Season 1 Uhura

I'm reminded of David Gerrold's quote regarding Uhura when he was interviewed for the documentary 'Building The Enterprise':

"She's the most important person on the ship. When Uhura says 'Captain', *everyone* turns to look at her."

Uhura's functional role as a member of the cast of characters was criminally under-used. But in terms of her role on the Enterprise in-universe, she was arguably one of the most crucial officers aboard.

 

No, it was a shot LIFTED from "The Naked Time", not shot during. (source)

 

Interestingly enough, the USN divides shipboard communications into three categories, handled by three different ratings. External emission-based comms like radio are handled by the Electronic Technicians (ETs), computer networking type comms are handled by the Information Systems Technicians (ITs), and internal telephony-type comms are handled by the Interior Communication Electricians (ICs.) All three are "seaman ratings" now but IC was an "engineering rate" up to 2014.

This is a big argument for no enlisted on TOS, IMO. Officers in RL are managers and enlisted are the subject matter experts, doing the maintenance and repairs. (The only officer I personally witnessed getting his hands dirty was a warrant officer serving as the Main Propulsion Assistant.) The fact that we see officers rolling up their sleeves is a strong indicator of no enlisted in my book

 

The only problem with that theory is that we see quite a few enlisted personnel, just not as many as there should be. They're even easier to spot in the movies. I agree that the majority of engineers and security guards should be enlisted plus lab technicians, most nurses, and the yeomen.

 

It's worse in Nutrek as female officers have no rank insignia on their short sleeved dresses. Talk about the glass ceiling!

 

Uhura also took over navigation during balance of Terror when Styles went down to man the phaser room

 

Good point, and interesting about ET and IT. In the big ratings overhaul after WW2, IC split off from Electrician's Mate in the "Engineering and Hull" group, while RM was "Administrative and Clerical" and ET in its own "Electronics" group. Did IC's also work on gyros? Seems like it but I can't remember.

Of course we can now see that electronic and information tech is basically involved in everything, but TOS is a product of its time that way and I can't blame them for not foreseeing that and keeping "computers" separate from communications, fire control etc.

Agreed, or it would be if GR had laid that down from the beginning. As it is, enough crewmen and petty officers made mentions or appearances that you're just left wondering how they fit in. If a security lieutenant is just standing a sentry post, what are the security crewmen doing?

 

A better question is: do you really need a four-year college education/degree to be standing a sentry post? Is this really an effective use of resources?

 

I noticed in Devil in the Dark that there were two lieutenants and the security chief Lieutenant-commander amongst the personnel. I figured the lieutenants were there to command the crewmen but it turned out that all the officers stuck together and sent the enlisted crew off to die on their own. Harsh.

Uhura commands a security search party in City on the Edge of Forever.

 

Yeah, there were some overhauls since I served in the 80s as well. Signalmen into Quartermasters, Boiler Techs into Machinist's Mates and Data Processing Techs into ITs are three that come to mind, based on the ratings of friends that I remember. And, yes, ICs do/did gyros (Kept my previous comment narrowed to comms.)

I'll be the first to admit that "no enlisted" is more my preferred way of imagining Star Fleet and I am okay with handwaving away (@Timo style) the mentions we get as anachronisms if it means that Star Fleet is more egalitarian, progressive version of a navy, one free of the upper/lower class stratification. A service free of the notion that the gold bar on a snot-nosed ensign fresh out of the Academy trumps the gold anchor of a CPO with a forearm covered in service stripes. My preference is for that crap to join scurvy and flogging as the way things used to be.

 

Yeah, I would think that officers have greater scientific and people management training. In a crisis, someone needs to be in charge but it's more that you want your experts in charge in most cases. Sulu, DeSalle, Chekov, and Chapel all display quite a lot of scientific training on top of their core training. Rand makes the coffee. I mean Rand can fly the ship, fix equipment, fly a shuttle, work transporters, and hold her own in a fight but her scientific training in TOS is lower than the others.

I would think that CPOs are great all rounders but they may still lack expertise in scientific areas.

 

Wouldn't science require the most devotion to studies that detract from general soldieering, though? That is, if an officer is supposed to manage a bunch of Plasma Turbine Mechanics, she should do the same with Quantum Mechanics, rather than waste her time with studying the subject matters themselves, let alone getting her hands dirty with particle accelerators.

As for the "flogging of enlisteds and other serfs is a thing of the past" approach, here's some of that handwaving... Early TOS does its damnedest to show Kirk's underlings as indeed deserving of a keelhauling or two. From "Man Trap" on, they are a rowdy and undisciplined lot, abandoning their posts for lusty pursuits and getting themselves killed for it. Is this futuristic? Well, it certainly isn't contemporary, so why not?

The old line about not having to be crazy to work here "yet it helps" is likely to be false - you absolutely need to be batshit crazy to join Starfleet, considering the alternatives. So it's back to the bad old days simply because one day, the crew will fail to take their pills and there will be trouble.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Yeah, I think the navy has been trying to consolidate ratings to downsize their school system as much as possible. There are a lot fewer rates now than 30 years ago. OTOH, divers, SEALs, EOD, and special boat operators now have their own rates, which makes sense.

I am 100% with you on that. As technology advances, so do the skill/knowledge/education requirements for the operators. I have said before I could picture a structure with a few low-skilled trainees on the bottom, a lot of highly skilled, highly trained warrant officer types in the middle, and a smaller number of strategic-thinker, war college type command officers at the top. If you enlist with a university degree, you might skip a rung or two at the bottom, but not start half-way up the ladder. Who's giving more important advice and making more important decisions, the Command Master Chief or the officially higher-ranking newly minted ensign?

I read an interesting piece by a USAF major last year about abandoning the officer-enlisted divide and grade-by-grade promotions in favor of levels of responsibility "jobs" that you apply and compete for based on skills and experience. It made a lot of sense to me.

The problem applying something like that to Star Trek is you'd have to build it in right from the start and have all writers and editors on the same page. There are fundamental assumptions and implications involved, you couldn't just move a traditional military unit story into space. Nobody involved in Trek so far has taken that kind of further step.

 

That drove me nuts for years - that Uhura wore a different uniform and had no rank indicators. Ughhhhhh.

 

The single broken stripe also appears in TOS, albeit only once, on Lt JG Joe Tormolen's sleeve. So in TMP there's either no Lt JG rank, or ensigns are still rankless. I think Bob Fletcher intended the former.

 

I'd prefer it if they stuck to giving everyone rank insignia on their shoulder epaulettes.

I do think writers struggle to understand even the existence of enlisted crew. O'Brien started as an ensign, became a transporter 'chief' Lieutenant, and was retconned to be an actual Chief by the time of DS9. Yeoman Rand was most likely a petty officer. In the original script she was going to be 'promoted' to be an ensign in TMP but she ended up with the insignia of a CPO on screen . In STIV she is wearing an enlisted uniform but is billed as Commander Rand in the credits.

In the Phase II fan series and in John Byrne's New Voyages Rand returns to the crew as a Lieutenant, despite wearing enlisted uniforms in movies set at a later date and in Voyagers Flashback, she tells Tuvok it took her a year to make Ensign despite the fact that there is a total of about 16 years between TOS and STIV.

 

According to The Making of Star Trek the Motion Picture, Jon Povill sent Fletcher a memo outlining the stripe system that had been used in TOS. For whatever reason, he omitted LTJG and gave ensign the broken stripe.