Why no com officers?

[YJAGG]

If this has been asked before, sorry, but I was watching DS9 last night and notice Sisko asked Odo (who was assigned to the communications station) to contact one group and Kira to contact another. This got me thinking, everybody since Next Gen to Voyager can open a channel, I realize "because it is in the script" comes into play and from a production standpoint, do you want to bump an extra up a paygrade with an "aye aye sir" but it was not until Enterprise that we get an Communications officer.

 

[Timo]

There are communications and communications. Sometimes an important person has to speak with an important person or with a group of listeners; this the computer can handle, allowing the Captain to speak his piece and the enemy Captain or the mayors on the cities of the planet below to listen. No need for a top-level officer for operating the comms in that case.

Sometimes, though, constant messages have to flow back and forth multiple starships to keep things happening in proper order. For this, one needs a number of people, each sending out his or her own message as needed, and listening as needed. But that's by definition several people, not one top-level officer operating the comms.

I don't know what the role of the comms officer in TOS really was. Connecting the calls didn't seem technically demanding; perhaps Uhura or Palmer not only connected the calls, but also carried out constant communications with various parties - the HQ, nearby ships, the various departments of the Enterprise, scheduled reports, timely announcements, what-have-you - and we never noticed because they had those fancy earphones and throat microphones and whatnot and we didn't hear a sound. Would the need for that go away if tech advanced even further? It's very difficult to see why the tech wouldn't have been as advanced in the 2260s as it eventually was in the 2360s - even today's computers ought to manage that sort of communications complexity with ease, after all. But perhaps Comms is a major department with several "speakers" belowdecks to keep in touch with the several parties involved, and some skippers want that department to have a spokesperson up on the bridge while most do not.

In ENT, the communications officer is also a linguist and a contact specialist of sorts. Perhaps most starships have a linguist, but some have this officer belowdecks, some on the bridge, and some combine the role with the comms department head and either have that on the bridge or belowdecks...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Wormhole]

The lack of communications officers in the 24th century didn't bother me as much as the fact that communications seemed to become the tactical officer's duty. Seems kind of odd the chief of security who is responsible for the ship's defenses and firing the weapons in a firefight with another ship is also the telephone operator.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Incorporating communications into a starship's tactical station didn't really bother me. During a combat scenario, the tactical officer could directly coordinate security and munitions teams on the ship as well as monitor & intercept any outside transmissions (friendly or not) from other vessels and planetary/space-based facilities.

I also think that by the 24th-Century, communication systems are so automated that it only requires a push of a button instead of perhaps more that was required of Uhura and Sato in their day.

 

[T'Girl]

What strikes me as odd about communications is ...

Picard: "Open a channel."

Worf: "Yes Sir (one mississippi, two mississippi) no response."

Geez, give them a chance.

 

[Timo]

Actually, I'd assume communications is about more than just carrying over the voices. It might well be possible to immediately hear whether the other side has dropped its firewalls and allowed metadata to flow to enable communications, or is actively refusing such things and thus declaring unwillingness to respond.

Indeed, communications might require literally/physically "opening a subspace channel", and if the other party doesn't do its part and turn on its Chambers coil or whatever, the channel won't open and the officer can declare "no response".

Seems kind of odd the chief of security who is responsible for the ship's defenses and firing the weapons in a firefight with another ship is also the telephone operator.

I guess it makes sense to channel all information warfare through him or her, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[urbandefault]

What strikes me as odd about communications is ...

Picard: "Open a channel."

Worf: "Yes Sir (one mississippi, two mississippi) no response."

Geez, give them a chance.

Maybe they had the wrong person doing the dialing ...

Picard: "Open a channel."

Lt. Ernestine: "Aye, sir. One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy ... Is this the party to whom I am speaking?"

 

[HIjol]

The "Finger-Mammary Probe Maneuver" had me from Probe Day One!

And then the Snort

And THEN, in the near-twilight of my life...she ends up on West Wing as POTUS's
Main Drain secretary.

Ah, why could she not have found a place on Star Trek???

 

[YJAGG]

The "Finger-Mammary Probe Maneuver" had me from Probe Day One!

And then the Snort

And THEN, in the near-twilight of my life...she ends up on West Wing as POTUS's
Main Drain secretary.

Ah, why could she not have found a place on Star Trek???

She could been an ambassador

 

[drt]

If this has been asked before, sorry, but I was watching DS9 last night and notice Sisko asked Odo (who was assigned to the communications station) to contact one group and Kira to contact another. This got me thinking, everybody since Next Gen to Voyager can open a channel, I realize "because it is in the script" comes into play and from a production standpoint, do you want to bump an extra up a paygrade with an "aye aye sir" but it was not until Enterprise that we get an Communications officer.

The idea for the TNG 24th was to show the 1701-D had a greater degree of automation than the 1701, so helmsman and navigator became the conn officer, I guess a lot of the peripheral bridge stations became the ops officer, etc. It probably would have made more sense to give communications to the ops officer, but since Data was the de facto science officer, the responsibility moved to tactical (likely to give that actor something to do since shooting phasers was relatively rare). And this arrangement became the default for the other 24th century shows.

 

[Timo]

Well, during the first season of TNG, no job on the E-D bridge remained consistent, save for the ones of the CO and the XO. It wasn't the Tactical Officer or the Chief of Security who handled the calls (or raised the shields or analyzed the anomaly of the week or gave a damage report), it was a different character at a different station in different episodes. And the characters rotated from station to station, too.

Things settled down by the end of the season and then, after a minor reshuffling, got carved in stone from the second season on. We could say that in-universe, Picard was cross-training his bridge officers and experimenting with different setups, a perk for all starship commanders made possible by the flexibility of technology...

Timo Saloniemi