Retroactive justification for Riker's friction towards Jellico?

[Mojochi]

THAT forgives a multitude of sins. He also let Data be first officer, and he rocked it.

He also shut Bev TF in one sentence & we didn't hear from her again. Dude's batting a thousand

 

[Oddish]

He also shut Bev TF in one sentence & we didn't hear from her again.

And he didn't even have to turn her into a dog.

 

[Ragitsu]

It was and still is a bizarre state of affairs.

 

[AntonyF]

There IS proof. Riker did due diligence: he consulted the shift heads. They told him under no uncertain terms that the change would cause severe personnel issues. So, like the professional he was, Riker waited on making the change until he could make Jellico aware if the difficulties. Jellico demanded that he do it anyway. Delta Shift was most likely a cobbled together mess, and the other three shifts lost significant efficiency due to being cherrypicked of essential personnel.

Well of course it would cause issues. You can't just make a major change and have zero impact. But Jellico has obviously run the format before and knew the benefits and knew the short term pain would outweigh the benefits.

The shift heads hadn't, so weren't placed to know. And like any organisation people don't like change. They had been coddled by Picard for six years some of them. Sometimes you have to respect that someone coming in knows stuff you don't know and respect that experience. That's why they're in charge and are put in that position.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Maybe they promoted Jellico after this just to keep him away from the captain's chair.

I'm sure Captain Wong was a good captain for the Cairo until the Dominion destroyed it. Presumably she was installed as CO in the event Picard never returned so no ship was left without a captain rank officer.

 

[Tomalak]

Well of course it would cause issues. You can't just make a major change and have zero impact. But Jellico has obviously run the format before and knew the benefits and knew the short term pain would outweigh the benefits.

The shift heads hadn't, so weren't placed to know. And like any organisation people don't like change. They had been coddled by Picard for six years some of them. Sometimes you have to respect that someone coming in knows stuff you don't know and respect that experience. That's why they're in charge and are put in that position.

These are intelligent people, not automatons. They like to understand why decisions have been taken, and Picard had set the expectation of usually making clear his thought process and consulting.

It's not "coddling", simply a different approach. Riker expected the opportunity to feed back having consulted with department heads. Jellico hadn't made it clear that it wasn't a matter for discussion and that he wasn't intending to share his reasoning at any point.

But that particular incident was not a big deal. It was a learning point for both captain and crew.

 

[Mojochi]

Riker did due diligence: he consulted the shift heads. They told him under no uncertain terms that the change would cause severe personnel issues. So, like the professional he was, Riker waited on making the change until he could make Jellico aware if the difficulties. Jellico demanded that he do it anyway. Delta Shift was most likely a cobbled together mess, and the other three shifts lost significant efficiency due to being cherrypicked of essential personnel.

Riker was correct in the matter of the shift change. And yes, he was wrong about Picard. Acknowledging a covert operation of that nature is generally a bad idea, and it wasn't even Jellico's call (it was Necheyev's). But it was still Riker's job to point out an action he saw as a mistake.

It's not Riker's place to withhold implementation of an active order, on the grounds that objections were proffered. You follow it, & present the objections & relevant issues after the fact. The incoming captain, (that everyone knows is having command transferred that day) has ordered a change, as his 1st line of business. It's a simple change in shift rotation, which he likely wouldn't be ordering, without knowing all the factors & consequences therein, already.

Frankly, it was a sample size order, so he could judge the single variable he couldn't have planned for, the crew's resistance, which he more than likely figured there'd be some, but needed an immediate understanding of... and Riker failed stupendously. He unilaterally decided he had leeway to hold off on an order until he could say his piece about it, because he's used to having a degree of that entitlement with Picard. It's deciding he can call shots, if he sees a little wiggle room in the command structure. He took a liberty that was not his to take

Nothing is ever later said about there having been trouble over the shift change. It's a personnel concern, & Jellico was already planning to reassign a swath of personnel to other positions anyhow. Riker & his department leads wouldn't have known that when they were talking about "personnel shortages". It was a non-issue, once you factor that he was adding more personnel to shore up those weak areas

I'd imagine that once he'd implemented the shift change, and then new people transferred in from other departments, everybody said "Oh... Well you didn't tell us you were planning to do that". Right. I'm sure they'd have liked to know all the "why" of everything he has planned, but it's not his requirement to give that for everything. They take orders & carry them out

 

[Jedman67]

This was a stupid episode that created unnecessary friction for forced drama that made everyone look dumb.

Jellico is captain. Captain is boss. If you're not the captain, you damn well better be listening to him.

Now Jellico has not earned the trust of the crew like Picard has, but it's up to them to learn what their new boss wants and make it happen.

Giving PS a few episodes off with alternate captains would have great potential as long as it doesn't turn Geordi and Riker into crybabies

 

[Oddish]

Well of course it would cause issues. You can't just make a major change and have zero impact. But Jellico has obviously run the format before and knew the benefits and knew the short term pain would outweigh the benefits.

If he had implemented the change during a period of routine operations, like Kira and Sisko did, that might be true. But this wasn't routine operations. It was IMMINENT COMBAT OPERATIONS. Jellico knew this; he was running battle drills and juicing up the phasers. When you're heading for a fight, you want everyone on your crew doing what they're good at. Last thing you want is to retrain your crew while the Cardassians are blasting at them.

 

[BK613]

Jellico is captain. Captain is boss. If you're not the captain, you damn well better be listening to him.

But Jellico is not the Captain—not the boss—when he gives that order and Riker is under no obligation to follow it as long as the Enterprise is still under Picard's command.
And there is a certain kind of irony in the fact that the episode is called "The Chain of Command" because Jellico sure as heck didn't respect the one in place with regard to Picard and Riker.

 

[DonIago]

It would have been interesting to me if Jellico had relieved Riker at the first sign of Riker pushing back. "I appreciate your candor, Commander, but we're in the middle of a crisis and I don't have the liberty of working with an XO I don't believe I can rely on. You're relieved." I wonder how people would feel about the rest of it at that point.

 

[AntonyF]

If he had implemented the change during a period of routine operations, like Kira and Sisko did, that might be true. But this wasn't routine operations. It was IMMINENT COMBAT OPERATIONS. Jellico knew this; he was running battle drills and juicing up the phasers. When you're heading for a fight, you want everyone on your crew doing what they're good at. Last thing you want is to retrain your crew while the Cardassians are blasting at them.

I do agree it may not be the best time to do change. But in his judgement it may be that the crew can perform better, particularly when they need to be agile and on guard for a a potentially volatile situation.

Picard's Enterprise was one of peaceful, science activities. The Enterprise was needed to do something else and pronto.

Now in an ideal world we'd see him explain this, but that wasn't the character they wanted for that episode. It was get it done, less chatty chatty.

The crew didn't realise what they were entering. They didn't know of the secret mission and that within days they could be at war with Cardassia. So they didn't have all the information. Which again comes back to trusting your superior officer and their experience.

I think there's a lot of evidence on screen to prove that Jellico is reckless and a hot head. But in universe, there's a lot of information we as the viewer lack and so do the crew.

 

[Mojochi]

But Jellico is not the Captain—not the boss—when he gives that order and Riker is under no obligation to follow it as long as the Enterprise is still under Picard's command.

Picard is already in prep for his op when Jellico boards. Jellico's orders, from when he steps aboard, are that of the entering commander, to be implemented at the time he will be in command. He's the superior officer, with mission specific directives that the ship is now assigned to.

The transfer ceremony is just that, ceremony. The order from Nechayev has already been passed down to Riker. This is the guy you answer to now. You want to try to get pedantic about a few hours? I suspect that's exactly why Jellico dropped it straight away, to specifically see how this simple order about shift rotation would be handled, to measure the crew's cooperation, which was abysmal out of the gate, because of Riker's entitlement

 

[Oddish]

It would have been interesting to me if Jellico had relieved Riker at the first sign of Riker pushing back. "I appreciate your candor, Commander, but we're in the middle of a crisis and I don't have the liberty of working with an XO I don't believe I can rely on. You're relieved." I wonder how people would feel about the rest of it at that point.

Maybe Data would have been XO for long enough for Jellico to promote him to full commander.

do agree it may not be the best time to do change. But in his judgement it may be that the crew can perform better, particularly when they need to be agile and on guard for a a potentially volatile situation.

He still needed to be given all relevant information. That was Riker's job.

I suspect that's exactly why Jellico dropped it straight away, to specifically see how this simple order about shift rotation would be handled, to measure the crew's cooperation, which was abysmal out of the gate, because of Riker's entitlement

Given how utterly dreadful Delta Shift's efficiency undoubtedly was, Jellico could have just as easily exploded at Riker if he did make the change without makung him aware of the potential difficulty: "why didn't you tell me that changing rotations was going to cause all these problems? That's information I needed to have!"

 

[BK613]

The transfer ceremony is just that, ceremony.

Nope. It's the moment when accountability, responsibility, duty and authority passes from Picard to Jellico. As noted and recorded by the computer.

PICARD: (reading) ... Computer, transfer all command codes to Captain Edward Jellico. Voice authorization, Picard delta five.​

COMPUTER: Transfer complete. USS Enterprise now under command of Captain Edward Jellico.​

JELLICO: I relieve you, sir.​

PICARD: I stand relieved.​

Jellico was the one out of line, IMO. YMMV.

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edit to add: The whole premise about the shifts themselves runs counter to logic for me.
in the RL, the more intense the situation aboard ship, usually the more stations there are need to be manned. Which means more bodies per watch period are needed. Which means the number of sections gets smaller to deal with the increase in those needed bodies.