# Difficult Star Trek Question **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 2, 2007, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583 "2007-02-02T18:46:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/21 "2007-02-03T01:50:38Z")
Roddenberry’s original vision was that _everyone_ in Starfleet was an officer; the lowest ranking person on the Enterprise was an Ensign. That’s why you never really see anything other than officers. Of course, he said that Starfleet isn’t military either. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/22 "2007-02-03T03:33:16Z")
[QUOTE=Oakminster] Yeah, you’ve got a point. Kira was a Major in the Bajouran system, and was not a Star Fleet officer…yet her rank/status was recognized on DS9. Riker was part of an exchange program, and served briefly aboard a Klingon ship in an officer’s slot. The Trekverse is a little top heavy, at least on the shows. We rarely see enlisted guys. Off the top of my head, I can name Yeoman Rand and Chief O’Brian, but that’s about it. The Enterprise prolly has grunts pulling KP or Firewatch, but they don’t get screen time until it’s time to feed somebody to an alien. [/QUOTE] DS9 is a special case, even within the context of the show. The gist that I got was that Deep Space Nine was a Bajoran space station, but that the Federation ran the show on the station, in order to keep the Cardassians away. Part of the political manuvering to make this work was that the top hat was a Starfleet captain, but the second in command and a sizable chunk of the chain down from there are with the Bajoran government. I think we see Kira bossing people around on the Defiant during missions away from the station, but that’s probably a special arrangement with Sisko rather than something she could expect to happen if she just walked onto the bridge of the Enterprise during the midnight watch. As for the Trekverse being top-heavy, watch Star Trek 6, and pause to think about how many crewmembers of the Enterprise are Captains. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/23 "2007-02-03T03:46:42Z")
[QUOTE=Raguleader] I think we see Kira bossing people around on the Defiant during missions away from the station, but that’s probably a special arrangement with Sisko rather than something she could expect to happen if she just walked onto the bridge of the Enterprise during the midnight watch. [/QUOTE] I see that as more of a chain of command issue. The Defiant was not really an fulltime ship, it was sorta like a mobile extension of DS-9. The senior person from DS-9 was usually in command. If Kira were to visit the Enterprise, she’s still entitled to the perks that come with being an officer, but she is not in the chain of command on that ship. Unless she had some temporary assignment, of course. Huh? Why yes, ossifer, I am guilty of fan-wankery in the first degree. Thanks for asking. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/24 "2007-02-03T03:54:41Z")
[QUOTE=Oakminster] I see that as more of a chain of command issue. The Defiant was not really an fulltime ship, it was sorta like a mobile extension of DS-9. The senior person from DS-9 was usually in command. If Kira were to visit the Enterprise, she’s still entitled to the perks that come with being an officer, but she is not in the chain of command on that ship. Unless she had some temporary assignment, of course. Huh? Why yes, ossifer, I am guilty of fan-wankery in the first degree. Thanks for asking. 😃 [/QUOTE] Heh, so DS9, having _no_ command staff to speak of, is the least top heavy ship in Starfleet. 😃 And if Kira randomly found herself aboard the Starship Enterprise, she’d have to probably make do hanging out in Ten Forward or being confined to her very humble Guest quarters (yaknow, the ones that are each the size of Luxemberg) ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/25 "2007-02-03T04:05:38Z")
If Kira were on the Enterprise, Riker would be trying to get in her pants. I don’t think he’d score with her, though. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/26 "2007-02-03T04:07:25Z")
[QUOTE=tanstaafl] Roddenberry’s original vision was that _everyone_ in Starfleet was an officer; the lowest ranking person on the Enterprise was an Ensign. That’s why you never really see anything other than officers. [/quote] I dunno about that; “crewmen” appear in a few TOS episodes, including the first one televised, “The Man Trap”. Vince Howard played a crewman (or, more accurately, the salt-eating shapeshifting creature who changed itself to _look_ like a crewman). > [@](#): > > Of course, he said that Starfleet isn’t military either. Interestingly, David Marcus uses the word “military” to describe Starfleet in the second film, though Roddenberry didn’t write it (and it happens to be by far the best in the series). Seems to me Gene wasn’t too concerned with accuracy and (most of) his successors agree. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/27 "2007-02-03T06:08:57Z")
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] Interestingly, David Marcus uses the word “military” to describe Starfleet in the second film, though Roddenberry didn’t write it (and it happens to be by far the best in the series). Seems to me Gene wasn’t too concerned with accuracy and (most of) his successors agree. [/QUOTE] Mind you, the only movie that Gene had much to do with was the first one. After that, he was more or less sidelined, with his input only occasionally listened to when making the movies. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/28 "2007-02-03T06:57:27Z")
[QUOTE=Larry Borgia] Is it possible for non-academy people to become officers, as it is in the U.S. military? [/QUOTE] McCoy didn’t go to the Academy. In **The Ultimate Computer** , when the Commodore insulted Kirk by calling him a name used by Academy middies for something useless, McCoy didn’t get it, and Spock had to explain it to him. But I suppose doctors are always exceptions. ---
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/29 "2007-02-03T08:33:01Z")
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant] Four hundred officers per ship? How about 360 crewmen and 40 officers. Most of the officers graduated from the academy rather than were promoted from the ranks. [/QUOTE] Which only strengthens the idea that one large Starfleet Academy on Earth could easily sustain and grow Starfleet’s entire complement of officers. A graduating class of 10,000 with 40 officers per ship means 250 new ships’ worth of officers every year. I agree that having an enlisted/officer ratio of 7 or 8 to 1 makes sense. We saw more of the enlisted folks in DS9, especially episodes like “The Siege of AR-558.” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/30 "2007-02-03T09:10:40Z")
It can’t be that tight-knit an organization. They lost 11000+ at Wolf 359 and shrugged it off. Compare that to the trauma of losing 220 Marines in a single bombing in 1982, or 342 firemen lost in the WTC. Those organizations were hurt _massively_, while Wolf 359 was pretty much forgotten until it was used a springboard in the first episode of DS9, after which it was again pretty much forgotten. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/31 "2007-02-03T16:09:32Z")
[QUOTE=tanstaafl] Roddenberry’s original vision was that _everyone_ in Starfleet was an officer; the lowest ranking person on the Enterprise was an Ensign. That’s why you never really see anything other than officers. Of course, he said that Starfleet isn’t military either. [/QUOTE] Mmmm, not true. There were “crewmen” as well. Usually guys in overalls who end up dead. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/32 "2007-02-03T16:56:49Z")
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] It can’t be that tight-knit an organization. They lost 11000+ at Wolf 359 and shrugged it off. Compare that to the trauma of losing 220 Marines in a single bombing in 1982, or 342 firemen lost in the WTC. Those organizations were hurt _massively_, while Wolf 359 was pretty much forgotten until it was used a springboard in the first episode of DS9, after which it was again pretty much forgotten. [/QUOTE] IIRC, it gets mentioned quite a bit in the fourth season at least of TNG, and I recall a number of episodes where Starfleet is trying to develop tactics and weapons to use against the Borg, but that may have been during the third season as well. That said, yeah, they really didn’t make as much of it as you’d expect them to. To be honest, I wouldn’t be suprised if Picard got the Sisko treatment a _lot_ everywhere he went. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/33 "2007-02-03T18:03:37Z")
[QUOTE=RickJay] Of course, “the Academy” might have satellite (no pun intended) campuses. [/QUOTE] I’m reasonably sure one of the people on Voyager said they went to an Academy campus in Europe. Doesn’t Tom Paris create a holodeck program based on the European bar he used to frequent during his Academy days? _edit_ According to the [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfleet_Academy), Paris attended the Marseilles branch of the Academy. > [@tanstaafl](#): > > Roddenberry’s original vision was that everyone in Starfleet was an officer; the lowest ranking person on the Enterprise was an Ensign. Someone already mentioned Yoeman Rand, who in an episode of Voyager mentioned that it took her four years to make Ensign. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/34 "2007-02-03T19:13:53Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] I’m reasonably sure one of the people on Voyager said they went to an Academy campus in Europe. Doesn’t Tom Paris create a holodeck program based on the European bar he used to frequent during his Academy days? [/QUOTE] Ah, but remember thanks to transporters he could get there from the main Academy easily. I seem to recall Sisko saying that he transported back for dinner at his dad’s restaurant ever night for his first year. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/35 "2007-02-03T20:26:33Z")
[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold] Ah, but remember thanks to transporters he could get there from the main Academy easily. I seem to recall Sisko saying that he transported back for dinner at his dad’s restaurant ever night for his first year. [/QUOTE] I think it was for his first _month_ and he used up all of his “transporter credits.” Unless Wikipedia got it wrong Paris went to the Marseilles campus. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/36 "2007-02-03T20:37:45Z")
You have a better memory than me. 🙂 Wikipedia’s generally right on this kind of thing. Mainly I guess because there’s no shortage of nerds like us on the net to correct each other. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/37 "2007-02-03T21:54:18Z")
[QUOTE=Oakminster] If Kira were on the Enterprise, Riker would be trying to get in her pants. I don’t think he’d score with her, though. 😃 [/QUOTE] Yeah, but I’d bet his twin from the transporter accident (Tom?) would tho’. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2007, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/38 "2007-02-03T22:07:42Z")
[QUOTE=SHAKES] Yeah, but I’d bet his twin from the transporter accident (Tom?) would tho’. [/QUOTE] Assuming the Cardassians allow conjugal visits… ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2007, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/39 "2007-02-04T04:10:05Z")
Well, back in Kirk’s era, the U.S.S. _Intrepid_ was a starfleet ship, but crewed entirely by Vulcans. That seems to imply to me that, at that time at least, at least some starfleet crews were drawn from member-worlds’ individual space forces, rather than starfleet proper. (It seems odd that just by chance, the ship would have received a pure-species crew…I could be wrong, though, since the Enterprise seems to be a mostly human ship. But I suppose a few of the crewmen could just have been human-looking aliens, or the freakier aliens were simply never been on camera.) One might argue that starfleet is (or has been) more like a NATO peacekeeping force than one superpower’s Navy. 'Course, there’s all sorts of questions we don’t have the answer to—like how many ships, total, starfleet has, or even what the population of the Federation is—that would badly influence the question at hand. [QUOTE=Raguleader] Assuming the Cardassians allow conjugal visits… [/QUOTE] Allow conjugal visits to unmarked mass graves inside gulags? That’s very progressive. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2007, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583/40 "2007-02-04T04:14:47Z")
If I get a chance, I may dig out (assuming I still HAVE the thing) my old, pre-STTMP Star Fleet Technical Manual. This has lots of information on the Federation, etc. Might have something useful on this thread. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/difficult-star-trek-question/390583.md?page=3)