McCoy in "Friday's Child"

[Wingsley]

If you subscribe to the notion that the different badges indicate a unit assignment, such as "First Fleet" as opposed to "Seventh Fleet", then Captain Tracey and the Starship Exeter were part of a larger unit.

Let's assume, for sake of argument, that Kirk's arrowhead badge indicates that the Enterprise is part of the First Fleet. The classmates he encountered in the Starbase 11 Officer's Club who also wore the same insignia, but obviously weren't assigned to the Enterprise, would also be attached to the First Fleet, just not the same ship as Kirk. As for the commanders and other personnel attached to other Federation starships-of-the-line in TOS, each badge would indicate a different flotilla. Decker's badge could be "Sixth Fleet", for instance.

 

[T'Girl]

But how do we explain Capt'n Tracy's insignia, or that of Wesley and Decker. Wesley and Decker were commodore's....but what of Tracy?

I like the idea that senior officers like Fleet Captains, Commodores and Admirals (plus their immediate staffs) had their own separate unique insignia. And that people in support branches like the JAG corp (Court Martial) or merchant marines (Charlie X) had a separate insignia as well.

Everyone in the fleet from Captain on down had a arrowhead insignia.

Tracy being say a Fleet Captain would have his own insignia, and the doctor we saw was a part of his small personal staff. While you can't actual see the Exeter's crew's insignia's because of the way the bodies are oriented, every one of the shirts used did in fact have an arrowhead sewn on.

In The Ultimate Computer, Commodore Wesley had his own insignia, while the crewmember behind him did have a arrowhead.

Commodore Decker had his own insignia, but what was on the uniforms of his crew?

 

[Greg Cox]

Honestly, I don't think an in-universe explanation is required here. It's a minor wardrobe glitch in a bit of footage that appears only briefly in the episode.

The original intent seems to be that this was some hitherto-unmentioned episode in McCoy's past. He's wearing his usual uniform because it was easier than digging some old relic from the second pilot out of mothballs for a five-second clip . . ..

I doubt if anybody back in the sixties noticed or cared.

 

[Nerys Myk]

[Luke Skywalker]I care[/Luke Skywalker]

 

[Timo]

I really can't consider the use of arrowheads outside the Enterprise context as an "error" any more, not with the frequency of such "errors" in TOS. It's just an interesting feature of the insignia system.

Regarding nuances, the "fleets" idea IMHO trumps the "personal perks for flag officers" one, because even the lower ranks of the Defiant crew were finally visibly given their non-Enterprise symbols in the ENT revisit of the interphase/Tholian thing.

The actual continuity glitch to be tackled is the type of uniform, this only becoming an issue if McCoy's Capellan stint took place significantly before "Where No Man". If it only happened a bit before that episode, it would be easy to explain that Kirk's crew were behind the times as regards fashion, what with having sailed towards the most distant unknown for the past year or so. Capella would lie closer to home, so McCoy would get a wardrobe update Kirk would not have access to.

If we go the route of the novels and other "fan material", McCoy would be established as having done stints off the ship during Kirk's overall mission, including the time we saw Dr Piper serving as Kirk's CMO. Another hop to Capella and back would merely fit the pattern, then. Canonically we don't know much about when McCoy arrived on the ship, apart from his ST6 statement of having been the ship's surgeon (not necessarily the same thing as CMO) for 27 years by 2293.

Timo Saloniemi