Harry Kim The 7 year Ensign??

[Guy Gardener]

And in in both BSG Adama got frakked when Admiral Cain came up to bat. I wouldn't mind seeing a c*(t off between Michelle Forbes and Lloyd Bridges over the title of the Ultimate Admiral Cain.

Rudy had 10 years on Kathy, he towered over her in authority, but just because her ship was bigger and had ten times the surviving crew compliment he had to pretend to bend over while he outsmarted the junior officer still technically on her first mission.

A captain can't promote herself. But if she became a civilian official, Voyager is technically a Federation Colony and probably an embassy/consulate, or she got some tame ensign to be her Patsy, then that person, even if it was herself could have promoted herself to admiral.

And what if they had acquired another ship? Or two ships? How many Captains in the fleet could they really have? Someone would have to become a commodore just because the position "manifests"?

 

[tharpdevenport]

Data may have spent 3 years as an ensign, but he also said that he'd been in starfleet for about 30 by the time he was manning the blockade between Romulan and Klingon space in Redemption, which means that by the point of the final movie he was still only a lt commander after 40 years service to the fleet.

To be fair, Starfleet probably had some mistrust in Data, seeing as he lacked humans emotions and ability to empathise -- maybe they were just uncertain could even do more without being cold and putting off fellow officers. And they see him as property ("The Measure of a Man").

What rank was Picard in the Tapestry Timeline? LTjg? Also after 40ish years in the service.

And as we already know, Picard was way too cocky and rambuncious. Getting run threw the heart was probably the best thing that ever happened to his career.

IN Nightingale Kim said that he's probably already be a Lieutenant Commander if he was back home, and Kathy remorselessly laughed at his gall and hubris.

That bitch.

 

[Deks]

While I do agree the lack of promotion for Kim was laughable, his statement that he would likely have advanced to a higher rank if they were in the AQ did actually make sense.

Let's recap a few things though ... Paris was an ex con with an ex SF rank (probably close to full Lt. , or already there before the accident and his subsequent joining to the Maqui happened).

Janeway on the other hand needed another bridge officer, and it was a different time after all.
Kim was fresh out of the academy and was too green probably because Paris had yars of more experience.

Taking into consideration what Kim did for the ship and crew over his 7 years of service, I wouldn't be surprised if SF promoted him to Lt/Commander upon returning to the AQ.

 

[Guy Gardener]

What about Carey? The Guy was a lieutenant (jg?) and no matter what he said about being happy to work under B'Elanna, it had to have hurt having the Chief Engineer position stripped off him? Moving the bloke to the bridge would have been fine, unless he had to stay ini Engineering to shoot B'Elanna in the face at the first sign of a Maquis Insurrection?

And of course their might have been Commander Bartlet who might have survived the trip to the dq who was doing something important and invisible?

 

[Deks]

Janeway had to delegate in order to provide an environment where both SF and former Maqui would mesh.

Torres was a better engineer in contrast to Carey and Chakotay didn't want to be a 'token' Maqui first officer to begin with.

Kathryn made compelling points though about Torres lacking insight into SF protocols, however, her engineering skills finally tipped the scale (and she did attend the Academy - per her own admission, although left after the second year if I'm not mistaken).

Carey eventually made piece with the fact that Torres became chief engineer, and let's be frank, he didn't lose because of it.
He was still a Lt.
I think Torres was more or less perceiving him as an equal later on (though of course this was never explored on-screen).

Kim cannot simply compare to any of these cases.
Unique circumstance resulted in him being left with a rank of Ensign.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Um, Kim died.

A newborn quantum duplicate replaced him.

New born.

4 and a 1/2 year ensign.

Tom Riker got Will Rikers commission as of their split.

If not for that precedence, then maybe all the arguments about "is the doctor alive or a thing" would apply tot his doppleganger of harry, and he would have to trade in his pip for a Maquis rank badge if he wasn't seen as a tool or slave?

 

[Delta1]

As for Harry, I just don't think promotions meant much until they returned home. He still had his prestige and honor among the crew so what did it matter if he got another pip or not?

Parity with his year group and pay. Or whatever kind of money-surrogate human officers receive. Same reason MIA officers are promoted in the real world. By the end he wasn't even MIA, he was just isolated and in sporadic communication with Starfleet. If they didn't send him promotion orders, there's got to be some kind of black mark on his record.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You ever watched Grey's anatomy? It's 4 year's later and Olivia is still known as Siffnurse for communicating syphilis between Alex and George. Sure these things are taken care of with a shot in your ass and good scrubbing with hot water, but the stain on your reputation can last forever.

He might think they call him Captain Kim because he snaps up all the night shift duty like a greedy bastard, but no, they really call him Captain Clap for contracting space VD (This valentines day past when the idiots keep saying happy V-Day, do you keep hearing "Happy VD" too?) from a passing alien hottie.

Oh, and in the the episode where he tried to have sex with his cousins and siblings before they began attempting to eat him, didn't he resign his commission? So effectively when he came back, wasn't he starting again all over from day one? Because the guy they promoted to take over his spot would have been pissed about being demoted back to the invisibleness becoming again on of Kim's henchmen.

 

[apollo1984]

The think is that if janeway stated there was no room for promotion just look at the senior staff for some of the other series:

DS9
Sisco - Captain
Kira - Major (equivatent to Lt Commander)
Dax - Lt Commander
Bashir - can't remember if he was a Lt or Lt commander
Eddington - Lt Commander
E Dax - Lt JG
O' Brian - Chief Petty Officer (high ranking NCO)

TNG was even worse (at time of generations)

Picard - Captain
Riker - Commander
Troi - Commander
Crusher - Commander
Worf - Lt Commander
Data - Lt Commander
LaForge - Lt Commander

No while I realise theat there wer more crew among the enterprise D its senior staff all held 'high ranking' positions.

Also she gave provisional ranks to Torres (an academy drop out) of Lt JG and also Paris. It is also known that the captain can give a field promotion like Picard gave Wesley, so if she really wanted to give Kim a promotion she could.

Although its not cannon in the novel 'Homecoming' Kim was promoted 2 ranks to full Lt.

 

[Anwar]

DS9 was a major installation that operated a combined Bajoran/Federation crew, in a hostile area and later on as a major front of an interstellar war. Naturally that environment has more promotion opportunity and would require a more experienced and thus higher ranking staff.

ENT-D was the Flagship.

VOY was neither.

 

[RyuRoots]

DS9 was a major installation that operated a combined Bajoran/Federation crew, in a hostile area and later on as a major front of an interstellar war. Naturally that environment has more promotion opportunity and would require a more experienced and thus higher ranking staff.

ENT-D was the Flagship.

VOY was neither.

But you can't really say there was "none" since Tuvok got promoted.

 

[Withers]

In the end there isn't a legitimate reason not to promote Harry just like there isn't a legitimate reason for their unabashed use of torpedoes and shuttle craft. It's just another example of a missed opportunity that they themselves seemed conscious of (by giving Harry the throw away line about never finding a little box in his chair when Paris got promoted.)

-Withers-​

 

[Guy Gardener]

But you can't really say there was "none" since Tuvok got promoted.

Tuvok got promoted because wardrobe fucked up and dressed Russ up in the wrong rank. After 1/2 a million bastards sent jerk mail to Berman telling him what a nonce he was for making for a frakking elementary mistake, promoting Tuvok seemed an easier dodge than paying some tailor to restitch the Vulcan's cuffs and adjust the jewellery on his neckline and claim that the washing gnome sent him the wrong uniform now and then.

Covering their own ass is not benevolence.

However, maybe an in-universe explanation is that Tuvok was subtly hinting to Kathy that he wanted a promotion just like i dress up as Wonder Woman when I want the wife to know I'm thinking about getting frisky?

Subtlety is a powerful tool.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

And in in both BSG Adama got frakked when Admiral Cain came up to bat. I wouldn't mind seeing a c*(t off between Michelle Forbes and Lloyd Bridges over the title of the Ultimate Admiral Cain.

No one beats Michelle Forbes! I know she was bad, but Admiral Cain was awesome (Lloyd Bridges was Commander Cain).

 

[Anwar]

And in in both BSG Adama got frakked when Admiral Cain came up to bat. I wouldn't mind seeing a c*(t off between Michelle Forbes and Lloyd Bridges over the title of the Ultimate Admiral Cain.

No one beats Michelle Forbes!

Sam from True Blood pulled it off .

 

[JanewayRulz!]

Tuvok got promoted because ...

Actually Tuvok and Paris each got demoted in the first season because of the screwup with rank. IIRC, Tvok had Lt Commander's pips and Paris had 1st Lt pips. Both were knocked down early in season 1 when someone finally caught on.

Tuvok's "real" promotion to Lt. Commander came years later.

As for Michelle Forbes, be it Ensign Ro or Admiral Cain... she is one bada$$ officer!

 

[SpyOne]

And in in both BSG Adama got frakked when Admiral Cain came up to bat.

Actually, in the original BSG Caine was immediately clear that Adama was senior, and therefore in charge. Didn't stop Caine from disobeying orders when he was certain he was right, but he at least pretended to be following Adama's orders.
If you miss the original BSG, its on Hulu.


By the end of Voyager, Harry Kim had been out of the Academy for 7 years. Data's comment in Datalore suggested he should be a LtJG by then. But let's compare with other characters we've seen:
7 years out of the Academy, Picard was in command of USS Stargazer.
7 years out of the Academy, Riker was First Officer of USS Enterprise.
7 years out of the Academy, Geordi was a LtJG.
7 years out of the Academy, Troi was a LtCmdr.
7 years out of the Academy, Worf was a Lt.
7 years out of the Academy, Lt Tasha Yar had been dead for 2 years.
When we first see Jadzia Dax and Julian Bashir, each has been out of the Academy about 8 years.
7 years out of the Academy, Janeway had been in command of a starship for at least a year.

Suggesting that there is room for promotion on Voyager because there were plenty of high ranking people on the Enterprise ignores the fact that the Enterprise-D had nearly 10 times as many people on it as Voyager. Similarly, DS9 started as a little backwater outpost, where the CO was a Commander and the CMO and Chief Science Officer were Lieutenants. Sure, even when the crew ballooned during the war, the head of Operations and Engineering was still "Chief" O'Brien, but that's more of a problem than a precedent.

Let's look at the Enterprise-D and see what we can learn:
Captain Picard's senior staff was 2 Commanders (Riker and Crusher), 4 Lieutenant Commanders (Chief Enginner, Data, Troi, and Chief Science Officer who usually wasn't at the meetings (Neela Daren was one)), and one Lieutenant (Security/Tactical). Each of those Commanders and Lieutenant Commanders probably has 3 to 5 Lieutenants working for them, so that's roughly 25 lieutenants, each of whom has 3 to 5 Ensigns working under them, and each Ensign has 8 to 10 Crewmen working under them. That's about 100 Ensigns, and 900 Crewmen, so that's a total crew of 1033.

Working that from the bottom up for Voyager, let's start with 90 Crewmen. They'd have 10 Ensigns supervising them. Those Ensigns would report to 2 1/2 Lieutenants, and the CO would be a Commander.
See, Voyager already has WAY too many chiefs and not enough indians, and most of those "chiefs" already rank too high. So while Janeway could technically command a staff of 4 to 8 Lieutenant Commanders, what Lieutenant Commanders do is supervise Lieutenants, and there aren't enough Lieutenants aboard. And Lieutenants supervise Ensigns. And Ensigns run a small team of Crewmen. If there aren't enough Crewmen, there are a lot of bored Ensigns with nothing to do.

These numbers are all very crude estimates. There probably aren't any Crewmen in the Counselor's office, and fewer than average in Medical, for example. On the other hand, Security probably has extra Crewmen, and Engineering will have a lot of them too. But the point remains that Harry Kim had trouble getting promoted because there just weren't enough people working under him to put a Lieutenant in that job, and no open jobs elsewhere to move him into.

"Lieutenant" (or"Ensign" or "Commander" for that matter) is not just a title, it is also a job description. Sucks to be Harry.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Marvelous.

My only criticism might be that medical school + starfleet academy probably means that although DS9 was Julian's first assignment, his time being schooled in a cadet uniform might have been twice or three times as long as the other officers being churned out for duty. I recall Bev saying that (or I did the math based upon something she said) she met Jack in medical school when she was 29.

Maybe Doctors are NEVER Ensigns?

 

[SpyOne]

Well, my crude attempts to work out what an education at Starfleet Medical is like suggests that one would be an Ensign while attending Starfleet Medical, and maybe during residency as well.

BTW: According to the Encyclopedia, Beverly Crusher was born in 2324, married in 2248, became a mother in 2349, graduated medical school in 2250, was an intern in 2352, and became a widow in 2354. So, between Starfleet Medical and her internship/residency, she was at least 28 before she was a full doctor. Doctor Bashir was 28 when he first appeared on DS9, fresh out of Residency, so that seems to be how it works.

 

[Saquist]

Wasn't Picard a seven year Lt. in the Q time line.