Promotions?! (We doan need no stinkin' promotions!) (Trek Related)
Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections: The Kitchen Sink: Trek Related: Trek Discussion: Promotions?! (We doan need no stinkin' promotions!) (Trek Related)
Dan Osman: Every week my friends and I trade nits about what was wrong with the latest Voyager/DS9 episode. We enjoy it as much as (if not more than) the actual episode. Anyway, watching the latest Voyager episode (the WaterWorld one where Paris is demoted) I thought of a general observation about the series that I can't believe never occured to me before. So without further ado (I've always got some of that), here it is:

Voyager has a lot of ensigns. That much is obvious by the weekly death toll. What isn't so obvious is that they've remained ensigns for the length of the series. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a promotion...but even if there has been, what about everyone else? Surely 3 years is enough time to move up in the crew roster. Why don't they? No ensigns can come aboard to replace them. Someone's gotta be the ensign and do the drudge work. So here they are, day in and day out taking orders from the same people and doing the same jobs. You wanna talk about going postal, let's
talk about going ensign! All of their friends back in the Alpha Quadrant are leutenents now, or lt. commanders, or captains for all they know.

They're still lowly ensigns. How do you keep moral up in that situation?

Phil: Um, well, I think Janeway had a plan to hand out beanies with the slogan, "The Work Is The Reward," but, um aside from that . . .
By Sharon Jordan on Thursday, January 14, 1999 - 2:23 pm:

AHHHH, so that's why Harry is still an ensign!

By Chris Ashley on Thursday, January 14, 1999 - 8:28 pm:

I suspect that everyone on Voyager who isn't court-martialed and sent to that prison camp from "Caretaker" will be given vewwy nice things by SF in return for the theft of some years of their lives. At least I'd HOPE so....

By Matt K on Monday, January 18, 1999 - 1:01 am:

They're on their own. Where are the senior officers going to go that means they need replacements? There's only 160-odd crew (correct me if I'm wrong), so there can't be that many senior officers around anyway.

One thing I always wondered about -- where are the ranks lower than ensign? Ensign is just the lowest officer rank. Where are the ordinary crew?

By Chris Ashley on Monday, January 18, 1999 - 8:43 pm:

They're called "crewmen" and they have no pips. I think we see them in sickbay every once in awhile, or in security details, but I'm not sure.

By Jason on Tuesday, April 06, 1999 - 8:32 am:

So... would anybody like to see Data promoted? It has been what, Thisteen years since we met him and he still is a Lt. Commander. Why? just about everyone else in the series was premoted at some point.

By Hans Thielman on Tuesday, April 06, 1999 - 3:17 pm:

Why should Data get promoted? He's malfunctioned, been possessed, and gone off half-cocked a few too many times over the years to earn a promotion. But as Troi said to Data, after she had was stabbed by Data, who saw a mouth on her shoulder, it's not really his fault.

By Nangeloni on Monday, June 14, 1999 - 9:57 pm:

What about Riker? He got a raw deal in "The Best of Both Worlds" when he was promoted to captain and then forced back to commander. Spock stayed captain with Kirk, so why can't Riker?!

By Charles Cabe (Ccabe) on Tuesday, June 15, 1999 - 10:16 am:

Perhaps this was Starfleet's was of encourging him to be a captain of a diffrent ship?

By ScottN on Tuesday, June 15, 1999 - 2:26 pm:

Nah... Starfleet was beginning the 29th century practice of preemptively punishing people. Riker didn't get to be Captain because in the future, he would be in command when the Ent-D was destroyed.

By Nangeloni on Tuesday, June 15, 1999 - 8:58 pm:

If so it's suprising Starfleet didn't force Spock back to commander when he took the position of first officer on the Enterprise-A. If I were the chief of Starfleet Command I'd want Spock in command of his own ship.