Daystrom Institute
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Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.
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Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
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Narratively rank is very important especially when you are trying to demonstrate a paramilitary organization in the confines of a television series. I think there are probably often arguments about this. Why is Ezri written as a counselor and an Ensign instead of a science officer of a higher rank?
I do think there is real world relevance sometimes. We see Worf and Geordi get promotions and become a larger part of the series with more screen time and character development. This works narratively to distinguish the change. An "on screen" promotion indicates some sort of character growth. We see this happen with Sisko likely because the only reason to distinguish him at first was because he was written to have a fairly minor (in universe) role which was greatly expanded.
In recent years I think rank has been downplayed as there are so many inconsistencies and patterns and anti-patterns throughout the series. It's important that you're able to tell a story where if someone is supposed to be in charge they have the appropriate rank for this. This is one of the reasons Discovery effectively promoted Tilly rapidly (all the way to being the XO for a little bit) because she was a pivotal part of the cast and needed screen time. In fact Discovery doesn't "ignore" rank it rather ignores rank conventions by having a mutineer on the bridge as a 'specialist' and a command staff that almost just takes turns at the wheel.
In Lower Decks we can assume narratively no one is going to get promoted permanently or demoted permanently because the show depends on that dynamic. If we look to Strange New Worlds we see rank downplayed to a large degree because everyone's rank is so close together. This is important to get Spock of a low enough rank so that he can be promoted to commander later. (Frustratingly there are still inconsistencies here. There seems to be confusion between Lt. and Lt. Jg. and Nurse Chapel's rank, which may be provisional because she may be a civilian contractor who has a temporary commission and then later joins with a regular commission of a lower rank - or her rank is just not important - is also out of continuity.) But importantly for SNW - narratively it makes sense to have these people of these ranks in these positions so it just works.
In a more realistic depiction people would be moving through ships much more quickly. There would be fewer officers and they would move through the ranks regularly and not stay in one position for 7 years. Likewise mostly Enlisted people would be spending a few years at most and moving onto other careers in civilian life as most people don't want to be in the military forever and if they do they become officers. Miles O'Brien (despite the insignia being weird) is probably most accurately depicted. He served on many posts, he left posts for some period of time and then returned to them in new capacities, he moved between posts. He joined in 2345 and by 2375 he was probably ready for retirement or in the case of a utopian future, moving back to Earth to teach at Starfleet until he is absolutely ancient because he's got nothing better to do and he loves his job.
We see this bear out in Miles O’brien. He enlisted in starfleet rather than attending the academy. He climbed the ranks (mostly in backstory) and by the time we meet him in TNG he’s a chief petty officer, non-commissioned but officer nonetheless. When he accepts the promotion/transfer to DS9 he achieves the rank of senior chief petty officer.
Its hard to say for sure that the rest of the show is inaccurate (or otherwise) in this regard because the shows mainly focus on bridge officers. Many characters receive offscreen promotions throughout the shows and you have to pay close attention to their uniforms and rank insignia to catch it. But also, you have to bear in mind how narrow a view we get of any crew outside of like Voyager.
For example, the Enterprise-D, as a Galaxy-class starship, can have a crew complement of anywhere from 1,000 to 6,000, and TNG as a show overwhelmingly focuses on just 7 of them. “best” case that’s a view of about a half a percent of them, so it would be easy to draw nonsensical conclusions if you overly extrapolate from that small percentage. Maybe a lot of crewmen do actually retire after just a few years, it’s hard to say for sure since there is basically no evidence either way.
Basically everyone in the commissioned officer corps (ensign and above) attended the academy first in order to receive the officer commission. You would not go to officer academy in real life if you did not intend to dedicate your main career to being a military officer, and likewise, people who attend starfleet academy generally intend to dedicate their careers to starfleet. Every depiction of the Enterprise is that it is the federation flagship and so we can consider a station there as being highly sought after and likewise regarded, it represents a high potential for being a crowning point on anyone’s career, so it kinda makes sense that the core officers might be reluctant to trade in for an inferior assignment, even if it meant a bigger promotion. Another aspect of this is loyalty: most of the officers depicted across all of the shows are supposed to be stand-out talents among the federation, with solid leadership skills that clearly foster loyalty. Loyalty that can create a reluctance for too much change. We see this reflected in Riker’s long resistance to getting promoted off the Enterprise to Captain. He doesn’t want to, partly out of loyalty to Picard, but also partly out of loyalty to the officers that report to him, and by extension the rest of the crew, and partly out of the chance that his potential new command is simply not as cool as being the first officer of the Enterprise.
Voyager has different circumstances, of course: the crew complement is much smaller, and they are stranded, but Rick Berman also decided that field promotions would be unlikely in their circumstances since they have no real way to gain more crew
Important to note that even among the enlisted ranks, the NCO corps begins just one rank above crewman. Similar to real life military there are only 3 ranks of non-officers
IIRC Roddenberry's idea was that everyone in Starfleet was a commissioned officer, but later writers overrode that.
One of the things that was good in the way O'Brien was written is that he was clearly a senior and respected member of the command structure. But that did not mean he had the positional authority to disobey a commissioned officer's orders should he disagree with them. Something that came out in... err... I think it might have been "Hippocratic Oath", where even though O'Brien had more years of military experience, and Starfleet experience, he still had to obey Bashir's orders (who might still have been a Lieutenant Junior Grade at the time?).