Good point. Saru really should be better used all around.
Side note but I never liked how the TNG era dropped the communications officer role. Yet put a counselor on the bridge and gave the nebulous role of "operations manager" to Data
Uhura - Hoshi Sato 2.
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Good point. Saru really should be better used all around.
Side note but I never liked how the TNG era dropped the communications officer role. Yet put a counselor on the bridge and gave the nebulous role of "operations manager" to Data
The idea was partly just to be different from TOS, and partly to suggest that the ship was more advanced and could do a lot of functions that used to require people, like communications and navigation (it's also why they didn't have a chief engineer in season 1). So there was less emphasis on the mechanics of operating the ship's systems and more emphasis on the management of the personnel aboard it.
Good point, but tbh they still have Worf doing the same job anyways. Plus having a linguistics experts aboard doesn't hurt
They're down stairs with all the other science types.
Worf just answers the phone.
I think we need one in the next show if there's one after Picard
Not sure how that would figure into Starfleet Academy. But I suppose one of the cadets could be studying communications.
Superficially, but presumably Uhura's job involves a lot of technical stuff the stories don't focus on, like adjusting frequencies and determining who to contact and how, all the nitty-gritty the episode skips over to show her reporting the results of her efforts. In TNG, the computer does all that and Worf just has to hit the button. By analogy, Uhura is like an old-style switchboard operator looking up numbers in directories and connecting calls manually, while Worf is a guy hitting autodial on his smartphone.
That was part of Troi's job on TNG -- see "The Big Goodbye" where she coached Picard on greeting the Jarada in their language, and "Darmok" where she and Data worked on figuring out the Tamarian language.
possibly, yeah.
All good points. I still feel making 1 person operate both weapons and communications would be too distracting. The job of just activating communications could still be operated by someone with less intense responsibilities.
Well they had to give something for Troi to do lol. Tbh while psychology and linguistics have some overlap I don't think one person could feasibly occupy both positions at once either
So Troi was the switchboard operator with her mind.
Something besides sensing the obvious
So Troi was the switchboard operator with her mind.
No, the computer was the switchboard operator. That was Uhura's job as defined in TOS, and TNG made it superfluous. Note that depicting Uhura as a language expert was never done in canon until 2009, although it was done in novels as far back as Spock Must Die! in 1970.
I established in my TNG novels that Troi had two official jobs, counselor (for managing the crew) and contact specialist (for managing outside interactions). Sort of like how Spock was both first officer and science officer. (That was one of a couple of my bits of terminology that made it into canon, with DSC defining Saru as a "first contact specialist." My other was "cosmozoan" for a spacegoing life form.)
So really it's better to have a linguist as the position than a communications offer per se
Wow, you wrote Star Trek books!?
Data was originally supposed to be the science officer, but apparently Behind the Scenes folks didn't think Brent Spiner looked good in his Data makeup while wearing a blue uniform, so he was given a gold uniform and the title Ops Officer was created accordingly.
Yes, here's a list of his works. You'll find there's quite a few Trek novel authors who post here. Granted, most hang out in the Trek Lit forum, but there are a few who venture about the rest of the site.
But what exactly is Ops officer. I always found the show just put him into whatever position they needed him so it seemed vague.
Cool. Certainly brings a different perspective.
It was supposed to be a Second Officer kinda thing.
Doing all the physical things that makes sure the ship runs smoothly on a daily basis.
Overseen by the First Officer.
They never really got into the nitty-gritty details of that though.
Ah, I understand now. Still somewhat vague but I guess it makes it sense.
I feel since they made up a random job though it ends up being superfluous, especially since this ship is, as stated her, so heavily automated already.
It is a made up random job. Harry Kim is also Ops.
Lol, I haven't watched much VOY tbh. I guess the whole "drop the comms officer because it's unnecessary but then make up a new vague role for a main bridge crewman" thing mystifies me.
Power distribution, resource management, data management.
It's a bit vague because it covers a variety of responsibilities. I always took it as a network administrator monitoring use.
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