Officers vs Enlisted: how many on the E?

[HigHurtenflurst]

Something that I've always wondered: I believe I read somewhere that Kirk had something like 30 officers on his Enterprise, leaving 400-ish crewmen/enlisted. And you would see them all the time, and they were sometimes referred to as "crewman." Not sure if TOS had NCO's, Chiefs, Petty Officers, etc, but they seemed to have a fairly realistic crew structure.

On Picard's ship, however, it seems like every single last character is an officer! Aside from one Chief (O'Brien) I can only ever remember a single "crewman," a Vulcan, and Picard asking him why he hadn't gone the officer route. Am I wrong in my perception? Is there a difference in the uniforms, like the pinstripe on the shoulders (that seemed to disappear after the first season) that separated officers from enlisted? Are there characters without officers pips?

Or is it the 24th century's politically correct, socialist, feel-good equivalent of giving every single kid in a sporting event (no matter how patheticly they lost) a trophy so you don't hurt their self-esteem?

 

[JessDD]

Well if you remember in "The Drumhead" the crewman talks about wanting to just get away and joined the Starfleet Enlisted Program. So the program, in fact, does exist. Not to mention, the standards for getting into Starfleet Academy seem to be incredibly high (re: Wesley Crusher's first try at getting into the academy). Therefore, the vast majority of starfleet members should be enlisted crewmen.

For whatever reason, however, we just don't see any of them. Keep in mind, Starfleet is full of starships, and we just focus on the flagship in TNG. Perhaps the flagship has a high quota of officers. It would have been nice for the producers to flesh out that part of starship operations though. We wouldn't need to hear from them, but at least seeing them would have been helpful.

It could also be argued that the majority of enlisted personnel were attached to Starbases. I mean, really, how many officers does it take to run a starbase?

 

[Ghrakh]

This:

For whatever reason, however, we just don't see any of them.

Not this:

Or is it the 24th century's politically correct, socialist, feel-good equivalent of giving every single kid in a sporting event (no matter how patheticly they lost) a trophy so you don't hurt their self-esteem?

 

[J.T.B.]

Something that I've always wondered: I believe I read somewhere that Kirk had something like 30 officers on his Enterprise, leaving 400-ish crewmen/enlisted. And you would see them all the time, and they were sometimes referred to as "crewman." Not sure if TOS had NCO's, Chiefs, Petty Officers, etc, but they seemed to have a fairly realistic crew structure.

Neither series handled the enlisted issue very thoughtfully. For one thing, there were apparently enlisted grades, but no insignia. Nobody below the rank of JG on TOS had rank insignia. TNG had the one-black-pip grade below ensign, whatever that was, and then nothing for everyone else. I think that shows the level of thought that went into the structuring the crew with regards to enlisted personnel.

That said, we shouldn't assume that the 24th century Starfleet's officer-to-enlisted picture should be similar to what we're used to today. Higher tech systems have historically meant fewer but more highly-skilled operators. For instance, a B-29 crew had four officers and seven enlisted, a decade later a B-52 had five officers and one enlisted. If a good chunk of the Galaxy crew are qualified researchers and scientists for the exploration mission, that may also distort what we might expect the ratio to be.

Or is it the 24th century's politically correct, socialist, feel-good equivalent of giving every single kid in a sporting event (no matter how patheticly they lost) a trophy so you don't hurt their self-esteem?

That doesn't seem likely.

 

[HigHurtenflurst]

Or is it the 24th century's politically correct, socialist, feel-good equivalent of giving every single kid in a sporting event (no matter how patheticly they lost) a trophy so you don't hurt their self-esteem?

That doesn't seem likely.

I was being sarcastic.

Anyway, good points. Hadn't really thought about the Air Force example. I know in WWII they made all enlisted on bomber crews Sergeants so they'd get better treatment if they were captured. Maybe they did something similar in Starfleet. I always preferred the way the new BSG handled the rank structure, but I guess Starfleet was never really supposed to be a military operation anyway.

 

[tafkats]

Some of it is probably just who the show happens to focus on. On M*A*S*H, for instance, despite being set in the (admittedly fictionalized for comedy) real U.S. Army, at any given time the main cast consists of a colonel, two majors, two captains, a lieutenant, and two corporals. And it's at least semi-realistic due to the nature of the posting, since drafted doctors and nurses of that era were typically commissioned as captains and lieutenants.

But the writers did seem to ignore the idea of enlisted ranks most of the time, and except for O'Brien, if crewmen were shown they'd be very junior.

A lot of the modern military divisions originate in very, very old class distinctions that I doubt would still be around in Trek's 23rd or 24th centuries. Maybe the norm is that most people who want to make a career out of Starfleet go the Academy route, while people who only want to enlist for a few years go the enlisted route and 95% of them don't stay?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

On Voyager, Harry Kim is considered a senior officer, partly because of his position more than his rank of ensign, but we do see him in command of the night shift bridge crew.
And when he saves the day the crewman flying the ship thanks him. Was she a crewman or another ensign?

On the Enterprise even Wesley could order any crewman around if he wished. Technically even O'Brien would have to call him Sir, as he did with Nog later.

I am pretty sure crewmen on board starships were obligated to not speaking lines an walking around corridors for the most part looking very busy and urgent trying to find the restroom.

Maybe if we had had one more season we had seen the episode "Lower lower decks" where a bunch of crewmen tried to suck up to some new first year ensigns.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've always taken the position that the people we see working in the background or walking in various corridors without any rank insignia as being enlisted personnel with the rank of crewman. Junior officers in Starfleet seem to do more "grunt work" than those in today's navies, IMO, but enlisted personnel tend to do the less exciting but still vital things where cameras rarely go to keep a ship running. As such, I usually tend to favor a 1:6 ratio between officers and enlisted on most ships.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I read somewhere that in GR's original concept for TOS that all the crew had been through the Academy, so all the braid-less men and women onboard were all ensigns. Not sure just when that was overturned but definitely by TMP.

For TNG, it would've been good had the writers thought about the actual standard operations of the ship, but since its not crucial to the stories then its not something that really needs to be looked at.

 

[bolak]

The British Royal Air Force provides a century-long case study of how an organisation became top-heavy with officers.

In the early days of WW1, British aircraft were flown by NCOs and commanded from the 'back seat' by officers. So that mission decisions were made by the officer and executed by the NCO in the manner he saw fit.

As single-seaters became more common, so did the lure for the back-seat officers to adopt the 'trade' of pilot. Most pilots were still NCOs but it was by then common to find officers within the squadron. This was still the case in WW2.

The balance gradually shifted to officers as former pilots rose through the command structure and piloting was no longer seen as a trade but as a career path for officers. The RAF has since then been blighted by a preponderence of ex-pilot officers in staff positions and they were eventually successful in eliminating NCO pilots in the 1960s.

The 'excuse' used was that NCOs could not conduct a State mission involving release of nuclear weapons, which was irrelevant for most pilots*. The real reason was that flying had become glamorous and was to be reserved for officers. This was self-sustained as more officers entered the pipeline to become pilots and rose to staff positions; the status quo was maintained.

The British Army, with a much better mix of staff officer origins, still has a strong NCO pilot contingent.

I would expect Starfleet, with such an overwhelming number of non-starship-command positions, to follow the Army line and have non-officers doing everything that doesn't require a decision based on interpretation of policy.

* Today, the RAF no longer has nuclear weapons but piloting remains not only exclusive to officers but the only way to reach the senior staff positions of the RAF. What a change in a century! The RAF could save a lot of money and access a lot of talent by reinstating NCO pilots, as the US Navy has recently done. But that would dent a lot of egos.