Retroactive justification for Riker's friction towards Jellico?

[Oddish]

And yet, I don't believe the episode presents any evidence at all that the changeover to a four-shift rotation had any adverse impacts.

The section heads said to Riker that it would cause serious personnel problems. Given that they're section heads of the Federation flagship, and should be among the best Starfleet officers around, I'm going to assume they knew what they were talking about.

 

[Ragitsu]

Riker was an embarrassment and should have been kicked out of starfleet, the only thing that saved him was Jonathan Frakes status as a series regular.

When all one has is an axe to grind, every problem starts looking like a tree. In this case: a Riker-shaped tree.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

That's the issue. No one there, Including the audience, can actually say that his "how" it should be done wasn't also "what" needed to be done, given the time sensitive conditions & precarious variables. That's WHY there's a chain of command.

And Jellico was the one who flouted the chain-of-command by dangerously and arrogantly assuming that he knew how to get the best out of a ship and crew that he had zero practical experience with and no interest in learning.

They don't always get the luxury of getting to know why. They should know that without having to be handheld about it.

Being given the opportunity to present their case and have it heard isn't "being handheld" it's being treated like competent professionals not slaves.

So he did, unlike Riker, who kept pushing, & undermining authority, & Troi egging him on about it, until it went too far.

Riker kept "pushing" because he could see that Jellico was acting extremely unprofessionally in ways that IRL could get a commanding officer court-martialled if something went wrong, and endangering the ship and crew and potentially the mission in the process.

Your comparison to Picard in the finale isn't entirely relevant IMHO, because even though they didn't know him, & were as of yet unsure of his ways, he DID know them, intimately. He knew the right things to say, to sway them. Jellico doesn't know any of those people, or WTF they'd personally respond to.

Except it is relevant, because a key part of the problem is that Jellico didn't want to know the crew, had zero interest in knowing the crew and was content to run them ragged under conditions that would raise eyebrows IRL if he did it at "red alert" during actual combat for the length of time that he did it.

That's his prerogative as the CO and not a problem. It's the crews job to run the ship as Jellico wants not the other way around.

As noted above, that has limits, particularly outside of combat, which he blew past by the half-way point of the story.

There were hundreds of people on the Enterprise. And if the cobbled together MESS that Delta Shift undoubtedly was had been on duty when combat began, they might have been blasted to ions. So yeah, I think Jellico should have listened to Riker and his section heads, who knew more about the Enterprise than he did.

Yup.

A critical failure. Jellico needlessly withheld information about the mission - putting the mission at risk should Jellico have been incapacitated.

Yup.

When all one has is an axe to grind, every problem starts looking like a tree. In this case: a Riker-shaped tree.

Yeah, but Jellico is the one who has the "axe to grind" not Riker, who does nothing that wouldn't have been standard for him as XO to DeSoto or Picard (good captains who are secure in their abilities not insecure, micro-managing tyrants like Jellico) up until the confrontation about Picard's status as a PoW which he pushed too hard on, but wasn't wrong to bring up and shouldn't have been relieved of duty (ie suspended and probably fired if not rescinded).

 

[Uncle Sock]

I just noticed an interesting detail. In 'Lower Decks', Riker says, '1200 hours, alpha shift is relieved'. Since I find it odd for the Alpha Shift to start at 0400, I'd like to imagine that Jellico may have had at least one positive effect on the ship's efficiency, and that the four-shift system may have endured. That would make sense, wouldn't it? In this system, alpha shift would go from 0600 to 1200, beta shift from 1200 to 1800, gamma shift from 1800 to 0000, and delta shift from 0000 to 0600.

Kinda neat.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Time is an illusion, especially on a starship

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I just noticed an interesting detail. In 'Lower Decks', Riker says, '1200 hours, alpha shift is relieved'. Since I find it odd for the Alpha Shift to start at 0400, I'd like to imagine that Jellico may have had at least one positive effect on the ship's efficiency, and that the four-shift system may have endured. That would make sense, wouldn't it? In this system, alpha shift would go from 0600 to 1200, beta shift from 1200 to 1800, gamma shift from 1800 to 0000, and delta shift from 0000 to 0600.

Well, a version of the four-shift system may have endured, though it should be noted that only Alpha and Gamma shifts not Delta were actually mentioned and Jellico's Delta Shift ran from 15:00 to 23:00, giving an even more ridiculous start time of 23:00 for Alpha Shift (whereas Gamma Shift could plausibly run from 18:00 to 00:00 on the system, with Alpha running from 00:00 to 08:00).

 

[Oddish]

I just noticed an interesting detail. In 'Lower Decks', Riker says, '1200 hours, alpha shift is relieved'. Since I find it odd for the Alpha Shift to start at 0400, I'd like to imagine that Jellico may have had at least one positive effect on the ship's efficiency, and that the four-shift system may have endured. That would make sense, wouldn't it? In this system, alpha shift would go from 0600 to 1200, beta shift from 1200 to 1800, gamma shift from 1800 to 0000, and delta shift from 0000 to 0600.

Kinda neat.

DS9 makes it clear that it wasn't a bad idea, it just has to be done right.

 

[Paul Weaver]

DS9 makes it clear that it wasn't a bad idea, it just has to be done right.

I.e not during periods of
* big change
* heightened tensions with potential for battle
* that the department heads say it's going to cause problems if its done now
* with no attempt to understand the problems

All when the previous system and crew had been proven time and again

 

[Oddish]

Precisely!