What does the Command division actually.. do?

[MacLeod]

I might be mistaken but in the pilot didn't Janeway have a line something along the lines of

"Our new operations officer." in relation to Kim. No mention of Kim being Chief Operations Officer, but on a ship that size there would be at least 3 or 4 Operations officers depedning on how many shifts were operated.

 

[Timo]

Things could go either way: Kirk's replacement for his navigation officer was an enlisted in ST:TMP. And Maxwell seems to have accepted an enlisted man as his Tactical Officer after the Setlik III debacle. Perhaps one fairly junior officer could be all a medium-sized ship has got for a Division or a Department, regardless of the need for multiple shifts.

But I think Janeway would not go for an all-rookie crew if she could possibly avoid it; she has at least some pull, such as being able to secure the presence of her old pal Tuvok aboard her ship. It would seem, dunno, more natural to assume that the Ops division had a Lieutenant or even a Lieutenant Commander in charge, and Kim was just a random addition to the team.

This especially since the casualty list glimpsed in "Imperfection" features a Commander and two Lieutenant Commanders; there are only so many divisions that could have top officers who outrank the ship's XO! The Chief Medical Officer could do that without creating conflicts in chain of command, but we saw he was a mere Lieutenant Commander in "Caretaker". We know the Chief of Security / Tactical was a Lieutenant (or LtCmdr, depending on how you read the various costuming errors), so we have the prominent Chief Engineer, the Chief Operations Officer and the Chief Science Officer slots to fill with the remaining "Cmdr Bartlett" and "LtCmdr Ziegler or McCarry" characters. Or perhaps the head of some other department that never made an impact in any incarnation of Star Trek... But I'd still love to drop "Bartlett" into the harmless blueshirt top position of Chief Science Officer, and "Ziegler" and "McCarry" could be the Ops and Engineering bosses. Or the CMO, depending.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

I might be mistaken but in the pilot didn't Janeway have a line something along the lines of

"Our new operations officer." in relation to Kim. No mention of Kim being Chief Operations Officer, but on a ship that size there would be at least 3 or 4 Operations officers depedning on how many shifts were operated.

Not necessarily. There would be no need to refer to Kim as chief operations officer if he was the only operations officer in the department, with the rest being enlisted. The billet for the operations officer of an Intrepid-class starship may only warrant an ensign. On even smaller ships, it may only warrant a noncom.

 

[Timo]

We might want to discuss the fact that Ayala outranked Kim while wearing yellow and occasionally crewing the Ops console - yet Kim was the department head for Ops. Why give Ayala the make-believe rank of Lieutenant (jg) if the idea was to have him serve under Ensign Kim? Why not the make-believe rank of Ensign or noncom? (It's never implied that Ayala would have been entitled to a real Starfleet rank, now is it?)

So Ayala is probably Security rather than Ops, just as Memory Alpha speculates. And thus we have Janeway wanting an officer-heavy Security corps when she gets to decide, with Lieutenant (Commander) Tuvok provided with Maquis Lieutenants and Ensigns rather than mere Maquis crewmen. Why not an officer-heavy Ops corps in that case?

I don't really see the Ops division aboard Janeway's ship being so small as to only warrant one officer, not when every other division gets commissioned or field-commissioned officers galore.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

On Janeway's ship, the Ops department could be just that small where it has only a single officer. Other gold-colored departments could just be bigger than Ops with more officers.

 

[Timo]

In that case, it's particularly funny that Ops is represented in top brass meetings, but those other gold departments are not...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

Engineering and Security tends to be represented at those meetings--those are gold departments too...

 

[Nightdiamond]

The command and position structure is interesting if not damn confusing to follow. on Trek.


Obrien was the chief of operations yet his main job was engineering, so he was the chief engineer.

Data was the chief of operations, and the chief science officer and the 2nd officer.

Dax was the chief science officer, like Data, yet Data wore the yellow uniform. Dax did almost everything Data did, like report on systems, sensory scans etc, and she might have been the 2nd officer too.

But she was kept strictly as a science officer.

From what I've seen, the command division basically stands around on the bridge and gives out orders.

They have the X.O status and seem to have automatic authority conferred on them.

In FC, when Worf comes aboard the Enterprise, Riker outranks Worf, but with the red uniform and the 2 and a half pips now, Worf seems to stand almost on a equal footing, if you look at the way they interact.

Data was the 2nd officer, but Shelby was the one around giving orders. Notices how she 'takes' Data with her on an away team mission on her own authority.

Or gives orders to Data on the bridge with Picard and Riker present.

 

[USS Excelsior]

Also the Operations Console should only be reporting what's going on inside the ship. Tactical and the Science stations would be looking at what sensors are saying. Where there would have been a separate Science station to be asking them about scientific stuff, but in VOY and TNG there was no main character to fulfill that separate role.

 

[Mudd]

Also, wasn't Data originally intended to wear a Science Blue uniform (he is the Science Officer, after all)? The producers changed it to gold because it photographed better with the gold android makeup. Moral of the story: We fans think more about this stuff than the showrunners do.

It's specifically stated in one edition of the Writer/Director's Guide that Data is not the "science officer" and is not "Spock-like."

 

[warriorsfan]

The the CEO (who is in command of Engineering) has no doubt done the tasks he is asking others to do. Rather than saying just coming in knowing all the theroy behiind how to do something but never actually having done it themselves. It's not unheard of people to have more respect for someone who has worked they way up from the bottom than for people who have just say graduated University and are in a senoir positon.

Only in entertainment does the guy in charge know everything. In the real world, when running a large complex organizations like a Starship, you have to rely on experts in subordinate positions. Now the guy in charge may have a background in Engineering, but that won't help when the problem is best served by someone in the Sciences. Even if the problem is an engineering one, you want the transporter expert to handle a transporter problem, not the guy who expertise is in Warp engines.

US Navy Surface Warfare Officers (which are essentially the "command division" officers) rotate through different departments as junior officers in order to gain a diverse background of experience and earn various qualifications including Engineering Officer of the Watch and Tactical Action Officer.

While these tours might not make them experts in all these areas (having an Engineering Officer of the Watch qualification doesn't make you a Engineer, as Engineers have their own restricted line community that is different from Surface Warfare) it does provide a SWO with the diversity of knowledge and experience necessary to command a warship one day.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Also the Operations Console should only be reporting what's going on inside the ship. Tactical and the Science stations would be looking at what sensors are saying. Where there would have been a separate Science station to be asking them about scientific stuff, but in VOY and TNG there was no main character to fulfill that separate role.

It could be a case that aboard the Enterprise-D and the Voyager, the bridge science stations are merely auxiliary consoles in the same way the bridge engineering stations are. Various science labs below decks, such as stellar cartography and astrometrics, are where real scientific work is going on.

 

[dammitjim6400]

The command division basically runs the ship from tactical to helm and navigation to Captain. Data from TNG was never a science officer but he was in charge of Operations..For the record the Command shirt colors in TOS was olive green, the shirts just appeared gold/yellow on film.

 

[The Wormhole]

For the record the Command shirt colors in TOS was olive green, the shirts just appeared gold/yellow on film.

In the first two seasons, anyway. In season 3 they switched to actual yellow shirts, and every series since has stuck to yellow.

In fact, there was some debate with DS9's Trials and Tribble-ations about whether they should go with actual yellow shirts or green ones which were used in the actual episode. They went with yellow in the end.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Data from TNG was never a science officer but he was in charge of Operations...

Technically, but he was frequently written as if he was the science officer and even worked at one of the two aft sciences stations on the bridge at times.

The post-Nemesis novels actually tried to explain this by implying that Data served double duty as science officer in addition to being the operations manager. The person chosen to replace Data--not being an android--wasn't really able to handle both jobs, forcing Picard to split the duties up between two different officers.

 

[USS Excelsior]

It's no wonder the conspiracy aliens wouldn't like their science officer.