why did o'brien not recive a battlefield commission during the war

[Squiggy]

Did we ever see any other NCOs during Star Trek's run, or was O'Brien the only one?

Janice Rand...I think.

 

[Timo]

Because we have eye balls.

The ones that tell us that the Enterprise is surrounded by matte shadows and occasionally changes shape? The ones that establish the sagging of Data's face, or that of Tasha Yar's in "All Good Things..", miraculously reversed when she next appears in "Encounter at Farpoint"?

For the record (since my TNG record happens to be on VHS tapes), it is not possible to tell the color of O'Brien's pips while watching the episodes. Just like it wasn't possible to tell the poor quality of set construction back when TOS was being aired, even if it is blatant today from screencaps projected on TV screens eight feet across.

Did we ever see any other NCOs during Star Trek's run, or was O'Brien the only one?

Dozens of characters were called "Chief", and there were a couple of people with the single dark pip that O'Brien wore during those years when even the costuming department believed he was a NCO. Also, the TOS movies featured a broad range of rank and rating markers, including many for NCOs. In writing, Roddenberry's brain fart about an all-officer crew was completely ignored - including episodes written by Roddenberry himself!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deckerd]

It's a rare thing when Timo acknowledges things like 'set construction'. It makes me feel all peculiar, like he doesn't really believe.

 

[Timo]

My point here was that set construction, like O'Brien's pip color, are things to be ignored, exactly because they aren't "real". What we see when it is shown to us at the artist-selected resolution is the in-universe reality - and what we see when we look past, through or beyond the in-universe reality is either irrelevant, or then fully open to speculation and personal interpretation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tafkats]

Did we ever see any other NCOs during Star Trek's run, or was O'Brien the only one?

Janice Rand...I think.

Sergey Rozhenko was an NCO, and this guy.

Dorian Collins was breveted to acting CPO.

There are a handful of other enlisted personnel, like Crewman Simon Tarses, but I think they're more like privates in today's army.

In Voyager, it was implied initially that most of the Maquis would be considered enlisted personnel -- Chakotay hands Janeway a list of "several" who would be good officers and tells her "I have no intention of being your token Maquis officer," and it actually kind of sounds like Torres would be the only Maquis officer besides Chakotay. But many of them show up as officers later on.

 

[MacLeod]

We could debate O'Brien's rank all day long. However regardless of his rank he had positional autjhority over officers.

Chief Engineer of the USS Defiant
Chief of Operations Starbase Deep Space Nine.

Both fairly senior posts.

 

[The Green Mushroom]

We could debate O'Brien's rank all day long. However regardless of his rank he had positional autjhority over officers.

Chief Engineer of the USS Defiant
Chief of Operations Starbase Deep Space Nine.

Both fairly senior posts.

But on DS9 it seemed that most of his people were Bajoran contractors and the odd ensign who all seemed to be assigned to him for traning purposes.

It doesn't make sense to me that O'Brien is the only non-commissioned chief engineer in Starfleet on the Defiant though. Though I wonder, how big does a modern navy/coast guard crew have to be before the engineer needs to be an officer?

Personally, I've always tried to just ignore his rank after his random demotion when he moved to DS9. But I confess that my thoughts are colored by the fact that not only did I accept that Starfleet only has officers, I never had and still don't really have a problem with that. Starfleet isn't the twentieth century military and shouldn't be held to its standards.

 

[SonicRanger]

I think other Defiant engineers in "Starship Down" were non-comms:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=111&page=16