Forget Kirk's promotion; what about Pike?

[wew]

Technically, anyone in charge of a ship is called captain. Captain can serve as both a rank and as a title. In the Navy, the commander of the ship is referred to as Captain, no matter what their rank is.

Pike's promotion wasn't really that unbelievable, after all he only went up one rank.

 

[BenRoethig]

Technically, anyone in charge of a ship is called captain. Captain can serve as both a rank and as a title. In the Navy, the commander of the ship is referred to as Captain, no matter what their rank is.

Pike's promotion wasn't really that unbelievable, after all he only went up one rank.

Two, but flag ranks depending on the position it isn't unheard of to skip a flag rank.

Also, when Data took command of that ship in Redemption II, he still maintained his rank of Lt. Commander - he wasn't promoted to captain

Captain is both a position and a rank. Also note that Data was referred to as Captain by the Sutherland crew.

 

[gimpy117]

pike didn't willingly give up information though.

 

[Praetor]

Commodore is kinda one of those strange ranks. If memory services it's pretty much a land side equivalent of a Fleet Captain. feel free to correct me

IIRC in some navies it is indeed just a captain who commands a task force and is more a title than rank, whereas in others it's just the lowest Admiral.

Technically, anyone in charge of a ship is called captain. Captain can serve as both a rank and as a title. In the Navy, the commander of the ship is referred to as Captain, no matter what their rank is.

Pike's promotion wasn't really that unbelievable, after all he only went up one rank.

Two, but flag ranks depending on the position it isn't unheard of to skip a flag rank.

One if he was Rear Admiral, Lower Half, or in other words a Commodore in all but name. Perhaps in the alternate timeline the person who wanted to resurrect the Commodore title was killed before they could do it? Or, perhaps less plausibly Commodore was "really" only a title in Trek all along?

That reminds me: do we have an image of Pike's stripes?

 

[Mereope]

I think we're going to need the DVD so we can focus in on the stripes. I only remember seeing that Pike and Kirk had on Captain's stripes in their command gold tunics, and McCoy had on LCDR stripes on his blue tunic. But hey, I'm only up to seven viewings- I'll try and pay better attention the next time

For whatever reason, the Commodore rank has historically proven to be somewhat nebulous- at least among English-speaking navies. It currently appears to my untutored eye to be a position in the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard used for officers who command certain types of surface and submarine groups- and hasn't ever been consistently used as a rank for any length of time.

Maybe Starfleet had the same problem too and got rid of it as a rank. Pike appears to have been promoted to a one star position. IMHO

 

[Praetor]

Yeah, Pike is (hopefully) a one-star. And we can explain away the lack of Commodores easy enough. But we do need screencaps.