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RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:The guy was a whiz with transporters. Say he's off at the Daystrom Institute helping refine them or something.

If only I had thought of that

Graham Kennedy wrote:
Trek seems very different in that respect. In fact in Trek, officers in general seem to be incredibly unambitious. They stay in the same job for years on end, and the same rank often for decades. Real world militaries just don't work that way. IIRC, if you don't win promotion in the US after a few years at any given rank, you have to resign.

Irony considering that the whole point of humanity is bettering yourself.

Teaos wrote:

Graham Kennedy wrote:
Trek seems very different in that respect. In fact in Trek, officers in general seem to be incredibly unambitious. They stay in the same job for years on end, and the same rank often for decades. Real world militaries just don't work that way. IIRC, if you don't win promotion in the US after a few years at any given rank, you have to resign.

Irony considering that the whole point of humanity is bettering yourself.

Is it better to have a higher rank? In our culture yes, because it comes with extra pay and prestige. In Trek it likely has some prestige associated with it but certainly not the money. Doing what you do best as well as you can is surely "being the best you can be". How do you better yourself or anyone else around you by doing a job you are perhaps not suited to or able to do as well. I'm not sure that the case.

Well, hopefully promotion within Starfleet is a reflection of becoming wiser, more experienced, and more capable; in turn, one might therefore say that a person who remained at "able seaman" level for 25 years, wasn't becoming any of those things. On the flip side, without the lure of higher pay or an easier lifestyle, that able seaman might be very content to remain right where he was for 25 years.

A shuttle shifted in the landing bay and... oh... too soon?

IanKennedy wrote:

RK_Striker_JK_5 wrote:The guy was a whiz with transporters. Say he's off at the Daystrom Institute helping refine them or something.

If only I had thought of that

Great minds think alike. But yeah, one of the better options it seems.

Mikey wrote:Well, hopefully promotion within Starfleet is a reflection of becoming wiser, more experienced, and more capable; in turn, one might therefore say that a person who remained at "able seaman" level for 25 years, wasn't becoming any of those things. On the flip side, without the lure of higher pay or an easier lifestyle, that able seaman might be very content to remain right where he was for 25 years.

We do have the example of Picard in the alternate timeline in "Tapestry" in which he never took risks and remained a Lieutenant junior grade for many years. On the other hand, we also have Data who never rose above Lieutenant Commander in 15 years (at least).

It makes you wonder just how many people there are like that in Starfleet. Average-at-best officers who just sit in the same job at the same rank for decade after decade, which is apparently perfectly acceptable.

We've seen a few grey haired lieutenants.

Varthikes wrote:

Mikey wrote:Well, hopefully promotion within Starfleet is a reflection of becoming wiser, more experienced, and more capable; in turn, one might therefore say that a person who remained at "able seaman" level for 25 years, wasn't becoming any of those things. On the flip side, without the lure of higher pay or an easier lifestyle, that able seaman might be very content to remain right where he was for 25 years.

We do have the example of Picard in the alternate timeline in "Tapestry" in which he never took risks and remained a Lieutenant junior grade for many years. On the other hand, we also have Data who never rose above Lieutenant Commander in 15 years (at least).

Well, with Data, at least in the admittedly non-canon novels, the Lost Era series he was used mostly as a mobile filing cabinet.

Graham Kennedy wrote:It makes you wonder just how many people there are like that in Starfleet. Average-at-best officers who just sit in the same job at the same rank for decade after decade, which is apparently perfectly acceptable.

"Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship because while you're there, you can make a difference."
– James T. Kirk

I think our perceptions on promotions and transfers might be skewed by the particular crews the shows have followed. It came up a number of times that Riker was avoiding promotions and opportunities to become captain of his own ship in order to stay on the Enterprise, and that may be a commonplace occurrence on ships the Federation names Enterprise. On DS9 they were getting promotions, but they started off with lower/different ranks and it's more like they promoted into appropriate ranks for the roles they took on. On Voyager an occasional point of contention was that Janeway didn't hand out many (any?) promotions because she needed/wanted to maintain a standard chain of command and rank structure.

Certainly VOY was a unique situation; on DS9, with the example of Sisko specifically, I imagine that command of a (at the time) backwater space station was slotted for the rank of commander, if not lt. commander. Remember, even in the RL USN, smaller boats are captained by officers who have not attained the rank of captain.

Major USN ships like a carrier have major position's filled with high ranking officers. I believe the Head Engineering officer (whatever his title is) is Captain. The CAG, commander of th air group stationed on the carrier is also a captain.

Squadrons are commanded by Commanders.

In Trek we see senior officers being filled by Lt. Junior Grade officers. We also see a fleet filled by mostly officers unless the enlisted areally treated like peasants and have to crawl to their stations/barracks by the use of the Jeffries Tube because their filth might dirty up the clean interiors of the ship.

Source

"I would say there's no replacing him,” Star Trek producer J.J. Abrams told Postmedia Network of hiring another actor to replace the late Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov in the already-greenlit sequel to “Star Trek Beyond.”

“There's no recasting. I can't possibly imagine that, and I think Anton deserves better. ... I have thought about (how he'll be replaced), we're working on it, and it's too early to talk about it."

Now that special effects have come a long way, perhaps they could replace Chekov with Arex from TAS