"Ensigns of Command" demonstrate that they do not.
Why dose Starfleet medical and science share a common uniform configuration?
- Thread starter SS.Scientific
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That's specific to that particular treaty, where the alien race in question was incredibly difficult. IT was literally one of the federations most complex treaties, and it was written that way specifically so they couldn't find loopholes.
It's not a good barometers for the legal capabilities of a jag equivalent.
I'd settle for a diplomacy officer. They literally use a counselor and a supposedly skilled diplomat of a captain to eventually find the weakness in the treaty.
It's pure and unadulterated bullshit that they lack a diplomacy officer who's immediate assignment was to review that treaty for support.
Pretty sure a sailor can't wake up one morning and decide to be a Marine and then a week later go back to being a sailor.
But the divisions in Starfleet are not analogous to branches of the military. It's one organization. You can transfer from one division to another as Geordi and Worf did.
It has aircraft manned and served by Marines.
My father was literally part of a "dedicated intelligence organization." The USAF Security Service who's mission:
Gee, similar to the CIA. (see below)Wikipedia said:
Starfleet intelligence is probably more akin to that and other Military Intelligence organizations than the CIA. The CIA, is a civilian agency. The closest equivalent might be Federation Security seen in The Search For Spock.
The CIA gathers and analyzes intelligence.
The CIA said:
Modern militaries have a variety of pins, patches, insignia, caps and other things to indicate units/divisions/whatever. The uniform colors are the same thing.
Starfleet still isn't the CIA. Kirk, Picard and Sisko are given orders by people higher in chain of command. That's how most organizations work. Many not involved with "intelligence gathering."
Eh, wearing "red" has been optional. Spock as XO chose to wear blue because he was also the Science Officer. Scott was Second Officer and chose to wear red. Data was also a Second Officer and wore gold. While all Starfleet Intelligence officer wear red, not all officers wearing red are Starfleet Intelligence.
Command is a specific job.
You've watched Star Trek, right? They lead on ships, space stations, Starbases, fleets and the whole magilla.
So every one in Starfleet in in Intelligence now? Yeah, no. Starships are multi-mission oriented. They do everything: scientific surveys, "health checks", personnel and material transport, defense and patrol of borders and warfighting.
You're overstretching the concept/context.Pretty sure a sailor can't wake up one morning and decide to be a Marine and then a week later go back to being a sailor.
My point was that the designation represents the purpose of the people.
Researchers are there to research, operations folk are there to maintain, with command being its own thing.
Just like the marines have their defined role, the air force its, and the Navy/army.
The point is you can't for an extended period of time have the Air Force doing the role of the infantry as it's beyond their branches mission statement.
Transferring between divisions appears to be rare. A doctor isn't gonna wake up one day and decide he wants to work on warp coils.
We see characters stay in their respective divisions even when it makes no sense.
Yes and that happens because it supports the objective of the marines. You can't use marine aircraft and start doing the air forces job for any extended period of time.
Your example is missing the point.
CIA gathers information from any means. What you're referring to with your father literally spells it out for you it's a specific reconnaissance job.
Your father was never assigned a 5 year mission to sit there and read farsi text books/fiction to get insights into how people in Tehran think of issue X.
The point with the CIA is that it doesn't matter how you get the information, it matters that you get it. For a command officer it might mean spending hours sifting through alien databases to find out the locals concept of a welcome home party.
I guess I could try to restate the idea and say command means you're something like an information analyst.
Yes and then you have to take your orders and figure out how to implement them. And that would coincide with my theory that this is the role of command staff. They boot up their handpads and start sifting through intelligence data and trying to analyze the specific of a given mission.
This would overlap with why people at the conn are typically wearing command colors.
Spock and McCoy were the top of Operations and Science.
It's unlikely spocks subordinates are wearing another color than blue.
Data is the exception because he can basically do anything he wants.
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You haven't explained what leading means, when we see quite clearly there's a division of labor. People making the ship go, including keeping it "secure" are operations. People looking at new things/aliens are wearing blue. The point is they seem to manage themselves.
We continually see that there are a large volume of background characters wearing red. They aren't running around in engineering telling people what to do, they're not in a med lab etc. They either fly the ship, are acting captain of the ship or doing something unknown.
The unknown would coincide with roles that we see exist, including strategic operations, jag etc.
It's easy to imagine that the main thing they are focused on are the mission objectives. As plenty of objectives can have nothing to do with the operations of the ship and require no research.
Again, they are executives. They receive information from their departments, and their best way to achieve their orders, or mission as ordered by higher commanders.
Intelligence is only one facet, not the description of their whole job, since there are also administrative details, paper work, personnel management, as well as the actual contact with the unknown.
Intelligence is only one facet, not the description of their whole job, since there are also administrative details, paper work, personnel management, as well as the actual contact with the unknown.
A part of that may be that starship captains are given a considerable amount of autonomy and leeway in interpreting Federation policy and that in the vast majority of instances, Starfleet generally sides with whatever decision a captain makes aboard his or her ship. In that regard, the need for a legal expert may always fall under special circumstances. It may harken back to ancient naval times in which a captain was the highest legal authority in his particular domain and had the final say in anything involving his ship and crew in regions far from home.
In TMP, Medical was mint green and Science was orange.
In ST II - ST VI, Medical was mint green and Science was grey.
That's a good in-universe explanation for why he initially wore yellow - he wasn't science officer yet, or he hadn't reached the conclusion that since he would be spending more time working in that capacity (with other scientists) than command, it just made sense.
He was in Science blue in “The Cage”. Though blue shirts are in security in that episode and going by the BTS stuff his position was “First Lieutenant”.
A position that didn’t not survive the transition to series. In WNMHGB, Sulu seems to be the Science Officer.Gene Roddenberry said:
Yes, awesome, remembered the green medical division in the files.
Yes, someone else remembers the green!
McCoy had WHITE scrubs and I seem to recall GREEN scrubs in TMP, and the Green undershirt/collar and green on McCoy's Monster Maroon uniform in "Wrath of Khan".
And McCoy's scrubs in "Khan" were just his reused repurposed TMP uniforms!
And seems to me that in both of the 2 TOS pilots there were a wider pallet of - albeit muted - uniform colors....and same for the TMP uniforms, which were also muted colors'. I get the impression that Gene really wanted to make that work!
(BTW, and much as I LIKE the red uniforms from "Wrath of Khan", they don't seem the most practical for working on a climate controlled starship all day. Where as the short sleeve and other uniforms from TMP, while not the most interesting, seemed the most comfortable and practical to be working in all day on ship! And I remember that the reason the costume designer creates such a wide variety of shipboard uniforms, was so that crewmembers could pick what they wanted to wear.)
I kinda like the idea, used in "The Orville", orf some extra colors - including medical green!
I would go with Gold for Command (though in TMP Kirk had that famous white uniform too!)
Red for Engineering and Security (gotta have redshirts man!)
Blue for US scientists
And Medical/Life Sciences would be Green, with white as an option for scrubs!
Sometimes I think maybe a separate color for security too...but I dunno which.
And Section 31...black!?
I've done a concept or two around a five-colour system in the past (with additional colours for flag officers, cadets and field ops), and usually gone with red-yellow-green-blue-purple, but I kinda like the red-yellow-green-cyan-blue pallete that SNW offers (I headcanon that white is now the civilian uniform colour):
Red: Engineering (including Armory Technicians who may substitute for the Security Department on some vessels).
Gold: Security and Services (Security, Communications, Administration and other ship's services functions). Modern "deck division".
Green: Command (CO, XO, Duty Bridge Officers and optionally Department Heads if they hold a BO endorsement).
Cyan: Medical and Life Sciences.
Blue: Navigation and Space Sciences.
I think someone on this board came up with something a long those lines, at least for color coordination, that I like:
No green scrubs. In TMP McCoy had green epaulettes, green circle behind his insignia and a green cravat (at De's request) for his publicity pics.
https://forgottentrek.com/the-motion-picture/evolution-of-the-sickbay-set/
For what is called the "command division," that doesn't seem so. The division goes from the captain down to phaser crews, who are clearly not running the ship. Spock and Scotty are not in the command division, but are a lot closer to running the ship than Chekov, or Crewman Green, or the woman who pours drinks in the dining room.
He was called the science officer in WNMHGB. The original idea was that a ship's science officer was second in command.
Spock is both Second-in-Command and Chief Science Officer. He chooses to wear Science blue. (Gold in second pilot.)
Scott is both Third-in-Command and Chief Engineer. He chooses to wear Engineering/Ship's Services red. (Beige in second pilot.)
So the chief engineer is actually in the command division, and could choose to wear a different uniform than rest of engineering? I don't think that's supported. And even if so, it would't explain Lt DeSalle.
No, but members of the other divisions can still be in command of the ship without having to run and swap shirts. (Unless it was Chekov in the Kelvinverse.)
You want them to wear multi-coloured shirts?
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That's no different than what I was saying.
Which is why I think designating gold/green/avocado (and later red) as the Command Division color was dumb as is having a Command division. As you said, we see all sorts in the Command color. From the CO down to the lowliest tech. And we also see reds and blues in the chain of command on ships and bases. So a “Command” color is a pit of a misnomer.
Where does that come from? BTS info? TMoST? Frank Joseph? FASA? Somewhere else?
You’re ex-Navy. Are command level officers in their own division?
In retrospect, Gold should have been called Operations and Red called Services, IMO. Command should be a term reserved for the CO, XO and 2nd Officer. Leaders on the ship level and above.
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