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.
What bothers me the most is that Data was still a Lt. Cmdr after 25+ years of exemplary Starfleet service. It’s not like he’d fail the bridge officer’s test.
I think it’s clear throughout TNG that many in Starfleet had reservations about treating an android equivalent to a biological officer, as evidenced by A Measure of a Man (where it was clear many in Starfleet had considered him a piece of property) and by Pulaski’s early interactions with him. Data raised the question in Redemption Part 2 about whether Picard’s initial failure to assign him to command one of the ships was because of unease about an android captain, indicating that such unease was not an outlandish concept to him.
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.
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.
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.
He was clearly a qualified bridge officer. As a member of the regular chain of command (and being the one regularly in charge of the night shift due to not needing to sleep), he had to be. (In fact, he was put in command of another ship once which would have been impossible if he didn’t have the qualifications.) In his case it’s probably a lack of ambition that led to him being stuck in that rank; he had no real desire to be promoted to another ship when his friends were on the Enterprise and he had every opportunity to learn about meatbags there.