# Navy battlefield commissions, re: a DS9 episode: Valiant **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 3, 2013, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367 "2013-12-03T14:07:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/121 "2013-12-05T03:12:11Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > That’s another thing; _Captain_ Spock still served as Kirk’s First Officer after Kirk was demoted from Admiral. Scottie was also a captain and Chief of Engineering. Alternate/new movies/pretty boy/ Kirk saved the world once. Real, tough guy Kirk saved the universe innumerable times, gets the officers he wants. 🙂 There was the chess game metaphor in one of the TOS episodes. Spock thinks they are check mated, Kirk switches to poker. Spock knows that Kirk is better at running a starship, although he is somewhat lacking as a taxi driver. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/122 "2013-12-05T05:14:27Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Alternate/new movies/pretty boy/ Kirk saved the world once. > Real, tough guy Kirk saved the universe innumerable times, gets the officers he wants. 🙂 > There was the chess game metaphor in one of the TOS episodes. Spock thinks they are check mated, Kirk switches to poker. Spock knows that Kirk is better at running a starship, although he is somewhat lacking as a taxi driver. 🙂 The Corbomite Maneuver switches to poker and bluffs TRANYA!!! ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/123 "2013-12-05T07:01:52Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > A Captain as a rank is completely different from a Captain as the commanding officer of a vessel. The rank Captain is an O-6, above a Commander, but below a Rear Admiral. But the captain of a vessel can be one of several ranks, and in the US Navy, is often (usually?) not a Captain in rank: > > [USS Bremerton](http://www.csp.navy.mil/subssquadrons/bremerton/bremertonco_bio.shtml) commanded by Commander Wes Bringham. > [USS Kidd](http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/ddg100/Pages/Bio1.aspx) commanded by Commander Gabriel Varela. > [USS Avenger](http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/MCM1/Pages/bio1.aspx#.Up45A8RDt9A) commanded by Lieutenant Commander Todd Penrod. > > So the captain of a vessel could be outranked by a non-Captain. Whether the person who outranks him has authority to remove him from command is a different question. But there’s nothing that would automatically prevent a Commander from being a Lieutenant Commander’s immediate superior, even if the LCDR is the CO of a vessel. PT-73 commanded by Lieutenant Commander Quinton McHale. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/124 "2013-12-05T09:41:16Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > And the first time she gets to drive, she totals the damn thing. :rolleyes: Troi always gets a hard time for this but she wasn’t driving. The conn was dead and Data was doing flight control from ops. ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/125 "2013-12-05T17:00:57Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Two words. Wesley. Crusher. > > Sorry, it’s Star Trek. If your suspension of disbelief isn’t already superhuman you can’t watch it. I just believe that most fanboys look back at their childhood loves with fondness and look past the flaws. I agree there needs to be internal logic to a work. I just don’t see how this one small point stretches star trek’s already shaky internal logic more than a lot of what came before. But you don’t have to like it. Voyager is on DVD. I have two words too. Commanding. Officer. On the one hand I agree with you. For all of the producer’s talk on canon and continuity, they violated much of that at the drop of a hat. And I think we forget that all of the original series was produced to be seen twice. Once when aired and once in reruns. Syndication wasn’t given a lot of thought and VHS or DVDs were a pipe dream. No one thought there every line would be picked apart for decades. So we get that there are logic flaws. But having Wesley Crusher as an “acting Ensign” while a bit ridiculous is still miles beyond a college boy in command of the most powerful ship in the fleet. So **Loach** I think you are saying that there is so little logic none of this matters. To me there is a lot that doesn’t have logic, but Kirk being the CO as a college student is orders of magnitude beyond the pale and took me out of the moment. Why not have him as a LCDR in Command of Farragut who gets fleeted up while on Enterprise for some other reason? YMMV of course. Fun discussion either way! ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/126 "2013-12-05T17:13:47Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > So, how would the current US Navy approach a situation where an officer cadet on a training cruise is suddenly the senior officer? When he’s assigned a battlefield commission by the Captain of the vessel and that is duly recorded in the logs. Or could that never happen? That could never ever happen. I can’t begin to describe outside the bounds of reality that would be. Please keep in mind that even on a smaller ship such as a destroyer, the Commanding Officer has ~17 years in the Navy, the Executive Officer ~12 years, the four department heads have ~10 years, the rest of the wardroom (about 17) has Officers with between 1 and 4 years experience. All but one of those is a line Officer, who ultimatly could be assigned command of a ship later in his or her career. So with that experience on board, there is no way a midshipmen would ever be comissioned and made Commanding Officer. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/127 "2013-12-05T17:21:47Z")
And I’m pretty sure that the reason Wesley got such a great job was pure nepotism. Picard can’t admit anything, of course, but he takes responsibility for his own. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/128 "2013-12-05T17:28:24Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > That could never ever happen. I can’t begin to describe outside the bounds of reality that would be. > > Please keep in mind that even on a smaller ship such as a destroyer, the Commanding Officer has ~17 years in the Navy, the Executive Officer ~12 years, the four department heads have ~10 years, the rest of the wardroom (about 17) has Officers with between 1 and 4 years experience. All but one of those is a line Officer, who ultimatly could be assigned command of a ship later in his or her career. So with that experience on board, there is no way a midshipmen would ever be comissioned and made Commanding Officer. Unless you were contriving a plot for a TV show. In this case, the Valiant was sent on a 9 month top secret mission, involving complete radio silence for some reason, and brought along a squadron of cadets against all good judgement. And then every. single. officer on board was killed in some manner. That’s a pretty contrived setup, but then in order for the plot to function the audience is required to believe that the cadets are so arrogant that they wouldn’t immediately abort the mission. Or that the Captain who made a deathbed battlefield commission wouldn’t then immediately order the cadet to abort the mission as well. Given such a ridiculously contrived plot, it would be silly to throw it all away just to give command of the ship to Nog, even if that were the “correct” thing to do. Nevertheless, I started this thread, in GQ no less, because it seemed an interesting hypothetical. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/129 "2013-12-05T17:33:59Z")
What about the story of George Custer? Became the youngest general in the history of the U.S. due to a clerical error then immediately saves the Army of the Potomac’s ass at Gettysburg so no one want to be the one to “demote” him. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/130 "2013-12-05T18:35:33Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > What about the story of George Custer? Became the youngest general in the history of the U.S. due to a clerical error then immediately saves the Army of the Potomac’s ass at Gettysburg so no one want to be the one to “demote” him. Perhaps if he had been a bit older and more experienced he wouldn’t have been afraid the Indians were going to get away at Little Big Horn. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/131 "2013-12-05T20:47:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Is it possible to intercept subspace transmissions? It’s conceivable that their original mission required “radio” silence. And if their original mission were a short duration, high priority mission on a limited timetable, then that would be a conceivable reason to delay calling for backup or heading home. But even a mission requiring radio silence that has any duration, the prudent thing to do is call in or return to base on the grounds that the mission is no longer achievable. Mission profile: race to sector 2753 mark 13 and rescue the Andorian Princess from the Cardassian squad who are holding her for ransom to make the Andorian’s back their play to regain control of Bajor in the upcoming senate vote next Tuesday - check. Mission profile: sneak into sector 2753 mark 13 and conduct a 2 year radio-silent sneak attack on lone Jem Hadar ships to whittle down their forces and affect their morale (as if Jem Hadar have morale 😉 ) - uh, Houston, we have a problem. > [@spifflog](#): > > Please keep in mind that even on a smaller ship such as a destroyer, the Commanding Officer has ~17 years in the Navy, the Executive Officer ~12 years, the four department heads have ~10 years, the rest of the wardroom (about 17) has Officers with between 1 and 4 years experience. All but one of those is a line Officer, who ultimatly could be assigned command of a ship later in his or her career. So with that experience on board, there is no way a midshipmen would ever be comissioned and made Commanding Officer. Fair enough, and some of that is by virtue of the size of modern warships. That said, in the thread about the previously mentioned USS Chesapeake incident with William Sitgreaves Cox, **Billdo** points out that despite how it is presented by Heinlein in _Starship Troopers_, 3rd Lieutenant Cox was not an equivalent case of a cadet accidentally in command of a ship during a battle, either. So we don’t really have an equivalent real situation from the days of sail. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2013, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/132 "2013-12-06T01:07:48Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > As far as I can tell, you take on the color of your highest level job, even if you were originally in another track. Although it must be voluntary to some degree, as Data keeps his gold shirt. Data’s an interesting case. He was originally supposed to be in red, but the makeup didn’t go so well with red, so they switched and made him wear yellow. Okay, that’s not that interesting. Oh well. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2013, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/133 "2013-12-06T02:06:40Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Okay, that’s not that interesting. Oh well. It is to me! That’s the sort of interesting meta-production thing that is fun to know for no good reason at all. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2013, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/134 "2013-12-06T03:26:15Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > What about the story of George Custer? Became the youngest general in the history of the U.S. due to a clerical error then immediately saves the Army of the Potomac’s ass at Gettysburg so no one want to be the one to “demote” him. Custer was promoted on purpose by his cavalry patron Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, from all I’ve ever read, and although he was heroic at Gettysburg, I think it’s overstating things to say he saved the Army’s ass. And he was demoted after the war, as were many officers, as the Army shrank dramatically. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2013, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/135 "2013-12-06T03:49:10Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Two words. Wesley. Crusher. Wesley Crusher? The single most hated character in Star Trek history? Roddenberry’s Jar-Jar? That’s your defense? Even the guy who played him hated that character! If you’re going to justify the new Kirk, you need to compare him to something that _isn’t_ universally regarded as a mistake. Otherwise, you’re just demonstrating that bad ideas don’t improve with age. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2013, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/136 "2013-12-06T21:20:03Z")
His argument is “it happened”, not “it was a good thing”. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2013, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/137 "2013-12-09T16:44:25Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Is it possible to intercept subspace transmissions? It’s conceivable that their original mission required “radio” silence. It’s definitely possible to intercept subspace transmissions; it’s canon that the Romulans did it in Kirk’s time, and fanon that they were so much better at cryptography than Starfleet that there was practically no point in Starfleet encoding transmissions; it was best to deliver sensitive messages in person. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367/138 "2013-12-09T17:18:15Z")
No matter how good they were at cryptography, they can’t defeat one-time pads (at least, not without _serious_ infiltration of Starfleet command), and ships sent out to the far reaches of the Galaxy from a central base but with the potential for rapid communication back to base is practically a textbook case of where a one-time pad would be useful. At best, they’d be able to learn that a ship had found something worth talking about, but ships could also just transmit random bits every so often to mask that, too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/navy-battlefield-commissions-re-a-ds9-episode-valiant/675367.md?page=6)