Going Command Track (DS9/VOY/TNG)

[Dingo]

I was watching Way of the Warrior and The Game from DS9 and TNG respectively and I became curious. It seems that the path to the command track can vary, which match's Starfleet's meritocracy ethos.

From my observations:

1. Flight control types are always starting in red and thus are command track from what I see.
2. Security/Engineering/Ops/Science types can become command tracked later in their careers if they so desire.

I'm wondering at what points, usually, it would be in an officer's career that he or she would be asked if he or she wanted to go command track if they were in the latter field.

It seems around the Lieutenant/Lieutenant Commander mark from what I've seen, as evidenced by The Way of the Warrior where Worf becomes Strategic Operations Officer.

From Sisko's background (engineering) seems like he might've been a senior Lieutenant or Lieutenant Commander before he started to wear the red.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've always viewed command as being where people went who weren't in "sciences" or "operations," and that it wasn't automatically a direct track for a captaincy or the admiralty (you could spend your entire career wearing "command red" and get nowhere near a captain's chair).

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I've always viewed command as being where people went who weren't in "sciences" or "operations," and that it wasn't automatically a direct track for a captaincy or the admiralty (you could spend your entire career wearing "command red" and get nowhere near a captain's chair).

Canon vis a vis Command Track would seem to suggest any one above Lieutenant Commander has taken the Bridge Officer course and is nominally Command Track (but can chose to mainly continue in their original career), as would the fact that most Admirals wear Command Red (although I'm less convinced by this argument)

Also, Tom Paris being the nominal Third Officer on USS Voyager despite several others nominally outranked him suggests that Command Division/Command Track are somewhat synonymous and it's likely that it's a good path to the 'Big Chair'.

Shamrock Holmes

 

[Timo]

Canon vis a vis Command Track would seem to suggest any one above Lieutenant Commander has taken the Bridge Officer course and is nominally Command Track

Umm, no - McCoy and Pulaski had no command qualifications. Whenever Crusher got those, we don't know, but we hear her say that it took "extra work" to earn the rank of Commander, not that it too the Bridge Officers' Test to earn it.

There are no doubt dozens of ways to advance in rank, and dozens of ways to get limited or full command qualifications (doing command studies and the Kobayashi Maru in the Academy like Kirk, doing those after graduation like Saavik, doing a series of lesser tests, perhaps just accumulating service years and experience of the right type).

Security/Engineering/Ops/Science types can become command tracked later in their careers if they so desire.

And vice versa. Riker did a stint in yellow after already being at the helm of the Pegasus; Spock first wore gold and only later switched to blue when under Kirk, having earlier donned blue under Pike. And the alt-Picard who started out with command white eventually became a blueshirt in "Tapestry".

OTOH, there have been people at the helm with different colors - the last TOS movie had two greycollars there, rather than yellowcollars, once Sulu stopped being a regular on the Enterprise.

There really doesn't appear to be any fixed connection between rank and position, or any fixed career path that couldn't be modified in user-specific ways if desired.

Also, Tom Paris being the nominal Third Officer on USS Voyager despite several others nominally outranked him suggests that Command Division/Command Track are somewhat synonymous and it's likely that it's a good path to the 'Big Chair'.

However, yellowshirt Ensign Kim gets similarly exalted status at Janeway's table, despite there being flocks of yellowshirts and redshirts outranking him. This might establish Ops as being a more powerful department than any of the other yellowshirt ones (Security and Engineering excluded, as they already have their representatives at the table). Conn might also be a powerful division, instead of red being a powerful color...

Timo Saloniemi