.
And I think you're reading way too much into the concept of a Captain. There probably are hundreds (if not thousands) of Captains in Starfleet who never command a ship and there's no particular reason to think that's some sort of problem. A Captain can just as easily command a space station, a ground station, a research station, even some sort of special unit (like a legal division or some kind of military, diplomatic or scientific task force). And sometimes a rank is just a rank. Admirals' assistants can be Captains without having any actual personal responsibility beyond keeping their Admiral happy. And plenty of people probably get a promotion on their way out the door out of respect for their career as whole, at least a few of whom may wind up coming back out of retirement for various reasons. Plus, Trek has no shortage of situations where it would be rather ungrateful to withhold promotion from someone after their extraordinary performance (like saving an entire planet) regardless of whether there's a specific position available or not at the time.
At the end of the day, Starfleet is big enough and diverse enough that you should pretty much always be able to find some kind of position for a Captain. And to be clear, it's not like they're just handing out Captain's pips willy nilly - it's always portrayed as taking years to get there, except in ST09 which is my main complaint with that film.
You could probably make a much better argument that Starfleet has too many Admirals, rather than captains, since I'm fairly certain we've seen almost as many admirals as we have captains (if not more) which is a bit of a weird ratio, especially since so many of the admirals seem totally unworthy of command of any kind which kind of calls into question how they became admirals in the first place.
Having said that, I do agree some writers are super unthoughtful about what rank they give a popular character in their later life. Chekhov in particular isn't command material at all, yet the movies made him a first officer and I think the books even made him an Admiral. But this also goes both ways, since Uhura randomly got stuck at Commander without ever even so much as a command role in a communications division or some such.
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I don't think there are too many captains, but at this point I do think there are too many starship classes.
I mean, seriously! You've got, what, like 20 starship classes active in the late 24th Century now? It's getting a little ridiculous! Why have so many ship classes? Use the ones you've already got! What's the point of an Akira when you've already got a Nebula? What's the point of a California when you'e already got a Saber? What's the point of a Parliament when you've already got a California!
I mean, seriously! You've got, what, like 20 starship classes active in the late 24th Century now? It's getting a little ridiculous! Why have so many ship classes? Use the ones you've already got! What's the point of an Akira when you've already got a Nebula? What's the point of a California when you'e already got a Saber? What's the point of a Parliament when you've already got a California!
^A quick count on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_United_States_Navy seems to give over 20 classes in active service, and that's only counting the commissioned ships. So apparently, there's use for so many different classes in use at the same time. Also, I would expect Starfleet to be orders of magnitude larger than the U.S. Navy.
That's not all captains do, especially in other branches, like medical or engineering.
Don't forget Star Bases & Planetary Bases that can also have Captains & their staff.
Touche! I suppose what puzzles me is that we don't canonically see why so many ship classes are built. With the U.S. Navy, I find it intuitive -- there are a lot of different maritime environments to cope with. But most Starfleet vessels seem capable of coping with the same range of space environments, and there are only so many mission types we see that require ship specialization, so I have trouble seeing why, for instance, Starfleet has the Nebula, California, and Parliament classes, since they all seem to have identical mission profiles.
And up until at least the TOS Era Commodores.
One of my favorite little touches of PIC is that commodores are back! It never made any sense to me that Starfleet would abolish the rank of commodore and replace it with "Rear Admiral Lower Half."
Yeah, starting with TMP it seems both Commodores and Fleet Captains were a thing of the past and then stayed that way until at least sometime between 2379 and 2399. I'm glad they resurrected the rank of Commodore even if the character in the series holding said rank was a Romulan impostor and traitor. 
Wasn't he called an Admiral in Relics? My memory might be failing me.
Yes, there are other roles, but it remains that in those roles, you have hundreds of subordinates for a few higher ranks. It stands to reason that not everyone of the lower-ranked characters would make it to the higher ranks, regardless of role.
Doesn't matter that it takes years: if you take all Ensigns in 2382 and they're all Captains or Admirals by 2425, you've got as many leaders as followers. Unless Starfleet recruits exponentially.
Some would die in the line of duty, some (most, I would expect) would stop at a given rank, some would just leave Starfleet and do something else. Wouldn't that be more interesting, when writing these alternate timeline episodes? In fact, statistically, I'd expect that perhaps none of the "hero ship" would end up promoted that high.
The writers do think about it in regular episodes (for instance, Worf leaves Starfleet, Tasha and Data die, O'Brien never becomes an officer, ...), but as soon as there's an alternate future, a random Ensign/Lieutenant gets catapulted Captain as shorthand for "years have passed".
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