something that's puzzled me for years
- Thread starter JoeZhang
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I would say that you are correct. That position did whatever they wanted Data to say. Some of its functionality seemed to overlap with Worf, while some of it also seemed to overlap with the stations at the back of the bridge behind security.
Wasn't Worf supposed to be an Ops officer on DS9 when he wasn't in charge of the Defiant? His role seemed even more ambiguous.
O'Brien was chief of operations on DS9, which was kind of like being an operations manager, but was really more like an engineer. (I guess it wasn't called "chief engineer" because a space station doesn't have engines.) Worf was the strategic operations officer, which mean he was responsible for coordinating fleet operations and activities in the sector. Totally different from managing the operations of the station and its equipment.
Plecostomus
Commodore
In a way.
Operations coordinates everything, from the positioning of the ship for optimal sensor coverage (as approved by the captain and carried out by the helm) to power distro as carried out by engineering... in short this is the position that makes everything else so.
When the saucer was knocked out of orbit there is a good chance that no one was manning engineering (either the bridge console or the impulse engine-room stations) so Operations was in charge of directing SIF and IDF modes as well as trying to get the thrusters working.
A non emergency roll would involve Operations setting up a probe launch. Pick a probe, tell the launch crews what kind and what payload, setting up the launch time, reporting this to the captain ("probe ready") and then coordinating with the helm to position the ship just so. Then Operations would monitor the flight of the probe and the telemetry of the probe while the science team pours over the incoming information (bet you though I was going to say Data, eh?).
Operations coordinates everything, from the positioning of the ship for optimal sensor coverage (as approved by the captain and carried out by the helm) to power distro as carried out by engineering... in short this is the position that makes everything else so.
When the saucer was knocked out of orbit there is a good chance that no one was manning engineering (either the bridge console or the impulse engine-room stations) so Operations was in charge of directing SIF and IDF modes as well as trying to get the thrusters working.
A non emergency roll would involve Operations setting up a probe launch. Pick a probe, tell the launch crews what kind and what payload, setting up the launch time, reporting this to the captain ("probe ready") and then coordinating with the helm to position the ship just so. Then Operations would monitor the flight of the probe and the telemetry of the probe while the science team pours over the incoming information (bet you though I was going to say Data, eh?).
On a day to day basis Riker also seemed responsible for much of operation on the ship. Although, that could be because he was responsible for personnel decision, and once those were made the actual logistics of the operations of the personnel were handed over to Data. Seems really complicated. Can any veterans chime in with similarities/differences of real-life military?
One might say that the functionality of Data's console mattered little when Picard decided where to point his questions and orders. What mattered was that Data was sitting there.
If the matter dealt with standard helm stuff, the conn officer would be addressed. If it was standard combat stuff, say, routine sensor sweeps, internal security status updates, firing the guns at designated targets, then Yar or later Worf would handle it.
But if it was anything out of the ordinary, Data's expertise would be called for to perform a more thorough sensor sweep, to manipulate the internal security arrangements in greater detail, to pinpoint the weak spot on the enemy vessel. He would then do the jobs of the conn officer or the tactical officer from his own do-all console, and do them better.
Other Galaxy class starships would no doubt follow a different procedure. Perhaps Captain Varley would let his Tactical Officer do all the cool stuff, including piloting the ship? Perhaps Keogh would have a dedicated Science Officer on the bridge but no Operations Officer?
Supposedly, any skipper would customize his ship to a great extent. And we do see that Picard has rearranged his bridge after "Encounter at Farpoint", moving the forward consoles around and switching their places. Quite probably, those forward consoles are deliberately made to be easily movable just for this reason.
Timo Saloniemi
If the matter dealt with standard helm stuff, the conn officer would be addressed. If it was standard combat stuff, say, routine sensor sweeps, internal security status updates, firing the guns at designated targets, then Yar or later Worf would handle it.
But if it was anything out of the ordinary, Data's expertise would be called for to perform a more thorough sensor sweep, to manipulate the internal security arrangements in greater detail, to pinpoint the weak spot on the enemy vessel. He would then do the jobs of the conn officer or the tactical officer from his own do-all console, and do them better.
Other Galaxy class starships would no doubt follow a different procedure. Perhaps Captain Varley would let his Tactical Officer do all the cool stuff, including piloting the ship? Perhaps Keogh would have a dedicated Science Officer on the bridge but no Operations Officer?
Supposedly, any skipper would customize his ship to a great extent. And we do see that Picard has rearranged his bridge after "Encounter at Farpoint", moving the forward consoles around and switching their places. Quite probably, those forward consoles are deliberately made to be easily movable just for this reason.
Timo Saloniemi
I like the idea of this flexibility. Great for the captain, of course. And ideal for settled crews whose aptitudes/roles can be fine-tuned. Exploration, first-contact and any other single-ship mission would work more smoothly with such a set-up. Perfect for peacetime.
But I do wonder how it would stand up to rapidly rotating crew complement and in more flotilla/fleet situations? Could you have a consistent engagement or strategic doctrine if every ship is managed very differently internally? Probably, but it might be harder, I'd say. And if there a battle casualties and new crew got rotated in, it would take them a while to get up to speed.
Is there anything suggested about how ship-board operations changed on the Enterprise during/after the Dominion War compared to the peacetime of the series? The change of ship by time of First Contact makes it difficult to make comparisons, I guess.
Not at all. I said he coordinated operations, not just movements. He was a fleet liaison and intelligence officer. His job was to coordinate the decision-making and sharing of information between the station command structure and the command structures of the ships in the fleet, to manage the strategic planning of Starfleet's operations in the region. It's kind of like being a first officer, but for a whole fleet rather than one vessel.
I don't know about the military, but there is an analogy in film production. The captain is like the director: the one who makes the decisions as to what will be done. The first officer is like the producer: the one who figures out the plan for how the crew will carry out those decisions. And the operations manager is like the first assistant director: the one who coordinates and supervises the actual execution of that plan, takes care of the details so the higher-ups can focus more on the big picture.
So the captain says "We need to escape the Anomaly of the Week." The first officer assigns the science and engineering teams to research the AotW and find a way out. And the ops manager allocates power to the appropriate sensor grids, balances it with the shield and propulsion power necessary to resist the AotW's effects, etc.
Of course, that isn't cool or dramatic to watch, so TNG and VGR both presented the ops officer as sort of a de facto science officer. Dramatic license.
Yup; perhaps a better comparison might be between the TV and ST:GEN versions of the Enterprise-D?
More consoles were added for the movie, and more of them were crewed during alerts. One added console read Communications, something that had never warranted a console of its own in TNG before. Perhaps the ship had acquired a command role of some sort, with the navigation bridge doubling as the "flag bridge" or fleet command center?
The various TOS movie bridges might also offer points of comparison. TMP and ST2 showed new emphasis on Tactical and Security, pairing the two and giving them a dedicated console. They also showed a Science Officer in the double role of XO, although this was something of an accident both in TMP and aboard Kirk's ship in ST2. There was no representative of Ops on the bridge back then.
From ST3 onwards, the Navigation console was crewed by a ("services") greycollar rather than the former ("low command"/"ship operations") yellowcollar, perhaps an early sign of deemphasis on that position? In ST5, Tactical again moved to a humble side console and lost a permanent operator, although we should remember the ship only had a skeleton crew in that movie. The big jump would be the dropping of the Navigation position altogether, and the addition of the Ops representative, but those would only happen in TNG.
The E-C bridge tells us little, since it was apparently re-crewed after initial casualties. The Stargazer one might hint at changes, as yellow (the equivalent of former grey?) sits at Nav and blue at Helm... But again those could be casualty replacements.
Put short, we'd need yet more data to say anything definitive. But speculation is fun, too.
As regards Strategic Operations Officer,
And then he got reamed by Odo when he tried to do that, while Odo in turn was doing that very stuff behind Worf's back (on the matter of criminal investigations, admittedly, not warfare, but nevertheless).
Timo Saloniemi
Who does what on the bridge of the Enterprise depends upon the episode. I think the writers sometimes forget who does what.
In the Ensigns of Command, Riker manages to control the ship from his little display computer near his chair. There are other, numerous instances of this - usually so they didnt have to pay an extra to sit at the conn when wesley wasn't there (and after he left).
Also depends on the director too. Watched Descent pt1 the other day, and Geordi delivered a line whilst sat in troi's chair!!!
When was the last time that happened?
Normally he would have said it whilst sat at the Engineering station, but given that Picard and Geordi were the only ones in the scene (aside from extras) the director chose to shoot it in a single rather than cut between two shots (plus it stopped Picard geting lonely sat in the command circle...
)
In the Ensigns of Command, Riker manages to control the ship from his little display computer near his chair. There are other, numerous instances of this - usually so they didnt have to pay an extra to sit at the conn when wesley wasn't there (and after he left).
Also depends on the director too. Watched Descent pt1 the other day, and Geordi delivered a line whilst sat in troi's chair!!!
When was the last time that happened?
Normally he would have said it whilst sat at the Engineering station, but given that Picard and Geordi were the only ones in the scene (aside from extras) the director chose to shoot it in a single rather than cut between two shots (plus it stopped Picard geting lonely sat in the command circle...
)
The Ops Console also has one of the rare "Do Not Press" buttons on it.
I always took ops to be equivalent to the old post of flight engineer on airplanes. And to pick up on what some of you others have said, it became a kind of default station for problem-solving, so as to limit the number of extras sitting at consoles. -- RR
Very true.
As I understand it, the XO and Captain can take control of the CONN or OPPS from their seats. I believe it was in the Tech Manual that said that. It makes some sense, should CONN be disabled he can take it over. It looked like he did something like it during Yesterday's Enterprise, while the Enterprise was fighting the Klingons.
Geordi was acting as XO. Data was AWOL and Riker was on the planet looking for Data. Geordi was the next in line to be XO then CO if need be. I believe the chain of command went: Picard, Riker, Data and Geordi. I would imagine Worf would be next in line.
It would really make the most sense if every console aboard the ship could do the job of every other console. I mean, it's just software - why should console A not be able to do what console B does?
The various bridge stations probably don't exist for accommodating different interfaces and systems. They exist simply to accommodate different personnel. A jokester might change the labels of each of the bridge stations during the night shift, and the next shift might sit according to the new labeling yet have no problem performing their jobs; the console on the rail behind Picard would be identical to the ones in front of Data or behind Worf's back in every practical respect.
Timo Saloniemi
I think that this is born out by several of the episodes. Several times Geordi will "transfer engineering to bridge." In Chain of Command, Jellico orders several of the bridge stations retasked to damage control.
I thought greycollars were Sciences (which obviously included Nav in the TMP-TUC era) and yellowcollars engineering.
BTW, slightly off tangent: never made sense to me that helm/conn people wear command colours.
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