From what I can remember, Hoshi: earned a degree with honors from a university independently of SF training, went through SF academy, held a university professorship (meaning she probably published in her field), was an expert in a field that SF desperately needed experts, programmed a piece of machinery that SF depended on. Adding all that up, Hoshi should have been a lieutenant, first class, at the very least. I suspect that for the Beebs, calling her an ensign was merely a way of saying that she was green. (Unless there's a different explanation ...)
In most military or paramilitary organizations, while you are promoted based on merit, your rank corresponds to a level of responsibility at your assigned ship or station. She's the comm officer on a small ship with a limited command staff. Starfleet apparently says that the comms department should be headed up by an Ensign, so that's the rank she needs to hold that position. If you promote her, you give her a position somewhere else that requires a Lieutenant (most likely someone who has a staff of other officers and which would therefore require a Lieutenant rank to maintain a chain of command). The fact that she's a multiple degree holder who's designed some killer app has nothing to do with it. That's why some promotions bug me, like Tuvok or Worf. It's not like they're being paid, and it's not like their responsibilities are changing aboard ship, so why do it at all?
I'm much more interested in Archer's rank. Since he has never seemed to have captained anything other than the NX-prototype plane before the NX-01, how had he actually attained the rank of captain? Was he serving on sea ships from ensign to commander before joining Starfleet?
Wow! That's downplaying things, given that a universal translator is likely a hop, skip and jump from a universal codebreaker! Indeed, given her linguistic and programming skills, she could have obtain some rank through direct commission. Extensive officer training (however she spent her three years) ought to add to that.
@Dukhat - Check this out, the career of the first Captain of the USS Enterprise, CVN-65: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_P._de_Poix This guy's first command was the USS Albemarie, a seaplane tender. He actually started as an ensign briefly aboard two warships, but then he was a naval aviator and pilot aboard the previous USS Enterprise CV-6 plus a bunch of aviation-related stationings having to do with aviation or R&D, for the bulk of his career before then taking command of the Albemarie - no assignment as an XO, second officer, or whatever. After a year as her skipper, he did a shore-based assignment and then was assigned to the first ever nuclear powered aircraft carrier, and the largest ship of its kind at the time. One could argue that he was placed in command of the Albemarie as part of grooming him for command of the Enterprise, but the point is that anyone's career can be all wibbly-wobbly and then end up as the skipper of the most important ship in the fleet, without having to work your way up in the ranks of seagoing vessels. QED. Mark
We could also argue that Archer was given the rank of Captain solely so that he could be made captain of NX-01. Starfleet needed to put Henry Archer's son there in order to provoke the Vulcans, and it was convenient that he was a military test pilot already holding rank, but probably not all that necessary a prerequisite. In all the eras, it seems Starfleet hands out promotions as rewards the same way real militaries hand out commendations and medals and other awards and decorations. Any rank is appropriate for any position, but if you wear four pips where your colleague wears one and a half, you simply flaunt the fact that Starfleet likes you more. Of course, Starfleet also uses medals and commendations, but these are something you keep in your desk drawer, not something you pin on your uniform (although in TOS, you apparently did use those little triangles to symbolize these symbols, the same way real militaries use ribbons in place of their respective medals). Timo Saloniemi
Apparently in Starfleet, if your father was a big deal you get to captain an Enterprise, no questions asked. It's weird because Starfleet clearly had experienced crew (of the Intrepid and Neptune classes) out there... I guess TPTB just didn't give it much thought.
Archer's crew may well be a collection of experienced veterans. It's just that the skipper himself was chosen on PR basis, and Starfleet may have failed to get their veteran XO aboard the ship in time before she sailed in "Broken Bow", leaving the loose cannon Tucker and the alien T'Pol to fight for that position. Timo Saloniemi
"Minefield" has Archer talking about disagreements with a former CO over command style. I can only assume he would've been the First Officer, or at least among the senior staff. Maybe incidents like that casued him to be sent back to Earth and the solar system, where he got into Starfleet's development of Warp 2. I never came away from Enterprise with a JJ-Trek Kirk career path for Archer. It's tempting to see Bush nepotism but realistically I don't see that happening in this show's take on Starfleet as a mix of NASA and the US coast guard. And it's clearly his achievements in the former that got him the job... even if he's not at the level of scientific genius of his father. So piloting probably and later mission control. Inbetween a number of tours of duty patrolling as far as low warp can get Earth ships?
IIRC, he earned the rank as a test pilot. As for Hoshi: *Is* there even a Starfleet Academy this early in the game? Before the Federation, no less?
There's incidental info on a Starfleet Academy existing at least in 2149 if not earlier ("Storm Front II"): a clearly legible Academy diploma is visible on the desk of Ensign O'Malley. Of course, we can't really read the date, so all we canonically know is that the Academy existed some time prior to 2154 when O'Malley went the way of the classic redshirt. The other bookend would appear to come from Archer's inability to join Starfleet in his early years. If there's no Starfleet for him to join, there's probably no UESF Academy, either ("Horizon"): Since Archer was born in 2112, this "serious thought" probably came no sooner than 2114 or so... As for earning the rank, all we know is that he was a Commander in "First Flight" still, but was called "captain" during the selection process to NX-01 command, this probably referring to rank rather than position. Many of Archer's early exploits seem unrelated to test-piloting, so the promotion might well be associated with those rather than the warp 2.5 flight. Timo Saloniemi
But that could have been during a ground assignment, perhaps when he was a test pilot. While in Starfleet, he always would have had a commanding officer.
True, but there's the context of what they were supposedly arguing about. How they could be out in deep space and cut off for years, with no one but themselves to rely on. Being more like a family than a military style unit. How Reed's disappointment in Archer not being that kind of strict Captain he expected, directly reflects this. What would prompt disagreement between Archer and "his CO" over such an issue, while basically being safe and sound themselves on Earth? If you were writing that drama, he'd surely be the subordinate questioning command style, while they're close to, if not actually experiencing such conditions?
As has been point out here and in other similar threads there no indication that Archer ever serve aboard a Starfleet vessel before, only in single seat test vehicles. He mentions no ship by name, never indicates that he's been outside of the solar system before. His repeated wonder at simply being in interstellar space speak to this being a totally new experience for him. Where were the stories that started with; "I remember the time when I was a Lt jg aboard the Armstrong ..."
Well IMO "Minefield" could be one such story. Archer just didn't mention the ship's name. You know what? Okay. Fair enough. It could be a simulated training exercise he was talking about. Like the time he reminded Trip of in "Strange New World", convincing him not to take his helmet off. Archer's argument with a CO, occurring more during prolonged test conditions happening in and around planets in our solar system. Some camping trip going on endurance test on a moon near Jupiter station. A Commanding Officer wanting by the book and Archer saying that wouldn't necessarily be so, because he knew, spent a lot of time with and trusted those under his command. Citing his long friendship with Trip as an example. I'll block "These are the Voyages" out of my mind here, because Trip's actions in that highlight him as such a lousy case to build any kind of defence on!
Everyone has to start from somewhere. Obviously Archer did stuff to move up through the ranks prior to his assignment to the NX-01, we just didn't see a lot of it, just like every other captain in a Star Trek show. The most we ever saw about a commandin' officer's past was Sisko's, thanks to the Wolf 359 flashback. As for Hoshi, seems to me that since the NX-01 was new, and most of the crew were of a low officer rank or enlisted, ensign seemed about right for her position. Keep in mind that the senior conn officer/pilot, who was supposed to have the most first hand experience in the areas where the ship was travelin', was also only an ensign. That the two were still at that rank in the 'These are the Voyages...' holoprogram is idiotic, but that's a whole other thing.
Cadet Kirk was part of a peace mission to Axanar. Ensign Kirk was posted to the USS Republic. Young Lieutenant Kirk was assigned to a planetary survey mission on Neural. Lieutenant Kirk was the tactical officer aboard the USS Farragut. There is a hole between there and when Kirk is a Captain, however Kirk's past shows that he was working his way up the promotion ladder and had a series of assignments. The non-canon backstory created for Kirk by Roddenberry had Kirk in command of a "destroyer type vessel" prior to the Enterprise. He wasn't just give command of his Enterprise out of nowhere. Like Archer was.
^ Archer mentioned servin' aboard a Vulcan ship in an episode. He was seen as a test pilot / ground control for the warp five experiments along with Tucker. Obviously he was somewhere before 'Broken Bow', and he is just as likely to have worked his way up the ranks, as well. It just wasn't shown, much like the other captains. And clearly he was Admiral Forrest's top pick for the position, and since Admiral Forrest ran Starfleet Command, he was the one who decided who got the NX-01. Picard took command of the Stargazer durin' an emergency and got to keep it for a couple of decades. He went out for milk and cigarettes for almost a decade before gettin' the Enterprise-D, and then he got the next one, too. Sisko was an engineer who got moved to command by Leyton, and then served as the first officer of the Saratoga before workin' at Utopia Planitia and then gettin' command of DS9. Janeway served as a science officer under Owen Paris, and dependin' on which episode ya watch, she had a command before Voyager, or Voyager was her first command.
Except it isn't "like the other Captains," because in their cases we do learn of their career backstories.^ I'd forgotten about that, it was Breaking the Ice, but Archer didn't serve aboard the Vulcan ship, he was just a passager.