Chains of Command...Picard, Worf, Bev...Really????
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It's no more complicated than drawing up a schedule chart and putting names on it, which is something that would be done at the duty officer level...and Ent-D's crew has iPads to do it with.
Step one: Jellico tells Riker he wants to go from three shifts to four. That is all Jellico is required to do. He does not have to tell Riker in detail how to set up the watches. Riker should be smart enough to figure that out for himself.
Step two: Riker takes the current daily schedule, sees how the day is divided into three shifts and creates new divisions that divide it into four shifts. (OMG!!!! It's so hard!!! Jellico doesn't care!!! Captain Picard where are you???)
Step three: Riker passes on Jellico's order and the new watch schedule to the department heads (Engineering, Operations, Medical, etc.) and instructs them to rearrange their duty rosters to fit the new shifts.
Step four: the department heads pass Jellico and Riker's orders and the new watch schedule to their duty officers and instruct them to reschedule the department personnel's on-duty hours to fit the new shifts.
And thus we have reached the most complicated part of the exercise, and at that, it is not a job for the Vulcan Science Directorate. You are not deploying fleets of starships. You are not wrangling exotic beasts and transporting them to Risan zoos. You are not trying to play Parisi Squares blindfolded. The duty officer's mission at this point is literally to take a bunch of names off a roster schedule with three divisions in it and redistribute them on a new schedule with four divisions. That's it. Once that's done there will only be two significant changes. The good change is that everybody stands a shorter watch. The bad change is they may all have to stand that watch more than once. Too bad.
Step five: The duty officers take their revised schedules to their department heads for approval. If the heads don't agree they have the duty officers try again. If the heads approve they send the revised schedules to Riker.
Step six: Riker reviews the department rosters. If he disagrees with one he sends it back to the department for another try. Once he's satisfied with everything he sees he gives the order to implement the new rotation.
"Wait!" You say. "Shouldn't he get the Captain's approval first?" Not Jellico. Jellico already told him what he wanted, so Jellico will be satisfied with nothing less than the report, "Sir, the ship is now operating on a four-shift rotation, as per your orders." Final step.
This is the work of a day, tops, and can only be prolonged by spending more time bitching and gossiping about it than actually doing it. Will there be complaints and hard feelings among the lower decks? Yep. Is that Jellico's problem? Only marginally. It becomes a problem if Riker doesn't do his job. He cracks the whip. If he refuses to crack that whip for anybody but the bald Frenchman, that makes him the problem.
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We're not arguing jurisdiction here. You're off having arguments about jurisdiction on your ownie own.
We're arguing as students of leadership techniques - is Jellico's command style optimum in the circumstances? Granting that Riker has made a misstep -- would a different approach have tapped Riker's strengths and avoided the bust up that we see later on?
Noone is questioning that Riker is mandated to carry out Jellico's orders and to do so efficiently. I think it's the writers intent that the shift change does carry with it extensive disruption and Riker is being sincere and is acting with the best of intentions, perhaps thinking as the new captain Jellico isn't aware of the full spectrum of problems pursuant to these changes and if they had a chat they maybe able to avoid unnecessary disruption.
I do see the bulk of the problem is with Riker. Riker is back in the "Picardzone" where he enjoyed a more collaborative relationship with Picard who may have been game in reopening the discussion on shifts. He completely misreads Jellico and Jellico's own pronounced authoritarian style doesn't permit latitude so an estrangement to a greater or lesser degree is inevitable. Is Jellico within his rights? 100%. If Riker is driven to exhaustion to carry out Jellico's orders, then he's obliged to drive himself to exhaustion. Is Jellico's leadership style optimum though? I would say, no.
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The way I took it was that there were problems with continuing work the departments had going. Sure you could easily order people to work these hours. But if a four month experiment in astrophysics is going to be disrupted in week 15, maybe you review to the captain before simply scrapping things. They weren't at war, the crew did already have plenty of combat experience, and Riker is nominally a fantastic first officer, offered numerous times his own command; maybe there was some leeway to work in.
I haven't seen the episode for some time, but weren't they preparing for war that could start any minute?
The whole while I was watching this one in first run, I just kept muttering "Brief some tactical specialists on the things they need to know and send them, not the goddam command staff officers." There are 1,000 very smart, well-trained people on this ship. I know the stars are the stars, but this story reeeeaaallly stretched credibility to the breaking point.
They keep telling us that, but every time there's a crisis when he's in command, he fails to find any way out except shooting (Darmok, for example). He did better in Best of Both Worlds, I suppose, but that called for shooting.
I have a love/relationship with these episodes. I love them because, like most TNG, they're awesome but I hate them because at that time in my workplace we often seemed to have a change of leader and they always came blasting in like Jellico and managed to upset everyone. So if I watch the episode now I get nostalgic for the Star Trek-ness and anxiety attacks when I remember being told "Get it done!" by whoever was now in charge.
I am Riker!
Gah, I'm feeling it now just thinking about it. I worked for a terrible organisation in the 90s!
I am Riker!
Gah, I'm feeling it now just thinking about it. I worked for a terrible organisation in the 90s!
Picard has moulded Riker in a particular way suited to Picard. Riker gets a new captain and suddenly he's all over the place.
If you're arguing command style then you're arguing an irrelevancy. Command style is meaningless in a leadership position where command authority is absolute. Yes, Picard is absolutely the more genial commander. His command style is open and thoughtful and certainly more empathetic...but it's not his ship in this story. It's Jellico's ship, and as long as his actions remain within the bounds of Starfleet Regulations Jellico can be as acerbic, demanding, abrupt, aloof, direct and dismissive as he damn well pleases, because a genial command style is a fringe benefit in a captain. It is not a job requirement.
You're debating philosophy: "Who's style of leadership fits the crew better, Picard's or Jellico's?" I'm stating the facts of the situation: This is who Jellico is. Jellico is in command. Picard is not. Therefore, the debate over who's command style fits the crew better is irrelevant because from the moment he took command, it was up to the crew to fit Jellico.
That's how command works.
The problem with going with the writers' intent in creating the situation is that canon Star Trek writers are notoriously bad at creating situations that make logical sense in the real world. I get that the switch from three shifts to four is supposed to be some huge scary deal and that Big Dumb Jellico has to have that explained to him before he rips the fabric of the universe apart...but looked at objectively, you quickly realize that there would be no disruption in the function of the ship, because the only thing you're changing is the time certain members of the crew perform their duties. That's it. The only things you're disrupting are meal and shower times. Somebody upthread mentioned a four month experiment and worried over it stopping because of the shift change. All the change means is that the experiment will continue with different people monitoring it at different times. You're changing a duty roster. You're not creating Omega particles.
(And by the way, like about two episodes later Riker went into Picard's ready room and recommended the exact same schedule change and baldy said "Make it so" and drank tea. Why wasn't it a huge scary deal then? Maybe because it had already been done once and everybody realized "Oh wait...this wasn't as bad as we thought...")
And as I've already said, whether his style is optimum or not is irrelevant. It is simply the reality of the situation.
I'm sorry but no. These things do matter of course. They are matters of academic debate and are hotly contested.
Why are they important then?
An optimum command approach would deliver optimum results for the ship and the mission. And a less than optimum command approach would deliver less than optimum results for the ship and the mission. It maybe a conversation that distresses you for some odd reason but that's a different matter entirely.
Eh, can it guys. A good captain explains himself to his XO, because in case the penny drops, that (incompetent?) first officer will find himself carrying the load. So the writers manufactured some upper level controversy, bringing an episode down a notch or too. It does make sense that department heads get upset a little with stuff moving things around, as well as Geordi's complete rewriring of Engineering, but the whole controversy just seemed too forced.
Unless Frakes was in talks to leave the show, they shouldn't have kept on offering him a captains job somewhere else. In the Honor Harrington novels, an officer who doesn't believe he is ready for a promotion offered by the Admiralty oftentimes finds that offer rapidly rescinded and a reassignment to an office somewhere. I don't think 7 years is too long to be the FO, after all Starfleet has its own culture, but he never moved!
Unless Frakes was in talks to leave the show, they shouldn't have kept on offering him a captains job somewhere else. In the Honor Harrington novels, an officer who doesn't believe he is ready for a promotion offered by the Admiralty oftentimes finds that offer rapidly rescinded and a reassignment to an office somewhere. I don't think 7 years is too long to be the FO, after all Starfleet has its own culture, but he never moved!
I can see how the crew might deserve a little slack for complaining about the shift change.
But in this episode, they seemed determined to complain about even the common sense things.
Like preparing sick bay in case there's a battle. Beverly was griping about that.
And Laforge, an engineer, wanted to believe the Cardassian fleet was sitting in the nebulae because it was conducting scientific research.
It looked really naive-- ironically since Jellico was right in the end.
But in this episode, they seemed determined to complain about even the common sense things.
Like preparing sick bay in case there's a battle. Beverly was griping about that.
And Laforge, an engineer, wanted to believe the Cardassian fleet was sitting in the nebulae because it was conducting scientific research.
It looked really naive-- ironically since Jellico was right in the end.
I don't think Riker was offered a captain's job THAT many times, was he? I can only recall maybe 3 times, and then the time that he did accept it after Nemesis.
Because it's important to academics. They always need something to talk about. Philosophy is always different from practice.
Define "optimum."
That's the problem. You have no idea what's optimum in a situation until you try different approaches to see what works best. The only reason Picard's approach seemed "optimum" is because at the time of Chain of Command the crew had already been putting it into practice for six plus years. They were used to it.
Jellico didn't have six plus years to get the crew used to him. He had days to accomplish his mission and only the Ent-D crew available to help him do it, so there was no time for him to find a command style that the crew would respond optimally to so that he could get his job done. So much for philosophy.
Fortunately, the way a military command structure works means command in practice does not require an optimal command style. It only requires subordinates follow the orders of superiors, regardless of the personal feelings on either side of the equation. Jellico gives the orders, the crew follows them. If the crew spends more time whining than they spend obeying, they are in the wrong. Period. There is no "Jellico should do this" or "Jellico should act like this" or "Jellico's personality and general countenance are not optimum for commanding this fine group of researchers and all around awesome people." Jellico is following his orders: take command of a frontline ship and use its resources to head off a Cardassian incursion. That's what he was doing, and his methods in practice were minimally disruptive to the functioning of the ship. The only real disruption was that the crew all felt butt-hurt because he didn't say "Please" and drink Earl Gray while he was doing it. Too Fucking Bad.
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When someone starts a thread about Chain of Command, it ends up a knockdown-dragout about Jellico. Every time. That was probably the goal of the writers. "Let's give 'em something to really argue abou!"
Look folks, I like a good debate as much as anyone but its getting a little heated in here and I don't want to have to close the thread. Thanks.
We've got the captain, head of a task force in a tense stand-off against an invasion force, feuding with his XO and scraping around begging for pilots to do a critical shuttle run that will decide the success of the mission? That's not cool. And the pap about "I won't order you to do this", well, the less said about that stock-phrase the better. All that's a big problem, dude and it's lucky the mission wasn't sunk there. Picard would've got the job done with far less faffing about.
Military command structures are or should be constantly improved or optimised to ensure continued advantage over any potential adversary. That is a requirement for any defence force that wants to remain cutting edge. If it doesn't strive to improve, it gets left behind. So, no, it doesn't rest on its laurels and aspiring commanders will typically study the various styles of historical commanders and generals to refine their own understanding and approaches to leadership.
Is it is just academics that study this? No, not really. These issues can be matter of public controversy anywhere from the barstool, to forum threads, to university and everywhere in between. No military history book or war documentary is really complete if they don't survey the character of the various commanders and you'll often see speculation as whether military decisions made differently would've seen different outcomes. Does a particular commander have a more congenial approach to command or is he a more abrasive with his men? Is a commander too swayed by his staff or too indifferent? All these questions are questions of hot debate. And that's kinda what we are doing here, albeit applied to the fictional universe of TNG.
A feud the XO started, a well-worn storytelling trope that started with Mutiny on the Bounty...
Scraping that would be unnecessary if the XO had just done his job.
No it's not, and I just told you who is to blame.
And there you go again, talking about "woulda/coulda/shoulda." It doesn't matter what Picard would have done because Picard wasn't there. Jellico was, and he did what he knew best to do and compensated for an uncooperative crew.
Wrong. What gets improved in a military are Training, Doctrine and Technology. Command Structure has only had cosmetic changes throughout history because the basic concept has worked just fine since the creation of massed armed forces: it's a pyramid. The guy at the top of the pyramid gets the last word. Every one else in the pyramid is subordinate to the ones above him and superior to the ones below him. Subordinates follow the orders of superiors. In battle, they follow those orders without question. It is a concept that has been used by every military that has ever existed over the course of thousands of years, and not once has anybody ever added a codicil to it that requires the superior to be nice about it.
Zachary Taylor was a foul-mouthed asshole. He was also one of the US Army's most successful pre-Civil War commanders. Ulysses S. Grant was a drunk. He was also the commander that turned the tide of the Civil War and carried the North to victory. Patton and MacArthur were both egotistical pricks, yet WWII might have gone on a lot longer without the success these two achieved with their campaigns.
Yet, using the logic you've advanced here, they all would have been even more successful if they had just sat down and had heartfelt philosophical discussions with their senior staffs and made their divisions feel more "comfortable" with them.
Yes, we can look back in history and study the characters of men who have changed history and speculate ad nauseum about what would happen if they had different personalities or if they had been replaced altogether, but through all that you have to remember you're examining History. It's not just academic. These men were who they were and they did what they did and no amount of philosophical back and forth will change that.
It's the same with Jellico. He was who he was and he did what he did, which was achieve his mission, and nothing the enemy did was a real impediment to that success. The real impediment was his own crew, and no matter what you think of his "command style," that makes them look bad, not him.
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