Senior Officer positions

[Mr Silver]

It's something that isn't made completely clear in Star Trek, how exactly are senior officers determined? It doesn't appear to be based on rank, since we've seen many officers onboard who outrank the likes of Sulu, Chekov, La Forge, Worf, Paris and Kim at one time or another.

Asides from the Captain and XO, in the TOS era we have the following position personnel as senior officers...

Science Officer - Cmdr
Chief Engineer - Lt. Cmdr
Chief Medical Officer - Lt. Cmdr
Helmsman - Lt
Communications Officer- Lt
Navigator - Ensign

Now in the TNG era we have the following position personnel as senior officers...

Chief Medical Officer - Cmdr
Counsellor - Lt. Cmdr/Cmdr
Chief Engineer - Lt/Lt. Cmdr
Operations Officer - Lt. Cmdr
Security Chief/Tactical Officer - Lt/Lt. Cmdr

Now obviously we can rule out rank being the sole reason for selecting a senior officer. In the TNG era, the helmsman role isn't presided over by a senior officer. The same went for the Navigator role in the TOS era until Chekov came aboard.

Could the most qualified person out of the personnel who work particular stations on the bridge be the ones who are given the senior officer role? This would provide a reason for Harry Kim being given the role of senior officer, despite being an Ensign and just out of the Academy. It's resonable to assume that he's the most qualified person who works the OPs station.

Thoughts?

 

[sojourner]

what makes you think helm and navigation are senior officers?

 

[Nerys Myk]

If your character is a regular, you're a senior officer.

 

[Skywalker]

I always imagined every head of a certain department (science, medical, engineering, etc.) made up the senior staff, which would include the heads of helm/navigation.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Now obviously we can rule out rank being the sole reason for selecting a senior officer.

Actually, by definition you're mistaken.

 

[Caliburn24]

I had to attend a number of Company level meetings while in the Army. And what needs to be understood about any organization of that type whether it is the US Army or Starfleet is that two types of people attend such meetings.

You have the unit representatives, either the platoon sergeant or platoon leader(LT), ideally both. In Starfleet those are the department heads who have numerous people working under them.

The second type of person is the staff people who work directly for the CO or Captain. They have no real departments or people under them, but they serve in mission critical positions to keep the unit or ship functioning.

The department positions are generally locked and set up for a set rank. The staff positions by contrast are entirely at the discretion of the CO, which allows him or her to adjust the size and duties of the staff, and also steal the best and brightest of the lower ranks to work directly for the CO.

 

[Mr Silver]

what makes you think helm and navigation are senior officers?

Both Sulu and Chekov attended senior officers meetings and were regulary selected for duties that required the presence of senior officers. Sulu led the away team on Alpha 177 in "The Enemy Within" as an example.

The helm and navigation stations were merged into one by TNG and on the Enterprise D, there isn't a senior helm officer. Rather, I get the impression that Commander Riker is the chief of that particular department along with his other duties as XO given that he was responsible for overseeing Sam Levelle's performance in the lead up to his promotion.

I should also point out that being a senior officer doesn't mean that one is also a department head. (Troi and Worf as Strategic Ops Officer on DS9)

Actually, by definition you're mistaken.

If you want to mix semantics, then yes. But that isn't the point of the topic. The point of the topic is to establish a reason for selecting a senior officer, something which isn't always based on their prior rank. An example being Harry Kim who is chief of operations, despite the fact he is outranked by quite a few Lt's seen throughout VOY. In that scenario, you have to assume that his qualifications warrant his posting above higher ranked officers.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

In the episode "Home," Captain Hernandez talk about her list of potential senior officer candidates. So regardless of whether you're an ensign all they way to the commander, the captain seems to have some say in the officers he or she wants to keep close for constant advice. Plus, it makes sense that regular bridge officers all count, not countating the crew members that rotate.

 

[Pauln6]

The impression I always got was that department heads in most departments would be lieutenants and occasionally lt-commanders. Helm and navigation are not usually manned by a department head - I would guess that the chief operations officer is nominally in charge of that department. Exceptions could be Mitchell in TOS, Sulu in TMP, and possibly Chekov in TUC (although navigation and helm were in different departments by that stage so Chekov could not be head of operations). It's also worth noting that we do see some other random Lt-commanders at helm and navigation in TOS and occasionally people from other departments (red or blue shirts) so it is possible that other officers are required to man the stations as training exercises occasionally.

It seems that scientists are treated slightly differently. They seem to pop in at lt(jg) (like Bashir) or lt ranks and stay there for much of their careers depending I suppose on whether they spend their time researching. Having said that, in Tapestry, Picard was a science ensign for his whole career so perhaps we have the supervising science officer (lt to commander), individual department heads (Physics, Life sciences, Astrometrics etc), and then more junior assistants below them in areas of specialism (botany, atrobiology, geology etc). We also see enlisted 'specialists' in some episodes too but it isn't clear if these are fully-qualified scientists who simply have not trained as officers or if they are just assistants with specific training. I'd guess the latter.

 

[Timo]

I see no clear evidence of Chekov being a department head or otherwise highly positioned officer in TOS. Rather, it looks more like Kirk likes to summon the current duty officer from each position of significance for his meetings; these aren't negotiations, but situations where Kirk and Spock make decisions and then tell the currently active officers how to execute them. It wouldn't do to tell Lieutenant Oftaway, head of Navigation Department, how to navigate through the present adventure if it were Ensign Chekov's turn to sit at the navigation console!

Uhura's status as Communications head is also debatable, as she has explicit sisters-in-rank. And mere leading of a landing party of less than half a dozen people is hardly indication of a senior position; Sulu qualifies as an important dude mainly by having been placed in command of the entire ship at critical moments.

As for Kim's status as a department head despite low rank, that's not particularly different from the EMH's status despite no rank. Kim probably simply is the senior surviving Operations Department officer; those yellowshirts who outrank him apparently aren't competent in Operations, and fall within some other command hierarchy.

The oddity of his low rank (that is, the failure of Janeway to make him Lt right away when giving him Dept Head responsibilities) could be explained by Janeway feeling that she has no authority to deal out any promotions until she can put them through Starfleet Command. Tom Paris might have been promised a promotion by Starfleet before the ship embarked on her journey, but nobody pre-authorized Janeway to promote Kim. This type of rationalization works if we assume that the two people who did get extra pips later on during the voyage, Paris and Tuvok, merely got back what Janeway had taken away from them; after all, Tuvok had worn the third pip long before the episode where he got assigned one - he had merely stopped wearing it for a period of time (conveniently enough soon after the episode "Prime Factors" where he had mutinied against Janeway).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm pretty sure it's determined by who collects the most cerial box tokens.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Personally, I like to think the terms "senior officers" and "command crew" are mostly interchangeable aboard a starship and refers to a commander's personal handpicked staff...

 

[Mr Silver]

Well in the TNG episode "Lessons", it was established that Lt. Cmdr Nella Daren was the department head of stellar cartography. Despite her position and rank, she wasn't regarded as a "senior" officer. This is one of the reasons why (as I stated earlier) being a department head doesn't necessarily equate senior officer or command crew status.

I agree with what C.E. Evans mentioned regarding the senior officers being the commander's handpicked staff. However, It's still interesting what criteria an officer must fill to be selected by the ships commander.

 

[T'Girl]

Similarly, the officer in charge of Security regardless of his rank on Kirk's Enterprise wouldn't be a member of the "command crew." Neither would the ship's surgeon normally, it just that McCoy hung out on the bridge for no reason and was Kirk's friend.

 

[SFRabid]

what makes you think helm and navigation are senior officers?

Both Sulu and Chekov attended senior officers meetings and were regulary selected for duties that required the presence of senior officers. Sulu led the away team on Alpha 177 in "The Enemy Within" as an example.
...

I've also noticed that when Kirk, Bones and Spock let Scotty join them on away missions Sulu was in charge of the ship.

 

[Timo]

Similarly, the officer in charge of Security regardless of his rank on Kirk's Enterprise wouldn't be a member of the "command crew." Neither would the ship's surgeon normally, it just that McCoy hung out on the bridge for no reason and was Kirk's friend.

...Tuvok possibly gained his clearance to hang around similarly, by being Janeway's friend. After all, Tactical Officers weren't part of Kirk or Picard's standard briefing sessions any more than Security Officers were.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ngc7293]

Well in the TNG episode "Lessons", it was established that Lt. Cmdr Nella Daren was the department head of stellar cartography. Despite her position and rank, she wasn't regarded as a "senior" officer. This is one of the reasons why (as I stated earlier) being a department head doesn't necessarily equate senior officer or command crew status.

It's possible that someone in Stellar Cartography still has to report to someone else higher up in the chain of command in the science department. That would mean that even though Nella was a Department Head, she still wasn't a Senior Officer.

 

[Timo]

The position of Chief Science Officer has been mentioned in VOY (even though apparently the hero ship herself lacked such a person, either because of "Caretaker" casualties or because Janeway felt herself doubly competent). Probably this is also the proper description of Spock's position aboard the TOS vessel: various scientific disciplines would have their high-ranking department (or sub-department) heads, but a single officer would channel all the pertinent information to the command staff. Spock could have a LtCmdr reporting to him on matters astrobiological, yet another giving him summaries of astrophysical and planetological results, and a humble Lieutenant managing the small anthropological and historical sub-department in her free time.

Picard didn't have a Chief Science Officer in evidence, but he did trust Data more than anybody else ever had apparently done. His Chief Operations Officer thus might have been doing double duty even if this wasn't listed in Starfleet records, and the actual Chief Science Officer could have had a lot of time for hobbies and holodeck adventures... Or perhaps Picard considered himself enough of a renaissance man that he wouldn't need a special filter between himself and the various science departments, and thus directly interacted with the likes of Darren?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The_Baroness]

Or perhaps Picard considered himself enough of a renaissance man that he wouldn't need a special filter between himself and the various science departments, and thus directly interacted with the likes of Darren?

Timo Saloniemi

Oh, he interacted with Darren alright...

 

[SFRabid]

I always felt like Data was the chief science officer, but was positioned at one of the front consoles to make for better camera action. Of course, they also called on Jordie whether he was at the helm or the chief engineer.