www.ditl.org

Captain Peabody wrote:Keep in mind that, in Star Trek III, the Enterprise was commandeered by around half a dozen old men, and they managed to run it pretty smoothly, even under combat conditions.

Run it smoothly under combat conditions? The jury-rigged control system was knocked out with one hit and the ship was helpless to a patrol vessel she should have outgunned 10 to 1. Scotty's system simply wasn't up to a battle, and given that they were discussing a similar situation in Angel One, where the ship could get to the battle on her own but wouldn't be able to fight, things don't seem to have changed much.

Run it smoothly under combat conditions? The jury-rigged control system was knocked out with one hit and the ship was helpless to a patrol vessel she should have outgunned 10 to 1. Scotty's system simply wasn't up to a battle

So I exagerated a little bit... The point is, they did manage to run the ship, even if they didn't do so well for themselves in an actual battle. And, in all fairness, the ship was already heavily damaged; if it was in perfect condition, they probably wouldn't have gotten taken down so easily.
That's what I get for not thinking things through...

What about the Bynars? Ultra-intelligence or not, they comandeered the flagship out of a starbase with 6 of them! Impressive.

Another thing that bothers me in general is the lack of enlisted men in Trek. In ST:II we see many, but that's because a lot of them were trainees. I understand that Trek focuses on the lives of senior officers of a given ship, but the lowest rank ever seen is always ensign, never seamen (spacemen? starmen?) or anything else.

I Am Spartacus wrote:Another thing that bothers me in general is the lack of enlisted men in Trek. In ST:II we see many, but that's because a lot of them were trainees. I understand that Trek focuses on the lives of senior officers of a given ship, but the lowest rank ever seen is always ensign, never seamen (spacemen? starmen?) or anything else.

Agreed completely. Ensigns still graduated from an academy, no? You'd think 90% of your crew is enlisted men, petty officers, etc.

Maybe having such high tech ships means that you need a large number of officers who specialize in any given system/department, but there still should be enlisted men, particularly for away teams. Yeah, let's send the highest ranking engineers and command staff off into extremely hazardous environments...

Voyager was the worst for that. With about 140 crew we saw many of them over 7 years and almost all were ranked ensign or higher.

Have we ever seen someone of a lower rank than ensign? I can't remember ever having seen one.

Probably lots but it is just never mentioned. All those people in the background are proabably low ranks.

To my knowledge the only NCO ever identified as such was Miles O'Brien. And even he was all over the rank chart - started as an ensign in "Farpoint", got promoted to Lt j.g., demoted to Warrent Officer in "Realm of Fear" so Barclay would outrank him, and described himself as an NCO in "Past Tense Pt 1".

I'm just waiting for them to call someone private or general or some army rank

What army? The colony in "Nor the battle to the strong..." was defended by Starfleet officers, as was the outpost in "The Siege of AR-558". While the former could be brushed off as not expecting an attack, and therefore defended by an ad hoc force, AR-558 was defended by a company-sized unit sent down specifically to take and hold the Dominion comm station. Despite that, it was held be Stafleet personel, so poorly equipped that a modern Armoured Infantry platoon could probably beat them.

Yes that was my point. The writers are such big idiots that they would screw up by throwing a army rank in there.

It says a lot about the intelligence of Starfleet when you realize a modern army could take on ground troops of the 24th century and massacre them.

The MACOs had a lot of corporals. Yeomen (who I assume is similiar to a seaman) and Petty Officers (sergeants) are common for background characters.

The thing about Warrant Officers is its not a non-commission officer, in the real life army Warrant Officers are specalist in a certain job. They're kind of like an odd mix between an officer and a noncom and it was always kind of awkward for me to be around the rare one that I met because they have a mix of noncom and officer protocols on how to address them. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if they got rid of all 6 warrant ranks within the next fifty years like they got rid of technical sergeant way back when. With the higher technology the armed services are using it makes less and less sense to have warrant officers.

Currently the bulk of them are helicopter pilots but officers can be pilots to so... they're kind of useless.