What does the Command division actually.. do?

[NervousEnergy]

Something that's always bothered me about the post-TOS Treks, is that we see a lot of redshirts walking around; but I'm unclear on what their roles actually are.

Obviously Picard, Riker, Sisko, Worf (DS9), Janeway, Chakotay are all in red because they command the starship, or are the executive officer onboard. This makes sense.

Worf in Season 1 of TNG also wore red. He.. seemed to be a generic bridge officer, but sometimes manned the conn.

The conn/flightcontroller station always has redshirts too: Geordi (Season 1), O'Brien (Season 1), Ro Lauren, and Tom Paris all wore red too.

So we know for a fact that the Admirals, Captain, XO, and conn officers wear red.

Is conn the only non-"Commanding Officer" role that wears red?


EDIT: I just found this picture from Voyager, Good Shephard. Which muddles things greatly.

According to this.. Tactical, Security, Operations, and Environmental (???) are in the Command division. Yet all these roles wear Operations Yellow. Is this just a mistake?

 

[Melakon]

One of my biggest nitpicks with the 24th century was swapping the yellow/green shirts with red. As for job classifications sometimes switching their apparent division, either Starfleet regularly mixes things up to keep people on their toes, or whoever in the writing/art department was keeping track of these things was asleep that particular day.

 

[MacLeod]

I would disregard the screen cap, after all shouldn't Enviromental fall under Crew Support. It really wasn't meant to be paid too much attention to.

Besides you could say that's just how Seven classified those positions not how starfleet classifes them.

 

[NervousEnergy]

I would disregard the screen cap, after all shouldn't Enviromental fall under Crew Support. It really wasn't meant to be paid too much attention to.

Besides you could say that's just how Seven classified those positions not how starfleet classifes them.

Yeah, that's probably true.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

What do middle managers do in 21st century?

Comedy answer: Nothing.
Real answer: They're a buffer between the people who do the work and the people who make the decisions. As one of the people who does the work, yes, that is valuable. It's great to have somebody who gets yelled at on your behalf and understands the tech enough to take the technical things you're saying and digest them in a way management can understand.

 

[NervousEnergy]

What do middle managers do in 21st century?

Comedy answer: Nothing.
Real answer: They're a buffer between the people who do the work and the people who make the decisions. As one of the people who does the work, yes, that is valuable. It's great to have somebody who gets yelled at on your behalf and understands the tech enough to take the technical things you're saying and digest them in a way management can understand.

Makes sense. But what job roles would these.. middle managers be? Are there any administration staff on starships? We saw Yeomans on TOS and TMP ships, but they seemed to vanish TNG+. Besides, they never wore command red (or TOS equivalent), and most weren't even enlisted.

 

[DavidGutierrez]

What do middle managers do in 21st century?

Comedy answer: Nothing.
Real answer: They're a buffer between the people who do the work and the people who make the decisions. As one of the people who does the work, yes, that is valuable. It's great to have somebody who gets yelled at on your behalf and understands the tech enough to take the technical things you're saying and digest them in a way management can understand.

Makes sense. But what job roles would these.. middle managers be? Are there any administration staff on starships? We saw Yeomans on TOS and TMP ships, but they seemed to vanish TNG+. Besides, they never wore command red (or TOS equivalent), and most weren't even enlisted.

First of all, all the yeomen we saw on TOS were definitely enlisted. "Yeoman" is an enlisted billet. There are no officers who are yeomen.
Second of all, I always imagine that those who wear command red in the TNG-era but aren't our main heroes or piloting the ship are either relief conn officers or fill some other administrative role, as mentioned above. Perhaps the quartermaster wears red, or the records officer. Shuttle pilots would wear red, too (on ships large enough to have dedicated positions for shuttle pilots, as mentioned in TNG "Chains of Command"), and so would watch officers.
I also always imagine that the command division is typically the smallest division on a starship or starbase. Operations would seem to be the largest, followed by science.
Basically, everything the command division officer do would play into developing their leadership abilities. People are only in the command division if they want to fly something or command something.

 

[MacLeod]

If you want to break it down into levels of management it could be something the lines of

Admirals = Senior Managment
Command Division = Middle Management
Department Heads = Lower Management

Or for example in say a retail enviroment you might have a Store Manager and a Deputy Manager whos role it is to see that everything is done, whilst Department supervisors actually see more to the day to day operation of the departments.To perhaps transalte that, Command Divison has to look at the bigger picture whilst the Department heads look at the smaller picture.

As for why CONN is in the Command Diviosn perhap the task requires less time to complete than saying maintaing the engines it gives greater flexibility for training for a Command role.

 

[J.T.B.]

I've said this before, but I think it works best if the divisions are thought of as not too rigidly defined and related only to an individual's current assignment aboard, not their overall career. The name "command division" might be misleading, but it seems to be primarily responsible for flight and weapons control, not necessarily actual command. Data normally wears gold, but is third in command on Enterprise and a "line officer" who can and does command a ship in battle. Wes Crusher wore a red uniform, but there were probably hundreds of gold and blue officers ahead of him in line of command succession.

 

[AgentCoop]

Also, wasn't Data originally intended to wear a Science Blue uniform (he is the Science Officer, after all)? The producers changed it to gold because it photographed better with the gold android makeup. Moral of the story: We fans think more about this stuff than the showrunners do.

 

[varek]

The Command division is supposed to be for training future Captains and other line officers. The qualities for this career path are rather different than those helpful in other paths, such as Engineering.
I admire them, but I would never want to be in the Captain's chair, unless it were on a Science or Engineering ship.

 

[C.E. Evans]

That screen cap seems to suggest a number of shipboard systems or network links rather than personnel, IMO.

Otherwise, I think the command division incorporates fleet command, line command, bridge operations, flight operations, and general services.

 

[J.T.B.]

The Command division is supposed to be for training future Captains and other line officers.

But that doesn't fit the evidence. Data, as mentioned above. Worf went back and forth between gold and red but commanded Defiant. Science Officer Spock and Chief Engineer Scott were qualified for starship command. Kirk started out in Engineering. Captain Decker was a qualified science officer.

 

[NervousEnergy]

It's all very well talking about what the Command Division does, but as far as I can remember there are only five specific roles we see in Red: Admiral, Captain, XO, Conn/Helm, and Strategic Operations Officer. Are we to believe that.. every future Captain was on the Conn station?

What else to Command reshirts actually do all day? Position/role wise.

 

[Kevman7987]

Didn't Ayala on Voyager wear both red or gold depending on what he was doing in an episode? Maybe it's like that, outside of those few specific roles on a ship, everyone else is in either blue or gold depending on what their specialty is.

 

[lostshaker]

Something that's always bothered me about the post-TOS Treks, is that we see a lot of redshirts walking around; but I'm unclear on what their roles actually are.

Obviously Picard, Riker, Sisko, Worf (DS9), Janeway, Chakotay are all in red because they command the starship, or are the executive officer onboard. This makes sense.

Worf in Season 1 of TNG also wore red. He.. seemed to be a generic bridge officer, but sometimes manned the conn.

The conn/flightcontroller station always has redshirts too: Geordi (Season 1), O'Brien (Season 1), Ro Lauren, and Tom Paris all wore red too.

So we know for a fact that the Admirals, Captain, XO, and conn officers wear red.

Is conn the only non-"Commanding Officer" role that wears red?


EDIT: I just found this picture from Voyager, Good Shephard. Which muddles things greatly.

According to this.. Tactical, Security, Operations, and Environmental (???) are in the Command division. Yet all these roles wear Operations Yellow. Is this just a mistake?

I wouldn't interpret VGR's schematic as reflecting the whole of Starfleet. Remember, VGR was alone in the Delta Quadrant with an integrated crew. A shuffling of jobs and duties likely existed based on their circumstances.

 

[The Wormhole]

Didn't Ayala on Voyager wear both red or gold depending on what he was doing in an episode? Maybe it's like that, outside of those few specific roles on a ship, everyone else is in either blue or gold depending on what their specialty is.

Actually, no. Ayala wore gold for most of the series but switched to red for the last few episodes. Mr. Leslie on TOS did frequently switch between red and gold.

 

[drt]

Also, wasn't Data originally intended to wear a Science Blue uniform (he is the Science Officer, after all)? The producers changed it to gold because it photographed better with the gold android makeup. Moral of the story: We fans think more about this stuff than the showrunners do.

Shoot, they did it with Uhura for probably the same reason, since she started gold and switched to red - and I'd say communications seems to fit with the gold shirts better.

That screen cap seems to suggest a number of shipboard systems or network links rather than personnel, IMO.

It mostly suggests to me that Jeri Ryan has a nice rack.

(Aka the real reason fanboys hate Braga)

 

[Nebusj]

I would disregard the screen cap, after all shouldn't Enviromental fall under Crew Support. It really wasn't meant to be paid too much attention to.

So you're saying you're just going to ignore Environmental's order that we not drink the water and try to avoid unnecessary breathing for the next 47 hours?

 

[MacLeod]

That's not what I said, For Enviromental read Life Support surely a rather crucial fuction in which to support the crew.