why did o'brien not recive a battlefield commission during the war
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O'Brien WAS an officer on the Enterprise, but he lost his commission at some unknown point. My guess is that Tom Riker knows what happened, but he refuses to speak of it.
It must have been between TNG "Where Silence Has Lease" in Season 2 and "Family" in Season 4.
The real question is, did O'Brien receive a commission during the last war?
References to O'Brien's rank or rating are fairly consistent: he's always a petty officer of some sort, quite regardless of the pips we see on his collar. But in "The Wounded", it is said he was the Tactical Officer of the Rutledge under Capt. Maxwell at some point before the episode. Could somebody be Tactical Officer without holding officer commission?
Later episodes and backstage sources suggest that the Rutledge was a smallish vessel whose top officers got ambushed by Cardassians on the surface of Setlik III in 2347 and may have suffered casualties despite O'Brien saving the bacons of a dozen of them. It might make sense for Maxwell to use the hero of the day as a casualty replacement for the TO, perhaps with a temporary commission to satisfy the bureaucrats.
On the other hand, the Setlik III incident of 2347 does not seem to be part of the Cardassian War yet - it seems to be a preceding small-scale hostility for which the Cardassians actually apologized, probably several years before the open fighting began. Would Maxwell's ship be cut off from Starfleet assets for any length of time if it was not wartime? Would O'Brien be filling in for a fallen or convalescent comrade for long enough to make an impression on Maxwell if a starbase could supply the Rutledge with a replacement officer the very next week?
Timo Saloniemi
References to O'Brien's rank or rating are fairly consistent: he's always a petty officer of some sort, quite regardless of the pips we see on his collar. But in "The Wounded", it is said he was the Tactical Officer of the Rutledge under Capt. Maxwell at some point before the episode. Could somebody be Tactical Officer without holding officer commission?
Later episodes and backstage sources suggest that the Rutledge was a smallish vessel whose top officers got ambushed by Cardassians on the surface of Setlik III in 2347 and may have suffered casualties despite O'Brien saving the bacons of a dozen of them. It might make sense for Maxwell to use the hero of the day as a casualty replacement for the TO, perhaps with a temporary commission to satisfy the bureaucrats.
On the other hand, the Setlik III incident of 2347 does not seem to be part of the Cardassian War yet - it seems to be a preceding small-scale hostility for which the Cardassians actually apologized, probably several years before the open fighting began. Would Maxwell's ship be cut off from Starfleet assets for any length of time if it was not wartime? Would O'Brien be filling in for a fallen or convalescent comrade for long enough to make an impression on Maxwell if a starbase could supply the Rutledge with a replacement officer the very next week?
Timo Saloniemi
He was called "Lieutenant" in TNG "Where Silence Has Lease."
A common myth - but the scene is actually quite ambiguous. In it, Riker and Worf discuss the tactics of beaming over, with O'Brien listening in. When Riker ultimately decides on a tactic on Worf's (strangely paranoid) recommendation, his command "Aft station, Lieutenant" may just as well be addressed to Lieutenant Worf. He doesn't even look at O'Brien when saying it!
Timo Saloniemi
That's like saying "ignoring his rank all together, he was this rank". That doesn't make sense.
Rank insignia means something in the real world. If you're trying to rationalize a costuming/development error, it's never going to work. Why in the hell would Starfleet make a CPO's rank identical to a LTJG? Are they expecting that all Ensigns will personally know all CPOs thus disregard the rank they're displaying and then order them around?
Also, didn't Roddenberry as at some point state that everyone was an officer?
All verbal references to O'Brien are perfectly consistent. At least if we take the trouble of assuming Riker spoke to Worf in "Where Silence", and not to O'Brien. Why should we distract ourselves from that? There's no benefit to it.
Collar pips in the real world mean something. Collar pips in Star Trek mean nothing, until a meaning is assigned to them. TNG assigned the meaning "Chief Petty Officer" to two pips on the collar, just as unambiguously as it assigned the meaning "Lieutenant" to them.
All that is left for us to decide is how and whether our TNG heroes can tell the two types of two-pippers apart. Perhaps the very same way people can tell apart Majors and Lieutenant Colonels in today's US Army? (That is, when people aren't forced to squint at the collar brass through low resolution TV transmissions!)
Timo Saloniemi
Collar pips in the real world mean something. Collar pips in Star Trek mean nothing, until a meaning is assigned to them. TNG assigned the meaning "Chief Petty Officer" to two pips on the collar, just as unambiguously as it assigned the meaning "Lieutenant" to them.
All that is left for us to decide is how and whether our TNG heroes can tell the two types of two-pippers apart. Perhaps the very same way people can tell apart Majors and Lieutenant Colonels in today's US Army? (That is, when people aren't forced to squint at the collar brass through low resolution TV transmissions!)
Timo Saloniemi
You mean the different colored rank?
'Xactly. For all we know, the two pips on O'Brien are the same as the two pips on his later pips-and-chevrons collar plate: they tell what grade of Petty Officer he is. And even though our TV sets can't show the difference, they are "in reality" of a distinctly different color for the heroes themselves, much like Kirk's shirt was distinctly green to him even when we saw it as golden.
Since we later see O'Brien with a single distinctly dark-centered pip, it should be easy enough to pretend that his one and two pips in earlier TNG were always black, too.
If two pips and three chevrons is "Senior Chief (Petty Officer), Specialist" as per DS9 dialogue, then one pip plus three chevrons could well be Chief Petty Officer, and chevrons-only could be Petty Officer First through Third Class (as Starfleet apparently doesn't believe in using "rockers" with the chevrons). That way, O'Brien would be a known and consistent quantity.
...Almost. We'd still have to explain why he briefly sports the two Senior CPO pips in mid-TNG before reverting back to the single CPO pip for late TNG and early DS9. A temporary promotion that only applies for X amount of time for reason Y? A screw-up that got him demoted just before "Realm of Fear"?
Timo Saloniemi
Since we later see O'Brien with a single distinctly dark-centered pip, it should be easy enough to pretend that his one and two pips in earlier TNG were always black, too.
If two pips and three chevrons is "Senior Chief (Petty Officer), Specialist" as per DS9 dialogue, then one pip plus three chevrons could well be Chief Petty Officer, and chevrons-only could be Petty Officer First through Third Class (as Starfleet apparently doesn't believe in using "rockers" with the chevrons). That way, O'Brien would be a known and consistent quantity.
...Almost. We'd still have to explain why he briefly sports the two Senior CPO pips in mid-TNG before reverting back to the single CPO pip for late TNG and early DS9. A temporary promotion that only applies for X amount of time for reason Y? A screw-up that got him demoted just before "Realm of Fear"?
Timo Saloniemi
But they weren't.
How could we tell?
It may well be that the black pips just caught the light the wrong way every time we looked at them in early TNG. That happens in late TNG and DS9 a lot, even if only briefly.
What the pips were like in "our reality", on the collars of actors standing on the studio floor, is rather immaterial to the argument. The walls were made of plywood, too... And sometimes looked the part. But we looked the other way.
Timo Saloniemi
It may well be that the black pips just caught the light the wrong way every time we looked at them in early TNG. That happens in late TNG and DS9 a lot, even if only briefly.
What the pips were like in "our reality", on the collars of actors standing on the studio floor, is rather immaterial to the argument. The walls were made of plywood, too... And sometimes looked the part. But we looked the other way.
Timo Saloniemi
Because we have eye balls.
If that was the case then we would have at least 1 instance where he was wearing two hollow pips. There isn't one. We have him from several angles in various lighting configurations wearing two solid pips and the rank of LTJG. Even one solid pip. But not one of what you're suggesting.
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