After kirk got demoted Spock And scotty technically outranked him
- Thread starter TEH BABA
- Start date
Care to clarify, or should I just clang this?
I do believe that seniority is attributed to time in the rank. In the U.S. Navy it is, anyway.
I have a site manager at a base who had to hire three former military types as technicians. One guy had been a consultant with us for a year, so he knew the system in and out. We finally hired him as a regular employee to be a shift supervisor, plus two completely new guys. (Though all three would have the same "technician" title.) They were all to start on the same day, but the experienced one had a prior commitment and officially started a day later.
The manager called me and asked what he should do, because the supervisor has less seniority than the other two techs. By one day. I said, "This must be a Navy thing," and he confirmed it. I told him, "This isn't the Navy, he's got a year of experience in the position, which more than justifies the supervisory position. Explain that to them and don't worry about the legality of it."
So it all depends on whether Captain Kirk got credit for his previous stint as a Captain. And whether Starfleet measures seniority the same way as the U.S. Navy.
I have a site manager at a base who had to hire three former military types as technicians. One guy had been a consultant with us for a year, so he knew the system in and out. We finally hired him as a regular employee to be a shift supervisor, plus two completely new guys. (Though all three would have the same "technician" title.) They were all to start on the same day, but the experienced one had a prior commitment and officially started a day later.
The manager called me and asked what he should do, because the supervisor has less seniority than the other two techs. By one day. I said, "This must be a Navy thing," and he confirmed it. I told him, "This isn't the Navy, he's got a year of experience in the position, which more than justifies the supervisory position. Explain that to them and don't worry about the legality of it."
So it all depends on whether Captain Kirk got credit for his previous stint as a Captain. And whether Starfleet measures seniority the same way as the U.S. Navy.
Why wouldn't Kirk get back his seniority based on his prior years as a Captain? I could see it if he was demoted to Commnader and then promoted back to captain.
...Even then, it might theoretically be that Spock would have more years at Captain rank than Kirk. Say, what if Kirk only got promoted at the beginning of TOS (indeed, perhaps only after "Where No Man"), and spent five years at the rank, after which he got kicked to flag rank - and Spock got promoted to Captain right after ST:TMP, somewhere between 2273 and 2278, and retained that rank until Kirk's demotion in 2285 or so? That would give Spock up to seven years of seniority over Kirk.
Scotty wouldn't get any, of course, as his captaincy would be mere days old (assuming it ever even got through in writing in ST3) before he forfeited it by going rogue.
Timo Saloniemi
Scotty wouldn't get any, of course, as his captaincy would be mere days old (assuming it ever even got through in writing in ST3) before he forfeited it by going rogue.
Timo Saloniemi
I don't understand the OP, either. Kirk was demoted from Admiral back to Captain; Spock and Scott are also captains. How do they outrank him?
Doug
When dealing with 2 or more persons of the same ranking, it's more a matter of seniority. I believe the OP was saying that when Kirk was Demoted to Captain, Spock and Scotty could technically now have had more Seniority as Captain than Kirk BECAUSE after the demotion it's possible all his previous experience no longer counted in the official Seniority calculations...
Of course for a guy who saved earth several times over by that point, I don't really think it mattered.
Of course for a guy who saved earth several times over by that point, I don't really think it mattered.
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Kirk really should have been busted merely down to Commodore. That way he could still have the other Captains plausibly serving under him in V and VI.
He could have but then there would be no "Captain Kirk".
Except the rank of commodore has been replaced by the rank of rear admiral.
Still, there is the position. Spock is a science officer, Scotty is an operations officer, while Kirk is a command officer. Can they really outrank him?
Peeps:
My understanding is it's the posting that matters more than simple seniority, even in the U.S. Navy. For example, on aircraft carriers it's not uncommon for the commanding officer and the executive officer to both have the rank of captain, also called 0-6, and that there are other captains/O-6s on board in different capacities.
So I think that by virtue of Kirk's total command experience, not just time in grade of captain, he gets the assignment of commanding officer of Enterprise. Both Spock and Scotty don't want to command, even though they're able to command quite well.
Yeah, I remember being bugged by the end of TVH, where you had three people ranked captain on the bridge, but after reading up on it, I now accept it's not so unusual.
Red Ranger
My understanding is it's the posting that matters more than simple seniority, even in the U.S. Navy. For example, on aircraft carriers it's not uncommon for the commanding officer and the executive officer to both have the rank of captain, also called 0-6, and that there are other captains/O-6s on board in different capacities.
So I think that by virtue of Kirk's total command experience, not just time in grade of captain, he gets the assignment of commanding officer of Enterprise. Both Spock and Scotty don't want to command, even though they're able to command quite well.
Yeah, I remember being bugged by the end of TVH, where you had three people ranked captain on the bridge, but after reading up on it, I now accept it's not so unusual.
Red Ranger
On a side-note:
Seniority and years-of-service play an integral role in the Seafort's Hope series of Military SF books by David Feintuch.
Seniority and years-of-service play an integral role in the Seafort's Hope series of Military SF books by David Feintuch.
That's the US Navy, not Starfleet. Costume designer Bob Fletcher created a commodore's rank pin for the movies, and one of the Caitans in the STIV council scene was wearing it.
The rank does seem to have disappeared by the TNG era, though.
Marian
To be sure, Fletcher's rank pin was never associated with the title "Commodore" in dialogue. The pin does look as if it described the lowest flag rank, aesthetically-systematically speaking, but the name of that rank could be "Desk Admiral", "Admiral in Waiting", "Flotilla Admiral" or "Bigskipper" for all we know.
Then again, nobody ever gave dialogue indicating that Commodores wouldn't exist in TNG, either. It's largely an open issue.
OTOH, the episodes do show that visiting Captains are not given any "lip-service promotions" to Commodore or anything...
Timo Saloniemi
Then again, nobody ever gave dialogue indicating that Commodores wouldn't exist in TNG, either. It's largely an open issue.
OTOH, the episodes do show that visiting Captains are not given any "lip-service promotions" to Commodore or anything...
Timo Saloniemi
Did we ever see a "1 pip" flag officer in any of the TNG series? We say a lot of 2's and 3's, and a few 4's - but never a 1...
So it is quite possible these 1-pip flag officers either do not exist (i.e. the rank of commodore was just abolished), they are only a temporary rank given to help Captains given command of a task group authority over other Captains, or Commodores are out there and we just do not see them.
Well, the rank of "commodore" in today's navies -- and in navies of the past, for that matter -- has a convoluted history. My understanding is that in the U.S. Navy, it's been abolished and brought back a few times. I think today, in the U.S. Navy, that is, it's a title for a captain put in temporary command of a group of ships. In the British Navy, it is a rank, equal to "brigadier" in the British army. It's also synonymous with what's called a "senior captain," similar to "senior colonel." -- RR
But that sounds horribly unlikely.
I mean, why would there not be a 1-pip rank if there are ranks with 2-4 pips? What sort of an idiot would design a pip scheme that omits the 1-pip option?
I could easily take the lack of 5-pip Admirals on screen as evidence that the pip scheme doesn't extend to five pips, but stops at 4. But it just doesn't make any sense that the scheme would skip 1 pip.
The line officer ranks do "skip" something - there is no rank with three bright pips and one dark. And that's odd enough already. But to skip an "entire" pip? Surely the more natural choice if dropping Commodore would have been to also turn Rear Admiral into a single-pip rank, Vice Admiral into a two-pip one, and Admiral to three-pipper.
Which, come to think of it, may be what happened. After all, we have never heard the terms "Rear Admiral" or "Vice Admiral" associated with a specific number of pips, now have we? We simply assume that Ross with his three pips must be a Vice Admiral (because we know the rank of Vice Admiral exists, thanks to the mention of the unseen officer of that rank in "Inter Arma").
Timo Saloniemi
I think my third option was the most likely - that we just don't see the Commodores/RALH.
Did 3-pip Nechayev not get referred to as Vice Admiral in TNG? I seem to remember something similar.
Logically of course the 1-4 pips align closely with US Navy flag ranks - so 1 pip officers exist, as do 2, 3 and 4 for Commodore, Read Admiral, Vice Admiral and Admiral respectively.
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