Red, perhaps? That's what he wore in Farpoint, anyway.
So, why do helmsman wear red?
- Thread starter neozeks
- Start date
Red, perhaps? That's what he wore in Farpoint, anyway.
It's always been my interpretation that the helm/nav (later Conn) officers were command "interns". That is, their planned final destination was command of a starship, or least XO. Chekov doing turns at Spock's station was part of his training to make sure he was well rounded on the bridge stations.
As for people like Jadzia at the Defiant's Conn while wearing blue, I always chalked that up to her being A. Sisko's best pal and, B. just that damn good at starship stuff. Or, her current posting may have been as science officer for DS9, but given time, she could have eventually gained command rank.
As for that yellow shirted guy that became conn officer on the Defiant, that's either an engineering/ops guy that happened to take a rotation at conn one day, and impressed Sisko with his skills, or it was the only color uniform they already had made that would fit that actor.
As for people like Jadzia at the Defiant's Conn while wearing blue, I always chalked that up to her being A. Sisko's best pal and, B. just that damn good at starship stuff. Or, her current posting may have been as science officer for DS9, but given time, she could have eventually gained command rank.
As for that yellow shirted guy that became conn officer on the Defiant, that's either an engineering/ops guy that happened to take a rotation at conn one day, and impressed Sisko with his skills, or it was the only color uniform they already had made that would fit that actor.
My take is that the TOS/TNG uniform color simply reflects which division a person is currently assigned to. It doesn't indicate anything about qualifications or "career track." The division that handles helm and weapons happens to be called "command," perhaps because it works the most closely with the CO. I don't think Sulu undertook a major career re-direction to go from astro-sciences to helm, and obviously Spock and Scotty and Data are fully command-qualified without having to wear "command" colors to signify it.
--Justin
--Justin
In fact, EVERY starfleet crewman of ensign and above is trained in all the bridge stations, helm, astronavigation, weapons, battle tactics, diplomacy, basic engineering, and command. It's a large part of what they study to graduate. Science, engineering, security, and tactical are the 'major' optional add ons and we even see some characters such as Ro, return to the acadamy to enhance their training.
It was a huge insult to the Troi character to suggest that she wouldn't have known what a warp core breach would mean when she was a lieutenant-commander who'd been in space for a decade. I was also very unimpressed by the nature of the command test. As written, Troi wasn't really fit to pass the test. Although she sussed that the right outcome was to put a fellow crewman in danger she didn't first consider if there were any crewmen on board who might survive radiation exposure (Data or a natually immune species, or a resistant species like a vulcan) or whether a radiation suit or meidcation would make a difference to survival chances. It might have been that these considerations would have led to the same conclusion but her failure to consider all possible options before sentencing a crewman to death demonstrated poor command skills. In her defence, Geordi was wearing TNG's version of a red shirt...
It was a huge insult to the Troi character to suggest that she wouldn't have known what a warp core breach would mean when she was a lieutenant-commander who'd been in space for a decade. I was also very unimpressed by the nature of the command test. As written, Troi wasn't really fit to pass the test. Although she sussed that the right outcome was to put a fellow crewman in danger she didn't first consider if there were any crewmen on board who might survive radiation exposure (Data or a natually immune species, or a resistant species like a vulcan) or whether a radiation suit or meidcation would make a difference to survival chances. It might have been that these considerations would have led to the same conclusion but her failure to consider all possible options before sentencing a crewman to death demonstrated poor command skills. In her defence, Geordi was wearing TNG's version of a red shirt...
In fact?
Roddenberry said that he considered the crew to be trained astronauts.
It's strongly implied by McCoy that medical officers, at least, don't have the kind of training required to succeed to vessel command. In "A Taste of Armageddon" he points out that he's not an "officer of the line," which is similar to current navy terminology.
He did, though that was in the context of saying that everyone serving on a starship was a commissioned officer, which was shown not to be the case even in the earliest episodes of TOS. But even so, the qualifications of trained astronaut don't necessarily imply that everyone is qualified to take over every facet of the mission. Even in TOS's day, astronauts had been selected for their scientific rather than flying qualifications, and in the space shuttle era mission specialists no longer had to qualify as jet pilots and are not trained to take over from pilot astronauts.
--Justin
Both good points. There is eveidence to show that diverse officers and crew including Uhura, Rand, Troi, Chekov, Sulu, Desalle, O'Brien etc can all fly the ship, navigate, shoot phasers, use transporters, and fix at least basic ship technology in addition to their established 'discipline'.
Medics may or may not be in a league of their own. Some evidence sugests that they are trained at Starfleet Medical rather than the main Starfleet Acadamy. There is evidence to suggest that one does not have to spend one's whole education at Starfleet Acadamy to become an officer. McCoy was a qualified 'country' doctor with a family before joining up, Chapel was a research biologist, and Troi graduated in psychology on Betazed. Nevertheless, they need Acadamy training in addition to their 'professional' qualifications to function as 'astronauts'. To suggest crew would be sent into space without being trained to know how to work the ship is bonkers.
I think the modern navy is still the best real world example. I don't know how much basic grounding officers are given. I doubt that the average naval nurse can fly a plane or defuse a bomb but I'm sure they are given wider training than civilian nurses.
The problem with that is that three colors = three departments is way too little. It results in odd combinations such as Security+Engineering+Clerical...
To be sure, it might also be bad form to ponder about the safety of one crewperson for too long when the whole ship is about to explode. LaForge was there, and he supposedly had the special set of skills required. Crusher wasn't there, with anti-rad inoculations. And donning protective gear might not have made a difference, or might have taken too long. Troi supposedly did know the technical specifics of the disaster at hand, and would have known the time limits as well.
To be sure, it's not as much the writers showing Troi as ignorant of the deeper meaning of a containment field failure, but the writers showing that Ensign Ro is always ready to state the obvious if it makes her fellow officers look bad...
Timo Saloniemi
Quite - Picard says Ro would have made Lt. Cmdr. by the time she joined the TNG crew if it were not for her indiscretions. It is hard to imagine Ro doesn't know this herself, so we can safely assume that she knows if things were different she would doubtless be in charge in "Disaster".
That said of course, Ro was wrong and Troi was right, so on this occasion the chain of command worked very well.
Security, clerical, deck, navigation, weapons, legal, and technical specialties are combined within a single division in the modern US Navy.
In the system currently in use, enlisted personnel are separated into five general categories. Each of the categories is color-coded at the lower rates (pay grades), and is delineated by a particular term:
Airman (Aviation) - Green
Constructionman (Seabees) - Sky Blue
Fireman (Engineering and Hull Repair) - Red
Hospitalman (Medical) - White/Dark Blue (varies by season)
Seaman (Deck/Admin/Navigation/Weapons/Security/Legal) - White/Dark Blue (varies by season)
It's easy to see how this could develop into a Starfleet-like system. Merging of the Airman division into Fireman and Seaman, where appropriate, and consolidating Constructionman with Fireman would yield three divisions which generally correspond with Star Trek's:
Fireman (Engineering, etc.) - Red
Hospitalman (Medical) - White/Dark Blue (varies by season)
Seaman (Deck, etc.) - White/Dark Blue (varies by season)
Using Gold/Khaki, which is associated with officer and chief petty officers in the Navy (and thus with command), to differentiate medical from deck, we would even arrive at the Starfleet color scheme (the Navy has no non-medical scientific ratings, so science could be assumed in the Hospitalman category):
Fireman (Engineering, etc.) - Red
Hospitalman (Medical, Science) - Blue
Seaman (Deck, etc.) - Gold
In TOS terms (and treating officers as being divided the same way):
Kirk - Deck (Command) - Gold
Spock - Science - Blue
Scotty - Engineering - Red
McCoy - Medical - Blue
Sulu - Deck (Helm) - Gold
Uhura - Technical (Communcations) - Gold
Chekov - Navigation - Gold
I actually take issue with this. How long was there left before containment breach? I think Troi had left insufficient time for the damaged saucer section to get clear without any real indication that anybody was alive. She was right with hindsight but she just got lucky. Her command decision was actually terrible.
I would have forgiven her if, for example, she had been able to communicate telepathically with Riker, even if only briefly. As it was, I think her command performace was poor.
I also take issue that the immediacy of the emergency in the command test justifies her failure to at least consider safety options before sentencing a crewman to death. This decision is the polar opposite of the first. She needs to be somewhere in the middle.
Interesting info on the modern navy's colour scheme too!
Uhura was originally in gold and was assigned to ops in TMP. Security seems to be the odd one out in TOS compared to the modern navy.
Last edited:
I don't follow. There are clearly only three divisions. Whether the colors indicate career qualifications or assignment, there are going to be odd combinations.
If we think of Starfleet evolving from a more military organization, there may have originally been just two divisions: "command" for the fighting/driving or "deck" functions, and "engineering/services" for everything else. The quasi-civilian "science" division could have some along later (perhaps with medicos switching from "services" to "sciences" as more appropriate). And there you have it, three divisions. That's just one way it could shake out.
US Army personnel, BTW, are grouped into three broad categories: Combat arms (infantry, armor, cavalry, artillery), combat support (engineers, aviation, signals, intel...) and combat service support (medical, quartermaster, transportation, ordnance, legal, administrative...).
--Justin
The army divisions make sense to me. I think I can see a certain logic to TOS. Ops (yellow) involves operating the ship and its systems (including technical repairs) and commanding groups of crewmen, engineering (red) involves maintaining and repairing ship-wide systems, science is self-explanatory. I think it's lumping in security, legal, and admin with engineering that seems curious to me. I can see why the former three belong in one group but not why that group should also be lumped in with engineering. Further, transporter operators should be ops rather than engineering.
There are also some illogical choices. Uhura should have remained in yellow, Ann Mulhall should have been blue, Charlene Masters should have been in red, Marla McGyvers should have been in blue. It's clear that some crew can have positions which straddle divisions (i.e. we assume that Mulhall and McGyvers were also engineers or in admin).
In TNG it goes a bit wrong again, with the bridge ops position being assigned to engineering.
Very curious!
Security officers and engineers apparentally receive similar training. In TNG's Chain of Command Captain Jellico transferred half of the engineering staff to security. One would think that their training must be essentially the same for this to occur. Also, when Data was presumed lost in The Most Toys, Worf was chosen to take over as Ops officer, even though it is more an engineering related job than security. And on Enterprise, Lt. Reed seemed to do as much engineering related tasks as Trip.
I can see how you can transfer engineers to security since all crew are trained to shoot but I'm not sure you could transfer security to engineering with similar effectiveness.
I do agree that the cross pollenation aspect has more to do with wanting to use the actors than any in-world logic. Somebody mentioned that O'Brien has had a similarly diverse career. This adds credence to the theory that officers are given broad training with at least one area of specialty (ok O'Brien wasn't an officer but he was clearly exceptional). This also makes it worse that Troi was singled out as being so incompetent.
Not fair - a command decision is ALWAYS judged by the results, Troi risked more than Ro would have and it paid off. Military history is scattered with bigger risks. How often in WW2 did the Captain of a destroyer risk every life on his ship to save a couple of dozen survivors of a sunken ship?
Well as another poster has already explained, Troi in that situation is written as knowing the technical situation very well. You cannot also try and ring round to find someone more dispensible in those situations. The test was "send your friend Geordi to die" - it was very specific, and Troi herself points out she wonders if she could do it for real.
Now if you want a genuine command mistake by a female officer in TNG I direct you to Crusher leaving it just a second too long to raise the shields in "Descent".
I don't agree that a command decision must be judged *solely* by the results but I do agree that history is full of tales of people who sacrificed thousands of men to achieve a particular result. For them, the result was everything; less so for the men who were gunned down in the process!
I agree that Ro was far too cautious but Troi's gamble was too risky. She said she was going to wait until the 'last possible moment' to let the saucer get away while giving possible survivors a chance but she actually waited so long that the saucer could not have got away - that seems to me to be bad decision based on the evidence she had at the time. It was a Galaxy Quest moment - poor writing just to make it more 'exciting'.
I also accept Troi had to make a snap decision in the test but it was Spock's greater natural resistance to radiation that allowed him to survive long enough to effect repairs in TWoK. I think it would have been more appropriate just to ask if there was any crewman who was qualified to do the job who stood a chance of survival. It's not a question of dispensibility so much as finding the crewman most likely to succeed. If the answer is no and if Data is on the bridge then Geordi may well be up. He might have no time to don a protective suit but it should have been a consideration.
Good point on Crusher but lets not forget the mother of all F~~k ups by Kirk himself in TWoK when he failed to act cautiously and failed to follow regulations and ended up getting a number of his crew killed.
Last edited:
Similar threads
