Grenartia wrote:Ameriganastan wrote:Well, there was a war going on. Chances are if no Dominion War, Nog wouldn't have been so fast-tracked.
Indeed. Plus, there's almost no room for advancement on Voyager, short of a more senior officer buying the farm. And furthermore, half of the ship is Maquis. They probably dumped all the less-knowledgeable Maquis on Kim. Tuvok was afraid of mutiny, so he probably kept as much of his staff Starfleet as possible. Hard to imagine that many Maquis having a lot of Starfleet engineering experience, so much of Torres's staff is likely fleet as well. Nav/helm is probably mostly Maquis, but that still requires some advanced knowledge. Apparently, aside from Kes, the Doctor never needed much help, so limited slots in Medical. All you have left is Ops and Science, which Kim headed. So anyone without enough technical experience to compete with a fleeter in any other department is left scrubbing plasma conduits, mopping up the holodeck, sliding their fingers up and down the transporter controls, looking out a window to make sure the visual sensors aren't glitching out, etc.
Counter Argument: Deanna Troi. In any
realistic scenario she would have been an Ensign, an Lt at best, who served under Crusher, but on the Enterprise somehow she's part of the senior staff and holds appropriate rank.
Or other argument: Why does Tom need to be a commissioned officer, hold any rank, or get promoted no less? He's the pilot and...that's it, he has no authority over anyone else, no staff, no crew, but he gets a commission, a promotion, a demotion, and repromoted, while Harry languishes.
Harry's perpetual Ensignhood doesn't really make any sense given everything else we've ever seen about Starfleets rather laidback attitude toward the officer corps and ship command structure.
Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 5:42 am