Commodore can also be a title given to an officer regardless of what actual rank they hold.
Why wasn't Sisko promoted at the start of Season 3?
- Thread starter suarezguy
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It's been used several ways.
* In the old Royal Navy, it was a rank between captain and admiral.
* When I was a kid, it was the lowest rank of US Naval flag officer. You were a captain (O-6), then a commodore (O-7), then a RADM (O-8). Now, there are just two sub-ranks of RADM.
* In some Naval traditions, when an officer of Captain rank was on another captain's ship, they were sometimes called "commodore", as an honorific. They could not be called "captain" because a ship has one captain: the one actively in command.
* Sometimes a person of some import concerning ships is called it because it sounds cool. Cornelius Vanderbilt made a sizable fortune in merchant shipping before he sold out and put everything into railroads, so he was known as the Commodore.
Commodore can also be used to describe someone who lets everyone know that Sunday morning... is "Easy".
It's also a specialty of vernacular architecture, notably focusing on brick houses.Commodore can also be used to describe someone who lets everyone know that Sunday morning... is "Easy".
In that case, Sisko planning his retirement home on Bajor could have been a Commodore.
Unless it wasn't all Starfleet personnel, but a mix of civilians, contractors, and federal agencies, and not just Starfleet.
Which means a commander overseeing a station's operations, while be in charge of a smaller contingent of Starfleet personnel would make sense for the grade.
Regardless, DS9 was considered a backwater, unimportant, smaller installation. A commander seems appropriate for the billet.
Once it became more important, promoting him to Captain was appropriate.
Maybe, but I think there is flexibility within the rank, and the amount of responsibilities he had.
That might have happened had he been the Commander of DS9 for some time. As it was, he had been there for barely two days or so, and I think it would be far more likely they would fly in a more senior officer to take over in that case, with Sisko as his XO. (That is, assuming he wasn't on the roll for promotion to Captain already.)
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In the early years DS9 wasn't that important an outpost, even with the discovery of the wormhole. The intent in DS9's early years was the station was supposed to be cutoff from the rest of the Federation and Starfleet. Indeed, in the first two season aside from Picard in the premiere and the Odyssey's Captain in the S2 finale you never do see a Starfleet officer in the area who is even of equal rank to Sisko. Most Admirals we see in those seasons are only communicating to the station from a different location. Okay, Admiral Nechayev does visit the station in The Maquis, but she was presumably seeing to details related to the treaty with the Cardassians when the Maquis situation broke out and went to see Sisko since she was in the area anyway.
It isn't until the third season when the ongoing situation with the Maquis and contact with the Dominion leads to an increased Starfleet presence in the area that DS9 becomes an outpost warranting an officer with higher rank in command at which point various factors result it in making the most sense to just give Sisko a promotion.
Especially given his unique position with the Bajorans. Starfleet might not be overjoyed about that situation, but they undoubtedly recognize the politics of the situation. Sisko's the Emissary of the Prophets, so he has to be there.
Yes, that's why I had suggested he'd probably become the XO in that case. He doesn't necessarily need to be the CO as far as Starfleet is concerned, but he still needs to be there.
Even so, I was reckoning only with the situation in the first two days, when he wouldn't have held that clear position yet - only Kai Opaka acknowledges him as such and it may have taken some time before others held him in the same regard.
But I agree that The Wormhole has a point that even the discovery of the wormhole in itself needn't have elevated DS9 to a status of critical importance, but that it might have been the fact that it was the only access point for the Dominion to threaten the AQ, which only would have become apparent in S3.
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Still is.
In fact it's been a fully substantive rank that you can retire at since the late 90s (prior to that it was "for the duration of the assignment" and commodores would retire as captains)
That specific awkward kludge is specific to the United States naval forces and is very atypical in the Anglosphere (most other Anglosphere navies retain Commodores instead), but something similar (flotilla admiral and counter admiral are the most common) is used by many non-Anglosphere navies.
AFAICT, this is something of an urban legend or a misunderstanding of the principle that "there is only one 'The Captain' onboard a ship at any time", particularly as far as the US naval forces are concerned, as it's not uncommon for there to be several "Captain X" onboard at any given time, particularly on carriers and amphibs with Marine contingents.
Seems plausible. Yacht club presidents will often use the title for similar reasons.
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Indeed. It's not like Sisko's responsibilities inherently grew with the discovery of the wormhole. He was still supporting Bajor, and keeping an eye on the Cardassians.
I think he was a Lt. Commander at Wolf 359.
Time in Grade gets hinky with Star Trek. Especially when they retcon years off a person's service time. When TNG began, Jonathan Frakes was 34, so in theory, Riker should have had 12 years in service (a USN Commander typically has about 15). But for some bizarre reason, they later declared that he had only 7 years service when he started on the Enterprise. Which made his character about 35 as of "These Are the Voyages". And Frakes, about 53 at the time, couldn't pull it off.
Was he actually promoted to full Commander to take command of DS9?
