What are junior officers?

[Chaos Descending]

In US militaries a Junior Officer is between 01-02. 2LT-1LT and ENS-LTJG. An 0-3 CAPT or LT is not considered a junior officer.

In the US Navy and Coast Guard an O-3 LT is in fact considered a Junior Officer (or JO), and so is an O-4 Lieutenant Commander.

A Navy "JO" is almost exactly synonymous with "Company Grade Officer" in the Army, except of course in the Army an O-4 Major is a "Field Grade Officer" and not a "Company Grade Officer".

 

[Use of Time]

There are several engineering officer's on the Defiant and DS9. Who else do they report to? O'Brien is in charge of both.

Are you sure they're officers? Muniz was a crewman in the Defiant's engineering crew. There were other crewmen about, too. And we don't know that the Bajoran engineers were officers, do we? We know Rom was an enlisted engineer in the station's engineering crew.

If they wanted to go the NCO route they should have portrayed him more as an NCO. They could have shown him frustrated by taking orders from a young new officer or even guiding a new officer. His character on DS9 could be wearing LCDR pips and you would never know the difference. He's just another member of the senior staff. The closest he's ever been to be being portrayed as an NCO was as a transporter chief on the Enterprise.

O'Brien, frustrated? Why would he be frustrated by an officer - the station gave him enough grief as it was! He'd hardly notice an officer giving orders to him. Besides, Starfleet is "supposed" to be more egalitarian than the US military.

I can only imagine that O'Brien was assigned to DS9 because he was one of the most experienced people when it came to Cardassian technology, probably due to his experience with them during the border wars. And, as before, it wasn't really settled that O'Brien was enlisted until about the 6th season of TNG, when Lt. j.g. Barclay orders him around. They did work it out later, and he did have crewmen under his authority later on in the show.

It's not a perfect explanation, and it's going to seem odd when compared to modern military practices, but hey, we don't worry about whether officers have noble blood nowadays, either. In the future, they'll have different priorities.

ENS Aquino was apparantly an engineering officer and I do remember him working with some ENS in a crawl space.

O'Brien was constantly frustrated by Bashir wasn't he? O'Brien was easily irritated as I recall. Why wouldn't he be frustrated by some fresh academy officer trying to tell him what to do? Who wouldn't?

Edit: I just pulled the transcript for "Whispers" Here we see ENS DeCurtis call him "sir" twice for some reason. Transcript below.

(Work is already underway on a wall panel)
O'BRIEN: What's this?
DECURTIS: Just getting a head start, Chief
O'BRIEN: Head start? Everybody seems to be getting a head start on me today.
DECURTIS: Sir?
O'BRIEN: DeCurtis, I appreciate your bushy-tailed enthusiasm but I was waiting for Odo to came back from Bajor to do this. We have to realign the entire security net for the peace talks. The Constable might have a few things to say about it all.
DECURTIS: Commander Sisko didn't feel we should wait for Odo.
O'BRIEN: Sisko gave you permission to start this without asking with me first? I don't think so. DECURTIS: You might want to check with him, sir. I'm only following orders.
O'BRIEN: I'll check with him all right.
DECURTIS: Mister O'Brien? (gestures at the panel)
O'BRIEN: Carry on.

 

[Use of Time]

In US militaries a Junior Officer is between 01-02. 2LT-1LT and ENS-LTJG. An 0-3 CAPT or LT is not considered a junior officer.

In the US Navy and Coast Guard an O-3 LT is in fact considered a Junior Officer (or JO), and so is an O-4 Lieutenant Commander.

A Navy "JO" is almost exactly synonymous with "Company Grade Officer" in the Army, except of course in the Army an O-4 Major is a "Field Grade Officer" and not a "Company Grade Officer".

Well there ya go. I suppose the Army cuts off the term at 0-2 because most Captains are given their Company/Battery/Troop Command at that time.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Yep. The Navy's designation is based on tradition more than rational sense. Many LCDRs are actually department heads, XOs, or even COs of ships. But because the rank grew out of the "Lieutenant" rank instead of the "Commander" rank, it's considered to be sort of a glorified Lieutenant. In fact, the origin of "Lieutenant Commander" was actually "Lieutenant, Commanding".

 

[Pavonis]

ENS Aquino was apparantly an engineering officer and I do remember him working with some ENS in a crawl space.

Aquino was an engineering officer, but we don't know that he reported to O'Brien, do we? I'm not certain the organizational structure was ever really fleshed out. We know that O'Brien was in charge de facto, but what did the organizational chart really look like?

O'Brien was constantly frustrated by Bashir wasn't he? O'Brien was easily irritated as I recall. Why wouldn't he be frustrated by some fresh academy officer trying to tell him what to do? Who wouldn't?

O'Brien was frustrated by Bashir, but so was everyone else. That's was just Bashir's personality. And I don't think O'Brien was frustrated by anything except the station, and even Sisko thought that O'Brien enjoyed the challenge and was only grumbling in good nature.

Edit: I just pulled the transcript for "Whispers" Here we see ENS DeCurtis call him "sir" twice for some reason. Transcript below.

(Work is already underway on a wall panel)
O'BRIEN: What's this?
DECURTIS: Just getting a head start, Chief
O'BRIEN: Head start? Everybody seems to be getting a head start on me today.
DECURTIS: Sir?
O'BRIEN: DeCurtis, I appreciate your bushy-tailed enthusiasm but I was waiting for Odo to came back from Bajor to do this. We have to realign the entire security net for the peace talks. The Constable might have a few things to say about it all.
DECURTIS: Commander Sisko didn't feel we should wait for Odo.
O'BRIEN: Sisko gave you permission to start this without asking with me first? I don't think so. DECURTIS: You might want to check with him, sir. I'm only following orders.
O'BRIEN: I'll check with him all right.
DECURTIS: Mister O'Brien? (gestures at the panel)
O'BRIEN: Carry on.

Ah, but the episode "Whispers" has our O'Brien replaced with a Paradan replicant. The entire episode is depicting non-standard operations - everyone's tip-toeing around O'Brien and going behind his back to investigate him. Ensign DeCurtis was obviously sent because O'Brien couldn't be trusted with the security arrangements, and Sisko felt an officer was needed to perform the work. We don't know whether DeCurtis would reguarly be doing that kind of work, because the situation as depicted is highly irregular!

As for calling him "sir", we saw Commodore Stocker call Captain Kirk "sir" once. And Ensign DeCurtis is probably accustomed to calling many people "sir". Even females in Starfleet are addressed as "sir".

 

[Use of Time]

ENS Aquino was apparantly an engineering officer and I do remember him working with some ENS in a crawl space.

Aquino was an engineering officer, but we don't know that he reported to O'Brien, do we? I'm not certain the organizational structure was ever really fleshed out. We know that O'Brien was in charge de facto, but what did the organizational chart really look like?

O'Brien was constantly frustrated by Bashir wasn't he? O'Brien was easily irritated as I recall. Why wouldn't he be frustrated by some fresh academy officer trying to tell him what to do? Who wouldn't?

O'Brien was frustrated by Bashir, but so was everyone else. That's was just Bashir's personality. And I don't think O'Brien was frustrated by anything except the station, and even Sisko thought that O'Brien enjoyed the challenge and was only grumbling in good nature.

Edit: I just pulled the transcript for "Whispers" Here we see ENS DeCurtis call him "sir" twice for some reason. Transcript below.

(Work is already underway on a wall panel)
O'BRIEN: What's this?
DECURTIS: Just getting a head start, Chief
O'BRIEN: Head start? Everybody seems to be getting a head start on me today.
DECURTIS: Sir?
O'BRIEN: DeCurtis, I appreciate your bushy-tailed enthusiasm but I was waiting for Odo to came back from Bajor to do this. We have to realign the entire security net for the peace talks. The Constable might have a few things to say about it all.
DECURTIS: Commander Sisko didn't feel we should wait for Odo.
O'BRIEN: Sisko gave you permission to start this without asking with me first? I don't think so. DECURTIS: You might want to check with him, sir. I'm only following orders.
O'BRIEN: I'll check with him all right.
DECURTIS: Mister O'Brien? (gestures at the panel)
O'BRIEN: Carry on.

Ah, but the episode "Whispers" has our O'Brien replaced with a Paradan replicant. The entire episode is depicting non-standard operations - everyone's tip-toeing around O'Brien and going behind his back to investigate him. Ensign DeCurtis was obviously sent because O'Brien couldn't be trusted with the security arrangements, and Sisko felt an officer was needed to perform the work. We don't know whether DeCurtis would reguarly be doing that kind of work, because the situation as depicted is highly irregular!

As for calling him "sir", we saw Commodore Stocker call Captain Kirk "sir" once. And Ensign DeCurtis is probably accustomed to calling many people "sir". Even females in Starfleet are addressed as "sir".

If O'Brien is called the Chief Engineer of both the Defiant and DS9, then who else would these two ENS's report to?

Look, I'm all for discussion and everything but I'm not prepared to do mental cartwheels to rationalize everything I see. The bottom line is that the writers just didn't care, they wanted O'Brien to be the feature engineering guy so that's what they did. The rest is pretty much eyewash.

 

[Pavonis]

I dont think the writers didn't care. They might not have understood military hierarchies, but that doesn't mean they didn't care.

And maybe the writers wanted to depict a military structure that was familiar but different?

 

[Use of Time]

Maybe.

 

[Pavonis]

The writers could have made O'Brien an officer if they had wanted to. There wasn't anything stopping them. They didn't, for their own reasons. I for one enjoyed the partly familiar, partly strange aspects of the Starfleet hierarchy. It wouldn't be any fun if it was just the US military in space. That's Stargate.

And the mental gymnastics of fitting in seemingly incompatible elements of Star Trek is half the fun! Well, for some of us. Besides, all the problems of Trek can be laid at the feet of the writers. If we left it at that, we'd never have anything to talk about!

 

[CoveTom]

Simple fact is, O'Brien is the Chief of Operations of DS9 and the Chief Engineer of the Defiant. By default, that means that everyone who works in operations/engineering in either of those venues reports to him. If the officers were reporting to Sisko or someone else, even though O'Brien was ostensibly in charge of the departments, that would be one heck of a chain of command and nothing would ever get done. And if the only people working in those positions were NCO's, that would break with everything we have seen in Trek both before and since.

Look, Starfleet carries over a lot of military tradition, custom, terminology, etc. from the modern militaries of today, and particularly the U.S. Navy. But everything need not be analogous. Clearly, in Starfleet, a NCO can be put in charge of a department and have officers report to him, even though that can't happen in today's military. That's the simplest explanation. No reason to try and rationalize anything else.

 

[Use of Time]

The writers could have made O'Brien an officer if they had wanted to. There wasn't anything stopping them. They didn't, for their own reasons. I for one enjoyed the partly familiar, partly strange aspects of the Starfleet hierarchy. It wouldn't be any fun if it was just the US military in space. That's Stargate.

And the mental gymnastics of fitting in seemingly incompatible elements of Star Trek is half the fun! Well, for some of us. Besides, all the problems of Trek can be laid at the feet of the writers. If we left it at that, we'd never have anything to talk about!

I don't think clearing up the chain of command would all of a sudden take away from the Trekkiness of the show. Overall, I don't care that much and I can digest the story just fine. It doesn't hurt the viewing experience much but it sure as hell doesn't help it either.

 

[SchwEnt]

I wanna piss myself off by reminding myself of all the times on VOY when Janeway called a meeting of all senior staff and SEVEN OF NINE answers the call and shows up.

Really? Seven of Nine??

 

[Sindatur]

I wanna piss myself off by reminding myself of all the times on VOY when Janeway called a meeting of all senior staff and SEVEN OF NINE answers the call and shows up.

Really? Seven of Nine??

She's the Dept. Head in Astrometrics, isn't she?

 

[MacLeod]

Which would fall under science, which means in the accident along with losing their entire medical staff, they also lost their entire sceince staff (assuming they weren't coming onboard on Tuesday. )

 

[SchwEnt]

But I don't recall Seven even being in Star Fleet at all!

Yet she can head a department and be a member of senior staff? She can give orders to other officers aboard ship? She's a PASSENGER!

Okay, maybe Janeway can appoint Seven as an advisor or consultant or representative or some such. But still...

Evidently Picard can grant a field promotion to an acting ensign. I'll buy that. Even then, it was all official and logged and so on. If Janeway wanted to field promote Seven into Star Fleet, we never saw a rank or uniform or any kind of "official" anything.

Unless Janeway wanted to run things a little "looser" with civilians like Kes working in Sick Bay and Seven in Astrometrics.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Isn't a large portion of Voyager's crew non-Starfleet? I don't think the EMH has any rank insignia either, but he's head of the Medical Department, yes?

Janeway doesn't exactly have a deep bench out there in the DQ. She's gotta make do.

 

[SchwEnt]

Yes. But the Doctor was Star Fleet (property and/or program). Even the Maquis got put into uniforms and got their ranks and even their own versions of insignia. Fair enough.

If Seven was brought into the fold, as the Maquis were, well put her into a uniform and give her a rank and position.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Yes. But the Doctor was Star Fleet (property and/or program). Even the Maquis got put into uniforms and got their ranks and even their own versions of insignia. Fair enough.

If Seven was brought into the fold, as the Maquis were, well put her into a uniform and give her a rank and position.

They asked. Seven's reply was "I will not comply."

 

[The Wormhole]

And what about O'Brien on DSN, an NCO who is a department head and who seemingly has officers reporting directly to him.

O'Brien is a whole can of worms himself. If he were the highest ranking NCO on DS9 than yes, he could have been on the station's senior staff. But he shouldn't have held an officer's job, and he most certainly shouldn't have had officers reporting to him.

Which ensigns reported to O'Brien? Nog? Maybe a few ensigns in the early seasons of DS9? Were they really reporting to the Chief, or were they learning something from him?

Dramatis Personae does feature an ensign stating he is "under orders from O'Brien." Of course, given that is the episode where a virus turns everyone insane, that's probably not the best example.

Isn't a large portion of Voyager's crew non-Starfleet? I don't think the EMH has any rank insignia either, but he's head of the Medical Department, yes?

I wouldn't say a large portion. Voyager had a crew of 150. About 30 of those were Maquis, plus Neelix, Kes, Seven of Nine, and Icheb. I consider the EMH to be Starfleet since he does where a uniform and all the knowledge any actual Starfleet doctor would.

 

[T'Girl]

But is the Doctor a commissioned officer, enlisted personnel, or just something off of the equipment list? Correct me if I'm wrong, he wore no insignia.