Troi's Chair
- Thread starter EyalM
- Start date
I get what you mean and I know the tactic. His demeanor in every other way in both episodes goes against the idea of winning people over, so I lean toward it being more a power trip than anything else because NO ONE is going call the captain by his first name.
I've had bosses in the past who power trip in overt ways and subtle ways. This one felt like one of the subtle ways.
I feel like discussing Troi's chair is not that exciting, so this transmorgified into the Captain Jellico is mean to the Ent-D crew official discussion. 
Well, that's interesting... because when Riker suggests that Jellico is confident, Troi immediately shuts the idea down:
DATA: Captain on the Bridge.
JELLICO: Let him stew for a few minutes, then go in and tell him you'veconvinced me to meet with him one more time. Tell him I'm a loose cannon and that he needs to be more reasonable because I'm such an unreasonable man. Lemec will want to bring his own aides on board. Pretend to be worried that I'll object, and then give grudging permission for two aides, no more. Understood?
TROI: Yes, sir.
RIKER: Aye, sir.
(Jellico goes into his Ready room)
RIKER: Well, I'll say this for him. He's sure of himself.
TROI: No, he's not.
Yep, this is the point I made a couple of pages back. I think his behaviour is a result of a lack of confidence and trying to use control freakery to give himself a sense of order over an unfamiliar and uncomfortable situation.
Of course he wasn't confident. He was surrounded by a legendary crew that had saved the federation on multiple occasions, with a first officer who acted as captain and defeated the borg. His ship was a glorified transport.
Why else would he spend more time hiding in his quarters looking at his kids pictures and pulling crew off battle drills to redecorate his office, if not to hide how scared he was that he was outshone by Mott? He would rather spend his time deciding if a picture is of an elephant than spend 10 minutes explaining the mission to his senior crew, especially Riker, so they could take over in the likely event the captain was incapacitated, it's evidence of a bad captain, a bad leader, and a bad manager. He did not deserve to sit in the hotel chairs on the bridge let alone the centre chair.
Why else would he spend more time hiding in his quarters looking at his kids pictures and pulling crew off battle drills to redecorate his office, if not to hide how scared he was that he was outshone by Mott? He would rather spend his time deciding if a picture is of an elephant than spend 10 minutes explaining the mission to his senior crew, especially Riker, so they could take over in the likely event the captain was incapacitated, it's evidence of a bad captain, a bad leader, and a bad manager. He did not deserve to sit in the hotel chairs on the bridge let alone the centre chair.
Counterpoint, Jellico might have done his homework and knew how much staff Geordi actually needed to implement the changes and to run the engineering department efficiently. If a third of the engineering staff can be reassigned and outside of Geordi complaining once no problem arises that's a sign that third wasn't really needed.
Riker couldn't have been a bit better, he could have been much better. As XO it is literally his job to run the ship as the captain demands, it's not his job to know better and not implement the changes the captain wants. If he thought a four shift rotation would lead to problems he should have brought this up immediately and explain the exact reasons to Jellico so that he can reassess the situation but ultimately the choice is still the captain's. Simply not implementing the changes and not informing the captain until he asks about it is the worst thing Riker could have done.
I still don't see how Jellico didn't help matters, he was the commanding officer, it was not his job to adjust his command style or preferences to the crew's expectations.
None of Jellico's orders were objectively problematic, the crew simply didn't like them but that's a "tough shit, do your job and stop whining" situation.
And of course Riker has always been unprofessional, if he liked a subordinate officer he was their buddy and they could get away with a lot, if he didn't like them he got super pissy and dressed them down at every opportunity.
Counter to your counterpoint: we don't hear about any problems with the lack of engineering personnel on screen, but there could very well have been some. And Data, being Geordi's best friend, almost certainly would have been helping him out pretty much every off duty minute he could since he doesn't require sleep. And he's fast and efficient and can probably do the work of 10 people on his staff at the exact same time. So having someone like that on your side helping out is going to smooth over a LOT of whatever issues may come up.
As for Jellico, he could have engendered some trust with everyone. He was too much of a manager and not enough of a leader. Besides him always using first names of everyone, there's other examples of him just being on a power trip... like having Data say 'captain on the bridge' every time he steps onto it. While that may be actual procedure, we don't see other captains requiring their bridge crew to do that. Kirk, Picard, Sisko... never had their crew do it. You know why? Because they didn't need that reminder that they were in charge or need to have others remind them who's in charge.
As someone else pointed out, this was a crew that handled some major stuff over the years, like the Borg. Clearly, they know what they're doing. Jellico came from basically a lesser ship to a top of the line one, and there is some obvious feelings of inadequacy there, which he brings out with his command style. That's not someone I'd want to serve under.
(In Jellico's defense, we don't know if he was like this with the crew of the Cairo. So he may have a more moderate command style. But based on
his PRODIGY season 2 appearance
Also in his defense, he got Troi to wear the uniform, and we DID get to see Data FINALLY wear red when he was made temporary XO.)
Fortunately the crew didn't need to go into battle completely exhausted
Jellico hid away in his quarters from literally the second he made his desire known (before he was captain) until the point he turned up to be made captain.
As he was cutting off Riker and he was running to his quarters, Jellico explicitly told him he was going to be hiding in his quarters from the second he boarded to the ceremony. We saw later this didn't involve crew or mission work, but instead he spent his time looking at pictures his grandkids had made him.
Given the option of accepting Data's assertion that the entire Engineering Department was required for a fraction of the total extra workload or accepting that Jellico -- with zero experience of the ship or crew -- as an accurate read on the crew's capabilities and capacity... I'm going to go with Data.
It's also the job of the first officer to make sure that the captain has the correct information they require to come to their decision.
Riker's investigation of Jellico's request highlighted potential serious problems that he couldn't be sure that Jellico knew about or accounted for, so he paused implementation of the request until he had the opportunity to report back to Jellico and have him confirm that he's still ordering the change.
Given that Jellico had no interest in listening to Riker's report a few hours later, I see no reason to believe that Jellico would have any more interest in Riker's opinions regarding potential problems at the outset.
Indeed.
Which only happened because Jellico unbent enough to allow limited feedback that actually served his agenda (the actual "win" was almost entirely due to the efforts and contributions of Data, Geordi and Riker rather than Jellico).
It still bothers me to this day that Janeway's chair is not in the center.
Why is that? For me, I feel like each show was trying to show us something different.
TOS - Kirk's center of the bridge, his chair spins around so he can address everyone.
TNG - Three command chairs so Picard can have advisers to either side: Riker and Troi.
DS9 - It's a space station, so he gets an office instead of the big chair. When in OPS, he strolls around.
VOY - The idea was that it's the Janeway-Chakotay duo thematically, Janeway leading the Starfleeters, Chakotay leading the Maquis, so twin chairs to symbolize this.
Fast forward to Prodigy. The twin chairs are a nod to Voyager, but also symbolic. The blue guy steps down to XO, Gwen has earned command, so in a sense, they're equals now in that they've both gone through some serious growth across the 2nd season.
