Dr. Crusher and giving orders

[knightgrace]

The final test in the Bridge officers exam that Dee took on screen, that we all saw, required that Deanna save the ship by ordering one of her crewmen to sacrifice themselves for the good of the many. I don't suppose it's always Geordie that has to be murdered, every time anyone takes this exam on any ship ship in the fleet, but what if it were?

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This is one of the most beautiful scenes in all of Star Trek. Horrible, but this has always been necessary. At some point, someone has to give an order like this. And in an individual's career, I hope that it doesn't occur, but they absolutely must be prepared to.

In the movie 'Gettysburg' I think that there is a line 'that to be a good soldier, one has has to love the Army beyond almost anything else, but to be a good officer, one has to be willing to destroy that which you love the most.'

Or if you perfer, firefighters, they have to go into the fire, taking appropriate precautions to rescue...knowing that they might succeed, but not come out...

This is why you should love firefighters, because they are willing to die for you., a stranger.

This is the essence...of being many things.

 

[Uncle Sock]

I always understood Star Trek to work on the idea that a higher-ranking officer can automatically give orders to anyone of lower rank. The only exceptions would be if the lower-ranking officer was already following orders from someone even higher up, or if their area of expertise overrode the chain of command. For example, Crusher could relieve even Picard of command if necessary. And by the same logic, if there were a dangerous situation where Worf had the most relevant expertise, he could probably give an order to a higher-ranking officer—something like, “Get out of here, it’s not safe.”

The problem is that Star Trek often portrays higher-ranking officers as having every skill. You’ll see Picard or other captains say things like, “Have you tried recalibrating the lateral emission converter, Geordi?” only for Geordi to respond as if it never occurred to him—even though earlier episodes show him doing things like practically building a warp core out of stone bricks.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I always understood Star Trek to work on the idea that a higher-ranking officer can automatically give orders to anyone of lower rank. The only exceptions would be if the lower-ranking officer was already following orders from someone even higher up, or if their area of expertise overrode the chain of command. For example, Crusher could relieve even Picard of command if necessary. And by the same logic, if there were a dangerous situation where Worf had the most relevant expertise, he could probably give an order to a higher-ranking officer—something like, “Get out of here, it’s not safe.”

The problem is that Star Trek often portrays higher-ranking officers as having every skill. You’ll see Picard or other captains say things like, “Have you tried recalibrating the lateral emission converter, Geordi?” only for Geordi to respond as if it never occurred to him—even though earlier episodes show him doing things like practically building a warp core out of stone bricks.

Locutus probably stuffed Jean-Luc's brain with 10 times as much science as he learned at the academy... Did the "Inner Light" scenario work better on Picard after the Best of Both Worlds then it would have before because the wiring in his brain had been brought up to code by the Borg?

 

[Mojochi]

This is one of the most beautiful scenes in all of Star Trek. Horrible, but this has always been necessary. At some point, someone has to give an order like this. And in an individual's career, I hope that it doesn't occur, but they absolutely must be prepared to.

BTW, I still maintain Troi never really passed the command test, as presented. Riker gave her the answer. Follow me on this.

He outright tells her "My first duty is to the ship" and that's what clues her in. Is it though? There are times when the ship is placed below the prime directive, or as Picard has occasionally cited, when the truth needs to be exposed, at any cost. (see also The First Duty & The Pegasus) Sometimes the lives of the crew, on the whole, take precedent, like destroying it, after evacuating, to prevent it falling into enemy hands, etc... So the ship is not always duty #1 & we all know that.

So, then what Riker meant was "my 1st duty (in this specific situation) is to the ship's well being". He's basically telling her to prioritize saving the ship over any one life... in her scenario, by thinly veiling it as relevant to his own command duty about letting her serve there. It's a *wink wink* "Here's what you're not figuring out"

But if this is truly not a test of technological understanding, but ultimately is one of testing character, and a capability to choose death for people, then she never organically arrived at that solution. It was not (or not yet) within her nature to arrive at that solution naturally. She had to have someone else frame it that way 1st. There are multitudes of other different situations, that might put her in that place, and if she isn't the sort to make that call instinctively or intuitively, (or isn't yet) she's still just as susceptible & fallible as she was, on those other bunch of times she failed to save the ship, during the test.

She hasn't independently demonstrated that she has the individual capacity to arrive at that hard choice, when it presents itself as the only solution, and in future crises, she may fail to do so, unless there's someone who can remind her or has the luxury of time to frame it as her only option. She DID demonstrate that she knows how to spend ages pouring over every permutation for a very long time, & still not make the connection, on her own.

She just figured out (thru Riker's hint) that the fix was that you have to kill holo-Geordi, & then she did that, with a bunch of attitude, like "oh... this BS, about judging what kind of personality I have". Yeah! Exactly that. Some people are innately capable of that. Some people are fundamentally incapable of getting to that place ever, and some people only get to it thru major introspection about what kind of person they are. She didn't exhibit ANY of that. So which is she? And until then, is she competent?

I think Riker gave her a pass, because of her history in Disaster, where she already came up against tough choices, but that's still sketchy imho, because her solution in Disaster was to risk everybody to save some of the crew, which is kind of the opposite inclination, and she admits herself that she put everyone right up against losing the whole ship over it.

I always understood Star Trek to work on the idea that a higher-ranking officer can automatically give orders to anyone of lower rank. The only exceptions would be if the lower-ranking officer was already following orders from someone even higher up, or if their area of expertise overrode the chain of command. For example, Crusher could relieve even Picard of command if necessary. And by the same logic, if there were a dangerous situation where Worf had the most relevant expertise, he could probably give an order to a higher-ranking officer—something like, “Get out of here, it’s not safe.”

Expertise doesn't really override rank. A Doctor's orders can't supercede a higher ranking officer's, unless they are declaring them medically unfit to serve, which removes them from the chain of command entirely, in which case they can no longer give any orders. That's not quite the same thing.

I'm pretty sure the only one that can do anything like your last example, is a 1st officer countermanding their captain's orders, on the grounds that they're unduly putting themselves in harm's way, & even that one is open to a lot of different interpretations.

Really, the only time it seems universally acceptable that a lower ranking officer has authority over higher ones, is when an even higher ranking one has explicitly given them authority to do so, which one could argue is the case in the previous example. Highest command allows 1st officers to interfere in a captain's authority, in the one scenario where they are endangered.

I suppose you could try to extend that to any officer, that is next in line below a captain, doing the same to protect them, but that's going to be pretty iffy, depending on the officer. Otherwise, lower ranking officers have no place ordering around higher ranking ones.

 

[Gaith]

Let somebody who actually has military experience correct me if I'm wrong, but in the absence of anybody in the chain of command, superior rank becomes the de facto chain of command.

Navy veteran here. I remember being taught in Boot Camp that, in a POW situation, where every other command structure doesn't apply, every Sailor has a duty to follow the orders of the highest-ranking US service member around, regardless of which branch.

While a commander in the medical corps can wield substantial authority in their field if expertise, they are limited to that field unless placed in the chain of command.

I think that's pretty much right. If, say, an officer whose military job is dentistry is carrying heavy bags around a base, and they see some junior enlisted sailor walking around in uniform, technically, they could order that person to help them carry their bags. As a practical matter, however, they'd do their best not to do something like that, because the junior enlistee almost certainly has a specific job to do at that moment, so even if helping carry those bags served a legitimate military purpose (say, they were full of medical equipment), ordering them to help could put them in the awkward position of having to explain to their superior that they were delayed in doing their job because they were following a lawful order from someone from a completely different command. And, if the medical officer's superior found out that they were improperly grabbing other commands' personnel to help with their tasks, they'd probably berate said officer.

Bottom line: on paper, pretty much any service member can give any kind of lawful order to someone of lesser rank at any time, and that person should obey them. However, abuse or even just unnecessary use of that legal privilege is very discouraged, because even if doing so doesn't immediately damage the overall mission, it degrades the social trust the military is built on, and that damages the mission in the long run.

So, as a practical matter, that dental officer would carry the heavy bags themselves, or arrange for someone in their own command to help them out, rather than ordering whoever happens to be walking by to help them, even if that would be more immediately convenient for them and fit within their legal/theoretical prerogatives.

So if the higher wishes to defer to the lesser (who might be an expert, unbiased, or thinking more clearly), and nobody's available to overrule it, that's the higher's privilege to do so.

A person in authority can always consult with someone of lesser rank, but the decision, and the accountability that comes with it, ultimately rests with the higher-ranking person. A higher-ranking person can't transfer their accountability to a lesser-ranking one.

In practice, truly weird situations, like a dental officer without any combat experience getting stuck in a combat situation with combat-experienced junior enlistees, are of course very rare. In that kind of situation, in theory, the officer probably should be giving orders, even pertaining to combat, but as a practical matter, the officer would no doubt defer to the junior grunts, and any resulting complications would be discreetly talked through and handled off the record later. Service members are ultimately just humans, and human interactions get weird sometimes. One does one's best.