Chopping and changing jobs - does it make sense?

[AntonyF]

I know on an entertainment level it's just putting characters you know in different places... but as I got up to mid season 4 I just realised how silly it is in TNG.

We had Geordi going form a low-ranking pilot... to being chief engineer.

Worf can go from pottering around at the back of the bridge, to head of tactical, to operations officer when Data was believed to have died. Wouldn't it have made more sense for him to become second officer but remain in tactical? Aren't these roles very different?

And the one that really was absurd was rewatching The Wounded and O'Brien a non-commissioned officer, who spends his whole day just beaming people back and forth... was a tactical officer. Responsible for the safety of the ship in combat and he's not even comissioned. And then of course he goes on to be a chief engineer, of foreign tech no less.

You'd think in Starfleet they would train for a certain discipline, and while able to jump in and 'make do' but is it logical they could do such career shifts? Both in terms of competency, but also why would you?

Career wise, sanity wise... would you want to do an O'Brien and going from the bridge as tactical officer to shut in a transporter room all day?

Would be curious to if anyone has any real life examples of this sort of thing in the navy too.

 

[Alexander Corrino]

Not a military example but I was trained as a documentation assistant in five locations - archive, library, research facilities/TV stations, picture agency and medical institutions. I could work in all of these. Yes, the basics are the same, but the individual demands are very different. I guess what I'm saying is that if Starfleet does something similar in its training process then it can be somewhat realistic to switch divisions.

 

[Oddish]

Trek really suspends reality in that regard anyway, mainly in its determination to keep the same cast of characters when it really doesn't make sense.

 

[Mojochi]

Just imagine that in the future, people in this organization are largely exceptional people. How else do you explain that Riker, O'Brien, Keiko, & Nella Darren among others are also professionally proficient musical instrumentalists? That they are exceptional people, perhaps even a bit more evolved, is part of the sci-fi premise.

It helps with the old show too. The concept behind Khan was that we're pitting a genetically engineered "Superman" from hundreds of years earlier against the naturally evolved, best of their class, standard humans of the future... And the latter comes out on top.

We're meant to believe they are better than us at... Stuff.

 

[somebuddyX]

Well Worf I kind of thought of as Tasha's second in command, even with him wearing red I guess. Maybe Geordi wasn't the best engineer at first but was a good department head, which is what they needed with all the different CEOs in the first season. Geordi and Worf were both command in first season, so maybe they had more department head training and that's why they slotted in better. I also think Geordi wasn't using his full potential in-universe until Season 2. There's always been something interesting how Riker and Geordi are they same age but their ranking was way different. I feel like Geordi went about doing his job really well and picking up knowledge on the side and that's why he slotted well into being CEO.
The O'Brien thing is weird but only because it's not defined well. It's obvious the Starfleet attitude to non-comms is not like modern day military so it's pointless making comparisons. I don't think O'Brien lives in the transporter room. I think he does maintenance, probably runs diagnostics on emitters and stuff, he's part of other engineering assignment like helping Data with Locutus, he flew the ship in "Encounter at Farpoint" and "All Good Things," did tactical in "Redemption." And even if not, if all he does all day is one job and really well then I'm glad it's the one guy who's going to scramble my molecules and then reassemble them. I could end up in a bulkhead is all.

 

[Mojochi]

You can actually see a pretty good S1 course of events happening behind the main stories, with a number of one & done Chief Engineers looking rather foolish, & Geordi spending time down there, now & then, getting something sorted. I always felt it was a natural shift.

 

[evilchumlee]

I don't really see an issue at all.

Take the O'Brian issue. He was a tactical officer... on a small, fairly insignificant ship. Later, he's (presumably, anyway) the Chief Transporter Officer on the Enterprise... sounds like a massive promotion to me.

Starfleet officers tend to get broad training and are skilled in most aspects of the ship, some just choosing to focus on certain paths.

For the Worf situation, going from... whatever he was in S1 to Chief Tactical Officer doesn't strike as any issue. Going from Tactical to Operations seems to be a promotion of sorts, with Operations (apparently) being a higher-prestige position. Worf's role was quite ill-defined in S1. I like to think he was attached to Tactical/Security, but he was in a more administrative role, hence the red shirt. Kind of makes sense actually... he was only Tactical for 6 years, and then he was Strategic Operations on DS9... which is really a more administrative role... We see Worf as something of a dumb brute, but in all actuality given his positions, he actually seems to be quite adept at "flying a desk".

Geordie may have been vying for the Engineer spot for some time, but moved hopped to higher prestige positions... he could have potentially just came on as a junior engineer on the Enterprise, OR he could be the Chief Conn Officer...

 

[Mojochi]

I don't really see an issue at all.

Take the O'Brian issue. He was a tactical officer... on a small, fairly insignificant ship. Later, he's (presumably, anyway) the Chief Transporter Officer on the Enterprise... sounds like a massive promotion to me.

I don't know about promotion. My initial impression was that during the Cardassian War, Miles was a standard officer, & worked Maxwell's Tactical spot, but after the war, maybe he'd had enough ordering people to die & resigned his commission, only to return later in a much less stressful/guilt-riddled non-com job, ferrying people around transporter rooms.

I like to believe he made a choice to work in a job that was more conducive to his mental well being

 

[flandry84]

With the level of automation on any given starship I think cross training and moving personnel about would be essential to keep everything running well and avoid slipshod practices.

Is that “Chief O’Brien at work “thing still going?

 

[evilchumlee]

I don't know about promotion. My initial impression was that during the Cardassian War, Miles was a standard officer, & worked Maxwell's Tactical spot, but after the war, maybe he'd had enough ordering people to die & resigned his commission, only to return later in a much less stressful/guilt-riddled non-com job, ferrying people around transporter rooms.

I like to believe he made a choice to work in a job that was more conducive to his mental well being

It could well be a choice, although I don't believe O'Brian was ever a commissioned officer.

The thing is the whole officer vs. NCO thing seems to be nearly irrelevant in Starfleet, and by and large the only real defining trait is that officers went to Starfleet Academy, NCO's didn't.

I do think it is doing a disservice to the position though minimize the Chief Transporter Officer. A ships transporters are a HUGE deal, so being the guy in charge of those is a pretty solid position. Might not be glamorous, but it's important.

 

[Oddish]

Given O'Brien's endless rank changes, maybe it's best not to use him as an example. He's already an illustration of what Trek writers shouldn't have done.

 

[Finn]

Meh. It was weird for the first season. It was fairly consistent with the main characters after that during the Berman years. Yeah, Miles was the odd one out, but his roles/rank was inconsistent when he was still a recurring character early on.

 

[evilchumlee]

Given O'Brien's endless rank changes, maybe it's best not to use him as an example. He's already an illustration of what Trek writers shouldn't have done.

I think it was more the writers early on TNG underestimated Trek fans. O'Brian was a background dude. Who is even gonna look at his rank?

Whelp. We did. And to their credit, when they realized that, it got better.

I still think it's easy enough to explain somewhat by O'Brian potentially getting a couple of fairly rapid fire promotions while at the same time, Starfleet was messing around with rank insignia.

 

[Oddish]

I think it was more the writers early on TNG underestimated Trek fans. O'Brian was a background dude. Who is even gonna look at his rank?

They should have known us better by then.

 

[Mojochi]

They should have known us better by then.

Specifically us. Definitely by then

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I think it was more the writers early on TNG underestimated Trek fans.

Not the writers... they were fairly consistent, particularly once they actually started writing for O'Brien rather than "CONN", "Security Officer" or "Transporter Chief" as in the first two seasons and to a lesser extent the third seasons of TNG. They even went back and clarified that O'Brien was a "Chief" back in Encounter at Farpoint in All Good Things... the problem was the wardrobe department who screwed up at least twice in succession (going from ENS>CMN>LT across his first three episodes, and giving Miss Gladstone his "Chief's Pin" on the third occasion and not fixing it til about three years later).

 

[Nerys Myk]

They should have known us better by then.

They always forget we are anal retentive, minutia obsessed people with a near photographic memory for detail.

 

[Frontis]

Actually O'Brien did nothing unusual for an engineer imo.

 

[Riley]

I think Geordi should have stayed at the helm. The bridge became dull without him, especially when everything became duller in season three onward. Burton's warmth and energy brought a lot to the bridge and was a nice counterpoint to the rest of the bridge crew. His interaction with Data was also great stuff, a similar but different take on Chekov/Sulu.

Wesley could have been assigned to engineering with a new chief engineer.

As for ranks and offices, Geordi and Worf were both junior grade lieutenants, so their assignments in season two made sense as they were both promoted as well.

As for O'Brien, the richness of his character and Colm Meaney's performance overrides any and all considerations of this issue. I'm just glad he got more and more attention and then became a regular on DS9.

 

[evilchumlee]

I think Geordi should have stayed at the helm. The bridge became dull without him, especially when everything became duller in season three onward. Burton's warmth and energy brought a lot to the bridge and was a nice counterpoint to the rest of the bridge crew. His interaction with Data was also great stuff, a similar but different take on Chekov/Sulu.

Wesley could have been assigned to engineering with a new chief engineer.

Keeping Geordie at the helm could have been good for bridge interactions, although in the grand scheme I think it would diminish his contributions. There's just not a whole lot for the helm to do. Even in Voyager, they had to come up with a secondary role for Paris to get him more involved in things.

On a pragmatic, real world level... they tried a new chief engineer. A few times. It just didn't stick.

Having an extra at the conn gave the show a readily available redshirt to suffer the ill effects of an exploding console or renegade alien scanner beam.