In TNG they often refer to the Enterprise as the fleet’s flagship.
Isn’t a flag ship any ship that the commanding admiral of a fleet is on at any given moment?
What say you navy dopers? Can you rest my mind on this?
Obviously, it’s simply a can of whupass.
This one pissed me off for another reason. When the clone people attempted to steal DNA from Riker, Troi, and a few others, they responded that this was a gross personal violation, how dare they, etc.
Why didn’t they just ask for volunteers? In a crew of a thousand or so, you’d probably find at least dozens who figure, “what the hell - it’s not like we’re ever coming back here, so, sure, take it!”
My sister is in the Navy and for some reason the subject of commodores came up and they do still exist in the U.S. Navy. It’s an honorary title usually given to a captain and it isn’t an official rank but it hasn’t quite gone the way of the Dodo yet.
Odesio
I had a confusing discussion with someone on the board about the rank of Commodore in the US Navy. It was during WWII used as a rank kinda sorta like Read Admiral, but isn’t used anymore.
He will probably be by soon to kick my ass about it again. 
I’m no navy Doper, but Wiki seems to back you up. However, Wiki also points out the logical confluence in the two meanings: while it does technically mean whichever ship the commanding admiral is on, said admiral usually needs better facilities, so whichever ship the admiral is on will tend to be top of the line, have a better crew, and carry more prestige. It’s not unreasonable to think that eventually the admiral will no longer be necessary to the meaning.
In fact, it’s already on its way, probably thanks in large part to Star Trek. There’s no way a company’s “flagship product” can meet the admiral requirement, after all.
As I recall, Commodore Aubrey took whichever ship was practical for his purpose in The Mauritius Campaign.
Can’t say about the US Navy, but here’s how the rank of Commodore worked in the British Navy of the Napoleonic era:
One huge measure of status was that a Captain had near-absolute control over his ship: where it went, what it did and how it was run. The Admiralty and the Admiralty alone could tell a Captain what his business with his ship was. That said, while an actual fleet might be overseen by an Admiral, it was not uncommon for a small flotilla or task force of ships to be working as a group on a specific operation. In that instance the Captain of one of the ships would be given the rank of Commodore; he had responsibility for the overall operation but not the actual authority to issue a direct command to the Captains of any of the other ships. In general he would meet with the other Captains, discuss the orders for the operation from the Admiralty, and come to a consensus on how the operation was to be conducted. In principle a particularly mule-headed Captain could balk against the Commodore’s “suggestions”, but he would certainly end up explaining to the Admiralty why. A Commodore “of the second rank” would also be the master of his own vessel, while a Commodore “of the first rank” would be a guest aboard one of the ships and be solely concerned with the task force operation.
An example from one of the Horatio Hornblower novels: Commodore Hornblower is being transported to the site of an assignment aboard a brigantine, a smaller vessel with a mere lieutenant as its master. Even though Commodore Hornblower has higher rank and vastly more status than the lieutenant, he has zero authority to tell the lieutenant how to run his ship. He has to phrase everything as a polite request, which the lieutenant “decides” would be a splendid idea.
In general the rank of Commodore was a way of giving someone most of the responsibility of a rear Admiral without any of the actual status. This was a concession to necessity at a time in which seniority and rank were jealously guarded prerogatives.
Well that explains why its not on any rank charts nowadays.
In the Aubrey/Maturin books, it seems that Commodore was essentially a temporary acting rank, to designate the commander of a squadron. Aubrey is appointed commodore a couple times to command a group of ships going off on a mission, then when the mission is over, goes back to being just a captain. And in every case he appears to give direct orders to the other captains.
The USN doesn’t have Fleet Captains either, but Starfleet did, at least at the time of TOS (Pike and Garth of Izar, for instance).
Love the show as I do, there’s certainly plenty to nitpick:
Why not send down a shuttlecraft to rescue Sulu and the others as they froze on the planetary surface in “The Enemy Within”? (IRL, the show didn’t have the budget yet for a shuttlecraft).
How does going really fast and really close to a star send you backwards or forwards in time?
How can Kirk beam over to the Romulan warship in “The Enterprise Incident”? Wouldn’t they have their shields up?
Why do we never hear any more about some of the one-time-only fantastic innovations of the show (gaining psi powers in “Plato’s Stepchildren,” building very convincing androids from putty in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” curing all ailments and even growing back your appendix in “This Side of Paradise,” etc.)
Why did Miri’s world look just like Earth? For that matter, why do so many alien races speak English?
Why have the Bridge so vulnerable on the top of Constitution-class starships, with just a single turbolift to connect it to the rest of the ship?
Why does Starfleet seem to operate only one kind of ship? Why no seatbelts for its crews? Why no circuitbreakers for its equipment? Why no female captains 200-some years from now?
How can the ship be so easily taken over by bad guys?
Why is the Prime Directive so erratically observed?
How could the Iotians have learned so much about Chicago Ganglands culture, right down to the fine details of clothing, guns, vehicles etc., from just a single book? And what kind of idiot historian thinks there’s a lot to admire and emulate in Nazism?
Why does the turbolift move at such inconsistent speeds? Long trips for long conversations; short trips when the characters have nothing to say to one another.
Why is beaming all of the tribbles to the Klingon ship, a certain death sentence for the poor little fuzzy critters, cause for hilarity among Kirk & Co.?
For that matter, in a Federation which has otherwise abolished the death penalty, why is visiting Talos IV so absolutely terrible that it alone merits execution?
How come Kirk and his crew kept beaming down to Vazquez Rocks?
He knew a girl there.
For that matter, in a Federation which has otherwise abolished the death penalty, why is visiting Talos IV so absolutely terrible that it alone merits execution?
To keep people from going there. Think about it - as you said, they really don’t have the death penalty except for this. That planet’s gotta be bad news to merit death.
As for no shuttles to rescue Sulu & co in The Enemy Within, I repeat my common reply “why not beam down bricks?” So what if they get duplicated, you’d have more bricks to build a shelter.
Do you want to stay in a shelter with evil bricks? With their little moustaches, plotting your death?
You turn them around so that the mustaches (mustachi?) face outwards. :rolleyes:
The fanwank I’ve heard goes something like this: by the end of the Eugenics Wars, there were only a few tens of millions of fertile women left on the planet Earth, and plenty of venereally transmitted viruses designed to eliminate the “genetically unfit”. As a result, society regressed to a standard of extreme cloistering of women. By the time of TOS things had improved to the point that the miniskirts were a fad occompanying a second “Sexual Revolution”, in which women reasserted the freedom to date and mate as they chose. There may have still been something of a “glass ceiling” in Starfleet, but probably Janice Lester was just rationalizing her failure to pass Starfleet’s requirements.
Why would the Enterprise have a storehouse full of bricks?
They could make them out of that fast drying concrete stuff McCoy used for a bandage in The Devil in the Dark.
Why would a god need a starship?