It seems that everybody on a starship went to the Academy and came out a Lieutenant. So does that mean there is no enlisted class? Are all members of Starfleet considered officers? Is there any point to being an officer if there are no enlisted men?
It seems pretty obvious to assume that in the homogenous, egalitarian utopia that is the human Star Trek future-world, along with there being no money, there is no military draft. But have they eliminated the military class distictions as well?
The bridge always seems to be inhabited solely by officers, from ensigns up. I don’t remember any references to CPO’s. Normally you’d expect the bulk of any ship’s compliment to be enlisted, but I guess they don’t get a lot of speaking parts.
Which of course brings up the question of what the hell of crew of 400 or so does on a daily basis aboard the Enterpise. (Taking the original show as a base.) It was never clear whether most of them were technicians who kept things running, or specialists for various planetary missions, or researchers, or what.
Miles O’Brien is an enlisted man (Chief Petty Officer), though when he first showed up he was a Lt., but they changed that. Just ignore it when they say Lt. O’Brien.
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They’ve got enlisted personel they’re just not prominent in many episodes. Chief O’Brian who started out on the Enterprise and moved on over to Deep Space 9 was clearly an enlisted man. In TNG they had an episode featuring an overzealous McCarthy like woman ferreting out traitors picking on an enlisted man who lied about being part Vulcan when his grandfather was in fact Romulan. In another TNG episode they featured a day in the life of 4 enlisted personel on board the Enterprise.
They haven’t eliminated it entirely though they seem confused at times. I believe in the episode where they go back in time and meet Mark Twain our fearless Picard stated “Star Fleet is not a military organiztion.” That really doesn’t make any sense though. Star Fleet has military ranks, they conduct court martials, and when the Federation goes to war it is Star Fleet who does the fighting. They are quite clearly a military organization.
Marc
PS: It is possible I got the quote wrong. Maybe he said “The Federation is not a military organization.”
I’m not sure one can use The Next Generation as a viable guide. The early episodes were written during a touchy-feely time in Hollywood, possibly in reaction to the Reagan administration. You can see it in the blatant hostility for 20th-century humans expressed many times in the show. Even in the first episode, as Q tries to “prove” how savage humans are, he appears in a WW2 uniform. Maybe that would fly in 1987 when Americans were expressing their leftover anger and regret from Viet Nam, but try to imagine it now, post-Saving Private Ryan.
There was a strong anti-military (and anti-technology) slant in NextGen overall. As a result, that show is riddled with inconsistancies and the system of government that comprises the Federation remains unclear and undefined.
No enlisted ranks? That’s just one of the many elements missing from NextGet. I somehow doubt any of the key writing staff had ever done a hitch in the service. Pity, really. It would have made a more plausible and entertaining show.
Ok, first of all, the entire premise of Starfleet is nonsense. Starfleet is supposed to be this altruistic force exploring the galaxy? My ass. Does the phrase “gunboat diplomacy” mean anything to anyone? They have these ridiculous all-purpose ship armed to the teeth with shields, phasers and photon torpedos with the internal layout of a Mariott hotel and a complement of scientists and other assorted nerds. I mean really, are these ships exploration vessels like Jaques Cousteu’s Calypso or are they warships like the USS Iowa class battleships?
Of course, the original Calypso was a former military vessel (a minesweeper).
I think, basically, that anyone you see roaming the halls in Trek who isn’t an established charac ter can be considered an enlisted man.
In the VOYAGER episodes Equinox 1 and 2, Captain Janeway rescues 5(?) officers from the Equinox, but because the crew were in a conspiracy to trap and kill trans-dimensional life-forms to boost their warp drive, she stripped them of their Starfleet Ranks and reduced them to ordinary crewmen.
Perhaps you don’t see enlisted crewmembers because they’re all cleaning the toilets you never see. 
Horseflesh, who’s cleaned more than a fair share of commodes in the military
I think it would be more appropriate to view them more like Magellan’s expedition. Or maybe Drake.
Yes, they’re explorers. But they also have to be able to protect themselves. Calypso doesn’t really need weapons because the seas are safely explored. Where Star Fleet vessels (the explorers, at least) travel to there’s no such guarantee.
I think this is born out by the assemblage of other, smaller, unarmed research and transport vessels we occasionally see.
There are loads of enlisted men/women. They are the ones who make up the casualty lists. Gotta have lots of cannon fodder. Can’t use up expensive actors with speaking parts.
Remember in the original series all the security guards who died? So many that almost anybody in a red uniform who wasn’t Uhura or Scott was guaranteed to die? I remember as a student placing bets on how long a red suited security man would last in an episode.
My question, which is a slight hijack, is: Why do they always send senior officers on away missions? Especially on Enterprize and the Original series, less so on the intervening three, the Captain is always going off on away missions, and taking several members of his senior staff with him. Is this a normal practice in, say, the Navy?? Not a military buff, myself, so I wouldn’t know, but it seems impractical for the captain and several commanding officers to leave the ship on dangerous missions. At least they’re usually smart enough to bring some nameless ensign along to do the dying for them…
This was a Gene Roddenberry thing, actually, and he exhibited this trait long before Ronald Reagan was President. GENE RODDENBERRY said Starfleet was not a military organization.
When the production team was putting together “The Wrath of Khan,” after the debacle of the first picture, Gene Roddenberry complained about EVERYTHING. He said it would ruin Star Trek. He didn’t like the movie at all; didn’t like the violence, didn’t like the new, nautical-style uniforms, didn’t like the plot, hated the scene where the crew loads up a photon torpedo. Roddenberry was elbowed out of the way and Harve Bennett was made producer of the franchise, while Nicholas Meyer more or less created the movie himself (despite not being credited as such, the script is his rewrite) with the approval of Harve Bennett.
Roddenberry’s main objection? The script was too militaristic. According to Harve Bennett:
Roddenberry deserves credit for creating Star Trek, but let’s be honest; on this issue he must have had a blind spot ten miles wide. It’s INSANE to say Star Trek isn’t a military show; you’ve got guys in uniforms with a rank structure, part of a huge interstellar navy that has fought innumerable wars, flying around in a ship that’s absolutely loaded to the brim with unbelievably powerful weapons, and three out of every four episodes they blow something straight to hell. How could it be any more militaristic? It’s exactly akin to saying “Friday the 13th” isn’t a slasher flick.
Roddenberry actually said this - I swear I am not making this up:
Roddenberry, I think, was blinded by his idealism to the point of lunacy when it came to Star Trek, and that’s why you see such weird contradictions in TNG. In one episode, Q manifests a U.S. Army general on the Enterprise bridge, and Picard derisively refers to his uniform as a “ridiculous costume” - while he and his entire crew are wearing uniforms every bit as ridiculous. In another, Picard and his officers decide not to use a tactic that could destroy the Borg because they’re afraid of wiping the Borg out, despite being openly at war with them. There are many, many references to money and material possessions not meaning anything in the 23rd century despite innumerable indications that they do. I get a strong sense of Roddenberry having a classic 90’s American inner conflict over the use of military force - gunboat diplomacy is okay as long as you pretend you aren’t really using force.
The lack of enlisted ranks is part of this, I believe, because Roddenberry was uncomfortable with people being ordered around. Of course, it also has something to do with a limited budget requiring you keep the extras down, but I just think Roddenberry didn’t like the idea of Picard ordering people around. Note that Picard’s officer staff almost always seems to do what he wants because they love him, not just because he’s the boss. Very rarely does he have to MAKE someone do something.
There was a crew of what~ 400? So there was plenty of enlisted walking the halls. After all, someone has to clean all of those Jeffery’s tubes. O’Brian as pointed out was enlisted, but I believe got a field commision (happens in real life too- especially during times of conflict).
Also- the episode about the “day in the life” was about four young officers, not enlisted (remember one received his promotion to Lt. after receiving news of their friends death at the hands of the Romulans).
As far as the all of the weapons, well space ain’t always a friendly place. . . .
Oh, and I agree Roddenberry went a little soft in the head- why else did he allow his talentless wife to force her way onto the shop so many times, shudder. . . .
Even more so, though, why is it that all truly critical tasks (particularly maitenence) must be done by someone of high rank.
I’m also not sure about the idea that minor or non-speaking characters must be the enlisted ones. Even Barkley, a minor tech not present but for one out of 20 episodes was Luitenant Barkley. And the episode involving the 4 "enlisted men, weren’t they all minor officers (and not enlisted officers, either). One of them was chosen for top secret covert ops mission into Romulan space. Do normal Privates do that? Particularly if they don’t have any relevant skills?
I don’t belive Magellan sailed the seas in a Ship O’ The Line unless they took off most of the guns to make room for supplies.
I’m not a huge Trek fan, but I seem to remember that the Kirk Enterprise was more of a warship. Yeah, they had a science officer and what-not but I don’t remember them doing a lot of butterfly collecting like they do in TNG and Voyager.
Unless engineering is a lot diferent 300 years from now, it doesn’t make sense to have an exploration vessel armed with all that weaponry since it means less room for scientific stuff, and vice versus. Ships tend to be purpose-built. We don’t arm US Coast Guard ice-breakers with Tomahawk cruise missles and Phalanx air defense guns, do we?
I think that’s one of the things I hated about Star Trek TNG. The frigin ship would do everything:
“Picard, we need to pull the Enterprise away from patrolling the Neutral Zone for cloked ships in order to deliver this diplomat to planet Dorkopolis”. Yeah. That’s an important task for the friggin flag ship.
“We need to fight the Borg with every ship in the fleet before they assimilate the Earth! Oh…not you Enterprise. It’s much more important that our largest battleship gather those nebula gas samples FIVE MINUTES FROM THE BATTLE!!”
“Hey, lets tractor beam this derelik ship back to Federation Space…'CUS THE USS ENTERPRISE HAS NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN BE THE 23RD CENTURY EQUIVALENT OF A AAA TOWTRUCK!!”
In all fairness, if you showed up on a modern US Army base wearing a revolutionary war officers uniform, it may seem equally ridiculous.
The “day in the life” episode followed four junior officers, fresh from the academy. Ensign Sito Jaxa was chosen for a top-secret mission into Cardassian (not Romulan) space because she was a Bajorran and would be able to help a Cardassian double-agent explain his absence as his “prisoner” - she was supposed to escape in a life pod after a suitable diversion was created. It didn’t work.
As for enlisted personnel, I figure that anyone whose rank is given as “crewman” would be enlisted - others were referred to as “Lieutennant” or “Ensign” etc. even when a name wasn’t given. On DS9, they pointed out that Chief O’Brien was enlisted on a couple of occassions, and, as pointed out earlier, there was the episode where the enlisted medical technician (Crewman Simon Tarses…gad I’m a geek…) was targeted by an overzealous prosecutor for having a Romulan great-grandmother. In his court-martial, he was asked why he didn’t go to the academy, and he said he couldn’t wait two more years to get out into space.
Well in the Navy you are call SeaMan (Sea Man?) So what you want Jordi going around engineering saying “Spaceman Jone! Go press that flat panal!”
Also I don’t think there was any sort of ‘Basic training/boot camp’ place mentioned. So it’s like everyone goes to Annapolis but no Paris Island.
(I know I mixed branches there but my brain is frozen sorry to any Navy or Marine types out there)
True enough, but the context implies that picard was talking about Military Uniforms.
ANother odd thing… The Psych Counselor Troi can scan anyone at anytime, regardless of their wishes, legally. And she can command a flagship with a minor holodeck course, despite having no actual experience or talent at it whatsoever.
In any event, while there are a few minor examples of enlisted personel, the point still holds.
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From what I can remember the best classic Trek episodes weren’t written by Roddenberry.
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It is insane but I guess he never heard that a rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Or something like that. Sometimes Star Fleet sounds like a pretty scary place. How many episodes in TNG and DS9 involved a near (non)military coup by various members of Star Fleet? There’s that episode of TNG with those parasite creatures as well as some DS9 episodes involving shape changers.
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Yeah that bothered me as well. Never mind that this race may very well wipe out the Federation as well as other countless intelligent life let’s show 'em some mercy.
Marc