Promotion seems awfully slow, Picard has been Captain for 15 years, Riker was at the same position for 15 years as was Data till he died.
On the other hand we see officers like Janeway (for whom Voyager was her first command) promoted to Admiral by the time of Nemesis.
It should be noted that Riker was offered starship commands and he turned them all down in favor of staying with Picard.
Sure, what about Picard? Surely he could have been used as an Admiral by now.
I think Picard turned down the Admiralty also. Having too much fun doing what he’s doing , I guess.
James T. Kirk also strongly advised him to stay put. He was wise to take that advice.
He turned down no fewer than three promotions during the course of the series. I wonder if they eventually just gave up.
Most captains get Peter Principled into the admiral position. I don’t think admirals get much respect from the lower ranks, captains are constantly disobeying their orders. The only admiral I remember from the history of Star Trek to be the least bit competent was Admiral Ross from DS9, and he just did everything Sisko advised him to do.
I bet the Starfleet officers look down on the admirals because they spend their careers behind a desk on Earth. Admirals are the people who are too dumb to go into space. No captain with a bit of respect would accept promotion, which is why Janeway is an admiral.
It seems to me that after the Borg (Wolf 359) Starfleet lost so many officers that Riker would have been made a ship captain whether he liked it or not.
But only Tasha Yar’s career died.
During the dominion war,hen you have major fleet actions one would have thought that Star Fleet would want it’s best officers in command positions and it would not be a desk job like before. They could have even written it into the movie, have Picard as the squadron commander with the Enterprise as his flagship
Janeway was only made an admiral because of all the Borg technology she brought back to the Federation. And also to keep her from ever commanding another starship. She was proballly given a choice between promation to rear admiral or retirement.
That’s because none of those other ships had their own TV show.
That’s what they did with the latter parts of the Dominion War. (See Admiral Ross above.)
Picard did take command over the fleet in the first act of First Contact, when the flagship was destroyed by the Borg.
Picard wasn’t fat enough to be come an Admiral. Riker was working on it, though.
-Joe
Riker ends up with his own command, eventually. Personally I’ve always thought he passed up commands as it would be better to be first officer on the Galaxy-class flagship than on some beat-up second line vessel.
When you’re a Starfleet officer, and a camera crew shows up on your ship, your career is on hold until you’ve been canceled.
Didn’t Troi get a promotion in one episode when she made a holodeck decision to order Geordi to his death to save the ship?
Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of military history knows better but in the 19th and 20th century wasn’t promotion awfully slow in peacetime army and navies?I am thinking of the British navy in the 19th century…so many ships were decommissioned after the Napolenic wars that many officers had to stay on half pay and stay where they where. Or in John Ford’s “Fort Apache” set around 1876 (they talk about the people killed at Little Bighorn) there is a scene where a wounded soldier gives a detailed report and John Wayne says something about "maybe you’ll get you sergeant’s stripes in 8 years).
I believe in “The Best of Both Worlds,” Admiral Hansen notified Picard that Riker was being offered command of the U.S.S. Melbourne and said words to the effect of “This is the third time we’ve pulled out the center seat for Will Riker, and damn it, this time we’re going to make sure he sits down in it!”
Yip. And in that one was the only time he was forced to become Captain. Perhaps because of his actions as Captain of the Enterprise, he was able to have his pick of jobs and chose to stay on as first officer.
And, yes, I think it’s a matter of the Enterprise being the best and most interesting ship, and he’d rather be a first officer there than a captain somewhere else.
Also, in the real world, is 4 years a long time to be a Commander (or whatever the equivalent rank is)?
No. She was studying and taking the test in a holodeck for a command promotion and part of the test involved making the command decision to send someone to their death. She kept taking the test over and over and failing until Riker hinted to her that she didn’t have what it took to make the command decisions. She re-took the holodeck test which involved sending Geordi to his death to save the others.
Yes, the USS Titan. He’s about to leave to take command, with his new wife Deanna Troi as his Ship’s Counselor, at the start of Star Trek Nemesis. For more details: Titan (disambiguation) | Memory Alpha | Fandom. There’ve been several books since.