Why Didn't Harry Get Promoted?
- Thread starter Akiraprise
- Start date
Indeed. Deep Space 9, alone among the shows, got promotion exactly right, even though they did all the promotions at certain times so they wouldn't have to mess with the credits every year. Sisko, Dax, Bashir, Nog, and even Kira ranked up properly. Worf didn't, but he was fresh from a promotion to Lt. Commander in Generations, so he wasn't due (so even with him, they got it right).
TNG had only one character who wasn't properly promoted: Data. Other characters failed to rank up by declining promotion, but that doesn't count.
VOY would have been fine if Janeway never promoted any character at any time, beyond the initial crew assignments. But that wasn't the case.
Somebody's gotta be the ensign. The ship can't run properly if everybody has a high rank. That's not a problem elsewhere because the excess higher ranks can be transferred to other ships and new ensigns replace the promoted ones... but in Voyager?
And also...
And also...
That same argument means that Tom and Tuvok should not have been promoted, either.
Also, Voyager lost an Operations lieutenant back in Year 1 (Pete Durst). Ergo, there was an open slot for one.
Though I enjoyed "Picard," you make a good point. Harry only got promoted in "bad future" timelines like "Before and After" or "Endgame." He was promoted in the novel-verse, which got pretty grim as well!
I meant to mention Tom's promotion; it might have been regarded differently, since he was just returning to his previous rank.
While Harry is a goody-goody by Voyager standards, by Season 4 he's surely broken a rule or two, like all the characters. Some stuffy admirals might be concerned about some minor act of rebellion thats normal for a "Star Trek" character, but not the average military officer. And remember how common @sshole admirals are in Starfleet. Harry surely deserved a promotion, but it's not too far of a stretch that Admiral Stickass might veto it because of the time he rebelled against Tuvok in "Resolutions," or did something "un-Starfleet" in "the Chute."
Alternatively, someone might have issue with the entire crew, in light of Janeway's alliance with the Borg, blowing up the Array, or Tuvix, resulting in a "no more promotions without our approval" rule.
As for Ayala ...maybe he just did something extraordinary in some adventure we didn't s÷e onscreen, good enough to impress Admiral Stickass back home. Or, maybe he was a Starfleet officer before the Maquis, and this, like with Tom, was just him returning to a previously confiscated rank.
I've heard Harry's admittedly juvenile behavior in "Resolutions" as a justification before. However, consider that Harry only advocated for disobeying Janeway's explicit orders. Tuvok actually did it. A year later, Janeway promoted him to lieutenant commander. Why would she (or Starfleet) ruin Harry for suggesting an action and reward Tuvok for carrying it out?
She promoted Tuvok *before* contact with Starfleet. My theory is that Tuvok was the last promotion she got away with before contact with Starfleet put major limits on promotions.
As for why stickass admirals might specifically deny Harry Kim a promotion....aside from his occasional minor misgressions, maybe Harry being infected by the Caretaker raised some concerns with Admiral Stickass. And/or his incident in "Favorite Son" casting doubt on his true origins. Maybe Starfleet had some suspicions about him being an alien, or possessed by one, or something.
Doesn't matter, really. Harry should have had his lieutenant pips by around about "Basics", especially when you factor in the death of Durst (the highest ranking ops officer).
Then why wasn't he relieved of duty?
This would have been a brilliant plot twist fir Harry, especially if it was revealed that no, he wasn't originally a Taresian, but the retrovirus he caught couldn't be stopped, so he was going to turn into one.
Unfortunately, it was never mentioned after that episode, nor are any of the mysterious abilities Harry had in that episode. And any circumstances that were serious enough to justify the preemptive destruction of Harry's Starfleet Career likely would have been at least brought up.
Assuming that they're going to devote the series finale to the LD crew rather than a guest character, we'll likely have answers of a sort in about five days. We'll see Harry four years after VOY ended (assuming one season is 6 months), and should have a good idea whether his career recovered... or tanked.
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What bothers me is just how keeping him an ensign would have torpedoed Harry's career post return.
'Oh hey you were on that ship where dropouts, washouts, and literal terrorists got rank promotions. What were YOU doing for the past seven years... Ensign?
And with good reason. Who could detect if a crewman was a shapeshifter alien in disguise? Voyager lost their doctor and nurse the moment they arrived to the Delta Quadrant, and never got a replacement.
Doctor: Hey, wait a minute! Voyager was not left without a doctor, I was there! I am as capable, if not more, than any other doctor you...
Computer, turn off Emergency Medical Hologram
Somebody's gotta be the ensign. The ship can't run properly if everybody has a high rank. That's not a problem elsewhere because the excess higher ranks can be transferred to other ships and new ensigns replace the promoted ones... but in Voyager?
And also...
In the US Navy, today, 80 percent of any ship is enlisted crew, who are all junior to and Ensign... The same should be true on Voyager hundreds of years in the future?
True. But that's because most Naval personnel are enlisted, and most enlisted crew stay enlisted (a few promising ones get sent to OCS and become officers; these are called "mustang" officers). For officers, promotion from ensign to LTJG is pretty much automatic after two years, sometimes sooner.
Had Harry been a Crewman, it would have made some sense for him to stay one. But the Ensign rank doesn't work the same way.
- Master chief petty officer
- Senior chief petty officer
- Chief petty officer
- Petty officer
- First class
- Second class
- Third class
- Crewman
- First class
- Second class
- Third class
An argument given against massive numbers of enlisted crew, is automation, self cleaning and food replicators.
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Gene had this weird thing where everyoen was an Officer in TOS. I think O'Brian was the only enlisted man we have seen on screen.
Simon Tarses was referred to as "crewman" as his rating in the Drumhead.
Worf's adopted dad also referred to himself as an enlisted man.
Enterprise featured 3 classes of crewman.
Star Trek always did a much worse job with enlisted personnel hierarchy than with officers.
The only main characters on Trek who held enlisted rank were O'Brien and (possibly) Neelix.
Neelix was never even an enlisted officer. All his duties (chef, ambassador, morale officer) were titles. Never had a rank or even enlisted rank.
Tuvok's holographic punching bag....
No, Gene had a concept that "everyone was an officer in TOS" but this never made it on screen and was therefore never specifically canon (though some of the more recent series, particularly LD and to a lesser extent DSC and SNW imply that this might be the case.
There were prominent enlisted characters in every one of the "classic" series (Rand, Burke and Samno, O'Brien, Tarses, most of the Starfleet engineers on Deep Space Nine, most of the Maquis, Culter, Daniels and all the MACOs save the CO for instance).
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