Thanks. I’ll try not to preen too much.
Shades of Jack Aubrey. 
Heck, that particular episode of DS9 and the reboot movies give the impression of not only being written by people who know nothing about how the military works, they are aggressively disinterested in how the military works.
In Star Trek II TWOK, when the Enterprise on a training mission is sent to check out Regula One, Spock makes Kirk take command.
[QUOTE=Spock]
As a teacher on a training mission, I am content to command the Enterprise. If we are to go on actual duty, it is clear that the senior officer on board must assume command.
[/QUOTE]
Admiral Kirk > Captain Spock
Needs of the many > needs of the one
How the 21st century US military works is not relevant to how Starfleet works. I don’t know why people insist it should.
No it doesn’t directly. But movies producers must work to keep fans “in the moment” and anything that takes one out of that is problematic. Talking dogs will work in a Scooby Doo movie but it won’t work in Iron Man. A man in a flying metal suit will work in Iron Man - won’t work in The Great Gatsby. So people are trying to make sense of this very odd happening with the only logical point view that they have and that’s the U. S. military.
So I think some (many?) fans were trying to make sense of a college student taking command of the most powerful starship in the fleet when presumably there are tens or hundreds of Officers with decades or more of experience on the ship. His age doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that his experience amounts to four semesters of College that has some of the bigger fans perplexed. So they look to the military for context.
It would work, and it would be awesome. Tom Buchanan wouldn’t know what hit him.
But the first example above shows that Starfleet has never worked like the US military. Or does only when they choose to. An admiral does not command a ship. The admiral is in overall command of the mission, task force or fleet. The ships captain commands the ship. Captain Spock would never have given up command to an admiral if it worked like the US military.
I don’t want to hijack, but I’d say that Starfleet works like the military when it wants to and doesn’t when it doesn’t want to.
ST uses U. S. Navy rank structure, use the “USS” nomenclature to identify their ships, has court-martials, military academies, weapons, etc.
And while I’ll grant you that Admirals don’t command ships, CAPT Spock wouldn’t have given up his command to a Starfleet academy student either.
They pick their spots and don’t hold to the military 100% of the time. But to say ST doesn’t work like the U. S. military at all is a bit disingenuous.
I didn’t say the U.S. military, nor does the U.S. military have any kind of exclusive on military organization.
Let’s just say that Starfleet works in a very ad hoc mission-focused way. People don’t hold positions because of their rank, they hold positions because they’re the right person for the job. In cases where people don’t know who the right person for the job is, they compare ranks, but that’s only when there’s no other clear way to tell.
So when Kirk puts Dr. McCoy in command, well, he’s the acting captain come hell or high water. In the real US navy the science officer or the chief engineer aren’t in the line of command unless all the line officers are out of commission. But Starfleet operates a bit more like ships in the age of sail. Ships are out of communication for weeks or months at a time, postings and jobs and ranks are more suggestions than rules. And so, just like in the age of sail a wet behind the ears midshipman might take command of a ship rather than a grizzled chief, because the midshipman was an aristocrat and the chief was a commoner. Or…something.
The Midshipman is an officer, and the boatswain is not.
Sure. We are making the same point. It acts like the US military (specifically the Navy) when it wants to. And it doesn’t when it fits the plot. It would be disingenuous to say otherwise. It is also ridiculous to criticize the new movies for deviating from military customs and procedures when the Star Trek universe has been doing so since 1966.
But putting an irresponsible neophyte into a position of high prestige and responsibility, ahead of many more qualified candidates, isn’t just something that’s not done by the present-day US military. It’s something that hasn’t been done by any human organization in history, and for good reason.
True. But Roddenbury was an officer in the US Army Air Corps and when the writers choose for Starfleet to follow military traditions it most closely follows the US.
Yep. This is fiction. Just like in TOS when they had a Captain of several years command time at (show) age 32 in charge of the “flagship” of Starfleet. I’m not saying the new movies are consistent with reality in this regard. I’m saying they are internally consistent with what had gone on in the Star Trek universe since 1966.
I don’t recall the Enterprise-no-suffix ever being called the flagship of Starfleet. That’s a NexGen thing. And it was clear that Series!Kirk was junior to all his peers.
He was not, however, a recent third-year cadet. He had a lot of heroism on his record, not just some patron like Pike saying “I believe in you SOOOOO MUUUUUUCH!!!” and moving him to the front of the line like an overly favoritism-minded dance club doorman.
Yep. In TOS he had probably at most 4 years more experience before given command. Probably less. Still unbelievably fast if you use today’s military standards. From the beginning Star Trek has shown people being put in positions for merit not seniority. The first new movie provided extraordinary circumstances in which the unusual occurance happened. If you think a couple of years difference is too big a logical gap for you to suspend your disbelief that’s up to you. But if you somehow feel any of the other Star Trek properties are logically tight your rose colored glasses are mighty thick.
Memory Alpha says Kirk had been in Star Fleet fifteen years before commanding Enterprise, his second command.