Chapel & Rand

[Ithekro]

How many actual officers are there in an engineering department on a naval vessel? How many division head are actually non-commissioned officers?

I know that the head of the division for diesel engines on USS Pyro was a 2nd-class Petty Officer back in 1971. Above him in the section was a single 1st-class and a chief. I don't think they even had an officer in charge of engineering, or if they did they had only one lieutenant or ensign to report to the ship's captain.

Also TOS uniform and enlisted and non-cons just aren't different from Ensigns on a visual ID. This was a running problem all the way to DS9 when Chief O'Brian finally got a rank pin that wasn't just an officer's pip. But aside from him, how do you tell who's enlisted or a petty officer on a starship?

 

[Pauln6]

How many actual officers are there in an engineering department on a naval vessel? How many division head are actually non-commissioned officers?

I know that the head of the division for diesel engines on USS Pyro was a 2nd-class Petty Officer back in 1971. Above him in the section was a single 1st-class and a chief. I don't think they even had an officer in charge of engineering, or if they did they had only one lieutenant or ensign to report to the ship's captain.

Also TOS uniform and enlisted and non-cons just aren't different from Ensigns on a visual ID. This was a running problem all the way to DS9 when Chief O'Brian finally got a rank pin that wasn't just an officer's pip. But aside from him, how do you tell who's enlisted or a petty officer on a starship?

There should definitely be more enlisted personnel on starships than Star Trek suggests. The show has been horribly top-heavy with lieutenants from the beginning, partly because it focused on the bridge crew and science officers. Presumably all command personnel are officers, all scientists are officers, and a percentage of engineers and security crew are officers. The remaining security guards, engineers, and technicians should be enlisted crew. Of all the Trek characters only Janice Rand and Miles O'Brien are enlisted crewmen of any significance out of about 100 characters and even then O'Brien was retconned to a chief from a lieutenant and Rand's rank went on a rollercoaster ride after TMP.

I was mildly annoyed when TOS Yeoman Zahra in the comic turned out to be a security lieutenant and, given the way Scotty treats him, I was shocked to see that Keenser is also a lieutenant. I'm fairly convinced the writers have almost no concept about the chain of command or what the crew composition should be on a starship. It's a bit like the mysterious regenerating torpedoes on Voyager. The writers pile on one lieutenant after another and pretty soon you have no room left for any technicians to fix your sonic shower. NuBattlestar Galactica seemed to have a much better grasp.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I hope they recast that unnamed officer with the dots forehead tattoo that was running around the consoles and exchanging smiles with Kirk from The Trouble with Tribbles.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Chapel and Rand really should be in the next movie and given something relevant to do, or at least let them have a few lines, or something, like THE VOYAGE HOME did. They may not have done much for Feminism (I suppose), but the 2nd Bananas should be allowed to make their mark in the new franchise, I feel.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Chapel and Rand really should be in the next movie and given something relevant to do, or at least let them have a few lines, or something, like THE VOYAGE HOME did. They may not have done much for Feminism (I suppose), but the 2nd Bananas should be allowed to make their mark in the new franchise, I feel.

Third bananas.

 

[austen_pierce]

Chapel and Rand really should be in the next movie and given something relevant to do, or at least let them have a few lines, or something, like THE VOYAGE HOME did. They may not have done much for Feminism (I suppose), but the 2nd Bananas should be allowed to make their mark in the new franchise, I feel.

Que Carol Marcus

 

[2takesfrakes]

Ah, yes ... Carol's bra sequence. Though "they" apologised profusely for its inclusion, it was certainly used for, like ... every. Single. Commercial for it. It was never taken out of the picture ... and continues to be available to own. I never really bought their "concern" about it. In fact ... they certainly appeared to be milking that scene for much more than it was even worth, considering how tame her undergarments turned out to be. The only thing about Carol that I found offputting was that she screamed her balls off when her daddy was about to get wasted and not when she got her leg broken. Seemed like an odd directorial touch, but I guess Abrams had to present Marcus as being a Tough Cookie. Got to have that in there ... But if we never get to see Chapel or Rand in their STARFLEET issued skivies, I'm cool with that. Let's just see these Ladies of STAR TREK in action ... for the first ... and last time.

 

[Pauln6]

Rand started out as a first banana, or rather half way between first and second. Even stripping out the sexist 60s nonsense she has great potential. She is the aide to the captain and has a valid reason to be at his side whether she fancies him or not (preferably not). You could play her more like Paltrow's Pepper Potts where she is the only person who gets Kirk but doesn't mind calling him out (a bit more gently than McCoy) when he's not in front of the crew. If she's security trained, then she's got his back on any landing parties.

In fact, Ellison, in his City on the Edge of Forever comic, allegedly knew little about the character except that she was a main character so he wrote Rand toting a phaser rifle, getting involved in a fist fight, using her tricorder as a weapon, taking charge of a security team, and modifying a transporter. Admittedly, had the character stayed, much of that would have been re-edited and she'd have been saying, 'I'm frightened Captain,' on screen. However, the way a modern artist has interpreted her role in the story shows that a modern Rand could be a ready-made action heroine.

In fact, I would have used her in the first movie as a security escort for Kirk to Delta Vega to excise the stupidity of wasting an escape pod. Beam Kirk to the brig, introduce Spock at the base, and have the monster scene when the characters go outside to modify the transmitter to boost transporter range.

IF the writers had any imagination and intent, they could do it. However, as far as Rand goes, they don't!

And as far as bumping one of them off goes, I would have been fine with that if they had used them in the first two movies as well but it will feel a bit disrespectful to the characters if they only put them in the third one to kill them off and be controversial.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Sorry for the delay in moving, but off to Movies XI+!

 

[Franklin]

Chapel and Rand really should be in the next movie and given something relevant to do, or at least let them have a few lines, or something, like THE VOYAGE HOME did. They may not have done much for Feminism (I suppose), but the 2nd Bananas should be allowed to make their mark in the new franchise, I feel.

Third bananas.

This. Third bananas. It's not about a reunion of minor characters (even male, like Lt. Klye). If you just have them on screen for the purpose of waving at the cameras, it's fanwank (or an Easter egg -- reader's call). Either way, it's "Ooh! That's nurse Chapel giving Dr. McCoy that scanner." So what? If they have a purposeful reason to need Rand of Chapel, fine. But I can't imagine that except by stretching a story just to fit them in.

As far as Chekov as chief engineer goes, part of the explanation for why Chekov seemed to be a jack of all trades in TOS was that he was being groomed for command, and therefore being exposed to many parts of the starship. Works for me in STID, too. (It always seemed ironic to me that it was Sulu, not Chekov, who eventually became a captain on screen.)

Consider Chekov's promotion a brevet promotion, probably based on Kirk needing someone down there he knew and also someone who would know the position as only temporary (because by then Kirk probably had it in the back of his head that when it was all over, he'd seek Scotty out to return).

The thing is, was there any mention of who was in charge of engineering before Chekov was sent down there? Kirk was hardly in full bloom yet, so maybe he had forgotten to appoint a new chief engineer up until then, and when he realized he didn't have one at that critical moment, Chekov was there in front of him, capable, and a known quantity.

 

[Tarek71]

It's not like it's "forcing" something to give women more to do on the ship. There were dozens of female characters on TOS. People name them because they were already established. But they could have new female characters as well. The idea being to try to address the 1960's gender imbalance in a 21st century movie set in the 23rd century. It's not that hard.

As for Engineering, it is a department like any other on the ship. Or any ship. The Captain would be well aware of that. There are department heads, and a whole chain of command beneath them. If the top one or two are out, or were killed or incapacitated in a battle or other emergency, you don't have to send 20yo ensigns down from the Navigation department to run engineering. The ships 3rd engineer would take over and everything would continue to run smoothly.

The people in all these departments are experts with many years of specialized education and training. They are perfectly competent to do an outstanding job in a crunch, emergency situation.

Why cant you get a woman who can do a great job? They could have cast a woman as 3rd in command of engineering, and let her hold the ship together. That seems like forcing something, but sending Chekov down there does not?

 

[Franklin]

Why cant you get a woman who can do a great job? They could have cast a woman as 3rd in command of engineering, and let her hold the ship together. That seems like forcing something, but sending Chekov down there does not?

Kudos to the idea of finding more for strong women characters to do in any movie. To that end, in Trek, it's too bad Robau wasn't a woman in ST09.

As far as Chekov in engineering goes, in the real world, as has been mentioned above, it's economy of characters. Our heroes need something to do. This is why the valuable captain (Kirk), Spock (first officer), and McCoy (chief medical officer) needlessly endanger themselves so often when subordinates should have most of those missions. They tried to rectify the illogic that in TNG by giving Riker the away missions over Picard, but that distinction between the captain staying on the bridge and the first officer leading the away teams even wore away over time.

That said, Chekov is a whizz kid. It was established that over the year he hung out in engineering with Scotty (probably like Wes hung out with Geordi). It just doesn't seem as forced as creating a new character (male or female) about whom we probably don't care because we know nothing about him or her, to all of a sudden be the hero in engineering.

(In someone's version of a Trek reboot years ago, Scotty's character was a female. That would've addressed the imbalance.)

 

[M'Sharak]

Sorry for the delay in moving, but off to Movies XI+!

[khanberbatch]You should have let it sleep! [/khanberbatch]

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...

As you've decided to be AirCommodore now, it would probably be best if you reset your cookies so that you're logged in under that name on all of your devices. I don't think you have any malicious intent in posting under both, but technically it's against board rules to maintain more than one active account.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Why cant you get a woman who can do a great job? They could have cast a woman as 3rd in command of engineering, and let her hold the ship together. That seems like forcing something, but sending Chekov down there does not?

Better yet, make her obviously more experienced than Chekov to replace Scotty, and always falling to Kirk's favouritism for the kid.

 

[xavier]

I would love to see both ladies but JJ Abrams films are so action packed and fast paced that there will not be enough time to give both women a chance to shine. the film can not even manage the 9 characters they have, many fans beleive Bones does not get enough screen time, so having extra characters like rand and chapel may be a bad idea.

 

[martok2112]

I can't quite get my head around Chapel, in a world where Spock was taken, being a conquest of Kirk! I guess the Enterprise might visit the frontier outpost she was reassigned to (Exo III, anyone?) leading to some awkward moments between the two.

As for Rand, she might have been the blonde in red we saw on the bridge in ID, at a station near Sulu (IIRC, it's Internal Security or somesuch). There isn't a place for a feeble secretary in this modern version of Trek, so making her a security officer or engineer would be a logical step.

You mean the cute, pixie haired blonde we saw in a couple of brief shots (one in a close up when Kirk was pleading for the crew of the Enterprise to Marcus?) Yes, I would love it if she was Rand.

I think she is s different character though. In the comics based around the JJ Universe Trek's, she goes by a different name, I believe.

But yeah, I would love to see more of this character...and if she was Rand, as a security or tactical officer...even better!

 

[Tarek71]

Sorry for the delay in moving, but off to Movies XI+!

[khanberbatch]You should have let it sleep! [/khanberbatch]

...

...

As you've decided to be AirCommodore now, it would probably be best if you reset your cookies so that you're logged in under that name on all of your devices. I don't think you have any malicious intent in posting under both, but technically it's against board rules to maintain more than one active account.

I wrote Tbonz about it a couple of days ago when I found my old password for Tarek71. I asked to have the AirCommodore account shut down.

 

[M'Sharak]

...

As you've decided to be AirCommodore now, it would probably be best if you reset your cookies so that you're logged in under that name on all of your devices. I don't think you have any malicious intent in posting under both, but technically it's against board rules to maintain more than one active account.

I wrote Tbonz about it a couple of days when I found my old password for Tarek71. I wrote to Tbonz to shut down the other account.

Okay. That works, too.

 

[Tarek71]

Okay. That works, too.

Not a problem! I am not a big fan of Sock Puppets anyhow!

 

[Tarek71]

(In someone's version of a Trek reboot years ago, Scotty's character was a female. That would've addressed the imbalance.)

I don't mind gender switches. I liked the female Starbuck on NuBSG for instance. But if they had any balls, they'd have given us Jane T. Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise. A kickass maverick Captain with the sexuality of a succubus. Like Bo in Lost Girl. (Anna Silk would be a great choice in fact). Now that I could live with! Even better, switch the whole crew so that the only main character males are an African communications officer and Nurse Christopher Chapel! Now we're talkin!