I wouldn’t count Worf’s ambassadorship; that was leaving the Starfleet hierarchy entirely.
Given that Enterprise is one of the most coveted ships be assigned to, I don’t think it’s the place where careers go to die. I can accept that someone might stay the same rank (Captain) on the same ship for several years without it being much of a problem. I have a much more difficult time Riker’s career path for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, Riker has created a bottleneck. As Ms. Snooty Blond told him, “You’re in my way.” Well, how many people are behind Ms. Snooty Blond waiting for their big chance at promotion? There are other ships, certainly, but if turning down promotions was common in Star Fleet this would be a problem. Second, nobody is made an executive officer without the assumption that they are on a career path towards becoming a commanding officer. By refusing his own captaincy twice, Riker demonstrated that he was not interested in command. He should have been transferred off of ship duty and onto a base somewhere so that another potential captain could be groomed for command.
Is that in canon?
I think Odesio is talking about in the real, current-day, US Navy, though I’ve been wrong before.
And I don’t think that’s canon for *Star Trek anyway. I’m not sure I could pin down a canon reference, but I’ve always taken it that Spock – the very first executive officer the viewers meet – had next-to-no interest in being a field commander himself. Yes, I know he was captain of the Enterprise in Trek II, but he wasn’t really a field commander; the vessel had clearly been reassigned for teaching purposes, not for regular missions.
As I think on it, Spock specifically denies in “The Tholian Web” that he wants to be captain. Scott is clearly of a similar mind, and the movie novelizations suggest that neither Chekov nor Uhura had any interest in taking the center seat full-time either. I can imagine several reasons why that might be true of many officers.
*Someone may bring up Number One from the Chris Pike pilot. That person can bite me. I don’t care that Majel Barrett was filmed in that role before the series aired any more than I care that T’Pol’s adventures on Archer’s Enterprise happened first. In terms of who the viewers saw, Spock came first.
Mirror Spock also didn’t want to move up, but that was mostly because he valued his skin being in one piece.
I don’t think it was that. Mirror-Sulu might decide to try to off him as well, after all.
Spock was interested in the sciences. He liked being chief of that department because it guaranteed him the bridge posting he wanted – the science officer’s seat, where he’d reliably be able to scan interesting space crap. And he liked being First Officer because it guaranteed him a spot on many if not most landing parties, where’d he have the chance to see interesting biological phenomena on new planets. He may have even liked being a teacher. But command of a ship, day in and day out, was of little interest to him.
At this point ** Unintentionally Blank** points out it was just a show that was more successful then it ever expected to be and perhaps ascribing perfect self referential integrity is giving them too much credit.
** Unintentionally Blank** is then tribbled off the stage.
You misspelled shot repeatedly with phasers, the Deep Space Nine type that don’t kill with a clean disintegration but rather delivers agonizing burns that leave the victim begging for death.
Odesio is talking about, as writer Michael Stackpole (or maybe it was David Webber - I forget which specifically, probably both) said, “any sane navy”. Executive Officer is the daily grind runner of a Navy vessel, the right hand to the Captain, and also getting experience in running a ship that he will need with his own command. That’s why Exec Officer is supposed to be Command line in ST. It’s one thing to have a rank structure with officers equivalent to and possibly even named captain that aren’t in command line - people like doctors, specialists in their specific field. It’s quite another to argue that the bulk of officers assigned to a Starship staff (say TOS Enterprise) don’t expect to someday at least try to make command themselves.
There is no indication of that I recall in TOS. TMP premises that Spock put Starfleet on sabatical and went to Vulcan for extensive meditation and purging of remaining emotions. He was sucked back in by V’Ger, and determined that the Vulcan purging isn’t what he really wanted. By Wrath of Khan he is certainly comfortable being Kirk’s right hand but no longer really interested in command for himself. After II and III, of course, his priorities have definitely shifted, and command doesn’t really interest him anymore. But I think it is the cummulative experiences of the movies that puts him in that mode, not any original predisposition on his part.
I don’t recall that, but it’s been a while. Conceivably he meant he didn’t want to be Captain right then, as he still wanted to retrieve Kirk. Someone can probably check that out.
Is that because the movie novelizations are trying to justify why Scott, Uhura, and Chekov have such illustrious careers that in the twenty years across the spectrum, they’re still essentially stuck in the same positions in Kirk’s ship, and not transferred to other assignments? All the characters in TOS were just normal crew members in their current assigned positions, with the unstated but presumed position of any person in a military, they have a current role and the expectation that their duties would grow with their experience. It’s only later that we need justifications that they don’t move on.
Scotty was certainly more engineering minded than command, and it’s plausible he could treat Engineering like a technical discipline like being a doctor. Chekov is on Grissom in WoK. Given that he was an Ensign on Enterprise, it makes sense he’s at a lower status than Uhura, Sulu, and Scotty. Uhura has a Starbase assignment in SFS, where she is IIRC ranked Captain but is a technical specialist in some Communications field (signals processing, an intelligence berth, something). Again, that seems plausible that her expertise is in the technical aspects more than just the job of being operator (“Hailing frequencies opened”). Like the reboot tried to show with her being aware of the Klingon transmission because of her doing signals review for Intelligence.
Spock was captain of the Enterprise in Star Trek II, when it was a training vessel. He handed command over to Admiral Kirk, despite Kirk’s (someone weak) arguments otherwise.
In WoK Chekov was a commander aboard the Reliant, you’re thinking of Saavik and David Marcus, who were both aboard the Grissom. Minor nitpick, but then those are the most important nitpicks, yes? 
Niether McCoy, Uhura nor Scotty could ever realistically hope to get the command of a Starship. OKay, maybe Scotty could, but Engineering has been a specialised discipline for many years now and even today Engineers rarely get command.Of the others; only Chekov and Sulu can so hope and Chekov ends up the XO of a Starship and Sulu gets his own. Their adventures in the earlier movies are due to special circumstances.
Spocks seems to have lost interest in advancement by the time of Star Trek II.
The above are all understandable. Riker’s is not. Even if one accepts (as was pointed out in universe) that he was rather young for his post (having been handpicked by Picard), he spend an inordinate time as XO; his collegues would have been promoted by then.
Small wonder that the Enterprise plated no role in the Dominion war and was kept far far away from the line.
And Shelby was either lying or somehow speaking figuratively, as she makes Captain before the end of the series. You’re right, it would be stupid if an officer was allowed to stay in his post and keep other people from advancing. Fortunately, Starfleet doesn’t seem to do this.
It makes perfect sense. Why be captain of a lesser ship when you can be XO on a better ship? You know, the ship that seems to run into all the anomalies and all the interesting stuff? The one where life is never boring?
Furthermore, the Enterprise-D doesn’t appear on the front lines because it’s not a warship. It’s an explorer ship, as its mission flatly states. And the Dominion war was over by the time of the Enterprise-E, which was actually a warship, which seems to have been due to a shift in how Starfleet operates.
Until Wolf 359 (or perhaps when Q introduced the Enterprise to the Borg), Starfleet’s military role was vastly lower, and they really were trying to head towards being more explorers than fighters. In fact, that was the point of the episode mentioned in the parentheses–the Federation had gotten too complacent. It was much closer to Roddenberry’s intent of a Starfleet that was only military-like due to its history. Fortunately, his successors better understood that conflict is a necessary aspect of storytelling.
BTW Geordi was an engineer, and got command of a ship. (Surely Voyager coming back didn’t change that) Then again, he also had a bunch of other roles before being an engineer, so maybe he drew on that.
From a personal perspective it makes sense, but I would have said the idea is that you put the needs of the service over the needs of the person in question (hmm, I wonder if there’s a better way to put that). It’s not about what would be most personally fulfilling for Riker, it’s about having an optimally efficient and effective Starfleet. If you let all the best trained and experienced people - and the Enterprise isn’t necessarily that, but it does seem like it’s a coveted post - pal around and hang about on the same ship, then that’s the one you’re going to have to call all the time to solve all your problems.
Which works for TV, since that’s what we get to do, follow the ship that goes around solving all the problems. But if you’re on one of those ships that exists to get blown up failing before the Enterprise gets there, I’d guess it’s not so great.
Sorry, I really don’t think Shelby was speaking figuratively or lying. That she found a way to get around Riker doesn’t mean he wasn’t in her way.
For starters, you’ll never become the captain of a greater ship unless you command a lesser ship first. Even Picard didn’t start out on Enterprise. Second, refusing a promotion demonstrates a lack of dedication to Starfleet. Starfleet offered Riker his own command because they were in need of a good officer to captain it. He demonstrated on at least two occasions (it is two, right) that Starfleet cannot depend on him. By all rights Riker should have been transferred, either to ship where they send dead end careers to die.
I don’t buy this. There’s at least one example of the Enterprise D being used as a war ship in the episode where they change the time line, Tasha Yar is still alive and the Feds are in a war with the combined might of the Klingon and Romulans. Furthermore, we have tons of examples of the Enterprise being shown to be an effective war ship. It might not be on the front lines for other reasons but I would assume that’s because Enterprise is contributing to the war effort in other ways.
They still had wars though. The Cardassian/Federation war for one. They might have beefed up a bit after Wolf 359 but if Star Fleet wasn’t a competent military force the United Federation of Planets would likely be a part of the Romulan or Klingon empire.
I bet he didn’t turn down any commands because they weren’t as cool as Enterprise.
A few points for clarification:
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The Enterprise D had no part in the Dominion War because whatever is left of her is scattered along the surface of Veridian III (Worf transferred to DS9 in the beginning of the fourth season, after the Enterprise D was lost, the Dominion War didn’t start until the end of season 5, though it was clear to everyone which way the wind was blowing for several years previous).
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I want to say that First Contact takes place fairly soon before the Dominion War, but I have nothing concrete to base that on, aside from the fact that the Defiant had found time away from the front lines to haul ass all the way back to earth, which is not a short trip.
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When Best of Both Worlds took place, Riker had just turned down his third offer at command (IIRC).
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When the first half of Best of Both Worlds took place, there were far more officers in starfleet in command slots than there were by the time the episode ended. This probably did much for Shelby’s promotion prospects. Arguably, it should have done much to make the offer of command to Riker less of an offer and more of an order. Really, it would have made sense for him to keep Enterprise and for Picard to retire to the quiet life Earthside, but they never played the fallout of him fighting (under duress) for the Borg at Wolf 359 for anything near the drama and storytelling it was worth.
Which begs the question: Would a Captain who got their from an engineering path be better or worse than one that got there from Command School or (heaven forbid) the Councilor/Touchy Feely/Psychology path?
Presumably, Captain LaForge would be better in battle, and Captain Troi would be better in avoiding battle.
Putting the needs of the service before the individual – strict dedication to Starfleet – These are values that we have not seen Roddenberry or canon espouse. I’s pretty obvious that Starfleet is not the same kind of military that we have today and it doesn’t operate with exactly the same kinds of values and goals as our military services do. Continually trying to impose your personal experiences on a fictional entity is going to be endlessly frustrating.
The explorer crap is just that; crap. Starfleet is a military organisation. It is more like the RN of the Age of Sail then of the present day USN true, but it is military and no doubt about it.
Any idea why the Enterprise E was kept off the line in the Dominion War?
I think there are books covering the Ent-E’s involvement in the Dominion War. It just never made it on screen
Because their show got cancelled before that happened. There are plenty of books in the Trek Expanded Universe that have the E^2 dealing with the Dominion.