Was Picard Grooming Geordi For Chief?

[Mojochi]

MacDougall, Shimoda, Argyle, Singh, Lynch, Logan etc... Picard seemed to have had a revolving door of potential chiefs of engineering in that 1st season. Some unnamed people too... Argyle got referred to as "One of our chief engineers". Picard comes into his new ship with a hand picked counselor, chief of security, and 1st & 2nd officers, (I think Bev hadn't been planned) but NO permanent chief of engineering, or at least no one who stuck.

Now, later on, in The Next Phase, Picard tells of his 1st encounter with shuttle pilot Geordi, and how he offhandedly griped about engine efficiency, to which Geordi spent the whole night improving it. He knew then he wanted him for his next assignment. However, when Geordi posts to the 1701-D, 7 years into serving, at age 29, he's still only a LTJG, just like Worf, who's 5 years younger & only been out of the academy like a year or 2. Geordi is the same age & academy class as RIKER! Who's already being offered his own command in 2364, at age 29.

Question #1: Was Geordi being passed over? Surely a guy who can fix a shuttle's engine in a night, by himself, has always been the same amount of talented that we now know him for. Was it maybe because of his handicap? Is he yet another example of one of Picard's "justice" selections, like Worf & Data, or Sito Jaxa & Ro Laren, or even Wesley, all of whom might otherwise have never been given the chance to prove/redeem themselves, due to their checkered history, or even just prejudice about their physical nature, being androids, Klingons, handicapped or too young?

Question #2: Did Picard maybe always know he wanted Geordi as his chief engineer, but Geordi came in at the unjustly low rank of LTJG, & needed time to advance? So, maybe Picard was just cycling thru people down there, finding an ongoing parade of reasons to be unimpressed & oust them, while he bided his time, waiting on Geordi to be ready? Or am I just head canoning too deep again?

 

[XCV330]

There's an episode where Worf mentions Picard likes all his officers to cross-train (how Total Football on a ship the size of Enterprise D works, I do not know). I think it might be kind of like Enterprise on season 1 of Disco.. for that matter Discovery itself. They hadn't really fleshed out or needed a chief engineer so they may have name dropped but didn't get around to it. With Disco they got Reno for season 2.

Picard does mention in season 5 that La Forge once worked all night to fix a shuttle and that drew his attention to him. So I guess the other 3 or 4 chiefs went to make room for La Forge.

My head-cannon as it were: Galaxy Class ships were new and they had several chief engineers on board that first year to avoid the kinds of problems the Refit Constitution had on its initial run, or they might also have been there to learn and then move to other Galaxy class ships being built. If that was the case Geordie might have been on the fast track to taking over..

 

[Dukhat]

Was there anything at all in season 1 that gave any indication that Geordi was supposed to be on a track toward Chief Engineer? Because he seemed to be pretty established as the helmsman.

 

[Sketcher]

Maybe helm was a temporary posting because the engineering staff was full at the time. Geordi had enough skills as a pilot to make it on the Enterprise, and if something opened up in engineering down the road, great.

Same logic I use for why Sulu was an astrophysicist at first on the Enterprise - wants to be a pilot, Enterprise doesn't have any open positions, but he's skilled enough in another area to make it on board.

 

[Uncle Sock]

Was there anything at all in season 1 that gave any indication that Geordi was supposed to be on a track toward Chief Engineer? Because he seemed to be pretty established as the helmsman.

I never understood that either. Geordi becoming chief engineer in season 2 was a complete surprise to me, and to this day I even wonder what qualified him to get that position. All of a sudden he was this engineering whiz kid, when all he ever did before was pilot the ship and on occasion sit in the big chair. It had always been my impression Geordi would eventually advance to a command-role position, so when he wore gold from season 2 onwards, I never fully got why.

The retcon in Next Phase was a nice touch, but still didn't explain the transfer fully.

On top of that, I have often wondered why the Enterprise had only one chief engineer after Geordi took over. Such a massive ship, over 1,000 people aboard, and one chief engineer is responsible for it all? No wonder Geordi was so terrible at dating; he hardly ever got out of the engine room.

I liked that season 1 had several chief engineers. I can absolutely imagine a rotation of several, like one chief engineer for the warp drive systems, one chief engineer for life support systems, etc. etc. etc.

And yes, as usual, there are real world explanations for this. But establishing a rotation of several chief engineers in season 1 to a one-man job season 2 and onwards without any further explanation is just lame.

 

[Mojochi]

Was there anything at all in season 1 that gave any indication that Geordi was supposed to be on a track toward Chief Engineer?

No. Not at all really, except he did find his way down there a few times for certain issues. By all accounts, he is firmly in the red suit command track, even getting to command once, despite his low rank. (From a show production PoV, I think there were a few characters whose roles were up in the air, in season one)

I'm mostly just positing that in retrospect Picard, in his experience, was wise enough to recognize LaForge as potentially a great talent for the role, long before anyone else, even Geordi himself, who maybe never had even planned on it, until Picard put it out there. Until then, maybe he was low in rank still, compared to Riker, and was going to need a spell before he'd be up for any lead role at all.

So, Picard was shifting people around down there until he was satisfied, & maybe he already knew who would be to his satisfaction. That sure does seem like Picard. He had hand picked almost everybody else. Maybe he'd also hand picked a guy before that guy was even ready yet

I do like @XCV330 suggestion that because the ship model was new, & highly advanced there'd have been a number of people coming thru to get time with its systems, but I'm still suspicious Picard was holding off on anything permanent until he could get Geordi positioned & convinced to step into it.