Star Trek: Picard (CBS All-Access)

[pengbuzz]

11 minutes ago, tekering said:

EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! :puke:

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/7/2022 at 7:18 AM, pengbuzz said:

"Orion business practices"? Do you mean the Orions in Star Trek, or the movie production company that made Robocop?

In Star Trek.

One of the few good lines in Lower Decks: "And for your information, many Orions haven't been pirates for over five years!".  

[Dobber]

In another episode Tendi also said that she resents people thinking Orions are all pirates and thieves and then immediately suggests visiting her cousin in a thieves den in a pirate outpost. Lol. I love that show. 
 

Chris

[sh9000]

 

[sh9000]

 

[Thom]

Seeing that had me grinning. Other than Crusher firing a phaser rifle. And I like the new Titan, though I'm guessing Riker's had a short lifespan. Seven's looks a little old school, and a little Churchill class melded with some Admiral Buck design cues. 

And check out this sexy starbase!

Wonder what happened to Stargazer?

Edited September 8, 2022 by Thom

[Dobber]

While I like the design I Hate that:
1) It’s the Titan. LD firmly established the Titan and this is far too old looking to be a new design. Seems a bit like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is/has done.

And….

2) This is a little too close to Admiral Bucks Shangri La to be accidental. Another Kurtzman production coincidence….yeah right.🤔

 

I would hope he would get some credit for the design, but then I’m sure, legally speaking, they could just say he used design cues from copyrighted designs or something. 
 

Chris

Edited September 8, 2022 by Dobber

[derex3592]

I mean it may turn out to be complete crap, but that's a pretty good damn trailer IMHO.  And the Titan????...Ok.....Buuuuuuuuuuut whyyyyyyyy can't we get the Enterprise F on screen FINALLY???!!!!

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, sh9000 said:

 

I keep my expectations for Kurtzman-era Trek low and I am still constantly disappointed.  It's actually weirdly impressive in its own way.  

On the one hand, it's nice to see that someone working on this mistake of a series has finally noticed most of their audience doesn't care for the design aesthetic from the Abrams movies and is actively trying to pivot to something less awful-looking.  On the other hand, it's still pretty ugly and it has that same kludgey feel the season 2 armada of "new" ships that were actually just TNG-era designs with different warp nacelles did.  Between the Enterprise refit-style saucer and Excelsior-looking front half of the engineering section, it just feels like someone dragged another TOS movie-era draft design out of the rejects bin and slapped a new set of nacelles on it.

That said, my hopes are not high for the writing.  Season one had the excuse that a (deluded) Picard was off on a personal (and very stupid) crusade to save Data's "daughter" (no relation) that ended up endangering all sentient life unnecessarily.  Season two could be blamed on Q being Q (and the writers being hacks).  Season three has a lot of heavy lifting to do to sell the idea that there's a threat to the Federation that a pack of depressed and out-of-shape retirees on a ship that looks to be over a century old that couldn't be solved a lot more efficiently and effectively by a real Starfleet crew?  Come to that, why is Seven of Nine suddenly a senior officer?  She's never been to the Academy and never showed any interest in becoming a Starfleet officer.  That was Icheb's interest.  Is Starfleet so hard up for personnel that they'll give a field commission of command rank to alcoholic vigilante simply because she showed up?  What happened to her earlier insistence that Starfleet won't take ex-Borg?  

Season one was Nemesis II, season two was a low-rent version of First Contact, and season three's redoing Insurrection?  

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I do not like the new Titan A.  To much of a mix of other ships.  In all the years I have watched Trek, when a ship gets an A designation the ship tends to look somewhat like the original.  Unless Lower Decks doesn't count.

[sh9000]

The trailer looks good.

[pengbuzz]

On the next episode of Star Trek: The Next Degeneration....

[azrael]

Terry Matalas (showrunner for S3) has confirmed it is the USS Titan-A, a Neo-Constitution class.

https://twitter.com/TrekCore/status/1567963434171473921?s=20&t=LE0brpNOik54-bg1FbTBGQ

https://twitter.com/TrekCore/status/1567964695335673856?s=20&t=LE0brpNOik54-bg1FbTBGQ

 

https://twitter.com/TrekCore/status/1567964695335673856?s=20&t=LE0brpNOik54-bg1FbTBGQ

 

[lechuck]

For Sto'Vo'Kor's sake, just bring back Andy Probert to do starship designs!

Instead of these terrible CG kitbashes, I would like my Starfleet ships to have a cohesive design language and elegant sculpt.

[Dobber]

I like the design, personally, but I hate it for this era and hate that it is the Titan-A. Should’ve just used a different name. The Titan is already established in this era in Lower Decks. Also why is Seven the Commander? She wasn’t in Star Fleet. This show even established her as sort of rebelling against it. Didn’t go to the Academy or anything, but hey, she helped out “JL” and his gang so she’s good to go I guess.🙄

Chris

[Thom]

Changes of heart do happen, plus Seven did distinguish herself in action and aboard Stargazer.

Although, in the trailer, Picard refers to her as Commander and not Captain, and you can clearly hear her being given approval to 'take her out.' So I wonder if her field commission was bumped down afterward. And if maybe the one in command of the overall ship is actually Riker, sitting in as Captain as Picard has command.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

20 hours ago, sh9000 said:

The trailer looks good.

Another f***ing time-travel plot?

Let me guess, they're gonna do a crossover with Strange New Worlds?  Under Kurtzman, this franchise has become such a f***ing joke.

 

5 hours ago, Dobber said:

I like the design, personally, but I hate it for this era and hate that it is the Titan-A. Should’ve just used a different name. The Titan is already established in this era in Lower Decks. Also why is Seven the Commander? She wasn’t in Star Fleet. This show even established her as sort of rebelling against it. Didn’t go to the Academy or anything, but hey, she helped out “JL” and his gang so she’s good to go I guess.🙄

Sean Tourangeou's USS Titan design that was used for the novel series and Lower Decks is amazing.  Having it show up in Lower Decks was HUGE for the fanbase.  Not just using that existing, incredibly well-received design is a huge missed opportunity.

On reflection, Seven's new circumstances feel far more in line with the Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager than her presentation in I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Star-Trek: Picard's first two seasons.  I wonder if this counts as character re-railment, after they derailed Seven hard by writing her as a painfully generic threat-growling, hard-drinking, "badass" action girl who'd become a cringeworthy space vigilante for no good reason.  A Starfleet crew is probably the closest Seven has to a "safe space" given that Voyager's crew were essentially her family and the basis for her being re-socialized after leaving the Borg.  She had about three years of service as a member of Voyager's crew before the ship returned to Earth successfully in 2378, the same tenure Wesley had as an acting ensign before Picard granted him a field commission.  The only thing that's really unreasonable about her joining Starfleet is that her rank is way too high for someone who never received most of the essential training needed for starship command.  If she had been a lieutenant or lieutenant commander and a chief engineer, it would have passed without queston.

(It's a worse version of the same problem Michael Burnham had, where the writers were so desperate to make the character "awesome" that they had her skip the academy entirely and go from a new recruit to the verge of promotion to Captain in just a few years.)

 

4 hours ago, Thom said:

Although, in the trailer, Picard refers to her as Commander and not Captain, and you can clearly hear her being given approval to 'take her out.' So I wonder if her field commission was bumped down afterward. And if maybe the one in command of the overall ship is actually Riker, sitting in as Captain as Picard has command.

For the record, you don't actually have to be a Captain to have command of a starship.

Sisko had command of the Defiant for a good while before his promotion to Captain.

[sh9000]

 

[Thom]

19 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

...snop

The only thing that's really unreasonable about her joining Starfleet is that her rank is way too high for someone who never received most of the essential training needed for starship command.  If she had been a lieutenant or lieutenant commander and a chief engineer, it would have passed without queston.

(It's a worse version of the same problem Michael Burnham had, where the writers were so desperate to make the character "awesome" that they had her skip the academy entirely and go from a new recruit to the verge of promotion to Captain in just a few years.)

 

For the record, you don't actually have to be a Captain to have command of a starship.

Sisko had command of the Defiant for a good while before his promotion to Captain.

As to the first, it's all about that assimilation! Due to all the Starleet officer's who 'joined' the Collective, she may know all she has to know!

To the second, that is a good point, though I don't recall that happening in ST previously. I may be wrong.

They probably wouldn't, but I could imagine her taking a temporary demotion and serving under another captain for a time.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Thom

[Seto Kaiba]

32 minutes ago, Thom said:

As to the first, it's all about that assimilation! Due to all the Starleet officer's who 'joined' the Collective, she may know all she has to know!

She definitely retained a lot of technological knowledge and expertise from her time as a Borg drone, but her storage capacity is finite.  I doubt the collective stored more than the essentials she needed to do her job in local storage in her noggin.  When she tried to push the limits of her onboard storage in "The Voyager Conspiracy" it ended up giving her an awful case of paranoid psychosis.  When she (unintentionally) gained access to stored personalities in "Infinite Regress", it gave her multiple personality disorder.

Command division definitely does feel out of character for her, though.  On Voyager, she was always more of a follower and spent most of her time either working in engineering with B'Elanna or in the astrometrics lab she designed.

 

32 minutes ago, Thom said:

To the second, that is a good point, though I don't recall that happening in ST previously. I may be wrong.

They probably wouldn't, but I could imagine her taking a temporary demotion and serving under another captain for a time.

It's happened a few times.

Jean-Luc Picard commanded the USS Stargazer as a Lt. Commander and then a Commander after the Battle of Maxia as a result of the ship's captain and first officer dying.

Data commanded of the USS Sutherland in "Redemption II" for Picard's blockade of the Klingon-Romulan border as a Lieutenant Commander.

The USS Defiant had a revolving door of THREE different officers ranked lower than captain as her commanding officer:

• Benjamin Sisko commanded the Defiant while holding the rank of Commander from her introduction in S3E1 "The Search" to his promotion to Captain in S3E26 "The Adversary", a year of in-universe time later.
• Worf also served as commanding officer of the Defiant while holding the rank of Commander after joining DS9 as strategic operations officer during the war with the Klingons and for a bit after until the Dominion War kicked off in earnest.
• Jadzia Dax served as commanding officer of the Defiant while holding the rank of Lieutenant Commander during the penultimate year of the Dominion War after Sisko was "promoted" to Admiral Ross' staff, in part because Worf was acting as liaison officer to the Klingon forces at the time.

(This is a problem with English, really... there is "Captain" the rank and "Captain" the title.  You don't have to hold the rank of Captain to hold the title of Captain... Nog and O'Brien discuss that topic overtly in one episode of DS9 after he receives a commission to the rank of Ensign.  There used to be alternative titles that were less ambiguous, but the usage of "master" and "shipmaster" fell out of use at the end of the 19th century, though still survive in a vestigial form in licensing for civilian sailors.)

[Thom]

@Seto Kaiba Thanks.

Yeah, pretty much any commander of a ship, no matter the rank, can be called 'Captain.' It's mostly in entertainment where the commander of a ship almost always holds the rank of Captain as well, as though one and the other were not interchangeable.

[Dobber]

8 minutes ago, Thom said:

@Seto Kaiba Thanks.

Yeah, pretty much any commander of a ship, no matter the rank, can be called 'Captain.' It's mostly in entertainment where the commander of a ship almost always holds the rank of Captain as well, as though one and the other were not interchangeable.

Not to mention in these shows there is always just 1 Captain O-6 rank on the ship…THE Captain, when in reality at least on American Carriers and some other large surface naval vessels there could be several O-6 captains on board. Usually the CO (THE Captain), the XO, chief engineer, CAG are all usually Captains in Rank. There may be a few others. 
 

Subs CO’s are often O-5’s Commanders but as was stated they are addressed as Captain as they are THE Captain. 
 

Chris

[pengbuzz]

So I wonder what rating Captain Crunch was?

[Thom]

16 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

So I wonder what rating Captain Crunch was?

Captain Crunch was the captain of my youth! Probably why I still have an extra few 'ratings' around the 'ole middle.

[JB0]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

So I wonder what rating Captain Crunch was?

Stolen Valor case. Mark my words.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Thom said:

@Seto Kaiba Thanks.

Yeah, pretty much any commander of a ship, no matter the rank, can be called 'Captain.' It's mostly in entertainment where the commander of a ship almost always holds the rank of Captain as well, as though one and the other were not interchangeable.

Yeah, that plus Star Trek and Star Wars cementing in the public consciousness the idea that a space fleet is a space navy, makes things real frustrating for other franchises which take a more realistic approach.  

(Oh so many questions sent my way by people who can't or won't believe that the Captain of the Macross has the title of Captain but holds the rank of Brigadier General...)

I wonder how much of that is just the average civilian's popular conception of naval operations and how much was dated knowledge on the part of the showrunners who served in the military during the second world war.

In any event, there would not technically be anything wrong with Seven being in command of the Titan-A as a Commander.

 

4 hours ago, Dobber said:

Not to mention in these shows there is always just 1 Captain O-6 rank on the ship…THE Captain, when in reality at least on American Carriers and some other large surface naval vessels there could be several O-6 captains on board. Usually the CO (THE Captain), the XO, chief engineer, CAG are all usually Captains in Rank. There may be a few others. 

Not to mention an admiral or two... since many of the largest surface combatants and carriers were taskforce or fleet flagships as well.

Weird, in hindsight, that Starfleet has always depicted promotion to Commodore or above as an assignment to fly a desk at some shipyard, starbase, or at Starfleet Command on Earth.  The only non-insane admiral I can recall ever actually commanding a ship or a fleet in Trek is Vice Admiral Hanson, who commanded an unnamed starship (one the script and reused sets indicate was Galaxy-class) at Wolf 359.

 

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

So I wonder what rating Captain Crunch was?

... out of the most morbid curiousity, I googled it.  I am spoiler-tagging the rest because this is INCREDIBLE pedantry.

Spoiler

I am... ... ... I'm not sure if the right word is "flabbergasted" or simply "bewildered and bemused" by the fact that there is enough controversy on that topic that a United States Navy spokesperson officially weighed in on the topic in 2013.

By modern Navy standards, Captain Crunch is indeed wearing the rank insignia of a Commander not a Captain.  Most of the articles stop there.

Where this spirals into the thickets of direst pedantry is that the number of stripes for each rank has not always been the same or in the same order.  The uniform Captain Crunch doesn't match any historical US Navy design in full, but its various components are all late 18th or early-to-mid 19th century.  Only the 1812-1815 issue uniform has the double-breasted jacket with the closure on the right hand side.  However, that uniform DID NOT have sleeve stripes.  Rank was denoted by the style of uniform, the side epaulettes were worn on, and the number of buttons on the cuff and pockets.  That he's wearing epaulettes on both shoulders in an 1812-style uniform jacket does indeed support that he's a Captain since the Master-Commandants (the forerunners of the modern Commander rank) and Lieutenant grades only wore one, on the left or the right shoulder depending on rank.

The US Navy didn't move to having lace/stripes on the cuffs as a form of rank insignia until 1852.  The Captain's formal dress uniform from that period did have three wide gold stripes on each cuff, a Commander two, and a Lieutenant just one.  Ensign didn't exist yet, and everyone below that had buttons.

The pattern changed in 1862 to one stripe or each grade, all of equal size, with a Captain from the newly created Ensign grade with one up to a Rear Admiral's eight.

The pattern we're familiar with today was instituted c.1900 in a series of uniform revisions and rank system overhauls.

To bring that bit of insanity back around to actual Star Trek... this actually leads to an interesting point that historian Jean-Luc Picard screwed up the 19th century Royal Navy uniforms in Worf's promotion ceremony in Star Trek: Generations.  EVERYONE except Worf is wearing two epaulettes.  Everyone who's not Riker or Picard should be wearing only the one.

Edited September 11, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[Dynaman]

14 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

 

Not to mention an admiral or two... since many of the largest surface combatants and carriers were taskforce or fleet flagships as well.

 

An Admiral on a Task Force ship would not, technically, be in command of the ship.  They would be in command of ALL the ships but the individual captains on each ship would be in charge of their vessels.  Even if the "task force" was a single ship the Admiral should leave command of the ship up to the captain while the admiral would say where to go and what the mission was and should only issue commands directly to the Captain.  I'm sure in real life this arrangement broke down more than once however.

[Seto Kaiba]

20 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

An Admiral on a Task Force ship would not, technically, be in command of the ship.

Very true, but they would at least be on the ship... and nominally a superior decisionmaking authority to the Captain(s) present.

Incidentally, while I was poking around I noticed something related.

Jean-Luc Picard is another case of an admiral in direct command of a Starfleet starship.  I'd very nearly forgotten Star Trek: Picard made the same mistake the failed Abrams movies did and put most of its (fairly important) backstory in a limited run licensed comic.  Picard left the Enterprise-E upon his promotion to Admiral and assumed command of a new ship, the USS Verity.  In hindsight, it's interesting for a few reasons.  The Verity is the first case, chronologically, of Picard borrowing designs from Star Trek: Online.  The comic presents the USS Verity as an Odyssey-class ship in 2381, when that class in STO didn't enter service even on a trial basis until 2409.  Also interesting is that Jean-Luc Picard apparently skipped three ranks and was promoted directly from Captain to a full Admiral.  

Come to that, does everyone important just skip the rank of Commodore entirely?  Robert April was promoted from Captain to Commodore after his tour of duty aboard the original USS Enterprise ended, but Kirk was promoted directly from Captain to Rear Admiral (a double promotion) after his tour as the Enterprise's Captain ended, Kathryn Janeway landed a triple promotion from Captain to Vice Admiral after getting Voyager back to Earth*, and now Jean-Luc Picard got a quadruple from Captain all the way to a full Admiral after taking charge of the Romulus evacuation effort.  If Sisko comes back and doesn't get a promotion to Fleet Admiral, I'll be terribly disappointed.

*The relaunch novel 'verse and a few staff comments suggested Janeway was "kicked upstairs" into a borderline sinecure as Vice Admiral because Starfleet and the Department of Temporal Investigations were alternately impressed and horrified by the things she did on her way home and decided to take her off a starship and put her somewhere where they'd have little difficulty keeping an eye on her.  Voyager wasn't decommissionined in that timeline, but the DTI did drydock her and seize all of the future tech Janeway got from her future self.

[Thom]

Important to keep in mind the difference between fictional command structures and reality. In Starfleet service, it just may be the norm (at least for officers who distinguish themselves) to be able to skip entire ranks.

[Dobber]

The Rank of Commodore in reality is a confusing one and it is currently not in use in the US Navy. Like the TITLE of Captain (not Rank) The TITLE of Commodore is still in use for senior Captains that command a squadron of ships. I wouldn’t look at Commodore as a hard fast rank. An O-6 Capt going to an O-7 1 Star RDML is normal. The US only periodically used Commodore as a Rank and hasn’t since the 1980’s. When it was in use it is kind of like how some enlisted ranks had 2 different designations like when the Air Force had both a sergeant and a senior Airmen E-4. 
 

Chris

Edited September 11, 2022 by Dobber

[Dynaman]

In Star Trek (at least the original series) it was a distinct grade (rank being position within a grade always based on date of promotion I think).  Star Trek is at best wonky with promotion and how it treats rank anyway.  JMS (paraphrased) said it best "People are promoted at the speed of plot".

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Very true, but they would at least be on the ship... and nominally a superior decisionmaking authority to the Captain(s) present.

Incidentally, while I was poking around I noticed something related.

Jean-Luc Picard is another case of an admiral in direct command of a Starfleet starship.  I'd very nearly forgotten Star Trek: Picard made the same mistake the failed Abrams movies did and put most of its (fairly important) backstory in a limited run licensed comic.  Picard left the Enterprise-E upon his promotion to Admiral and assumed command of a new ship, the USS Verity.  In hindsight, it's interesting for a few reasons.  The Verity is the first case, chronologically, of Picard borrowing designs from Star Trek: Online.  The comic presents the USS Verity as an Odyssey-class ship in 2381, when that class in STO didn't enter service even on a trial basis until 2409.  Also interesting is that Jean-Luc Picard apparently skipped three ranks and was promoted directly from Captain to a full Admiral.  

Come to that, does everyone important just skip the rank of Commodore entirely?  Robert April was promoted from Captain to Commodore after his tour of duty aboard the original USS Enterprise ended, but Kirk was promoted directly from Captain to Rear Admiral (a double promotion) after his tour as the Enterprise's Captain ended, Kathryn Janeway landed a triple promotion from Captain to Vice Admiral after getting Voyager back to Earth*, and now Jean-Luc Picard got a quadruple from Captain all the way to a full Admiral after taking charge of the Romulus evacuation effort.  If Sisko comes back and doesn't get a promotion to Fleet Admiral, I'll be terribly disappointed.

*The relaunch novel 'verse and a few staff comments suggested Janeway was "kicked upstairs" into a borderline sinecure as Vice Admiral because Starfleet and the Department of Temporal Investigations were alternately impressed and horrified by the things she did on her way home and decided to take her off a starship and put her somewhere where they'd have little difficulty keeping an eye on her.  Voyager wasn't decommissionined in that timeline, but the DTI did drydock her and seize all of the future tech Janeway got from her future self.

I found a few commodores online:

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Dobber said:

The Rank of Commodore in reality is a confusing one and it is currently not in use in the US Navy. Like the TITLE of Captain (not Rank) The TITLE of Commodore is still in use for senior Captains that command a squadron of ships. I wouldn’t look at Commodore as a hard fast rank. An O-6 Capt going to an O-7 1 Star RDML is normal. The US only periodically used Commodore as a Rank and hasn’t since the 1980’s. When it was in use it is kind of like how some enlisted ranks had 2 different designations like when the Air Force had both a sergeant and a senior Airmen E-4. 

Your real-world summary is spot on, but one important detail you have to remember is that Star Trek was created in the 1960s and the member of its production staff who had military experience were World War II veterans.  This manifested in many different ways, like the twelve Constitution-class ships being named for infamous American carriers in World War II and in Starfleet using the rank of Commodore for its O-7s instead of having two grades of Rear Admiral.  That did not change even after the US Navy changed what they called their O-7s to Rear Admiral (Lower Half).  It remained consistent from TOS all the way to present shows like Picard (with Commodore Oh in season 1).

 

6 hours ago, Thom said:

Important to keep in mind the difference between fictional command structures and reality. In Starfleet service, it just may be the norm (at least for officers who distinguish themselves) to be able to skip entire ranks.

That's a fair argument, but in existing Star Trek material that kind of promotion seems to be exclusive to Captains being promoted to the admiralty... and only then for captains who are main characters.

For all the sh*t we give Harry Kim the Forever Ensign, it's actually pretty rare for main characters to get promoted in Star Trek shows.  Probably because most of the cast are senior officers and don't have a lot of upward mobility while remaining on the same ship.  It usually happens offscreen between seasons or between a series and a movie.  It's basically always single-rank promotions too.  The TOS cast got most of their promotions between movies.  TNG had the most, I think.  Geordi got promoted twice during the series, starting at Lieutenant (JG) in season 1 and getting promoted to Lieutenant for season 2 when he became chief engineer, then season 3 made him a Lieutenant Commander where he stayed.  Worf landed a promotion to Lieutenant after Tasha died, and another to Lt. Commander in Generations before DS9 bumped him up to a full Commander.  The only other character who landed a promotion there was Troi, IIRC, who got promoted from Lt. Commander to Commander near the end of the series.  On DS9, Sisko, Bashir, and Dax get one-rank promotions which mostly occur between seasons.  Kira goes from a Major to a Colonel, but that's the Bajoran militia and they might not have a Lt. Colonel equivalent.  When she got her Starfleet commission for the mission to Cardassia she was made a Commander.  Tuvok and Paris were the only ones who got promotions on Voyager, though Tuvok's was one rank and Tom's was a reversal of a previous demotion.

 

4 hours ago, Dynaman said:

In Star Trek (at least the original series) it was a distinct grade (rank being position within a grade always based on date of promotion I think).  Star Trek is at best wonky with promotion and how it treats rank anyway.  JMS (paraphrased) said it best "People are promoted at the speed of plot".

I'd disagree with the witticism, since most of the characters who get promoted actually have fairly clear rationales for when and why they get promoted and their promotions are single-rank ones except for the main character captains who get promoted to admiral.

Geordi's promotions coincided with his becoming department chief of the Enterprise-D's engineering department.  Worf's first one coincided with his assumption of the Chief of Security role, his second was a term-of-service promotion, and his third was for assuming a new office as DS9's strategic ops officer.  Troi's was because she specifically took a promotion exam and had been a Lieutenant Commander since the start of the series.  I could go on, but I think the point is made?  They're not getting merit-based promotions on a regular basis, they might get promoted once or at most twice in the course of a seven year tour between merit promotions, required promotions to fill operational vacancies, and term-of-service promotions.

[sh9000]

 

[Dynaman]

On 9/11/2022 at 9:09 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

I'd disagree with the witticism, since most of the characters who get promoted actually have fairly clear rationales for when and why they get promoted and their promotions are single-rank ones except for the main character captains who get promoted to admiral.

Geordi's promotions coincided with his becoming department chief of the Enterprise-D's engineering department.  Worf's first one coincided with his assumption of the Chief of Security role, his second was a term-of-service promotion, and his third was for assuming a new office as DS9's strategic ops officer.  Troi's was because she specifically took a promotion exam and had been a Lieutenant Commander since the start of the series.  I could go on, but I think the point is made?  They're not getting merit-based promotions on a regular basis, they might get promoted once or at most twice in the course of a seven year tour between merit promotions, required promotions to fill operational vacancies, and term-of-service promotions.

The more or less realistic promotions do not diminish the off the wall captain to admiral promotions.  That just doesn't happen outside of Trek (or fiction in general).  You get other forms of recognition instead and fast tracking for promotion later.