Dr. M'Benga is, apparently, a Starfleet officer (he wears a medical shirt with the Starfleet logo) but did they ever give his actual rank?
What is M'Benga's rank?
- Thread starter Mr. Laser Beam
- Start date
In common with many of the medical officers in Star Trek, his rank is never given verbally and the short-shelved uniform that he wears precludes the wearing of sleeve stripes. However, based on McCoy holding LCDR rank and Bashir exiting the Academy as a LTJG (at 28), I think he's likely a LTJG or maybe a LT if the actor is playing younger than his age (27).
Then again, in at least one timeline, McCoy held LCdr rank right off the bat, presumably because he was a veteran of medicine already when entering Starfleet Academy.
Is M'Benga young enough not to be an MD first and an officer second? Old enough to have completed his studies and done some practice before he ended up in Starfleet? It's anybody's guess, really. But we have seen MDs of all ranks from Lt(jg) to full Commander, so at least this range should be available to him. And we've seen nothing to preclude Ensigns or Captains, exactly.
In terms of continuity, it might be nice to declare M'Benga junior to McCoy so that the latter gets the limelight in all the official ceremonies and in all the adventures that involve the top brass paying a visit to a location. This regardless of who's actually the better or more experienced sawbones, or physically older.
Amusingly, not even the novels assign any rank to M'Benga, even though he features prominently in the immediate pre-TOS Vanguard series of books.
Timo Saloniemi
Is M'Benga young enough not to be an MD first and an officer second? Old enough to have completed his studies and done some practice before he ended up in Starfleet? It's anybody's guess, really. But we have seen MDs of all ranks from Lt(jg) to full Commander, so at least this range should be available to him. And we've seen nothing to preclude Ensigns or Captains, exactly.
In terms of continuity, it might be nice to declare M'Benga junior to McCoy so that the latter gets the limelight in all the official ceremonies and in all the adventures that involve the top brass paying a visit to a location. This regardless of who's actually the better or more experienced sawbones, or physically older.
Amusingly, not even the novels assign any rank to M'Benga, even though he features prominently in the immediate pre-TOS Vanguard series of books.
Timo Saloniemi
Was Booker Bradshaw really only 27 at the time of A Private Little War? I thought he was early forties to be honest! I've just looked him up and he was and he sadly died in 2003 at the young age of 62! 
He also wrote Planet of The Apes episode The Horse Race!
JB
He also wrote Planet of The Apes episode The Horse Race!JB
Another non-essential aside:
I don't know how, but the TOS costume crew was always able to make the short-sleeved uniform (essentially a medical scrub) look puffed up, as though padded. None of the fan film crews have ever duplicated the look exactly. I wonder if the type of material had something to do with it, and if that material is no longer available.
I don't know how, but the TOS costume crew was always able to make the short-sleeved uniform (essentially a medical scrub) look puffed up, as though padded. None of the fan film crews have ever duplicated the look exactly. I wonder if the type of material had something to do with it, and if that material is no longer available.
Even though stuff like the Okudachron have McCoy attending Starfleet Academy, I'm pretty sure that the intention of TOS was that McCoy was a doctor well before he entered Starfleet, and he never attended the Academy the way that someone like Kirk, Spock, or Chekov did. McCoy, like Hawkeye Pierce and the other doctors on M*A*S*H, is still a civilian at heart and doesn't know a great deal about Starfleet protocols outside of his basic training. Look at episodes like "The Menagerie," where McCoy isn't sure if confining Spock to quarters is punishment enough for Spock hijacking the Enterprise, or "The Ultimate Computer," where McCoy is completely unfamiliar with the Academy midshipmen slang term "Dunsel." The implication is that McCoy doesn't know these things because he didn't go to the Academy. So McCoy probably did enter Starfleet with a rank of Lt. Cmdr. and received training in Starfleet regulations & space medicine that lasted for a few months, instead of the years of an Academy graduate.
Heck, you could even extend this to Nurse Chapel, as Kirk says in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" that Chapel gave up a career in bio-research to sign aboard a starship in the hopes of finding her fiance Roger Korby. Now you could interpret that line in a couple of ways. One is that Chapel was already in Starfleet when Korby went missing and just changed her career trajectory. The other is that she gave up a career outside of Starfleet in the hopes of finding Roger. I lean towards the latter, personally.
And the fact that McCoy says that Dr. M'Benga interned in a Vulcan ward leads me to believe that most Starfleet doctors, at least in the TOS era, gets their medical degrees outside of Starfleet and then enter the service later.
I have a feeling that Booker Bradshaw was playing older than his actual age. And again, the "interned in a Vulcan ward" line makes me think that he became an MD before he entered Starfleet.
So bearing that in mind, I'd say that M'Benga was likely a Lieutenant or a Lt. Commander. (McCoy would still be his commanding officer, since he was the ship's CMO, of course.)
In the US military, doctors are typically commissioned directly at O-3 rank (Captain for the Army, Air Force and Marines; Lieutenant for the Navy), without the need to attend a service academy. I imagine Starfleet operates in a similar manner.
Except it doesn't - DS9 gives us two graduates who are first witnessed at Lt(jg) rank, Bashir and Lense, and the former is actually a CMO in addition to being a full MD. And now DSC gives us another MD who holds Lt(jg) rank in the 23rd century, Dr. Pollard.
I gather Starfleet takes in both pre-trained specialists and pure raw material, and rewards the former with higher graduating rank even though the latter, too, emerge from the training as fully competent specialists. In both cases, I would imagine there is a reduced amount of training on those things that pad out the four years of the "average Jim". And indeed we see McCoy and Kirk enter SF Academy at the same time in the 2009 film, yet even when Kirk makes good of his promise to graduate in record time, McCoy still is way ahead of him, already holding high commissioned rank and a starship job when Kirk is giving his graduation the voluntary finishing touches.
But yes, it is perfectly possible that even the "in-house-trained" medics get an elevated starting rank: we have seen Lt(jg) but we have not seen Ensign. It is equally possible that Starfleet does not, though: even Bashir could have gained a promotion after graduation but before being spotted at DS9. Or then Bashir took additional courses in being CMO, much like Saavik took additional courses in command and partook in the optional no-win scenario test while Spock never did?
And why should Starfleet reward MDs when many of its other professions call for academic training, too? Shouldn't engineers graduate as Lieutenant Commanders for having mastered warp theory? Shouldn't navigators start out as Commanders for the double doctorates they hold in astronomy and advanced imaginary geometry?
Timo Saloniemi
I gather Starfleet takes in both pre-trained specialists and pure raw material, and rewards the former with higher graduating rank even though the latter, too, emerge from the training as fully competent specialists. In both cases, I would imagine there is a reduced amount of training on those things that pad out the four years of the "average Jim". And indeed we see McCoy and Kirk enter SF Academy at the same time in the 2009 film, yet even when Kirk makes good of his promise to graduate in record time, McCoy still is way ahead of him, already holding high commissioned rank and a starship job when Kirk is giving his graduation the voluntary finishing touches.
But yes, it is perfectly possible that even the "in-house-trained" medics get an elevated starting rank: we have seen Lt(jg) but we have not seen Ensign. It is equally possible that Starfleet does not, though: even Bashir could have gained a promotion after graduation but before being spotted at DS9. Or then Bashir took additional courses in being CMO, much like Saavik took additional courses in command and partook in the optional no-win scenario test while Spock never did?
And why should Starfleet reward MDs when many of its other professions call for academic training, too? Shouldn't engineers graduate as Lieutenant Commanders for having mastered warp theory? Shouldn't navigators start out as Commanders for the double doctorates they hold in astronomy and advanced imaginary geometry?
Timo Saloniemi
Fleet Admiral. He was just slumming it for 5 years.
That's correct, if they enter the service after graduation. If they enter during medical school, they come in at O-1 rank. And there are circumstances where they can enter at O-2 rank as well, which is what Bashir did on DS9.
The various Star Trek series have always had a bit of an issue with the doctors and their rank and command privileges. McCoy thankfully never takes command, except in the cute (albeit somewhat ridiculous) "Doctor's Orders" book by Diane Duane, but on TNG you had the Descent episodes where Picard beamed the entire crew down for some reason and left Crusher in command, which made no sense but was supposed to be interesting. Bashir wasn't in the command structure of either DS9 of the Defiant. And the last two series (before DISC) avoided the problem altogether by making the doctor without rank due either to being an alien or, you know, a hologram.
I'm satisfied that McCoy's role on the ship made sense, even though Navy analogies are not perfect because the crew of the Enterprise was smaller than that of many USN vessels (at least those that would have an officer on board as CMO).
And I assume M'Benga was a lieutenant.
The real question is - how many posts did he have on The Trek BBS? That should give us a clue.
I don't think that graduates of the regular four-year Starfleet Academy come out of it with doctorate degrees.
Kor
If you're talking to me, I agree; I don't believe I said they did.
The real question is - how many posts did he have on The Trek BBS? That should give us a clue.
Who knows? ITRW, you need advanced academic studies to become an engineer for a nuclear submarine. Starfleet churns out Chief Engineers like a replicator on overdrive. And plenty of these officers seem to be geniuses by today's standards - nuChekov at the tender age of seventeen.
Whether these folks complete a full academic curriculum or two in addition to the military one in their four, five, three or whatever years at SF Academy, or prior to enrolling, is unknown. But Bashir is an MD and a commissioned officer at 27 sharp, having just graduated from the Starfleet Medical Academy and, at an unknown date no later than this one, from the Starfleet Academy. We don't know how long his studies took, only that the SF Medical Academy bit included a party about a year before graduation. Julian might have enrolled at a late age, switching tracks from his tennis career; deliberately slacked in order to look inconspicuous; completed his studies apace with a 5% elite of fast learners, none of whom apart from him needed genetic enhancement for that; whatever.
But we do learn that Starfleet caters for both the generic officer studies and the specific professional ones.
Timo Saloniemi
Whether these folks complete a full academic curriculum or two in addition to the military one in their four, five, three or whatever years at SF Academy, or prior to enrolling, is unknown. But Bashir is an MD and a commissioned officer at 27 sharp, having just graduated from the Starfleet Medical Academy and, at an unknown date no later than this one, from the Starfleet Academy. We don't know how long his studies took, only that the SF Medical Academy bit included a party about a year before graduation. Julian might have enrolled at a late age, switching tracks from his tennis career; deliberately slacked in order to look inconspicuous; completed his studies apace with a 5% elite of fast learners, none of whom apart from him needed genetic enhancement for that; whatever.
But we do learn that Starfleet caters for both the generic officer studies and the specific professional ones.
Timo Saloniemi
And this was his backstory according to The Making of Star Trek, put out by the people making the show while it was being made.
Not quite.
