When you write your screenplay set in the AK84 Interstellar Confederation, the sky’s the limit, baby!
Did someone say something that would lead you to that conclusion? I don’t think so.
No no one has bothered to work out the comprehensive details of how rank works in Starfleet. And why should they? It’s not a real military service. It serves as the setting for fictional works. All we really have to know that it’s somewhat similar to military services we are familiar with in real life, but isn’t exactly the same as what we know. It’s fiction, dude. It’s there to serve the story.
I never thought of it as a “dead-end post”. But it started off as a post that didn;t need a Capt. But when they found the wormhole and DS9 became the front door to new reaches of space, they felt the post required at least a Capt. Sisko was doing a great job running the station. He had the respect of both his Starfleet and Bajoran crew, as well as the leadership of Bajor. So replacing him wasn;t called for.
The Mirror Universe took a more direct, impatient approach.
I know this is an old post, but there is a commander in the Star Trek novels called Elias Vaughn, a human who is at least 101 and is described as in robust physical health. The reason he is still a commander is because he is a former special operative who has turned down promotion in order to keep a low profile. I realize that the novels aren’t canon, but in recent years, the novels have been held to their own continuity, much like the various Star Wars novels.
Not quite but the Enterprise-A had at least three captains at once (Kirk, Spock and Scotty) while all the people still doing the lackey jobs were commanders.
It’s worse in the Abrams verse, where one can be promoted from suspended cadet to captain of the flagship in a single mission!
I know, jeez, I hated that. Still a fun movie, though.
I would argue (or handwave, I s’pose) that by saying that by the movies the Enterprise was training or special missions. Still, that’s a lot of captains on one starship.
In the U.S. Navy, it’s not unheard of for a ship to have two captains. Three isn’t a huge leap forward.
But this kind of stuff doesn’t really need wankery. It’s enough to say that rank in Starfleet doesn’t exactly match up with rank as we think of it in the U.S. armed forces.
I probably already posted this in this thread, but StarFleet wasn’t supposed to be primarily a Military Organization.
Yes, it’s silly. “We are not military, but we represent our government with big guns!”
This argument was what got me a personal reply from Phil Farrand of the Nitpickers Guild. He basically responded to my two page letter with: “Yeah, but …”
You mean like pumpernickel?
One Klingon did call it a “Homo Sapien’s Club”.
“Homo Sapiens Only Club”? I forget. Star Trek VI.
Ignoring the Vulcan sitting right there at the table with him, and the many other aliens who are members of the Federation.
True. However, during TOS run, the colonial empires were still in living memory. in those empires it was not unknown for a person who wax the nearest agent of a government to assume whatever duties that needed to be done. It was not exactly out if the ordinary for the military unit posted in some far away colony to double as an explorer, taxman, police, magistrate, emergency management force. In space, I can see StarFleet as just this.
Indeed in the original series that’s exactly they seemed to be.
But it does appear that, on screen, at least, especially during Kirk’s era, Humans make up a large majority of crews.
I’ve always wondered and fanwanked that Humans, being new to space, and right out of a devastating global war, were seen as overly enthusiastic and optimistic about their role in the galaxy, and their ideas about an interstellar government/entity.
The majority of the other races (Vulcan, Andorian, Orion, Tellarite) had been in space for centuries already, and fought a few wars against each other. They had become more… cynical.
But the Humans come along, all full of sass and energy, and actually volunteer to put themselves in harm’s way in Starfleet. (Both exploration and war are risky buisnesses.) Heh. As a bonus, they breed like rabbits. So fine, let them. 
Rye.
Don’t blame me, I just copy&paste!
So the only token alien at the table is the half-human one?
Ooo, ouch. Spock was nobody’s token.
mlees, I like your theory a lot.
I’m not sure we can conclude that. Sure, humans make up a majority of Kirk’s crew, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t crews were Andorians aren’t the vast majority, or Vulcans or Tellarites or so forth.
It doesn’t even seem unreasonable to me that Kirk’s Enterprise was majority human. Vulcans like things a lot hotter than humans and Andorians a lot colder. Spock was able to put up with the differnce, but a lot of Vulcans might not have been. For that matter, I suspect that a Vulcan ship’s artificial gravity is set higher than a Terran ship’s, and that few humans would want to put up with that for months at a time.