Distinguising Crewmen and Officers

[ROBE]

In TOS we did get lots of yeomen featured and in the modern US Navy yeomen are petty officers who do clerical work. As usual the 5th movie referred to an adjudant (officer) as a yeoman in error.

The whole problem with Trek is they made it up as they went along and did not have a uniform and insignia bible.

 

[Timo]

They did have extensive bibles for both TMP and ST2-6, made necessary by the (excessive?) attention to costuming detail there. The choice of addressing an officer as "Yeoman" seems to have been made either deliberately contrary to current practice, or then without anybody bothering to consult said bible at the time.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

i bet Starfleet had to eventually crack down on all the mooching crewmen who abused the starbases' Honor System regarding use of the Officer's Lounge.

I say, let 'em have a nice last meal... they're about to die anyway! just goes to show u that even in the UFP there is allocating of resources in a "class system" like manner

 

[Neopeius]

It's not just that there was a single Petty Officer in the first episode ever - it's also that there were Crewmen in basically all the early episodes. If Roddenberry had a memo against the use of enlisted designations, nobody read it, least of all himself... Except, just perhaps, Theiss. Which would explain the uniform rank indicator problem.

]

Except we don't know if Crewman refers to rank or is just a generic term. Given the great semantic leaps you'll make to "prove" that Fleet Captain isn't a rank, I don't think you're being objective.

Beyond that, it's basically "absence of evidence" sort of proof. And no episode goes out of its way to support the notion that there would only be officers aboard, or that Ensigns would be the lowest rungs of the ladder rather than privileged individuals in command of other individuals or groups.

Except that Ensign is the lowest rank we ever see mentioned or seen on screen. Seems like a pretty deliberate decision to me. I mean, why don't we argue that there are Fregatten-Capitans and Corvetten-Capitans too? Or that security guards have Marine ranks? Every unidentified extra in my database might have Vulcan rank nomenclature for all we know. "Absence of evidence" can give you lots of leeway.

 

[J.T.B.]

After all, while "CPO Garrison" is specified as Adam Roarke's character in the end credits, neither the name nor the rating are actually part of the dialogue, and end credits aren't really part of the Star Trek universe as such.

What credits? In the versions of "The Cage" I've seen, Roarke is not credited at all, and in "The Menagerie" his name is listed along with Hudec, Duryea and Hoyt without any character names. The "CPO Garrison" thing has been around for a long time, so I assume it came from some backstage material, but I've never been able to find out what.

Unless the new movie contradicts this (that is, shows Kirk promoted to full Captain before the events of this episode, and still somehow fits into the TOS continuity), we could argue that the Captain's rank here was Commander, therefore compatible with his braid in the TOS sense - and Lieutenant Commander Mitchell had either been very recently promoted, or was promoted posthumously, hence the lack of the "half-braid" to accompany his single stripe.

I think we can rule out the posthumous promotion, otherwise why would Dr. Dehner call him "commander" the first time they meet?

I suppose Mitchell could have been promoted so recently that he hadn't had got the new stripe sewn on his uniforms, but that seems quite a stretch. There would more than likely be some uniform supply section aboard that could make the change with a day or two. To take it further, that would imply that XO Spock was only a lieutenant or had also been promoted recently and hadn't added his half-stripe. And likewise for a fairly senior-looking ship's surgeon.

--Justin

 

[Basil]

The funny thing is many of us get all hung up on the insignia issue when most organizations, even large ones, don't designate leaders by insignia at all -- managers in white-collar organizations, for instance, do not wear stripes or pips nor dress fundamentally different than employees, yet even in large organizations, people know who is in charge. That Star Trek adopts a paramilitary stance automatically makes us assume the sometimes silly lengths to put braid on sleeves or shoulders is paramount to understanding hierarchy, but perhaps the attention should be on "para" rather than "military."