The US Navy and the US Coast Guard both follow this convention. The Commanding Officer of a ship is referred to as Captain. The larger ships (aircraft carriers, for example) do have a Captain as the CO. Some of the smaller ships don’t.
The only place I’ve encountered that is in Starship Troopers. It wouldn’t work for a large ship in the US Navy for a few reasons. One is because the ship’s CO is a Captain and the iir wing’s CO is also a Captain. The Engineering Department Heads for both carriers on which I served also were Captains. Sometimes the Army, Air Force, or Marince Corps officers assigned to the carriers or air wings are Captains, sometimes Majors.
I didn’t mean to be ambiguous. What I meant is that some of the smaller ships, including the submarines, can have commanding officers who don’t hold the actual rank of Captain. The CO is still referred to as “Captain,” though.
The only place where I’ve seen that to be the case is in the Star Trek world commencing with the second movie. In the US military, female officers are address as “Miss,” “Ms.,” or “Mrs.” or by their rank’s courtesy title.
Concur. I’ve been a Naval Officer for 20 year, and I’ve never heard a female officer refered to as “Mister.” Frankly, it’s pretty rare to be called mister at all. It’s usually by your rank, “Lt” for example or by your title such at XO, OPS, CHENG etc.
I have a vague memory of that book too. Something about some nephew (?) of Kirk who realizes the objective is to save the ship, so he beams aboard the Romulan ship as a captive so the ship can get away.
You know, I’d title that book something obvious, like [URL=http://www.amazon.com/Kobayashi-Maru-Star-Trek-Book/dp/0671658174Kobayashi Maru. But that’s just me.
I liked Sulu’s response to the situation, which was
to send a reply to the Koybayashi Maru’s distress call, roughly "We can’t help you, entering the Neutral Zone would be an act of war, and I’m not going to do that. What the hell are you doing there, anyway?
Chekov spends a fair amount of time scanning Ceti Alpha V and finds a minor life signal in a single area of the planet. After landing on the planet, Kahn explains a sand bug thingy is “Ceti Alpha V’s only surviving indigenous life-form”.
They can find and beam people from a planet using their sensors but can’t figure out about 20 people are on Ceti Alpha V and the planet has a bunch of sand bug thingys? They also don’t notice an ENTIRE PLANET (Ceti Alpha VI) is missing.
Ok, that’s not really a question. It’s just something that’s bugged me about the movie.
The thing with Star Trek characters addressing female officers as “sir” and “Mister” drives me up the freakin’ wall! There is no basis for it in any Naval or military tradition I’m aware of (and I was an officer in the US Navy for four years).
I can only think it came from Gene Roddenberry’s original vision of an egalitarian, liberated future, where men and women would be treated equally both in law and in fact. It’s a laudable sentiment, but its effect is to equalize women by turning them into men, after a fashion, and I think that ultimately makes it disrespectful of women.
I recently observed that Ronald D. Moore, a Star Trek graduate, has continued this ill-conceived usage over at Battlestar Galactica. I wish he would stop.
Incidentally but irrelevantly, only enlisted men are ever “mustered.” Officers “assemble” or “are assembled.” Of course “mustered out” actually means something different, and I’m not suggesting you should replace it with “disassembled.”
Actually I think more come from OCS//OTS/OIS than from either ROTC and the service academies combined.
In the Navy, at least, warrant officers are commissioned officers, although when I was in the service (as late as 1993) they were trying to phase them out, since they’re sort of anachronistic and a dead-end. More enlistedmen were getting commissioned as LDOs (limited duty officers) who, despite the name, were ordinary officers who started as ensigns and could climb right on up the rank ladder.
Apologies for this post having little to nothing to do with Star Trek II.
