NCO's on the Bridge

[Crewman47]

Something that I've often been unsure about but I've noticed that alot of Star Trek sites (specifically RPG and fanon sites) say that Bridge Stations are manned by Officer grades only and that NCO's are not authorised to access the Bridge, unless, I guess, directly authorised by an officer. However I've noticed that this isn't the case on Star Trek as we can see from the TOS Movies that they have NCO's assigned to Bridge Stations on TWOK, TFF and TUC which sorta contradicts the whole no NCO on the Bridge idea but yet in the TNG era, from what we can only assume, there don't appear to be any NCO's serving on the Bridge of either the Ent-D, Ent-E, Voyager or Defiant.

So I was just wondering, by comparing to present day Navy, what is the official position of NCO's serving on the Bridge?

 

[Space Cowboy]

Outside of the TOS movies, there doesn't seem to be a way to spot NCOs on the bridge. It gets more complicated if you take O'Brien into the mix. After he gets his NCO pin, everyone else still wears officer ranks and O'Brien orders ensigns around. The bottom line is that there isn't a consistent portrayal of NCOs in Star Trek outside of the aforementioned movies.

 

[sbk1234]

In modern navy, there are enlisted serving on bridges of ships.

 

[Colonel Midnight]

^ Same in the Coast Guard. At best, there's typically only 1 to 2 officers on the Bridge, unless the CO is there. Then the Department heads or XO will keep stopping by to pester him/her with info.

Now, during special details/evolutions -- there's a ton of people up there, unfortunately, like a freaking 'Khaki Conga Line'...

(If we were to wear khakis anymore which, thankfully, we don't.)

That's why it was good to be the EO (Engineer Officer) -- I was down in Main Control and avoiding the ruckus up on the Bridge, unless I absolutely had to do so.

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[BigC]

Chief O'Brian serves on the Defiant.

 

[-Brett-]

...yet in the TNG era, from what we can only assume, there don't appear to be any NCO's serving on the Bridge of either the Ent-D, Ent-E, Voyager or Defiant.

In the TNG era, NCO's and comissioned officers wear the same uniform. So apart from breaking out a magnifying glass and looking for those tiny little dots on the collars, how do you know that none of the extras that are always hanging around the bridge trying to look busy are NCO's?

Even if you do go that route and determine that they all have officer insignia, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Rank insignia, especially for enlisted people, is ridiculously inconsistent.

 

[USS Excelsior]

In the TOS movies, those NCO's on the bridge are actually cadets in training.

 

[Space Cowboy]

In the TOS movies, those NCO's on the bridge are actually cadets in training.

I thought only the ones with the red collars were trainees, while the ones with black collars were NCOs.

 

[MarianLH]

In the TOS movies, those NCO's on the bridge are actually cadets in training.

I thought only the ones with the red collars were trainees, while the ones with black collars were NCOs.

You're right. Jumpsuit with black collar = enlisted crewman, not trainees or cadets.


Marian

 

[Timo]

...At least that was the intention in ST2.

But the ST2 system was a minor revamp of the TMP system where red collar indicated Engineering (there being no special color for trainees or cadets), and OTOH we have seen Cadet Picard wear the black collar while in the jumpsuit in that ST:NEM photograph.

There have been blackcollared jumpsuit wearers on the bridges of basically every TOS movie era bridge: the E-nil, the E-A, the E-B, the E-C (although admittedly in the aftermath of combat losses), the Excelsior, and the Grissom. All those bridges had a great number of workstations scattered about, many with "standing room only"; this in contrast with the TOS bridge with the limited number of chairs all occupied by the main officer heroes save perhaps for the one next to Scotty's station. Then again, the jumpsuit people in the movies sometimes sat at "main" consoles, like the helm of the Grissom.

There were folks on Captain Pike's bridge who probably were enlisted, too - the character dubbed "CPO Garrison" in the end credits was sitting there, with unique "broken" sleeve braid, and a number of people in uniforms that had no sleeve braid were standing around.

One might speculate that different starships have differently distributed command systems. In some, the actual bridge is designed only for the top officers, and there are supporting rooms nearby with lower-ranking people. In others, those support functions are handled from the main bridge, or at least have secodary stations at the main bridge - and people might rush to those secondary stations if the adjoining rooms were damaged, or in a training situation or on a skeleton-crewed ship where there would be no officer supervisors available for those separate rooms.

Certainly one would see a role for specialized, narrowly trained NCOs and enlisteds on a starship bridge that is full of complex high technology an officer shouldn't be required to master, but that also is often left rather unautomated, or at least with manual overrides for every key function. For example Uhura in TOS should probably have been an enlisted specialist, given her very narrow field of expertise; and perhaps Sulu and Chekov, too. (But it was admittedly quite practical that Kirk could place basically anybody from the bridge in temporary command...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[J.T.B.]

There were folks on Captain Pike's bridge who probably were enlisted, too - the character dubbed "CPO Garrison" in the end credits was sitting there, with unique "broken" sleeve braid, and a number of people in uniforms that had no sleeve braid were standing around.
temporary command...)

Actually the Adam Roarke character is not identified in credits, originally or in "The Menagerie." I don't know where the CPO thing came from, I assume from production materials. It has certainly been around a long time and is widely accepted, and it's fine with me, but I have always wondered where it came from.

One of the highest-function enlisted we have seen in Trek is Chief DiFalco, who take over as navigator in TMP after Ilia is zapped.

We might speculate that the bridge, apparently a combining the present-day bridge and combat information center, is more for interpreting information, decision making and coodination than actually operating the various systems. The working-level operating of sensors &c. could take place elsewhere, with the bridge directing effort and acting as clearing-house. Of course enlisted can be on the bridge for all sorts of reasons, but my gut feeling is that those with assigned duty stations there would be fairly senior petty officers.

--Justin