Kirk might have been a dunsel, but Bob Wesley was only a second-class commodore. Which probably explains why he retired from the Star Fleet and became a civil servant.
Kirk's Rank in ST: TWOK
- Thread starter There Be Whales Here
- Start date
He wanted to spend more time with his family.Kirk might have been a dunsel, but Bob Wesley was only a second-class commodore. Which probably explains why he retired from the Star Fleet and became a civil servant.
Agreed. Wesley commanded the task force and war games, and was in temporary command of the Lexington.
Cue Admiral Nelson v. Captain Crane.
For all we know, Commodore always does more than command a single ship - and Decker would be in observation of that rule, if not for the fact that the DDM had isolated him from his flotilla with that jamming effect...
Starfleet operations in "DDM" are weird in a more general sense than Decker's rank (which was there simply so that he would explicitly outrank Kirk, creating the dramatically necessary tension, whilst the audience at large would not understand nuances such as "seniority within rank"). Two starship commanders apparently have no real awareness of each other, and are covering the very same territory for obscure reasons, Kirk having been there first a few months earlier. The same happened in "Omega Glory", with apparent random patrol bringing ships together even when one would expect the distress of one of them to be the cause and the mechanism. It really wouldn't be any weirder if Decker had a flock of destroyers under his nominal command out there, and was unaware of their exact whereabouts and actions...
As for Wesley's chair, it's not that of a Captain - it has a uniquely high backrest! Perhaps he's operating from the flag bridge of the Lexington, while the ship's CO on the main bridge is in charge of maneuvers except for the joint ones? Whenever we hear Wesley command actions or inactions, they are joint ones...
...Except for one course command when M-5 first fires phasers on kill. Alas.
Timo Saloniemi
Starfleet operations in "DDM" are weird in a more general sense than Decker's rank (which was there simply so that he would explicitly outrank Kirk, creating the dramatically necessary tension, whilst the audience at large would not understand nuances such as "seniority within rank"). Two starship commanders apparently have no real awareness of each other, and are covering the very same territory for obscure reasons, Kirk having been there first a few months earlier. The same happened in "Omega Glory", with apparent random patrol bringing ships together even when one would expect the distress of one of them to be the cause and the mechanism. It really wouldn't be any weirder if Decker had a flock of destroyers under his nominal command out there, and was unaware of their exact whereabouts and actions...
As for Wesley's chair, it's not that of a Captain - it has a uniquely high backrest! Perhaps he's operating from the flag bridge of the Lexington, while the ship's CO on the main bridge is in charge of maneuvers except for the joint ones? Whenever we hear Wesley command actions or inactions, they are joint ones...
...Except for one course command when M-5 first fires phasers on kill. Alas.
Timo Saloniemi
IMO, if anyone was a second-class commodore it was Decker, given that his seniority appears to be nominal, whereas all the other commodores were more clearly established as senior to a starship captain.
But YMMV.
As for Kirk's rank? That's a big fat Meh, as far as I'm concerned. If you're going by his Admiral uniform in TWOK? Don't. I doubt there was ever a pattern to the Monster Maroon Admiral unis - rank insignia, those little yellow stripes on the inside of the jacket flaps, etc. were all basically thrown together at random.
I mean, it's not like you could look at various Admirals such as Kirk, Morrow, Cartwright, Bob from ST V, Bill from ST VI, etc. and work out their precise order of seniority just by their uniforms...it's all a crap shoot, really.
Actually, a lot of thought went into these uniforms. Probably more than in every other uniform. Kirk was a Rear Admiral. The other four were all Fleet Admirals. Vice Admirals and Commodores can be seen in the TVH council scene and a full Admiral in TUC.
TUC is the movie where it gets a bit murky. Due to budget reasons there were a number of errors, ie Lt. Valeris wearing a mismatched uniform (division colour-wise) and a Lt. Cmdr. pin and Colonel West appearing in a Vice Admiral outfit.
Division colors were always screwy when it came to red. It was supposed to stand for "Academy" somehow, usurping from the TOS/TMP meaning of "Engineering", but the intended scheme where red would be combined with other colors as dashes on epaulets etc. never got implemented right, TSfS already screwing it up. Folks wearing "partial red" were all over the place, and Valeris adding to that count is easily excused.
Possibly having partial red in different places tells specific different things, but the common thing is "Academy", and Valeris was an instructor or something? In addition to being part of Kirk's hastily assembled posse for the mission, that is. She doesn't have any assigned shipboard role other than Spock's Pet, after all; basically, it seems like she's there to observe, and to be observed, so that Spock can eventually recommend her as the next SO or XO. Red would actually go well with such a "training" role.
Three rank pins in "actual" adventures stand out as anomalious: Scotty's Captain (which somehow degrades back to Commander without explanation), Valeris' Lieutenant Commander (which conflicts with how she is verbally addressed), and West's thing. The rest is rather trouble-free, though. And we can always say Admiral Cornell West was dressed exactly as he should, and that Scotty felt his promotion was not earned. And that the transition to and from Lieutenant Commander is a complicated thing in Starfleet, as seen with Mitchell, Spock, Giotto and Tuvok already...
Timo Saloniemi
Possibly having partial red in different places tells specific different things, but the common thing is "Academy", and Valeris was an instructor or something? In addition to being part of Kirk's hastily assembled posse for the mission, that is. She doesn't have any assigned shipboard role other than Spock's Pet, after all; basically, it seems like she's there to observe, and to be observed, so that Spock can eventually recommend her as the next SO or XO. Red would actually go well with such a "training" role.
Three rank pins in "actual" adventures stand out as anomalious: Scotty's Captain (which somehow degrades back to Commander without explanation), Valeris' Lieutenant Commander (which conflicts with how she is verbally addressed), and West's thing. The rest is rather trouble-free, though. And we can always say Admiral Cornell West was dressed exactly as he should, and that Scotty felt his promotion was not earned. And that the transition to and from Lieutenant Commander is a complicated thing in Starfleet, as seen with Mitchell, Spock, Giotto and Tuvok already...
Timo Saloniemi
she was replacing sulu at the helm…
Similar threads
