Starship Insignia

I just did a quick check scrolling through Netflix on my phone, looks like they always keep their backs to the camera, it would seem deliberately.

 

That probably means arrowhead then. Interesting - if it seems deliberate, I wonder if the production staff was in a perpetual state of confusion over uniform insignia and made an intentional effort to keep it hidden to avoid further confusion and additional "under penalty of death" memos. If the canonical state of insignia was that everyone used the arrowhead, per Justman's memo, why hide it? Very interesting. I wonder if there is anyone out there left from the original costume department who can say definitively how things happened back then.

 

Defiant took the same approach. But I think an arrowhead or two slipped by.

 

The deal with that was, in 1899 the US was feeling pretty important after the Spanish-American War, but the Navy was still fairly small and had a lean structure of flag officers, one-star commdores and two-star rear admirals. Other navies OTOH, especially the British, had rear admirals and vice admirals and even admirals all over the globe, so US commodores on overseas stations were always having to salute and pay their respects to other flag officers, even from nations who barely had a fleet but did not mind higher ranks. So in 1899 the US Congress made all USN one-star commodores into two-star rear admirals, BUT the junior half of the total number of rear admirals would still receive one-star pay. That's where "lower half" came from. That was the system in place through WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam: A USN captain would be promoted straight to two stars.

I posted a few documents about this in another thread recently:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/rec...fleet-departments.288190/page-2#post-12054628

Army and later Air Force officers didn't think that was fair, and finally around 1980 Congress agreed. Navy officers would first have to be promoted to one-star, and then be promoted again to get two stars. But what to call the new one-star grade? First they went with "commodore admiral." Nobody liked it. They dropped it the next year and went with just "commodore," but the new commodores didn't like that because they wanted to be called "admiral" for short, and also there were captains who were still given the title of commodore in their positions. So in 1986 the old title of "rear admiral (lower half)" was dragged out again, even though it no longer makes any sense. In practice, though their insignia and flags are different, the US Navy usually calls both simply "rear admiral" and doesn't really distinguish between them unless absolutely necessary.

In real life that doesn't take place. First of all, that was just to use the star of the series; really there should already be people in place to take charge of something like that. Second, why would you put a junior captain in command? If you have more senior officers who are not capable of taking command over their juniors, they shouldn't be in their positions. In real life, the senior officer takes charge. A brevet was an almost totally honorary promotion that was given as an award and died out in the early 20th century. The US and British armies used brevet promotions but their navies never did.

 

Cool info, thank you! I was afraid I woefully over-simplified what I said, and your post confirms that. I should never underestimate the need for an over-bloated bureaucracy in any government structure...in any century.

I wonder how much of the "real-world" history you mentioned parallels with the usage (and subsequent disappearance) of the Commodore grade in TOS. Since there would technically be no more "pay" in the conventional 20th century sense, I would think that it would necessarily (and exclusively) have to do with assignment.

 

To be exact, the Commodore grade did not disappear in TOS - and later on, it's not that the thing called Commodore grade would disappear, but that the one-star rank itself goes unseen, some murkiness in the first season of TNG notwithstanding.

Bo so does the two-star rank, again TNG S1 potentially notwithstanding, until late DS9. And the four-star rank disappears until the final episode of TNG, despite apparently having existed in the TOS movies; the five-star rank never appears, despite also having been a TOS movie thing (and very much a thing in the parallel Starfleet of ST:ID).

Perhaps we should make no more issue of such "disappearances" than we should of Admirals with Irish names "disappearing"?

As for the issue of Wesley wearing the "base symbol", the easy answer is to demote that symbol into yet another Fleet symbol, one that happens to apply to the Fleet that hosts Kirk's court martial.

Starbase 11, a big and busy place, could be home to two Fleets: the "Starburst Fleet" of which e.g. Commodores Mendez and Stone and Lieutenant Shaw are part, and the "Arrowhead Fleet" of which e.g. the lady in Mendez' office and plenty of visiting crews (including non-Enterprise ones) are part.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Ugh...this discussion has just gotten un-fun...

 

To me, Commodore Wesley seemed to be a base commodore who was assigned an attack force to test the multitronic unit.

Don't forget that Miss Piper wore a "starbase flower" too, which was quite obviously deliberate.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Piper

You can see personnel evidently serving in the background on Starbase 11 in "The Menagerie" wearing the arrowhead too (mainly such as "Mendez's secretary"), but my opinion is that that was likely a costuming error, and that a decision was made not to correct the costumes because they were extras and "no one would ever notice."

https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.ne...ision/latest?cb=20081206232456&path-prefix=en

In the case of the officers in the bar who Kirk speaks with in "Court Martial" and who wear the arrowhead, those probably aren't errors, because they seem to be starship officers who are ashore. Maybe some in the background should have been wearing flowers instead of arrowheads, but again it could have been decided that it wasn't worth fixing because "no one would ever notice."

 

There was also the ineffective Commodore Stocker in "The Deadly Years" - the only "red shirt" Commodore in existence, to my recollection - who was completely incapable of running a starship, especially when under attack. He wore the starburst and was clearly just a base commander - and likely an average one, at best. Kirk even referred to him as a "chair-bound paper pusher", IIRC.

 

Stone of "Court Martial" wore a red shirt.

 

Did he? Hmmm...okay, fair enough. This takes us into another oddity of uniform continuity. We always assumed that Captains-on-up generally wore "Command Gold" as a part of being a senior-later-general officer of a command grade. TOS gave us at least two non-command Commodores.

Now I'm wondering if TNG/DS9/VOY gave us non-command Admirals wearing orange and blue uniforms. I suspect that if "Admiral McCoy" wore something other than that sparkly black tunic with shoulder boards in "Encounter", that it may likely have been blue. Then there was also that psychotic Admiral Satee who wore civilian clothes for some odd reason. Were these honorary/brevet ranks, or were they considered retired from regular service and retained their ranks, kind of like "Colonel Sanders"?

And WHY do all these Commodores and Admirals get so completely fucked in the head once they get that high up? Don't they have regular psych evaluations to prevent that sort of thing in Starfleet? Second only to contrived transporter accidents, demented Fleet Command Staff has been the source of more trouble and artificial drama for the crew of many Enterprises than anything else!

In fact, I fully expect Captain Jericho to be fast-tracked into the Admiralty, based on this criteria!

 

The real-world reason, obviously, is that it's a source of drama for the main characters under them. I'm pretty sure that the desk-bound admiral out of touch with what's happening at sea, the desk-bound general out of touch with what's going on at the front line, the boss not knowing how the widgets are really made, etc. were already a cliches by the time of TOS, and that TOS was just borrowing them/it. The success of the episodes using it led to it getting solidified as a ST-specific trope.

To complete the circle, in-universe explanations for how it happens in Starfleet can be concocted by adapting the real-world reasons for the original cliches in the obvious way, with a heavy helping of people never seeming to learn, even in the 23rd century: institutions are vulnerable to the Peter principle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

P.S. I know it doesn't really answer your question!

 

Which would then raise the question: Was Lexington's regular CO put ashore for the duration of the test? Wesley seemed to be commanding the ship as well as the task force.

People tend to think that "gold" means "in charge," but the evidence is more that it was just the division that handled flight and weapons control. Obviously the captain of a ship would be immediately involved with controlling those functions so "gold" would make sense. A base commodore, OTOH, who was more concerned with construction, refit and repair, as Stone appeared to be, might fit better with red. I've also wondered if a Starbase had two commodores, a goldshirt one (Mendez) for the ships and a redshirt one (Stone) for the base. Similar to how USAF bases have separate commanders for the air wing and the base wing.

Because a competent senior officer who shows up and takes care of business smoothly and effectively, while the stars of the show say "Aye, sir," "Very good, ma'am," doesn't make for a very interesting episode. But Starfleet is presented overall as a very professional and effective organization, so you have to assume the "dramatic" officers are the very small exception to the rule, and the heroes just have bad luck to keep coming across them!

Captain Jellicoe? He should be, he did a good job. At least someone from Star Trek should not shrink from higher responsibility!

 

Starbase 11 had two Commodores.
1: Commodore Mendez was the overall commander of Starbase 11 and responsible for Starfleet operations in that sector.

2: Commodore Stone was the Portmaster of Starbase 11, and was the commander of Starship Maintance and Repair.

 

It's a good question. These are relatively minor issues, not part of the main thrust of the story, which is perhaps one reason why they're sketchy.

- Perhaps it was the "captain's holiday" on Risa (cf the TNG episode of that name). Maybe she was encouraged to take her accumulated shore leave time by Wesley who suggested it was going to be a simple, routine training exercise.

- Maybe the captain found herself with the Enterprise crew on the space station.

- Maybe Wesley didn't know which ship he would assume command of, or if he would take command of any, until he knew which ships were available. When he saw that one of the captains was moving up or on, maybe he swooped in and put a temporary hold on filling the captaincy there. Or, in line with the first option, maybe he talked the captain into going on leave for the drill.



As far as why I wasn't ever inclined to think that Wesley's assignment was captain of the Lexington, there are several reasons besides the flower insignia. In the first place, Wesley is the one giving Kirk his orders in conjunction with the M-5 testing. The M-5 program seems to be Wesley's baby, unlikely for a mere starship commander to be in charge of. No other officer, flag or otherwise, from the space station is seen (possible background members of the attack force notwithstanding), although one of unknown rank is heard in the teaser over radio (voiced by Doohan, I believe; edit - http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Enwright). Also, Kirk was unfamiliar that Wesley was in the area. If Wesley's ship was at the space station, they should have scanned it as they approached the station in the teaser. Wesley beams over from the station.

It's interesting that Wesley is shown with a blue uniform in TAS "One of Our Planet Is Missing." I would suppose that more accurate would be on off-white uniform (like outpost personnel in "Balance of Terror" and "Arena"), since he is described as governor of Mantilles.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Robert_Wesley

In any case and small point, if the intent in fact had been for the M-5 to be Wesley's baby and that he had just assumed command of Lexington for the M-5 drill, I think that blue would have worked for Wesley's uniform at that point. edit - On the other hand, the M-5 is intended to take over as starship commander, so gold works just fine as an indication of Wesley's interest in the project, too.

---

edit - from http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Enwright:

According to the first draft of the script, dated 30 November 1967, Enwright beamed aboard the Enterprise along with Wesley to brief Spock and James T. Kirk in the transporter room. The character was ultimately cut by the final draft, and his lines were given to Wesley.​

Maybe this explains the issues we're having. Maybe Wesley was originally intended to be captain of the Lexington, with the M-5 as Enwright's baby. But with Enwright cut and his lines given to Wesley, it all got folded into Wesley.

 

It makes sense that some dialogue oddities may stem from combining two characters into one.

Some other aspects of the premise of Wesley seemed odd to me and may be explained by that. For example, did he really honestly believe that Kirk blew a fuse in his head after the "Captain Dunsel" comment; enough to destroy one Connie completely and wreck 3 others? He clearly thought so when he said "What the hell is Kirk doing?", or something of that tone. If he thought Kirk was such a "thing that serves no purpose" in the first place then why, all of a sudden, does Wesley think that Kirk is cunning and skillful enough to be so aggressive? It never once occurred to Wesley that M-5 commandeered the ship and imposed a comms blackout to prevent Kirk from telling them to clear out?? Probably another artifact of Wesley in denial about M-5's problems, like we also saw with Daystrom. That whole engagement has always bothered me.

 

My read on the "Captain Dunsel" comment was that Wesley understood full well the feeling of obsolescence, which was why he offered the consolation in the first place, callously though he did. Maybe taking men out of the loop bothered Wesley too.

However, I agree that one of the minor plot holes in the story is that, when the Enterprise is attacking, Wesley doesn't consider the possibility that the M-5 is malfunctioning, at least out loud when discussing the situation with his crew. It's, like, a really obvious possibility. It's minor, because they'd still have to stop the ship either way, and arguably it doesn't necessarily change their behavior in terms of space combat. In any case, Wesley did correctly deduce that Kirk was in command and the computer wasn't when the Enterprise shields went down.

Perhaps the point is that Wesley had jumped to the conclusion during the attack that Kirk was trying to sabotage the M-5 program by making it seem like the M-5 was malfunctioning.

 

Episode and Memory Alpha makes it clear Wesley retired and became governor of Mantilles. He wasn't wearing a Starfleet uniform.

 

Exactly, but two things.

One, he's drawn wearing a Starfleet uniform. You can tell by the collar and the color. It's a straight-up sciences division Starfleet uniform.

Two, do we know that the outpost personnel in the two episodes I mentioned were Starfleet? They were Federation personnel, obviously, but Starfleet?

Yeah, no, gotta disagree. I agree that he shouldn't have been wearing one, which is why I said I suppose more accurate than what he was shown wearing. That means an improvement, even if not perfectly satisfactory.

And anyway, if you're going to argue that you can't tell for sure what he's wearing because you can't see the whole thing, even though what we see is drawn specifically the same way as a Starfleet uniform, then the same would apply all the more so if a different color were used instead, one not used for Starfleet uniforms.

 

I'll have to watch the episode again but, unless there is a Starfleet patch, then I cannot agree or assume it is a Starfleet uniform. Plenty of civilian clothing today have the same collar or color of a uniform.

Consider military uniforms. Plenty of civilians wear cammo.

Or, take the embroidery off this uniform and it can look like any civilian outfit.
https://blog.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DN-SC-85-02745.jpeg


Or this https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/l1EAAOSwnNBXXha6/s-l225.jpg