Rank confusion

[ghoyle1]

In various Trek series, various crewmen are referred to by titles such as the following
Yeoman Third Class
Transporter Chief
Transporter Operator
Specialist
Technician
Crewman
Chief Petty Officer

etc.
I believe these to be related to enlisted personnel and non-commissioned officers, but Im not sure how to sort them out. Memory Alpha list NCO ranks as:
Master Chief Petty officer
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Chief Petty Officer
Petty Officer (1st, 2nd, and 3rd class)

Ordinary enlisted personnel are simply "Crewman" (as in Crewman Green, first victim of the Salt Vampire in "The Man Trap"). A Yeoman 3rd Class (like Tina Lawton in "Charlie X") would thus seem to be a Petty Officer, 3rd class, if I'm interpreting that correctly.

I would appreciate some input into this situation. I am trying to put together a Star Trek RPG using the Risus rules, and this matter puzzles me.

 

[CoveTom]

I'm afraid that you're going to get a lot of inconsistent information on this, because Trek itself is horribly inconsistent. The only thing that seems stable are the officer ranks up to and including captain, which go:

Ensign
Lieutenant Junior Grade
Lieutenant
Lieutenant Commander
Commander
Captain

Beyond that, it starts to get murky. TOS had a Commodore rank that came between Captain and Admiral. By the time of TNG, Trek eschewed the use of Commodore, much as with the real life U.S. Navy, and instead jumped straight to Admiral, with the first Admiral grade being Rear Admiral, Lower Half, just as with the U.S. Navy. However, that's all concluded from what we see in rank pins. I don't believe any specific grade of Admiral has ever been mentioned on screen except Vice-Admiral and Fleet Admiral.

As far as enlisted ranks or crewmen, that's equally murky. Clearly there were some in TOS. However, Roddenberry declared at some point that Starfleet was made up entirely of the officer ranks and that there were no "enlisted crewmen." So we saw the use of those enlisted ranks fall out of favor. O'Brien is clearly not an officer, but I think he's about the only major character in one of the later shows to not be, and we don't see a lot of use of enlisted ranks even in background characters.

 

[captcalhoun]

Transporter Chief and Transporter Operator are more positions - like CMO or Chief Engineer - than ranks. the Transporter Chief is in charge of the Transporter Operators department of the engineering staff.

i believe the ranks go:

Crewman
Petty Officer
Chief Petty Officer
Senior Chief
Master Chief

with gradations in them, but as said, it's a murky thing. ENT had some crewmen ranked characters, they even had their own rank pips but during season 2 or 3, tehy disappeared.

 

[Takeru]

However, Roddenberry declared at some point that Starfleet was made up entirely of the officer ranks and that there were no "enlisted crewmen."

But that makes no sense and should be ignored, Roddenberry had a lot of really stupid ideas over the years.

 

[Nerys Myk]

As far as enlisted ranks or crewmen, that's equally murky. Clearly there were some in TOS. However, Roddenberry declared at some point that Starfleet was made up entirely of the officer ranks and that there were no "enlisted crewmen." So we saw the use of those enlisted ranks fall out of favor. O'Brien is clearly not an officer, but I think he's about the only major character in one of the later shows to not be, and we don't see a lot of use of enlisted ranks even in background characters.

He obviously changed his mind. What GR says can be and is trumped by what he put on the screen.

As for Yeoman, is more than a rank its a job. (A clerical one IIRC). If Rand had been assigned to a position in weapons or sciences she might not have been called a yeoman.

 

[CoveTom]

^ Absolutely agree. For most of history of Trek post-TOS, Roddenberry was not the one in control anyway. He was in control, more or less, of TMP and of the first season or two of TNG, depending on whose account you believe of when he started to step back from that role. And that was about it. Every other decision was made by Harve Bennett, or Nick Meyer, or Rick Berman, or Michael Piller, or whoever else was writing and producing at the time. Roddenberry liked to talk at great length about what was and was not in the Trek universe, but more often than not, his words did not carry much weight.

 

[Therin of Andor]

What GR says can be and is trumped by what he put on the screen.

For ST:TMP, they added a single broken line of rank braid for "ensign" (see the Rhaandarite ensign played by Billy Van Zandt) because they realised that, in TOS, no one could ever differentiate between a Crewman (ie. no braid) and an Ensign (ie. no braid) except by what it said in the script!

Mistakes happen when you're churning out episodes at great speed.

 

[C.E. Evans]

...Roddenberry had a lot of really stupid ideas over the years.

One of them was called Star Trek.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

What GR says can be and is trumped by what he put on the screen.

For ST:TMP, they added a single broken line of rank braid for "ensign"

What about Lieutenant JG?

 

[C.E. Evans]

What GR says can be and is trumped by what he put on the screen.

For ST:TMP, they added a single broken line of rank braid for "ensign"

What about Lieutenant JG?

IIRC, there was no lieutenant j.g. rank during the TMP era. Junior officers went straight from ensign to lieutenant. The grade was apparently reinstated when the TWOK uniforms came into service a few years later.

 

[Timo]

...It stretches credibility that Starfleet would consider the lack of distinction an "error" and yet fail to correct it for a decade!

We could always argue that there was a subtle difference in the TOS uniforms - say, that Ensigns always had a little pip in their sleeve or collar that failed to face the camera, or that (since Ensigns were often seen up close while crewmen seldom appeared) crewmen did. Or that crewmen wore a distinct collar color that only looked black to us because of the low resolution of our TV sets.

In any case, Trek ranks and rates appear to follow real world USN/RN precedent, there being few if any fictional ranks. Any perceived omission thus probably shouldn't be considered an omission at all, merely a case of us not looking in the right places. If there are no Lieutenants (junior grade) visible in TMP, it's only because they are off screen; the same with Commodores (or whatever the single-pip flag officers are called in the 24th century) in TNG, probably.

Or then we did see junior Lieutenants in TMP, and they were just called "Ensign" because they had been very recently promoted (lots of hassle there anyway, due to the hasty departure) and our heroes remembered them by their old rank. Riker does this to LtCmdr Troi in "Encounter at Farpoint", for example: she's still "Lieutenant" to him, despite her now more heavily decorated collar. (This covers the canonically unnamed bridge Ensign of TMP, but presupposes that Kirk knew that other seemingly random Ensign by face when he asked her for directions.)

The bottom line still would be that you can check on Starfleet ranks by reading through the Wikipedia page on USN ranks...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

Trek is indeed very inconsistent. I'd go with specialists and yeomen as petty officers. Certainly Rand wore the rank of a Chief Petty officer in TMP, which was set some 6 years after her character departed TOS. Her rank did a lot of yo-yoing after that but I think TMP is pretty clear.

Using correct terminology, Transporter Chief, Transporter Officer, and Transporter Technician should not really be interchangable. Probably the ship had one officer in charge of the lot with responsibility to keep things functioning and assigning crew (Kyle in TOS) and then various more junior crewmen to be in charge of particular shifts (probably CPOs like Rand). It is also worth noting that CPOs like O'Brien and Rand tend to be very experienced compared to 'superior' but less experienced ensigns and lieutenants.

I think Riker only referred to her as 'Lieutenant' when dressing down Troi, probably to emphasise the fact that she wasn't equal rank to him.

 

[Timo]

I think Riker only referred to her as 'Lieutenant' when dressing down Troi, probably to emphasise the fact that she wasn't equal rank to him.

Might also be an expression of affectation on the side. After all, Riker is chiding Troi for feeling protective of him!

Using correct terminology, Transporter Chief, Transporter Officer, and Transporter Technician should not really be interchangable.

Have they been used that way, though? In principle, a Transporter Chief could be an officer or an enlisted, depending on the vessel or installation; as long as Officer and Technician aren't used interchangeably, things should be all right.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

I think Riker only referred to her as 'Lieutenant' when dressing down Troi, probably to emphasise the fact that she wasn't equal rank to him.

Might also be an expression of affectation on the side. After all, Riker is chiding Troi for feeling protective of him!

Using correct terminology, Transporter Chief, Transporter Officer, and Transporter Technician should not really be interchangable.

Have they been used that way, though? In principle, a Transporter Chief could be an officer or an enlisted, depending on the vessel or installation; as long as Officer and Technician aren't used interchangeably, things should be all right.

Timo Saloniemi

They have been used interchangeably, although not necessarily correctly. We have chief engineers, chief medical officers, so I suppose Kyle might be the chief transporter officer but other officers wouldn't be 'chief' anything. I think in season one of TNG the chief and assistant chiefs of engineering were referred to as 'chiefs' despite being Lt-commanders. O'Brien's retcon was sensible but confusing, and pretty much all transporter officers were shown with officer pips throughout TNG.

Yeoman is a position rather than a rank.
Transporter officer is a position rather than a rank.
Transporter technician is a position rather than a rank.
Is Transporter chief a position or a position and a rank?

I think the fact that we see mostly ensigns and lieutenants referred to as 'chiefs' (apart from Rand and O'Brien) suggests the writers viewed it as a position - possibly because it saved them liaising with the costume department about the actual rank ascribed to the actor).

Starfleet just seems very slack when it comes to observing protocol I think.

 

[mtblillie]

I think maybe the idea of no enlistment was that technology had become so advanced that computers and machines could handle the "grunt work," which just left the leadership and decision making class, the officers. I think that is something you see when the TOS Enterprise only had a couple hundred crew members, when a naval vessel of today has twice as many crew. But I have a hard time believing there could be no enlisted personnel on a vessel, I always thought it sad that the hard working NCOs never get credit in shows, Stargate did this too and it really frustrated me.

 

[Timo]

Well, TOS opened with "Man Trap", an episode where the part of the crew that is not explicated as holding officer commission is a bunch of ill disciplined rascals who are nice guys (and gals) having fun with each other, yet abandon their posts and get killed for it. It's a classic portrayal of the enlisted man in such fiction, really...

Dramatically speaking, the ship was always two decks high: the officers stood above the crew. Science fiction concepts about future personnel management never entered into it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ghoyle1]

Thanks for the discussion! I'm trying to assemble this information for a role-playing adventure (not one of the licensed ST games), and I'm trying to nail down things like that before the players asked. This has clarified things a bit, at least how I might handle them.

 

[The Wormhole]

Stargate did this too and it really frustrated me.

Stargate has featured more prominent enlisted personnel than Star Trek. Just off the top of my head, there's Walter Harriman, Sgt. Siler, Sgt. Greer, Sgt. Bates, Sgt. Riley. Star Trek has Chief O'Brien.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think Trek follows the idea that enlisted personnel do all the boring, unglamorous work aboard a starship and the officers do all the exciting stuff--the easiest way to fix that, of course, is to dispense with the formula of all the main characters in a series being officers (with Chief O'Brien being the most glaring exception)...

 

[The Wormhole]

Chief O'Brien's status as a non-com is rather sloppily handled. On DS9 he basically did an officer's job, and to make matters even more odd, we sometimes saw ensigns and lieutenants reporting to him and taking orders from him. While I applaud the attempt to show Starfleet does have an enlisted side, it would have been nice if they could be consistent about it.