What exactly makes (made) Harry Kim a senior officer?

[at Quark's]

Not the rank -- there are loads of ensigns on board that are 'junior officers' (for example, Ensign Jenkins in Warhead is a member of the 'junior staff' and in the same episode Harry explicitly mentions he is a 'senior officer'. ) .

Not the experience - no-one came fresher from the Acadamy than he and his position didn't change in 7 years, so I'll have to assume he was considered a 'senior officer' right from the start.

Or did it just come with his position perhaps? In that case, what exactly is the position that makes him 'senior'? 'First operations officer' or something like that?

For that matter, what exactly is a 'senior officer', if it isn't tied to rank or experience?

 

[C.E. Evans]

For all intents and purposes, Kim was the highest-ranking person in the ship's operations department (everyone else could be enlisted there). It's also possible that Janeway simply had Kim as part of her personal command crew or personal staff that could consist of her most essential department heads. Another captain might have done things differently, IMO.

 

[Sophie74656]

He was the head operations officer. That made him a department head and a member of the senior staff. I assumed he had excelled at the academy to get such a position right off the bat

 

[Refuge]

Good question. I always assumed it was because he was on the Bridge and held the responsibility. I think he just applied for the position and got it.

 

[at Quark's]

He was the head operations officer. That made him a department head and a member of the senior staff. I assumed he had excelled at the academy to get such a position right off the bat

I have heard that said more often (that he is the head of operations), but is there any line / episode that explicitly confirms this? All I know for sure is that he is usually the operations officer that shares his duty shift with the 'alpha crew' (for want of a better term).

And if he really is, why wouldn't he be assigned a slightly higher rank (a junior lt. for example)?

 

[Kor]

Maybe he did something really bad, and because of that he was stuck "in charge" of a one-man department for his whole career, with no promotion on the horizon, ever.

Kor

 

[MadeIndescribable]

I just figured every graduate becomes an ensign, but obviously those who passed with more flying colours get more benefits.

 

[The Wormhole]

He's in the main cast, and Star Trek always considers main cast (or sometimes even recurring) to be the same thing as senior officer. Hell, how else can Wesley Crusher or Nog be considered senior officers?

 

[Gojira]

Not the rank -- there are loads of ensigns on board that are 'junior officers' (for example, Ensign Jenkins in Warhead is a member of the 'junior staff' and in the same episode Harry explicitly mentions he is a 'senior officer'. ) .

Not the experience - no-one came fresher from the Acadamy than he and his position didn't change in 7 years, so I'll have to assume he was considered a 'senior officer' right from the start.

Or did it just come with his position perhaps? In that case, what exactly is the position that makes him 'senior'? 'First operations officer' or something like that?

For that matter, what exactly is a 'senior officer', if it isn't tied to rank or experience?

Maybe a better term they could have used was "Department Heads."

 

[SPCTRE]

For that matter, what exactly is a 'senior officer'

that's the million dollar question right there

 

[Guy Gardener]

Any academy graduate on their first day out, can work in any department with grace and style, or be in command of that department without check or balance. Command is about managing human resources, not the technical requirements or excentiricites of any given post.

Rank denotes how many enlisted/officers that your superiors feel that you as a person are capable of competently managing. If they feel that you can boss around all the ensigns, they promote you to lieutenant, and so on, up the ziggurat lickity split.

Harry could be the department head for operations, and NEVER pull a duty shift ever-ever-ever, if he decided that that was the best use of ships resources... And if he had no idea how to run an operations console, maybe that would be for the best.

 

[MadeIndescribable]

up the ziggurat lickity split.

Now I will only ever see Kim as Rimmer, and my only question is why didn't I see this sooner?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Rimmer never became an officer.

(Later seasons don't count.)

 

[Timo]

He was the head operations officer. That made him a department head and a member of the senior staff. I assumed he had excelled at the academy to get such a position right off the bat

"Caretaker" makes no explicit mention or even much of a suggestion that Kim would have been the department head. Instead, we get this:

Kim: "Er, I haven't paid my respects to the Captain yet either."
Nameless CMO: "Well, Mister Kim, that would be a good thing for a new operations officer to do."

If anything, the use of "a" instead of "the" specifies that Kim isn't the boss, but rather one out of many.

Now, we don't exactly see anybody superior to Kim in rank operate the Ops console on the bridge before the Caretaker cuts down on personnel costs. But the department head need not be on the bridge at all times, or even at the time the ship first enters the Badlands.

OTOH, even after the big casualties, we do see a yellowshirt who outranks Kim take the Ops console every now and then. But that's Lieutenant Ayala, who's a criminal and a traitor and probably not prime material for leading positions, a fact Janeway recognizes too late after having awarded all those pseudo-ranks to Chakotay's crew...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Guy Gardener]

O'Brien as Chief of Operations and before that tactical officer on the USS Ruttledge, proves that "title" surpasses rank.

Also anyone given (temporary) command of the ship, has to later release it willing, and until they do so they are the (acting) Captain.

Kim was given command of the ship all the time.

Hell, in Future's End he seemed like a bit of a bad ass.

4 years later he lost an argument with a light bulb over who got command of Voyager.

 

[Ghislaine H. B. BRAEME]

I just figured every graduate becomes an ensign, but obviously those who passed with more flying colours get more benefits.

For me - and as surprising as it was in the light of (dramatic) events of Caretaker, Harry Kim ‎benefited from unique circumstances. Should I go as far as to say that he was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, I don't know, but if Voyager haven't been attacked by the Kazon ship then Voyager sent/ stucked in the DQ by the Caretaker AND if Janeway had not chosen to follow her instincts and give him quickly her confidence, he would have never found himself propelled Operations Manager and still less, been granted the privilege to attend senior staff meetings, which gave him by the same, a senority that he had not in facts. don't get me wrong, I don't say that he would have never achieve this status. He would have done it but after several years of experience (according to his talents, he would have succeeded more quickly than others, for sure!) and as Lt or Lt Comm, surely not as an Enseign fresh out of the Academy and during so quickly during his first mission! In short, he should let time take its course!

But well, Enseign Harry Kim being a regular character - and to serve the story -, it was necessary to give him a position, which places him in a favourable position with regard to a great part of the crew.

‎That being said, as seeing as Starfleet is supposed to be the future of the US Army (where corps and nationalities are merged under one banner), I'd have liked to see the command structure and protocols best respected. And in this sense, the fact that Harry has never been promoted in 7 years, ‎was rather logical. But all the experience and responsabilities gained during this journey can only be beneficial to him, not only on a professional but human level too, for his future.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Both of her first officers were only a lieutenant commanders.

Promote Cavitt or Chakotay, and everyone below has room to move up one rank, if they've earnt it.

 

[Timo]

It's not even as if there'd be need for "room" there: the ship could have half a dozen Lieutenant Commanders, of whom Cavit would be the senior in that rank. Or, if need be, Chakotay could be promoted to full Commander two minutes earlier than Torres or Seska, thus making him senior.

Heck, the ship originally did have lots and lots of Lieutenant Commanders and even one Commander, all apparently assigned from the West Wing of Starfleet, as indicated by that oft-quoted casualty list. One of those LtCmdrs would be the unnamed CMO, but the other two and the Commander would have to be unseen people killed in "Caretaker". (Who could outrank Cavit? The original Chief Engineer, perhaps. Or the original Chief Science Officer, assuming a blue shirt is an even more efficient blocker of chain-of-command ambitions than a yellow one is.)

Incidentally, Kim and O'Brien are semantically in different jams: O'Brien was addressed both as "my Tactical Officer" by his boss and "the Tactical Officer on the Rutledge" by himself, giving the position a bit more pomp. Then again, Maxwell supposedly took casualties, too, although probably not as severe as Janeway...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Guy Gardener]

Rank has vaule.

It's a waste of resources to put too much rank on a ship that hasn't the resources to put that rank to good use. Otherwise you wind up with engineers cleaning washrooms.

Three shifts of 50 people.

JANEWAY: It seems to me that people have been getting a little too comfortable around here lately. They're late for their duty shifts, taking mess hall privileges during non-designated hours. And a lot of people are spending more time on the holodeck than they are at their posts. You are Security chief. Don't thirteen department heads report to you every day?

There really shouldn't be more than 16 (13 departments + the security head/acting security head (a department head who reports to) + the first officers Officer/acting first officer (Who is in charge of the entire crew (Remember Tapestry where Riker and Troi were evaluating performance? Will reads every report, and then only tells Jean-Luc what he needs to know.), who reports to the) + the captain/acting captain) per shift...

So that's 34 junior officers or enlisted crew per duty shift divided into 14 departments, and the captains staff (which probably doesn't exist) and the XO's staff (which also does not exist on such a little ship) where B'Elanna takes about a third of the available crew, which leaves us 23 crew divided unevenly between 12 departments, per duty shift, so it's likely that Operations is not the only department with no fixed staff.

Although sometimes they work double shifts, or they're woken up for action stations, or maybe the night shift only has a skeleton crew of 20 people which is why there's only 2 people on the bridge in Warhead.

 

[Refuge]

Sort of not related but was the EMH recognized as an officer? He was a backup or supplement originally but took over from an officer, as in Chief Medical Officer.