Ensign Harry Kim?

[USS Excelsior]

I still think that an officer that's a senior officer and chief of operations should have had a rank of at least Lieutenant to begin with.

The TNG command structure didn't have a pilot as part of the senior staff to get in the way of anyone else, but even though VOY did have one, the Ops position could still be Lieutenant.

 

[brcarthey]

Janeway also promoted Torres to full lieutenant after initially granting her a Lt. j.g. status, in the first few episodes of season 1, after Chakotay whined and Carey groaned.

Unfortunately, we don't know for sure how this went. Torres wore a very ambiguous set of dashes on her collar during the first season: it seemed to be one dark dash before the promotion to Chief Engineer in "Parallax", but in subsequent episodes, at times both the dashes appeared dark and at times one or even both seemed dark.

The standard insignia settled on one bright, one black (Lieutenant jg) from the second season on, and it was made explicit in "Day of Honor" that Junior Lieutenant Torres indeed was outranked by Junior Lieutenant Paris (who had had the 1½ pips slightly longer).

For logic's sake, we could argue that our TV sets were playing tricks with the color of her dashes. Before the "Parallax" promotion, the single dash would have been dark (enlisted rate); afterwards, the two dashes could have been bright (Lieutenant) or possibly one bright, one dark (Lieutenant jg); and after the mutiny in "Prime Factors", if she had worn two bright dashes, one would now become dark.

Timo Saloniemi

both torres and paris were both lt. j.g. there are a few episodes (eg. "displaced") where paris (incorrectly, i might add) tells torres he outranks her b/c he's been a lt. j.g. longer than torres. what's funny is that carey was a full lt., which would/could create some problems with torres only being a lt. j.g. (maybe that's why he didn't really appear in any non-flashback episosdes until "friendship-one").

the captain only has the authority to grant field/provisional commissions. hence, the the reason the maquis members have different looking insignias. though, i can't figure out how paris (dishonorably discharged from SF) got his "official" commission while chakotay (resigned from SF) could not. also, it was weird that chakotay was always referred to as "commander" during formal introductions even though it would seem he was only a lt. commander. during TNG, data, worf and geordi always formally introduced "lt. commander" or "commander" (after their respective promotions).

as for tuvok's rank, one can assume that he was demoted from lt. commander (after "prime factors") and was re-promoted later like paris was.

 

[Kira Nerys]

Maybe the promotion has to come from HQ ?

 

[USS Excelsior]

Maybe the promotion has to come from HQ ?

I was under the impression that a Captain has the authority to promote anyone under them, as long as they promote anyone to the limit of Commander.

 

[Timo]

That's not affirmed onscreen, though. Whenever Picard seemingly "personally" promoted somebody (say, Worf in ST:GEN), he could have cleared that with HQ easily enough; nobody else seems to have done a field promotion when out of contact with HQ, at least not explicitly so.

Janeway might well have had (secret) Starfleet orders to promote Paris back to his former Starfleet rank if he helped Starfleet. She wouldn't have had such orders concerning Chakotay, since that guy was an enemy of Starfleet, not an ally: the only bit of shiny metal he'd be wearing at the completion of the mission would be a pair of handcuffs. And she wouldn't have a sealed envelope of promotion instructions for Harry Kim, either.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JoeZhang]

That's not affirmed onscreen, though. Whenever Picard seemingly "personally" promoted somebody (say, Worf in ST:GEN), he could have cleared that with HQ easily enough; nobody else seems to have done a field promotion when out of contact with HQ, at least not explicitly so.

Janeway might well have had (secret) Starfleet orders to promote Paris back to his former Starfleet rank if he helped Starfleet. She wouldn't have had such orders concerning Chakotay, since that guy was an enemy of Starfleet, not an ally: the only bit of shiny metal he'd be wearing at the completion of the mission would be a pair of handcuffs. And she wouldn't have a sealed envelope of promotion instructions for Harry Kim, either.

Timo Saloniemi

Wouldn't that make for a great ending, you see the star fleet members of the crew at a dinner party, while the Marquis members are taken away in handcuffs.

 

[KiraDax]

Janeway might well have had (secret) Starfleet orders to promote Paris back to his former Starfleet rank if he helped Starfleet. She wouldn't have had such orders concerning Chakotay, since that guy was an enemy of Starfleet, not an ally: the only bit of shiny metal he'd be wearing at the completion of the mission would be a pair of handcuffs. And she wouldn't have a sealed envelope of promotion instructions for Harry Kim, either.

Timo Saloniemi

That seems reasonable, but it also hints that what Tom's initial re-ranking and then later re-promotion boiled down to were connections.

I guess regardless of how much he despised his father, Admiral Paris was constantly keeping him one step up from the dirt anyhow.

 

[Good Will Riker]

I guess regardless of how much he despised his father, Admiral Paris was constantly keeping him one step up from the dirt anyhow.

Reminds me of John McCain and his admiral father back in the 60's.

 

[Snaploud]

The DS9 episode "Valiant" indicates that Janeway had a lot of power over field commissions. She could have made Kim a Commander had she felt like it.

 

[Timo]

Then again, the person who actually wielded this authority in "Valiant", the brevet Captain Watters, was in all likelihood a lying bag of shit.

What he claims is that

Watters: "I was given a battlefield commission and command of this vessel by the late Captain Ramirez. Using that authority, I've also commissioned and promoted other members of Red Squad as needed."

But Watters is the only person who actually heard the dying words of Ramirez, or claims he heard those. And he's the only one aboard claiming that Ramirez had this authority to begin with. We have to express some skeptiscm at the idea that the Red Squad members or Nog or Jake would be competent to challenge the power-mad Watters' supposed knowledge on field commissioning procedures...

Admittedly, Starfleet might have some field commissioning practices in place. But "Valiant" probably isn't a reliable example of those.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Wright]

What I can't figure out is why the guys at paramount never saw fit to write a story showing Janeway promoting several officers instead of a single officer somewhere in the show! Granted, we didn't see Janeway promote very many officers during the series.

JDW

 

[Red Ranger]

What I can't figure out is why the guys at paramount never saw fit to write a story showing Janeway promoting several officers instead of a single officer somewhere in the show! Granted, we didn't see Janeway promote very many officers during the series.

JDW

Could have easily added Harry's long-overdue promotion to lt., j.g. in the scene where Tuvok gets another pip and becomes lt. cmdr.

You know, it amuses me, all the rank foul-ups in the ST shows. Even in TNG, there was a mix-up over what kind of insignia O'Brien, as a chief petty officer, was supposed to wear, till they finally straightened it out in the later seasons of DSN.

Red Ranger

 

[exodus]

I guessing the reason for no promotions was, if Voyager were to stay lost much longer than 7 years you'd have a ship of all Commanders and no lower ranking officers. The commander structure would suffer due to having "too many cooks in the kitchen".

 

[stj]

A need to clarify chain of command or express confidence in an officer seemed to prompt promotions. Tuvok, to establish his status as third. Chakotay and Torres, to establish their positions as second overall and chief of engineering respectively. Paris, to signify his return to grace.

Kim was never out of grace and was never going to pass the others in seniority.