An ensign as a senior officer?

[Mage]

I'm usually not someone that nitpicks on little things, but something that I never really quite got, was how an ensign fresh out of the Academy was assigned a senior officer commision as Operations Officer. It just didn't really make sense to have someone with hardly any experience as a senior officer. Shouldn't someone like Harry be assigned as a gamma shift officer assigned to ops and work his way up?

 

[C.E. Evans]

If Harry was the only officer in his department--with the rest being noncoms or enlisted--then he would be considered a senior officer (or perhaps more accurately, a department head), IMO.

 

[JoeZhang]

They made a terrorist the first officer, so why not?

 

[doubleohfive]

I always understood to be less a matter of specific rank and more a matter of who Janeway wanted on the job. Likely she was involved in selecting her staff and chose Harry. It happens again in the second episode where Torres is convinced Carey will be the new chief engineer, but Janeway picks her instead.

 

[Timo]

We have no proof that Kim would have been made the Chief Operations Officer from the outset. The dialogue only establishes that he became an Operations Officer for the mission of hunting down the Maquis, not that he would have become a department head.

The subsequent heavy losses suffered in the pilot episodes might well have necessitated making Kim the senior member of his department, if we assume that Operations Officer is a position requiring very specific training and not something a random yellowshirt Lieutenant (of which the ship had several) could handle.

We know that quite a few Lieutenant Commanders or Commanders died in the pilot: we saw the XO (LtCmdr) and the Chief Medical Officer (LtCmdr) bite it, and we heard the Chief Engineering Officer (unknown rank) died as well - and then we heard later on that at least one full Commander and one LtCmdr (who wasn't named Cavit) had died. So probably at least one LtCmdr corpse there for the role of Kim's superior...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Guy Gardener]

Commander Bartlett.

Also in the list of dead crewmen from Imperfection were... Lt. Cdr. L. McGarry, Lt. Cdr. T. Ziegler, Lt. J. Lyman, Lt. S. Seaborn, Ens. Claudia J. Craig and Ens. Charles Young.

"think about it"

(Think harder.)

I think it's a little Rough making CJ an Ensign, she kicked ass weekly.

 

[C.E. Evans]

On the other hand, we have no proof that suggests any other higher-ranking officers at Ops. For all we know, the post may only warrant an ensign's billet aboard an Intrepid-class ship.

 

[PsychoPere]

I think it's a little Rough making CJ an Ensign, she kicked ass weekly.

That's a better rank / position for her than Chief of Staff...

 

[Guy Gardener]

She floundered for a bit, but CJ got the hang of it eventually.

This is what pissed me off.

JENKINS: Rumour has it you were the one who outsmarted the smart bomb.
KIM: Well, not exactly. I made first contact with a sentient being. All I did was help it understand a few things. The rest was up to him.
JENKINS: Understood. Actually, I've been authorised by the junior staff to thank you for keeping us in one piece.
KIM: You're welcome. Any time. Do me a favour?
JENKINS: Of course, sir.
KIM: No more distress calls. At least not tonight.

According to Memory Alpha, Jenkins was a full Ensign too.

 

[BillJ]

They made a terrorist the first officer, so why not?

I always found it funny that back-to-back shows made former terrorists the first officer.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Why not? The Captains of each show mounted actual acts of terrorism.

B'Elanna was promoted to Lieutenant junior grade to be Chief Engineer, to was a job prerequisite. If Harry needed a promotion to full some deadmans shoes to carry out his duties as the Operations Department Head, then he would have gotten that promotion in the second episdoe when Janeway and Chakotay were sorting these things out.

 

[Caesar753]

I don't think any ensign would be considered a senior officer on a bigger ship, like a Galaxy class. On a smaller ship like Voyager, there may have been more leeway as far as department heads, since there were presumably fewer officers aboard who held traditional senior rank. I don't remember; was Harry considered a senior officer before Voyager was stranded in the Delta Quadrant? If not, it makes sense that his senior officer status may have been an act of necessity due to Voyager's predicament.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Voyager was his first job out of the academy. Every non Maquis Ensign had seniority over him. Every noncom and enlisted crewman probably clocked years on him in experience, remember Miles and Julian in the beginning? they may have to follow his orders but he's really just getting in the way of jobs they know how to do perfectly without oversight.

Seniority is how officers of the same rank, baring orders, work shit out, so I have no idea what this "tactically superior ship" bullshit is about from why Janeway who, depending on the conflicting canon you want to site, was also on her first mission and first command, when Ranson had been captaining in the Delta Quadrant 6 months longer than she had been a Captain period.

A superior officer can just switch commands.

If he wanted Voyager and she thought the order was legal (Fuck "just" it only matters if he had the authority.) she would have had to have given it to him or whosoever he wanted to replace her with which probably would have been Max Burke and she would have been reduced to Commander (Just Like Decker when Kirk stole the Enterprise.).

For Fucks sake a 1/4 of her crew were Maquis terrorists!

They finally didn't need the Maquis and they could have used Equinox as a prison barge, leaving Voyager just full of proper officers, if that is that they just didn't turn one of their holodecks into a jail.

Kim was Supergreen.

The Captain too.

 

[Finn]

Didn't they mention Harry Kim reporting to someone else as if he had an immediate supervisor who isn't on the bridge...

 

[Broccoli]

Didn't they mention Harry Kim reporting to someone else as if he had an immediate supervisor who isn't on the bridge...

I think that would have been a great recurring gag on the show if there was this other important character always doing stuff, but we never actually saw him/her. Kinda like the Delaney sisters, but actually mattered (plus, we saw the Delaney sisters).

 

[Finn]

^You mean a Vera/Maris kind of thing going on?

 

[Finn]

^You mean a Vera/Maris kind of thing going on?

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Dellaney twins were first mentioned in Time and Again which was the third or fourth episode depending if you count the pilot of one or two episodes.

The twins were only ever mentioned in Time and Again, Prime Factors, the Chute, Muse and Thirty Days, and barely appeared twice out of those 5 episodes.

Kim was a section head, and got to sit at the big table when the captain was making decisions, but there are several sections on the Bridge who all have to report to the whosoever has the con, even if it's Kim. One more thing not to forget is that Operations is the management of dozens of smaller stations across the ship that each represent a blinking light on his LCARS.

 

[Broccoli]

^You mean a Vera/Maris kind of thing going on?

Exactly.