Daystrom Institute

3471 readers

2 users here now

Welcome to Daystrom Institute!

Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.

Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.

Rules

1. Explain your reasoning

All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.

2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.

This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.

3. Be diplomatic.

Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.

4. Assume good faith.

Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”

5. Tag spoilers.

Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.

6. Stay on-topic.

Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.

Episode Guides

The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

williams_482@startrek.website

Equals@startrek.website

LibraryLass@startrek.website

khaosworks@startrek.website

Did the writers care about the ranks of their characters? (startrek.website)

submitted 1 year ago by Equals@startrek.website to c/daystrominstitute@startrek.website

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I’m not talking about stuff like O’Brien’s hollow rank pip, I’m talking about stuff like “Why make Chakotay a lt. commander rather than a full commander?”

It seems like there was at least some forethought put into who has what rank, but it’s not clear to me how much thought, nor how much meaning was supposed to be baked in to those decisions.

For example, Dr Crusher was a full commander from Day 1, matched only by Riker on the main cast. Was that supposed to signify the authority afforded to the CMO? Was it supposed to be blatant enough for the audience to “get” it?

One of the most prominent examples is Sisko starting his series as a commander. Again — was that supposed to signify that he was more junior, a younger officer?

Behind the scenes, I wonder if we can trace a waxing and waning military influence in the writers room over the years. I know Roddenberry served, and I think some of the early TNG writers did as well. But I feel like that became less common in later series? (But I don’t know for sure.)

I think it’s striking that rank is significantly downplayed on DSC, except for Burnham and potentially Saru.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] T156@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Pulaski’s early interactions with him

Pulaski might not be the best example, since she's also fairly plainly stated to be a bit of a traditionalist when it to technology, even if she does keep up with modern tech and techniques. A sapient machine doesn't seem to be something that is common enough in Starfleet that she might have encountered one in her medical career, so some ignorance around Data is to be forgiven.

The crew of the Sutherland might be a better comparison, where Data almost had an outright mutiny on his hands after they thought of him as little more than a walking computer, with no more care about lives than you would numbers on a chart.

If I recall correctly, Data also indicated at some point that even though his positronic brain meant he could ace his way through any Starfleet tests, he intentionally didn’t seek to advance through the ranks any faster than a biological officer.

He was able to pack an immense number of people into that brain of his, having the records of the entire colony he was part of stored, and the thousands of people uploaded to him in "Masks". The relevant information to succeed in Starfleet tests would be small potatoes.