I had no problem with him being a captain, but he also had some tasks that seemed significantly above a captain's paygrade. Leading that expeditionary force of 600 ships in Favor the Bold, for example.
Why wasn't Sisko promoted at the start of Season 3?
- Thread starter suarezguy
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Exactly. There should have been an admiral running the show.
Of course, there should have been a Section 31 agent espionage-ing the Romulans into the war...
And a Starfleet security agent penetrating the Orion syndicate undercover...
Plus Intelligence ops in Cardassian space.
Of course it is, but in Trek, it counts for worthiness of the characterIt's plot magic. The main characters often do everything, even if it's not really logical for them to do so.
In theory Admiral Ross was doing lots of that stuff. It's just that Sisko usually had better ideas so he deferred to him a lot on strategy.
Yup. Top secret mission? Send in the mains!It's plot magic. The main characters often do everything, even if it's not really logical for them to do so.
And even the anomalies in the galaxy abide by that. You'll rarely hear about a weird phenomenon / time travel story that somehow doesn't involve Our Heroes
('you know, the crew of the USS Intransigent- where my nephew serves- found itself in the middle of the 18th century a few weeks ago. And -lt. Liesenthaler from Starbase 117 - I still know her from my Starfleet Academy days-just wrote me to that apparently an evil duplicate of her from another universe was running around the compound! Imagine how happy humanity could be if we didn't have to deal with those annoying little problems!)
Commodore Sisko or Fleet Captain Sisko would have worked for me toward the end of the series. Though, it wouldn’t make sense to keep him on a “little” (teeheehee) ship like the Defiant, in the thick of battle. He’d be next to Ross on a Sovereign or otherwise toward the back.
Promotions are treated as character development. Even Kirk being promoted to Admiral was to show he was beyond captaining the Enterprise and he though it was a young man’s game. Its also why fans get mad or annoying when characters don't get promoted, as its a sign that the character isn't getting developed at all.
I think Sisko would have been promoted to fleet captian if his mind was on it. But it looked like he was looking to settle down on Bajor with Kasidy Yates by the end of the series. Ergo, his development as a character was complete.
I think Sisko would have been promoted to fleet captian if his mind was on it. But it looked like he was looking to settle down on Bajor with Kasidy Yates by the end of the series. Ergo, his development as a character was complete.
Yes, he should have been a commodore or fleet captain, and on a bigger ship that could accomodate a commodore's HQ staff - intelligence officers, liasons from the Romulans and Klingons, specialists in whatever star systems they're expecting a battle.
Didn't Ross stay at a Starbase distant from the fighting until the very end?
Sisko should have started his career on DS9 as a Captain and promoted to Admiral once the war started and he came to be in charge of task forces. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that the reasons he wasn’t have nothing to do with in-universe developments, and everything to do with 90s real-world cultural politics.
Eh? There are plenty of high ranking black men in the 90s. Powell in Real Life. The 80s had cartwright in Trek. The 60s has that commodore. If anything Ds9 would be out of step!
I think it's less cultural politics and more the writers-aren't good-with-ranks. Commodore Sisko seems to be the general consensus here for the later seasons Sisko, going above Picard and being more in line with his duties.
Why a captain? Commander was the typical rank shown in TNG of Starbases.
I see no political machinations and just recognizing that smaller command means commander. The US NAVY does this with ships like submarines and destroyers.
Me neither.
For Season 3, the issue isn't that he wasn't a Captain-by-rank but rather that Ransom and to a lesser extent Janeway were, as it seemed like by that point his Starfleet command (not counting Bajorian militia or civilian personnel) had grown to at least the former's 70 to 80 if not the latter's ~150.
Consistency IMO is often Star Trek's greatest failing.
Even so though some of those starbases looked much larger than the Enterprise-D (e.g. in 11001001 ). I wonder how much personnel they typically had.
And that he could still be 'only' a Captain, while having the command over a fleet of over 600 vessels, including at least several capital ones in S6. And still at the same rank as Ransom, whose initial crew was supposed to be 78.
Honestly, major starbases -- potentially with a crew of thousands -- being commanded by senior officers rather than flag officers is an odd idea for me.
That a minor facility that's a joint operation with an other sovereign entity who provided most of the personnel is commanded by a senior officer is not
Well, there are two explanations for us IMO, a) Sisko is exercising delegated authority as Ross' chief of staff/second-in-command (what used to be known as a Fleet Captain), or b) he was actually a temporary commodore as Picard was on a couple of occassions (frankly Picard was probably a "commodore on field assignment"/vice commodore by default but used the title of captain due to tradition and a lack of ego) and he was still identified as a captain due to the Okuda's American-centric obsession with trying to wipe out Commodores in favour of Rear Admiral Lower Half, which they had limited success with during the 80s and 90s.
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As far as the (a) 'delegating authority' theory is concerned, I'd think that delegated authority is usually exercised on fairly limited areas when the actual person in authority has more important matters to attend to. But this was an entire battle, and a crucial one at that. (In the sense that if they didn't retake DS9 in time, the entire war would have been lost. And it would have, hadn't the Prophets intervened. So, what could possibly have been more important that Ross needed to attend to instead?
As for Sisko's temporary promotion to Commodore, it's a nice idea but I don't think there is any canon evidence of that? Also, I like the 'Picard was really a commodore on field assignment' theory, but I don't believe it, because even on the most formal of occasions (such as e.g. the formal command transfer in Chain of Command) he was still referenced as 'captain Picard'.
I don't think we know that at all. And what functional difference does it make? All of the other Starfleet (and Bajoran) officers on the station still answer to him whether he is a Commander or a Captain.
Making Sisko a commodore would also allow him to give orders to the captains of other ships, some of whom probably have more seniority than Sisko does.
