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Tuvok's Rank in "Resolutions"

KyleCHaight

Commodore
Commodore
How come Tuvok retained his rank of lieutenant after Captain Janeway placed him in command of Voyager? Wouldn't it have been more logical for her to promote him to captain? Furthermore, after six weeks in command, why was he still wearing the gold uniform instead of the command red one?
 
A captain cannot promote someone to the rank of Captain, you need an admiral to do it.

Tuvok, being a logical Vulcan, would have failed to see the point of why he should promote himself. Even though he was a Lieutenant he could still effectively lead. He didn't need a Captain's rank pip to say that he could.

Just because someone's a Captain doesn't mean they're a Captain rank either. Sisko was Captain of the Defiant in Season 3 at the rank of Commander.
 
Maybe tuvok was nostalgic for the old days where God was the command colour :D

Actually, it could mean that part of him didn't want to totally abandon the captain ^.^

And rank doesn't mean as much as the position that one holds. We know that there we other Lt. Cmdrs floating around voyager, yet often times Ensign Kim was placed in command, or Tom Paris for that matter.
 
Of course, Tuvok was often referred to as lieutenant in the early eps even though he was wearing lieutenant commander insignia. I've also noticed that in some eps, Torres' pip seems to show full lieutenant and other times lieutenant j.g.

sunshine1.gif
 
^ If it was the first season then that was correct. The costuming department screwed up the rank pins horribly in the first season.
 
Dimension11 said:

And rank doesn't mean as much as the position that one holds. We know that there we other Lt. Cmdrs floating around voyager, yet often times Ensign Kim was placed in command, or Tom Paris for that matter.
The only lieutenant commanders (other than Chakotay) listed at Memory Alpha are a few who are among a killed-in-action list shown on a viewscreen in one episode. It's entirely possible they all died at the beginning of "Caretaker."
 
I believe that whomever is in captaining the ship is automatically referred to as Captain, regardless of their actual rank.
 
If not promoted to Captain then why not a field promotion to at least Lt Commander. Wouldn't Lieutants only command ships with crews at least half the size of Voyagers?
 
nx1701g said:
^ If it was the first season then that was correct. The costuming department screwed up the rank pins horribly in the first season.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's from S1 eps, cause that's what Spike has been running lately. Is LJG her "official" rank?

sunshine1.gif
 
mcmac said:
I believe that whomever is in captaining the ship is automatically referred to as Captain, regardless of their actual rank.

I know that Sisko was referred by Commander, which is his full rank. Haven't watched DS9 in a while; was he a commander when he first commanded the defiant? Or was he already promoted then? How was he addressed?
 
IIRC Torres was supposed to be a Lt. JG, Paris a Lt. The reason why I said this is because (i forgot the episode name), during a warp core breach, Torres orders everyone out of engineering, but Paris says "you can't order me, I outrank you". And in 1x01, Janeway awards Paris the rank of Lt.

Tuvok was a Lt in the beginning, and later promoted to Lt. Cdr.

In fact, VOY's first season introduced a never before seen rank, Crewman First Class, as seen on several of the Marquis crewmen in Learning Curve & Seska.

The confusing part is of course the costume screw up, where Tuvok was wearing a Lt. Cdr. rank, Torres a Lt. Attempts have been made to explain this, and include the fact that both Tuvok & Torres were demoted off screen for the events where they defied Janeway's orders and gave Voyager's library in exchange for transporter technology (again I forgot the name of the episode).
 
Dimension11 said:
mcmac said:
I believe that whomever is in captaining the ship is automatically referred to as Captain, regardless of their actual rank.

I know that Sisko was referred by Commander, which is his full rank. Haven't watched DS9 in a while; was he a commander when he first commanded the defiant? Or was he already promoted then? How was he addressed?

He was a commander for a full season of commanding the defiant before being promoted in 'The Adversary'. But he was usually referred to as 'commander', as was Worf when he commanded her. It was only in the Dominion war 6 parter they stated the 'always called Captain' thing - Dax was called Captain while in command.
 
Gotcha :D My memory of DS9 is rather hazy.

Although it's also interesting to note that the rank of Commander (for example WW2 and before) was meant to be the one actually commanding the ship, where the captain played more the role of commanding a number of ships.
 
He didn't have a rank (at least while he wasn't ECH) AFAIK. He was just "the doctor", with a Chief Medical Officer appointment.
 
It would make sense, sort of, even if he were a biological humanoid CMO. After all, his rank would be rather meaningless when dealing with non-medical issues, and he would have no medical staff to pull rank with. And whether his rank affected his pay or not is pretty moot in the context of VOY if not in the general context of 24th century Trek already.

IIRC Torres was supposed to be a Lt. JG, Paris a Lt. The reason why I said this is because (i forgot the episode name), during a warp core breach, Torres orders everyone out of engineering, but Paris says "you can't order me, I outrank you".

I think this was in "Day of Honor", where both characters already wore the pins of Lt(jg). But Paris would theoretically outrank Torres in any case, in the sense that Paris got his commission in "Caretaker", while Torres got hers in "Parallax", several days later. And the officer with more days on a rank is senior in the relevant sense of the word: he gets to order those people of his rank who have spent fewer days at it.

In fact, VOY's first season introduced a never before seen rank, Crewman First Class, as seen on several of the Marquis crewmen in Learning Curve & Seska.

Crewman 1st Class was first mentioned out loud in TNG "Drumhead". Supposedly there are at least two, possibly three or four different rates of Crewman, like in the real world, even though none have special insignia in the TNG era.

The insignia on those VOY personnel were identical to the thing that Torres wears on her collar: everybody in the Maquis save for Chakotay (and Torres in some early episodes) was wearing the Lt(jg) pin, and we weren't supposed to notice. Indeed, those pins were so hard to read that it's easy to pretend some weren't Lt(jg) but were instead Ensign (as Seska should have worn) or perhaps Crewman (a never-before-seen pin in modern Starfleet, to be sure - previous 24th century personnel only wore rank markings if they were commissioned officers, some O'Brien haziness notwithstanding).

The confusing part is of course the costume screw up, where Tuvok was wearing a Lt. Cdr. rank, Torres a Lt. Attempts have been made to explain this, and include the fact that both Tuvok & Torres were demoted off screen for the events where they defied Janeway's orders and gave Voyager's library in exchange for transporter technology (again I forgot the name of the episode).

That'd be "Prime Factors". The demotions would come by the time of "Cathexis" a couple of episodes later, and would be a rather logical development - but "Cathexis" itself isn't logical, because Tuvok's rank pips fluctuate from scene to scene there.

Timo Saloniemi
 
As far as we've seen, the CMO seems to be of a fairly high rank, a Lt. Cmdr & above (except ds9 and ent). but i suppose you're right, it wouldn't have made much of a difference, except probably as an excuse to hand him/her command in case of an emergency :P

Timo said:
Crewman 1st Class was first mentioned out loud in TNG "Drumhead". Supposedly there are at least two, possibly three or four different rates of Crewman, like in the real world, even though none have special insignia in the TNG era.

It's only one of the explainations out there to explain a single, hollow pip. it's interesting to note that, IIRC, we only see the marquis wear this, i dont recall seeing any starfleet crew wearing it.

thanks for pointing out some of the dates/episodes to the points brought up btw, sometimes these just elude me ^.^
 
Crewman47 said:
If not promoted to Captain then why not a field promotion to at least Lt Commander. Wouldn't Lieutants only command ships with crews at least half the size of Voyagers?

What rank the commanding officer of a ship has depends on the size of the ship, but also the size of the fleet.
For example, I've heard that in the US, you sometimes have a Lt. Cmdr. in command of a aircraft carrier, a ship that holds 1000s of crew.
I've also heard that in some small Europeans nations, the commanding officer is usually a Cmdr. and for the biggest ships and captain.

So my point is, as has already been said, rank doesn't matter so much, concerning who the commanding officer is.
 
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