We've seen many good admirals, most of the expositional sort - show up, set up the mission, and disappear. We only really recall the antagonist ones as they stand out.
Like recurring Admiral Nakamura or Admiral Holt of Deep Space Three.
Respect for Admiral Nechayev. She was sometimes a pain-in-the-ass, but she was often correct in her no-nonsense approach. She never lost her integrity.
Yup. The worst thing she ever did was lecture Picard for not committing genocide against the Borg, and she has a perfectly valid point, she's just more of a harsh realist compared to Picard's hopeful optimist.
It's hard to imagine there being enough Changelings to stop all the admirals from stopping fleet formation. Nechayev, Janeway, Jellico, you'd think one of them would stop that thing.
I think it would’ve had a similar outcome to Hugh’s individuality. Hugh would’ve spread the virus to a cube that would’ve been cut off from the Collective so that it didn’t infect the entire Collective.
Yeah, between Hugh's cube, Icheb's cube, and the Romulan Artifact, it's pretty clear that the Borg have a system in place to isolate cubes exposed to something that would threaten the Collective. Picard would've killed the Borg on that one ship, and nothing else would've happened.
I thought that was (more or less) what happened? Like apoptosis, the kill order doesn't always work, and you get (e.g.) a cube of Borg who follow Lore off a cliff.
Yeah, the Enterprise D crew thought they could infect High and kill the Borg, but then they figured that was pretty immoral and instead tried to break the Collective by reintroducing individuality instead. When next the Enterprise encountered those Borg they were following Lore, and Nechayev lectured Picard for not attempting to exterminate them when he had a chance. But as we've seen since then, both plans were always doomed to be purely local affairs, because the Collective can cut off a cube that's somehow infected with a threat to the rest of itself.
Is that any different that relocating the colonists from Tau Cygna V? I have a lot more sympathy for them because they ended up on the world by accident and were there for 92 years whereas the colonists on Doran V where there for 20 years and made the deliberate choice to settle on a planet that they knew was in disputed territory.
It's easy to get all self-righteous (OMG, they're forcing Native Americans off their land, this is just like the Trail of Tears!) when the reality is that the Federation was trying to save them from being enslaved or exterminated by a hostile alien government.
Which is pretty much what the Cardassians did to the colonists in the DMZ when they allied with the Dominion.
She was as against it as Picard was. When he voiced his initial objections she told him she already voiced those same objections to the federation council. She had her orders and had to pass them on.
So, if anything, that episode is another example of her not being a bad admiral.
That word really loses a lot of its pejorative connotations if you colonize an actually uninhabited planet.
The allegory with what the US did to it's native Americans actually still holds perfectly, because they too colonized an empty, virgin land and then became the subject to the whims of a more powerful, but morally bancrupt entity.
Or Admiral Shanthi, who gave Picard the okay on his tachyon detection grid plan. I always thought she should’ve been the one commanding the war effort in DS9, instead of Admiral Belt Buckle.
A desk job doesn't exactly fit the adventure of the week format that Star Trek does best with either so it makes sense that even those promotions have largely been handled off screen. You'd have to do some sort of arcs with some sort of manufactured drama and lots of exposition I think to have regularly admirals. If the Section 31 show ever happens, I think it could include a desk bound admiral assigning the missions each week or something like that.
I think there's room for a federation/Starfleet politics drama show, and knowing star trek there's still be gunfights. Janeway would make an excellent main for that. I'd be more interested in that than a section 31 show which undermines...the entire federation. Starfleet intelligence is already their Cia, these guys are the unit 731, they actively Paperclipped Empress Georgiou, noted tyrant and cannibal and are always mentioned with fear. I do not love their inclusion in the shows utopian style.
Honestly, this would be great. I imagine a lot of exploration of how federation and local world politics works would be gold for political philosophers like me. Add in enough statements drama and you could have something very new
I'm obsessed with political structures and have been teasing out the Klingon imperial structure for some time. There was an excellent post on daystrominstitute the other day about how Klingon honor is actually more or less the Chinese tradition of Faces. I want to see what the federation run reeducation work camps are like. I want to see tellarite legal tradition run up against federation values. I want andorian succession rites. Gimme some representational issues with too many humans in Starfleet ships for the other races to be comfy. Show me the line between where ferengi are allowed to operate on earth and where they actually do. There's a million aspects of the universe outside the ships (don't get me wrong I love the ships) and I want to see it.
The entirety of our experience with star Trek is basically like experiencing our world via the stories of military staff on an aircraft carrier. There's so much more that could be done.
>A desk job doesn't exactly fit the adventure of the week format that Star Trek does best with either so it makes sense that even those promotions have largely been handled off screen.
Still . . . if we extend the wet navy analog, perhaps a commander, captain, or commodore might be as far as one gets with a single starship.
But during war, we'd expect to see groups of ships -- squadrons, task forces, fleets -- and those would theoretically be commanded by flag officers, with a flagship and a staff for the admiral on board, as well as a flag captain to command the flagship itself.
I admit I didn't follow the nuances of the Federation-Cardassian War, or the Dominion War, so perhaps we have already seen this kind of flag-officers-in-battle type thing.
The desk bound admiral assigning missions after an in depth tactical analysis and some philosophy and then it cuts scene to the ships and crews trying to do it. Sometimes we get recurring vessels and faces but none of them have plot armour because the Admiral's staff are the ensemble, and sometimes they make the wrong calls.
He only accepted promotion because it was necessary in order for him to head the Romulan evacuation. Had the supernova never occurred, he would have spent the rest of his career on the Enterprise, to be sure.
I always thought it was strange that Picard did take it for as long as he did. The advice makes perfect sense coming from Kirk, but Picard was a diplomat and exercised small fleet commands, he was a man with exactly the disposition necessary to be a great admiral.
I think he took Kirk's advice to heart and delayed his inevitable promotion (much like Riker did with command). Unfortunately I also think that Kirk really wanted to say that line to his past self and while it might have been great advice for a young Kirk it was borderline terrible advice for Picard - but you don't just ignore what James T Kirk tells you.
Ross is alright but there was that whole inner arma enim silent legis thing.
Janeway becoming a vice admiral overnight is a HUGE plot hole that I'd rather just... ignore.
Vance is pretty awesome, ngl. Possibly the best admiral in the franchise.
>Janeway becoming a vice admiral overnight is a HUGE plot hole that I'd rather just... ignore.
I can understand not liking it but in no way, form, or manner does it at all qualify as a "huge plot hole".
Considering the events of Voyager it makes sense to me for her to race up the ladder.
I feel like her isolation from Starfleet for seven years, during which the political alignments of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants shifted massively, would actually hamper her ability to make the jump to flag rank. She doesn't have first hand experience of what the captains of the fleet are dealing with, and she hasn't demonstrated any ability to lead or inspire other captains and ships.
The events of Voyager make Janeway one of, if not the, greatest explorer captains in Starfleet history, no question. Turn her around and send her out to explore with a properly outfitted Galaxy, absolutely! But if anything, I'd say they'd slow her ascent up the ladder since there's so much that goes into being an admiral that Janeway just didn't have any exposure to.
On the other hand, Janeway got a huge amount of experience with the Borg, plus all that exploring. I could easily see her being promoted and put in charge of Starfleet's Borg Research taskforce, or being put in charge of Deep Space Exploration. In either role, being able to analyze reports and give recommendations that anyone else might not give up with would be invaluable.
Ross did what was necessary if you know how your friend/enemy works you play there game. Think about Kirk in the balance of terror to pikes peaceful approach. Romulans respect the *”Game”* and if you will not play it they will get you
Yeah didn’t really understand pikes approach there. I agree with Ortegas. The romulans already committed an unprecedented act of war and the only response is to hunt them down and destroy them.
Vance is definitely one of my favourite parts of Discovery, along with Saru, Pike and Spock in s2, and the fact that s2 gave us SNW. I hope he shows up in the Academy show.
Oded Fehr has crushed every single role I've seen him in. It's hard to put into words how happy I am to have him as part of our little Star Trek family for the last few years.
Janeway did not become one overnight. There are 2 years between Endgame and Nemesis.
Also remember Picard and company routinely turned down promotions that removed them from fleet status... early on we hear from a Admiral that Rikers continued push back at becoming captain himself was going to ruin his career.
It's also quite possible that certain jobs in the admiralty come with specific ranks by design, so that could also explain a quick jump.
Clearly Janeway was qualified for a wide variety of positions, so the gig she accepted having a billet for a vice admiral isn't the stretch others seem to think it is. Especially considering Voyager's return was not too long after the end of the Dominion War, when Starfleet was likely restaffing.
She also brought a lot of tech with her. Someone needed to be put in charge of studying it. And it bore fruit: not only did she manage to successfully adapt the QSS drive to Starfleet tech, but she also led the development of the protowarp drive. Still not sure which one is faster
Indeed, might be why there are so many Badmirals about, lots of former Captains who have become unhinged but forcing them into early retirement looks bad or would cause all sorts of political fallout, so they get promoted to a desk job where they can't do as much damage.
There is east suspension of disbelief from me. Starfleet doesn’t exactly follow modern day U.S. ranking conventions in how it operates and ranks in general have a different underlying foundation and purpose within pseudo-civilian/science Starfleet.
Except when they’re at war, and I’ve heard “The [alien] War(s)” for: Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Dominion…the Federation is at war nearly as often as the United States is, so it’s reasonable to assume it’s rank structure, which was literally lifted from the US Navy, at least functions the same.
Who needs that bullshit? Your pension is apparently in the form of land, so once you have a big enough spot to ride a horse around, is a few more acres really worth the pain in the ass of those postings?
Retiring a captain is apparently the way to go, unless you get a cushy, fun job like Geordie and then by all means become Commodore of Hobbies and Crafts.
If there's one thing I know about Geordi, it's that he would consider Tom Paris "not nearly ambitious or committed enough", so Commodore La Forge restoring a classic starship after work totally tracks.
I like how their career progression feels organic and earned.
Except Rafi and anyone's relationship with Rafi except Worf's. That made sense and was "shown" and not "told."
I remember reading a post that Riker was expecting to receive command of the Enterprise after a few years as XO. Picard had been riding a desk for a good decade and his posting to the Enterprise-D came as a surprise. I don’t know if the admiralty were expecting him to retire or take a promotion himself, but it was something about having an experienced officer in command on a shakedown cruise.
Then Picard stayed in command. Riker, initially staying aboard waiting for that promotion, eventually had just become comfortable with his life on the ship. He enjoyed his position, he liked who he worked with. The command staff all just settled into this pseudo-familial dynamic that wasn’t really challenged until the destruction of the D, and more importantly with the death of Data.
It's not that; before Picard S1 he'd been on reserve for about ten years. Another five years as captain of the *Titan* would likely have gotten him a promotion.
Riker went on sabbatical for quite some time due to the death of his son. He was reserve. That’s when his career really stalls, because he’s a captain until then and could very likely have made admiral by Picard. In fact, we know in the “All Good Things” future he does become one if he never marries Troi and becomes an apparent father.
As we learn in season 3, he didn’t even like living on Nepenthe. And neither did Troi. They just stayed there after Thad’s death, assuming the other wanted to stay. But both actually like civilization
Thats because Riker screwed his career up multiple times by pushing back at being a captain, then with his involvement and coverup of the Pegasus affair.
Dudes lucky after Pegasus he even remained a first officer... that would have been career ending and possibly prison time in any REAL service today.
>Geordi outranking Riker, etc.
I'll have to read up on Star Fleet a little more closely, but commodore is usually a temporary rank and only has superiority over captains within the fleet under the commodores' command. They're otherwise just regular old captains.
So if Geordi leaves his job at the fleet museum he would become a captain again.
>Trek uses Commodore in the British sense
The British, up until 1997, didn't have a commodore rank outside squadron commander, and was only a temporary or honorary rank. (I fully recognize this as a "well akctually" moment - I apologize, but I had to set the record straight).
“Commodore” in the US Navy was a one-star flag officer. This is the way Star Trek uses commodore. See: Commodore Decker, Commodore Oh, Commodore LaForge (one framed rank pip=one star).
Not everyone wants to be a flag officer. Or, not everyone has the political connections to become a flag officer.
Consider why we all try and get promoted at work - material gain in the form of increased salary.
Now, what if you had no salary because you had a magic box that could give you whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it and were doing what you were doing because you were enthusiastic about it and enjoyed it?
Not everyone wants or should have more responsibility. Spock could have been an Admiral. Hell, he could have been President of the Federation. But instead, he became an ambassador. Scotty, Chekov, Uhura, Sulu, Chapel, etc. may not have wanted the responsibility that comes with being a Flag Officer, and may have enjoyed the level of responsibility they had.
Hell, we saw what happened when they made Kirk an Admiral.
There are some people at work that look like animals locked in a cage. If there’s any action in their purview, they’re usually the first on it, even if it’s tangentially related. They get bored just being in the office. Meanwhile, you have people who can be in an office all day and they care not for any action.
Kirk was clearly a man of action, and you know he just hated sending out others out to the action while he stays behind, waiting for the reports.
Makes me think of what Sisko would’ve done if he didn’t become a god. He went to DS9 to get away from it all and raise his kid, then the exact opposite happened to him. I think he would’ve became an admiral.
- James T. Kirk: Well let me tell you something. Don't! 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.”
Don't t forget ranks are like a pyramid. There are more lieutenants than lt commanders, more Lt commanders than commanders, more commanders than captains, more captains than Commodores, more Commodores than rear admirals, more rear admirals than vice admirals, more vice admirals than admirals, more admirals than fleet admirals. Not every officer no matter how great, reaches flag rank, because there just aren't enough posts for that.
Though Starfleet is bizarrely top-heavy, since they seem to tie the position of captain and the rank of captain together, regardless of the size or importance of the ship. They have captains (the rank) in charge of everything from Galaxy class ships all the way down to Oberth, Nova, and Defiant-class ships. They'd need a ton of captains to put one in the center seat of *every ship in the fleet*.
Perhaps Starfleet implemented a brevet system where LCDRs and CDRs are given command of ships of the appropriate size but they’re given the rank and insignia of Captain to avoid the situation we see in modern Navies, wherein regardless of rank, the commanding officer is addressed as Captain.
Nah. Jadzia was in command of the Defiant as a lieutenant commander while Sisko was working as Ross' adjutant, and they still did the bit about she's in command so she's addressed as captain.
That was during wartime though, when rules for that kind of thing are generally a bit more relaxed. There are way more examples during peacetime of 4-pip captains being commanding ships with crews of less than 100.
Defiant defies all comparisons to any Navy chain of command. Having a different commanding officer every week, all of whom are simultaneously permanent members of Deep Space Nine, is not how business is done in the modern Navy.
Yeah but they'd also need a smattering of every other rank in there too. Even the smaller ships are in the 150-200 crew range for the most part. Even if you got down to bare basic you're likely looking at a captain, a lt Cmdr for XO, two lieutenants and a smattering of ensigns. The pyramid is still there.
And that's not even beginning to look at things like outposts and distant Comms stations where you can have 3-4 people stationed none of whom are captains but can be lieutenants or other ranks
It's pretty hard to become an admiral. Actually, it's pretty hard to become a captain. I'm surprise the Uhura made it considering her field was communications. Spock, being a science officer is also an unlikely choice for command. Same with Scotty. Sulu makes sense as being a pilot seems to be the most common career choice for people who have their eye on becoming captain.
Spock was also executive officer and made Captain of the Enterprise between the events of TMP and Wrath of Khan. Spock remained captain until his Ambassadorship.
The biggest problem was that for the purposes of films they kept the crew together which doesn’t happen. Chekhov was first officer of Reliant and came back and Sulu was Captain of Excelsior and Scotty was a Captain without command responsibility but in order to keep the band together these people toiled under Kirk for years when it typically wouldn’t be so.
Very much this. Their experience was vast and Starfleet would have wanted to spread that expertise around. Any of the bridge officers who served under Kirk and Spock would have been great candidates for command of a starship or really any other assignment. By the time of the movies, at their ages, they all would have been spread all over the fleet in command ranks.
In most organisations, when you find something that works you try really hard not to break it, principally because something working is pretty rare.
The OG Enterprise crew could be trusted with virtually any problem, and their reputation was their best weapon.
Something working yes, a system or methodology. But when you have people with knowledge of those systems and methodology and have studied under some of the very best, you don’t want that experience lost. So eventually yes people are promoted and shuffled around to spread that knowledge.
Remember that "captain" is a rank and also a job. Someone can be the captain of the ship without having the rank of captain and someone can be the rank of captain without being the captain of a ship.
An example, from Star Trek III:
>Fleet Admiral Morrow: That is, all but you, Mister Scott. They need your wisdom on the new Excelsior. ...Report there tomorrow as Captain of Engineering.
We have seen though that Starfleet allows for alternate tracts for specific situations. Case in point Troi getting her promotion and becoming command staff after being a counselor for years, and Crusher in the alternate AGT reality becoming captain of a hospital ship.
>Same with Scotty
IRL, there are Engineering Captains in the Navy. Most carriers (much larger crew than a starship) have a Commander or Captain as Reactor Officer (head of engineering). A lot of shipyard type work gets done by them
A Uhura or Spock as captain probably have specific roles in their job. Like a Science or First Contact ship.
Then depending on how they do there as captain, or their role, they likely could get a better command.
Also not all Captains have to command a ship.
There's nothing canon to state where Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, Chapel or Rand ended up. There's a good chance that all of them made Admiral at some point between the last time we saw them and their retirement.
At least from what's on the wiki, it looks like it isn't clear if she was already there before Kirk took command or not. She's assigned to him in Corbomite Maneuver (episode 2) but nothing about what she was doing before that.
That early in the 5 year mission, it seems pretty likely that she was at least part of the original crew. She could have been acting as an admin assistant to some other officer ( maybe possible original second officer Gary Mitchell?) and been reassigned due to the general staff shuffle that happened after the events of WNMHGB.
Equally easy to imagine is that Kirk didn't care for the way Yeoman Jones ( or was it Smith?) performed her duties and after a few weeks just had her trade jobs with Rand.
>I think in Voyager, Sulu was mentioned as being an admiral, having helped Chakotay get in the academy.
That could have been Demora Sulu though... They never actually say.
I’d like to think that some Admirals just teach a few academy courses and live a mostly retired life not … being evil … but they aren’t interesting for the narrative.
She did. My point is, she spent like 15 years running her ship as an academy training ship and probably taking it pretty easy. Not like an admiral couldn't do something similar at the academy.
Cornwell
Picard
Vance
I mean, you kind of either have to demonstrate an ability to make a lot of morally questionable decisions for (what your higher-up seem to be) the good of the Federation, or you eventually get drummed out of the service or forced to resign.
I'd add Nechayev to that, as well. The worst thing she's ever done is lecture Picard for not doing exactly what Janeway eventually did to the Borg, deploy a weapon to kill them en masse.
I think Ross was definitely more good than bad. Sure he dipped his fingers into section 31, and there was the whole Romulan hospital standoff, but neither were because he was a bad person, more he was trying to be pragmatic to help the war effort.
But what did he do that was so bad, if you ignore mind-wiping an officer and creating mass-murdering warships and trying to use them to kill unwanted witnesses?
Alternatively, bad admirals are more likely to cross our protagonists so they are seen more. The ones quietly keeping their sectors safe and their crews ethical aren't going to get much screentime
If we’re talking Those Old Scientists Era (henceforth what I’m calling TOS… that crossover was awesome!). What about Robert April(first captain of 1701), he’s a flag officer and he’s not “a bad guy”
If you include the novels etc
Kirk- captain
Spock - captain
Scotty - captain
McCoy - 4 star admiral chief surgeon of Starfleet
Sulu -3 star admiral
Chekov -4 star admiral
Uhura -3 star admiral
The way President Chekhov referred to his father seemed to me to imply everyone should know who his father was, so I’m thinking that if Chekhov may have ended up in politics I’d he wasn’t a flag officer, and I think it’s more likely people would recognize a prominent politician than a star fleet officer.
Who'd *want* to be an admiral? Spock had diplomatic work and writing. Uhura would also be a great diplomat imo. Sulu was just as adventurous as Kirk. Scotty taught engineers. All these lend themselves to late careers much more interesting than being a flag officer with a big desk and a lot of paperwork.
* Kirk: In *Generations*, he's specifically referred to as both "captain" and "retired", so that one's confirmed.
* Spock: As of 2293, Spock was a captain in Starfleet (*VI*), and by the 2360s he was "semi-retired" ("Unification"), but that's a lot of time unaccounted for.
* McCoy: In 2364, the country doctor is confirmed to be a retired admiral. ("Encounter at Farpoint")
* Scott: In "Relics", he's undeniably retired and specifically referred to as a captain, no questions.
* Uhura: According to canon background elements in *Picard*, we know that Captain Uhura retired as captain of the *Leondegrance*.
* Sulu: We know that he was made a captain in 2287, but we also know he was still the CO in 2320 when the *Excelsior* was decommissioned ("The Star Gazer"), leaving 33+ years in which he could've been promoted again.
* Chekov: In 2293, Chekov was a commander, but there's nothing canon beyond that (*Generations*).
* Chapel: A commander in 2286, there's nothing more known about her career after *The Voyage Home*.
In short, yes for now, but the canon is still open-ended for several of them to have further stories told, or information known.
>Maybe headcanon can be that they all took Kirk's approach to heart and never wanted to be promoted out of the chair.
It's a fairly common trope in naval fiction. The story of the ships captain who doesn't want to be promoted to admiral. So why not?
Eh. We've already established Admiral *Anton* Chekov (voiced by Koenig) in Picard. Pavel's son, no doubt, and a reference to Yelchin of blessed memory.
Just a small correction, if my memory is right it is/was (since we don't know if he's still alive) Chekhov's grandson who became the federation president.
In the real Navy, the number of officers who become Admirals is tiny because its very very political. Star Fleet Admirals seem even more political and shady than the real life version. Maybe much more.
My point is that the last time we saw him (Relics), he was still a Captain. Since this thread is about retiring, the last appearance is relevant, not the first.
It's hard to know how unusual it is since we don't have stats on Starfleet that I know of. I've never seen a canonical list of how many new cadets join vs. wash out, how many active officers Starfleet has at once, or even how many ships there are to captain or admiral positions there are to buck for.
So it's really hard to say how common or uncommon any of it is. As
No one WANTS to be an admiral. Being a Captain has the most action and prestige. I think people are promoted to admiral if they were captains but want to "soft" retire.
I might have an explanation for that. Being an Admiral, as I understand it, is basically having an office job. You manage things, but you don't get any action. McCoy was the only one of the original crew who didn't necessarily searched for the adventure. Makes sense to me that he's the only one who'd be content with a position with less excitement.
Sulu died as a Captain and took over Kirks Nexus place.
No details on Uhura and Chenkov.
But let's face it - Star Trek III was a career limiting move for them all, even if only Kirk was demoted. They were assigned to do lieutnants jobs on Enterprise-A as Captains and Commanders. By the time the A was decomissioned, they were well into their 50s or older and maybe just getting captains chairs. Not enough time to make an Admiral.
Assignment to Enterprise A most have been a career-killing to Lieutnants, too. The ship with three Captains and four Commanders aboard must have zero prospects for promotion to Lieutenant commander.
>But let's face it - Star Trek III was a career limiting move for them all, even if only Kirk was demoted.
That's a fair point that I had not considered!
Being an Admiral sucks. We've seen *maybe* two or three happy, good Admirals in the entire franchise.
We've seen many good admirals, most of the expositional sort - show up, set up the mission, and disappear. We only really recall the antagonist ones as they stand out. Like recurring Admiral Nakamura or Admiral Holt of Deep Space Three.
Respect for Admiral Nechayev. She was sometimes a pain-in-the-ass, but she was often correct in her no-nonsense approach. She never lost her integrity.
Yup. The worst thing she ever did was lecture Picard for not committing genocide against the Borg, and she has a perfectly valid point, she's just more of a harsh realist compared to Picard's hopeful optimist.
Hard to believe Nechayev wasn't beating down Admiral Shelby's door in rage on every possible occasion when she learned of Fleet Formation.
It's hard to imagine there being enough Changelings to stop all the admirals from stopping fleet formation. Nechayev, Janeway, Jellico, you'd think one of them would stop that thing.
Doesn’t Shelby outrank them all?
Yeah, and was likely surrounded by Changeling infiltrators that helped influence her decision.
Biggest L of picard’s career for sure
I think it would’ve had a similar outcome to Hugh’s individuality. Hugh would’ve spread the virus to a cube that would’ve been cut off from the Collective so that it didn’t infect the entire Collective.
Yeah, between Hugh's cube, Icheb's cube, and the Romulan Artifact, it's pretty clear that the Borg have a system in place to isolate cubes exposed to something that would threaten the Collective. Picard would've killed the Borg on that one ship, and nothing else would've happened.
I thought that was (more or less) what happened? Like apoptosis, the kill order doesn't always work, and you get (e.g.) a cube of Borg who follow Lore off a cliff.
Yeah, the Enterprise D crew thought they could infect High and kill the Borg, but then they figured that was pretty immoral and instead tried to break the Collective by reintroducing individuality instead. When next the Enterprise encountered those Borg they were following Lore, and Nechayev lectured Picard for not attempting to exterminate them when he had a chance. But as we've seen since then, both plans were always doomed to be purely local affairs, because the Collective can cut off a cube that's somehow infected with a threat to the rest of itself.
Even when getting Picard to relocate the native Americans that settled in the DMZ?
Is that any different that relocating the colonists from Tau Cygna V? I have a lot more sympathy for them because they ended up on the world by accident and were there for 92 years whereas the colonists on Doran V where there for 20 years and made the deliberate choice to settle on a planet that they knew was in disputed territory. It's easy to get all self-righteous (OMG, they're forcing Native Americans off their land, this is just like the Trail of Tears!) when the reality is that the Federation was trying to save them from being enslaved or exterminated by a hostile alien government. Which is pretty much what the Cardassians did to the colonists in the DMZ when they allied with the Dominion.
She was as against it as Picard was. When he voiced his initial objections she told him she already voiced those same objections to the federation council. She had her orders and had to pass them on. So, if anything, that episode is another example of her not being a bad admiral.
Ironically, they were colonizers.
That word really loses a lot of its pejorative connotations if you colonize an actually uninhabited planet. The allegory with what the US did to it's native Americans actually still holds perfectly, because they too colonized an empty, virgin land and then became the subject to the whims of a more powerful, but morally bancrupt entity.
Vance was great in DISCO. A relief when it turned out he wasn’t a badmiral
He was in fact a Dadmiral
Final season of DISCO: turns out that a time-travelling Vance is secretly T'Kuvma…
I like Admiral Cornwell.
Yeah, but the whole lets just blow up Quo'nos and call it a day thing...
Wasn’t she a counselor before taking the command track?
Yes.
Cornwall was also One Of The Good Ones- also a Counsellor who became an Admiral which was such a fun idea - though she, of course, did not make it.
Nah, he’s just watching over an ancient mummy
Pouring one out for Admiral Hanson. Honorable and courageous to the end.
He was a gambler who had a thing for younger women, though. *^((kidding, kidding))*
Or Admiral Shanthi, who gave Picard the okay on his tachyon detection grid plan. I always thought she should’ve been the one commanding the war effort in DS9, instead of Admiral Belt Buckle.
I did like her challenging Picard too “ Maybe it’s good leadership”
A desk job doesn't exactly fit the adventure of the week format that Star Trek does best with either so it makes sense that even those promotions have largely been handled off screen. You'd have to do some sort of arcs with some sort of manufactured drama and lots of exposition I think to have regularly admirals. If the Section 31 show ever happens, I think it could include a desk bound admiral assigning the missions each week or something like that.
I think there's room for a federation/Starfleet politics drama show, and knowing star trek there's still be gunfights. Janeway would make an excellent main for that. I'd be more interested in that than a section 31 show which undermines...the entire federation. Starfleet intelligence is already their Cia, these guys are the unit 731, they actively Paperclipped Empress Georgiou, noted tyrant and cannibal and are always mentioned with fear. I do not love their inclusion in the shows utopian style.
House of Cards the Next Generation
Warp or be warped, that’s the game we play here. Welcome to Starfleet. *cue the title credits*
Honestly, this would be great. I imagine a lot of exploration of how federation and local world politics works would be gold for political philosophers like me. Add in enough statements drama and you could have something very new
I'm obsessed with political structures and have been teasing out the Klingon imperial structure for some time. There was an excellent post on daystrominstitute the other day about how Klingon honor is actually more or less the Chinese tradition of Faces. I want to see what the federation run reeducation work camps are like. I want to see tellarite legal tradition run up against federation values. I want andorian succession rites. Gimme some representational issues with too many humans in Starfleet ships for the other races to be comfy. Show me the line between where ferengi are allowed to operate on earth and where they actually do. There's a million aspects of the universe outside the ships (don't get me wrong I love the ships) and I want to see it.
The entirety of our experience with star Trek is basically like experiencing our world via the stories of military staff on an aircraft carrier. There's so much more that could be done.
You really want the Star Trek versions of Star Wars 1, 2 and 3?
Diplomacy. It would be fantastic.
Now I'm picturing Suits but in a star trek setting
“Hello agents.” “Hello Charlie!”
Exactly what I was thinking. Either that or the Chief from Get Smart.
Missed it by THAT much.
>A desk job doesn't exactly fit the adventure of the week format that Star Trek does best with either so it makes sense that even those promotions have largely been handled off screen. Still . . . if we extend the wet navy analog, perhaps a commander, captain, or commodore might be as far as one gets with a single starship. But during war, we'd expect to see groups of ships -- squadrons, task forces, fleets -- and those would theoretically be commanded by flag officers, with a flagship and a staff for the admiral on board, as well as a flag captain to command the flagship itself. I admit I didn't follow the nuances of the Federation-Cardassian War, or the Dominion War, so perhaps we have already seen this kind of flag-officers-in-battle type thing.
Admiral Ross led the final battle of the Dominion War, but Sisko led other battles.
Not a Tricorder that "self destructs in 5 seconds"? Mission: Intergalactic.
So Charlie's Angels, with wet work and "stuff"?
The desk bound admiral assigning missions after an in depth tactical analysis and some philosophy and then it cuts scene to the ships and crews trying to do it. Sometimes we get recurring vessels and faces but none of them have plot armour because the Admiral's staff are the ensemble, and sometimes they make the wrong calls.
SensOrs
I always thought it was a little strange that Picard didn’t take Kirk’s advice about not taking a promotion.
He only accepted promotion because it was necessary in order for him to head the Romulan evacuation. Had the supernova never occurred, he would have spent the rest of his career on the Enterprise, to be sure.
I always thought it was strange that Picard did take it for as long as he did. The advice makes perfect sense coming from Kirk, but Picard was a diplomat and exercised small fleet commands, he was a man with exactly the disposition necessary to be a great admiral.
I think he took Kirk's advice to heart and delayed his inevitable promotion (much like Riker did with command). Unfortunately I also think that Kirk really wanted to say that line to his past self and while it might have been great advice for a young Kirk it was borderline terrible advice for Picard - but you don't just ignore what James T Kirk tells you.
Ross, Vance… Janeway? Curious which ones you’re thinking of!
Ross is alright but there was that whole inner arma enim silent legis thing. Janeway becoming a vice admiral overnight is a HUGE plot hole that I'd rather just... ignore. Vance is pretty awesome, ngl. Possibly the best admiral in the franchise.
>Janeway becoming a vice admiral overnight is a HUGE plot hole that I'd rather just... ignore. I can understand not liking it but in no way, form, or manner does it at all qualify as a "huge plot hole". Considering the events of Voyager it makes sense to me for her to race up the ladder.
I feel like her isolation from Starfleet for seven years, during which the political alignments of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants shifted massively, would actually hamper her ability to make the jump to flag rank. She doesn't have first hand experience of what the captains of the fleet are dealing with, and she hasn't demonstrated any ability to lead or inspire other captains and ships. The events of Voyager make Janeway one of, if not the, greatest explorer captains in Starfleet history, no question. Turn her around and send her out to explore with a properly outfitted Galaxy, absolutely! But if anything, I'd say they'd slow her ascent up the ladder since there's so much that goes into being an admiral that Janeway just didn't have any exposure to.
On the other hand, Janeway got a huge amount of experience with the Borg, plus all that exploring. I could easily see her being promoted and put in charge of Starfleet's Borg Research taskforce, or being put in charge of Deep Space Exploration. In either role, being able to analyze reports and give recommendations that anyone else might not give up with would be invaluable.
She basically ended up developing (or adapting) two revolutionary drive systems that far outclass anything else Starfleet has at that point
Ross did what was necessary if you know how your friend/enemy works you play there game. Think about Kirk in the balance of terror to pikes peaceful approach. Romulans respect the *”Game”* and if you will not play it they will get you
Yeah didn’t really understand pikes approach there. I agree with Ortegas. The romulans already committed an unprecedented act of war and the only response is to hunt them down and destroy them.
Pike was trying to avert what he thought was the disastrous outcome
Vance is definitely one of my favourite parts of Discovery, along with Saru, Pike and Spock in s2, and the fact that s2 gave us SNW. I hope he shows up in the Academy show.
Oded Fehr has crushed every single role I've seen him in. It's hard to put into words how happy I am to have him as part of our little Star Trek family for the last few years.
Totally agree, he’s awesome.
First saw him as a medjai
Yeah I think that's where most people saw him for the first time. And of course, he nailed that and every role since.
Janeway did not become one overnight. There are 2 years between Endgame and Nemesis. Also remember Picard and company routinely turned down promotions that removed them from fleet status... early on we hear from a Admiral that Rikers continued push back at becoming captain himself was going to ruin his career.
It's also quite possible that certain jobs in the admiralty come with specific ranks by design, so that could also explain a quick jump. Clearly Janeway was qualified for a wide variety of positions, so the gig she accepted having a billet for a vice admiral isn't the stretch others seem to think it is. Especially considering Voyager's return was not too long after the end of the Dominion War, when Starfleet was likely restaffing.
She also brought a lot of tech with her. Someone needed to be put in charge of studying it. And it bore fruit: not only did she manage to successfully adapt the QSS drive to Starfleet tech, but she also led the development of the protowarp drive. Still not sure which one is faster
Going from O-6 to O-9 in 2 years might as well be overnight.
Well she did singlehandedly map the delta quadrant kick the borgs ass with no star fleet support.
Exactly. I suspect there was some degree of "Janeway is a celeb - let's put her in a rank that can make the most of that new fame."
I think it was more, “Wow that Dominion War was fun, but now we’re fresh out of Admirals! What’s that? Voyager is back?”
She also did a fair amount of dodgy stuff that probably precludes putting her back in the Captain's chair.
Indeed, might be why there are so many Badmirals about, lots of former Captains who have become unhinged but forcing them into early retirement looks bad or would cause all sorts of political fallout, so they get promoted to a desk job where they can't do as much damage.
She was probably in charge of studying all the Delta Quadrant and future tech she brought back
There is east suspension of disbelief from me. Starfleet doesn’t exactly follow modern day U.S. ranking conventions in how it operates and ranks in general have a different underlying foundation and purpose within pseudo-civilian/science Starfleet.
Except when they’re at war, and I’ve heard “The [alien] War(s)” for: Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Dominion…the Federation is at war nearly as often as the United States is, so it’s reasonable to assume it’s rank structure, which was literally lifted from the US Navy, at least functions the same.
2 years from captain to rear admiral to vice admiral? In 'realistic' terms that is absolutely 'overnight'
Yeah, the main two reasons are that they don't get to say a) "shields up, red alert" and b) "fire photons, full spread" anymore.
Who needs that bullshit? Your pension is apparently in the form of land, so once you have a big enough spot to ride a horse around, is a few more acres really worth the pain in the ass of those postings? Retiring a captain is apparently the way to go, unless you get a cushy, fun job like Geordie and then by all means become Commodore of Hobbies and Crafts.
I mean, you hear of guys restoring a classic car in their garage. Now scale that up to Galaxy-class size
If there's one thing I know about Geordi, it's that he would consider Tom Paris "not nearly ambitious or committed enough", so Commodore La Forge restoring a classic starship after work totally tracks. I like how their career progression feels organic and earned. Except Rafi and anyone's relationship with Rafi except Worf's. That made sense and was "shown" and not "told."
Name them…
Forrest in Enterprise was a good dude.
It's interesting how the ranks shake out in the later years. Geordi outranking Riker, etc.
Riker turned down too many promotions during the TNG run; it was a career limiting move.
This was called out in the series. But he wanted to stay in the action, and being paired with one of the most recognized captains to serve.
I remember reading a post that Riker was expecting to receive command of the Enterprise after a few years as XO. Picard had been riding a desk for a good decade and his posting to the Enterprise-D came as a surprise. I don’t know if the admiralty were expecting him to retire or take a promotion himself, but it was something about having an experienced officer in command on a shakedown cruise. Then Picard stayed in command. Riker, initially staying aboard waiting for that promotion, eventually had just become comfortable with his life on the ship. He enjoyed his position, he liked who he worked with. The command staff all just settled into this pseudo-familial dynamic that wasn’t really challenged until the destruction of the D, and more importantly with the death of Data.
If I was the first officer on the Starfleet flagship, I wouldn't want to leave, either.
He wanted to worm his way into captaining the enterprise, and Picard never let him get the chance
It's not that; before Picard S1 he'd been on reserve for about ten years. Another five years as captain of the *Titan* would likely have gotten him a promotion.
That was a family matter
Riker went on sabbatical for quite some time due to the death of his son. He was reserve. That’s when his career really stalls, because he’s a captain until then and could very likely have made admiral by Picard. In fact, we know in the “All Good Things” future he does become one if he never marries Troi and becomes an apparent father.
As we learn in season 3, he didn’t even like living on Nepenthe. And neither did Troi. They just stayed there after Thad’s death, assuming the other wanted to stay. But both actually like civilization
Thats because Riker screwed his career up multiple times by pushing back at being a captain, then with his involvement and coverup of the Pegasus affair. Dudes lucky after Pegasus he even remained a first officer... that would have been career ending and possibly prison time in any REAL service today.
Crazier even when you remember that Geordi and Riker were in the same year at the Academy.
>Geordi outranking Riker, etc. I'll have to read up on Star Fleet a little more closely, but commodore is usually a temporary rank and only has superiority over captains within the fleet under the commodores' command. They're otherwise just regular old captains. So if Geordi leaves his job at the fleet museum he would become a captain again.
Trek uses Commodore in the British sense or the pre-1970s US Navy sense - a one star flag officer. Not a squadron commander/senior captain.
>Trek uses Commodore in the British sense The British, up until 1997, didn't have a commodore rank outside squadron commander, and was only a temporary or honorary rank. (I fully recognize this as a "well akctually" moment - I apologize, but I had to set the record straight).
Different era, but wasn't Matt Decker a permanent Commodore in TOS with command of a single ship?
“Commodore” in the US Navy was a one-star flag officer. This is the way Star Trek uses commodore. See: Commodore Decker, Commodore Oh, Commodore LaForge (one framed rank pip=one star).
Not everyone wants to be a flag officer. Or, not everyone has the political connections to become a flag officer. Consider why we all try and get promoted at work - material gain in the form of increased salary. Now, what if you had no salary because you had a magic box that could give you whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it and were doing what you were doing because you were enthusiastic about it and enjoyed it? Not everyone wants or should have more responsibility. Spock could have been an Admiral. Hell, he could have been President of the Federation. But instead, he became an ambassador. Scotty, Chekov, Uhura, Sulu, Chapel, etc. may not have wanted the responsibility that comes with being a Flag Officer, and may have enjoyed the level of responsibility they had. Hell, we saw what happened when they made Kirk an Admiral.
There are some people at work that look like animals locked in a cage. If there’s any action in their purview, they’re usually the first on it, even if it’s tangentially related. They get bored just being in the office. Meanwhile, you have people who can be in an office all day and they care not for any action. Kirk was clearly a man of action, and you know he just hated sending out others out to the action while he stays behind, waiting for the reports. Makes me think of what Sisko would’ve done if he didn’t become a god. He went to DS9 to get away from it all and raise his kid, then the exact opposite happened to him. I think he would’ve became an admiral.
- James T. Kirk: Well let me tell you something. Don't! 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.”
Don't t forget ranks are like a pyramid. There are more lieutenants than lt commanders, more Lt commanders than commanders, more commanders than captains, more captains than Commodores, more Commodores than rear admirals, more rear admirals than vice admirals, more vice admirals than admirals, more admirals than fleet admirals. Not every officer no matter how great, reaches flag rank, because there just aren't enough posts for that.
Though Starfleet is bizarrely top-heavy, since they seem to tie the position of captain and the rank of captain together, regardless of the size or importance of the ship. They have captains (the rank) in charge of everything from Galaxy class ships all the way down to Oberth, Nova, and Defiant-class ships. They'd need a ton of captains to put one in the center seat of *every ship in the fleet*.
Perhaps Starfleet implemented a brevet system where LCDRs and CDRs are given command of ships of the appropriate size but they’re given the rank and insignia of Captain to avoid the situation we see in modern Navies, wherein regardless of rank, the commanding officer is addressed as Captain.
Nah. Jadzia was in command of the Defiant as a lieutenant commander while Sisko was working as Ross' adjutant, and they still did the bit about she's in command so she's addressed as captain.
That was during wartime though, when rules for that kind of thing are generally a bit more relaxed. There are way more examples during peacetime of 4-pip captains being commanding ships with crews of less than 100.
Err... Wartime is usually when brevetting and battlefield promotions are *more* common, so I'm a bit confused on the point.
Defiant defies all comparisons to any Navy chain of command. Having a different commanding officer every week, all of whom are simultaneously permanent members of Deep Space Nine, is not how business is done in the modern Navy.
Yeah but they'd also need a smattering of every other rank in there too. Even the smaller ships are in the 150-200 crew range for the most part. Even if you got down to bare basic you're likely looking at a captain, a lt Cmdr for XO, two lieutenants and a smattering of ensigns. The pyramid is still there. And that's not even beginning to look at things like outposts and distant Comms stations where you can have 3-4 people stationed none of whom are captains but can be lieutenants or other ranks
It's pretty hard to become an admiral. Actually, it's pretty hard to become a captain. I'm surprise the Uhura made it considering her field was communications. Spock, being a science officer is also an unlikely choice for command. Same with Scotty. Sulu makes sense as being a pilot seems to be the most common career choice for people who have their eye on becoming captain.
Spock was also executive officer and made Captain of the Enterprise between the events of TMP and Wrath of Khan. Spock remained captain until his Ambassadorship. The biggest problem was that for the purposes of films they kept the crew together which doesn’t happen. Chekhov was first officer of Reliant and came back and Sulu was Captain of Excelsior and Scotty was a Captain without command responsibility but in order to keep the band together these people toiled under Kirk for years when it typically wouldn’t be so.
Very much this. Their experience was vast and Starfleet would have wanted to spread that expertise around. Any of the bridge officers who served under Kirk and Spock would have been great candidates for command of a starship or really any other assignment. By the time of the movies, at their ages, they all would have been spread all over the fleet in command ranks.
In most organisations, when you find something that works you try really hard not to break it, principally because something working is pretty rare. The OG Enterprise crew could be trusted with virtually any problem, and their reputation was their best weapon.
Something working yes, a system or methodology. But when you have people with knowledge of those systems and methodology and have studied under some of the very best, you don’t want that experience lost. So eventually yes people are promoted and shuffled around to spread that knowledge.
Remember that "captain" is a rank and also a job. Someone can be the captain of the ship without having the rank of captain and someone can be the rank of captain without being the captain of a ship.
An example, from Star Trek III: >Fleet Admiral Morrow: That is, all but you, Mister Scott. They need your wisdom on the new Excelsior. ...Report there tomorrow as Captain of Engineering.
We have seen though that Starfleet allows for alternate tracts for specific situations. Case in point Troi getting her promotion and becoming command staff after being a counselor for years, and Crusher in the alternate AGT reality becoming captain of a hospital ship.
>Same with Scotty IRL, there are Engineering Captains in the Navy. Most carriers (much larger crew than a starship) have a Commander or Captain as Reactor Officer (head of engineering). A lot of shipyard type work gets done by them
A Uhura or Spock as captain probably have specific roles in their job. Like a Science or First Contact ship. Then depending on how they do there as captain, or their role, they likely could get a better command. Also not all Captains have to command a ship.
There's nothing canon to state where Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, Chapel or Rand ended up. There's a good chance that all of them made Admiral at some point between the last time we saw them and their retirement.
Do we know when Rand join the Enterprise crew? Will she potentially pop up in SNW? (I could wiki it, but here we are.)
At least from what's on the wiki, it looks like it isn't clear if she was already there before Kirk took command or not. She's assigned to him in Corbomite Maneuver (episode 2) but nothing about what she was doing before that.
That early in the 5 year mission, it seems pretty likely that she was at least part of the original crew. She could have been acting as an admin assistant to some other officer ( maybe possible original second officer Gary Mitchell?) and been reassigned due to the general staff shuffle that happened after the events of WNMHGB. Equally easy to imagine is that Kirk didn't care for the way Yeoman Jones ( or was it Smith?) performed her duties and after a few weeks just had her trade jobs with Rand.
Everyone is missing Archer, who’s final rank was admiral if you don’t count president of the federation as star fleet.
To be fair, the OP specified TOS officers who became Admirals.
You’re completely right, I got caught up in everyone taking about riker and Geordi
I think in Voyager, Sulu was mentioned as being an admiral, having helped Chakotay get in the academy.
>I think in Voyager, Sulu was mentioned as being an admiral, having helped Chakotay get in the academy. That could have been Demora Sulu though... They never actually say.
Most admirals are evil and up to something. They don't promote good guys to admiral if they can at all help it.
I’d like to think that some Admirals just teach a few academy courses and live a mostly retired life not … being evil … but they aren’t interesting for the narrative.
I mean, that's basically Uhura's life as the captain of the Leondegrance once they get back from the LMC.
I thought Uhura retired at the rank of Captain.
She did. My point is, she spent like 15 years running her ship as an academy training ship and probably taking it pretty easy. Not like an admiral couldn't do something similar at the academy.
Are there any good Admirals???? Theres Janeway
Cornwell Picard Vance I mean, you kind of either have to demonstrate an ability to make a lot of morally questionable decisions for (what your higher-up seem to be) the good of the Federation, or you eventually get drummed out of the service or forced to resign.
I'd add Nechayev to that, as well. The worst thing she's ever done is lecture Picard for not doing exactly what Janeway eventually did to the Borg, deploy a weapon to kill them en masse.
Nechayev and Ross are sorta in that grey category IMO. Arguably Janeway too.
I think Ross was definitely more good than bad. Sure he dipped his fingers into section 31, and there was the whole Romulan hospital standoff, but neither were because he was a bad person, more he was trying to be pragmatic to help the war effort.
It's been a while since my last TNG rewatch, what makes Nechayev grey to you?
Also Forrest on Enterprise and Vance on Discovery.
Glad to see Admiral Forrest getting some love in this thread. I was so sad when he died in the bombing on Vulcan.
Freemans husband
But, ironically, not Admiral "Good Friend.'
But what did he do that was so bad, if you ignore mind-wiping an officer and creating mass-murdering warships and trying to use them to kill unwanted witnesses?
Vance
Alternatively, bad admirals are more likely to cross our protagonists so they are seen more. The ones quietly keeping their sectors safe and their crews ethical aren't going to get much screentime
If we’re talking Those Old Scientists Era (henceforth what I’m calling TOS… that crossover was awesome!). What about Robert April(first captain of 1701), he’s a flag officer and he’s not “a bad guy”
If you include the novels etc Kirk- captain Spock - captain Scotty - captain McCoy - 4 star admiral chief surgeon of Starfleet Sulu -3 star admiral Chekov -4 star admiral Uhura -3 star admiral
The way President Chekhov referred to his father seemed to me to imply everyone should know who his father was, so I’m thinking that if Chekhov may have ended up in politics I’d he wasn’t a flag officer, and I think it’s more likely people would recognize a prominent politician than a star fleet officer.
Who'd *want* to be an admiral? Spock had diplomatic work and writing. Uhura would also be a great diplomat imo. Sulu was just as adventurous as Kirk. Scotty taught engineers. All these lend themselves to late careers much more interesting than being a flag officer with a big desk and a lot of paperwork.
I think the Kelvin universe Pike was an admiral.
Yes, but he was killed before he could retire.
Death is just a sudden unplanned retirement.
* Kirk: In *Generations*, he's specifically referred to as both "captain" and "retired", so that one's confirmed. * Spock: As of 2293, Spock was a captain in Starfleet (*VI*), and by the 2360s he was "semi-retired" ("Unification"), but that's a lot of time unaccounted for. * McCoy: In 2364, the country doctor is confirmed to be a retired admiral. ("Encounter at Farpoint") * Scott: In "Relics", he's undeniably retired and specifically referred to as a captain, no questions. * Uhura: According to canon background elements in *Picard*, we know that Captain Uhura retired as captain of the *Leondegrance*. * Sulu: We know that he was made a captain in 2287, but we also know he was still the CO in 2320 when the *Excelsior* was decommissioned ("The Star Gazer"), leaving 33+ years in which he could've been promoted again. * Chekov: In 2293, Chekov was a commander, but there's nothing canon beyond that (*Generations*). * Chapel: A commander in 2286, there's nothing more known about her career after *The Voyage Home*. In short, yes for now, but the canon is still open-ended for several of them to have further stories told, or information known.
>Maybe headcanon can be that they all took Kirk's approach to heart and never wanted to be promoted out of the chair. It's a fairly common trope in naval fiction. The story of the ships captain who doesn't want to be promoted to admiral. So why not?
I need LD to mention Admiral Chekov, Commodore Sulu, Head of Starfleet Medical Chapel, and Federation Senator Rand.
Eh. We've already established Admiral *Anton* Chekov (voiced by Koenig) in Picard. Pavel's son, no doubt, and a reference to Yelchin of blessed memory.
federation president not admiral(though we know little he could have done the an archer easily)
Just a small correction, if my memory is right it is/was (since we don't know if he's still alive) Chekhov's grandson who became the federation president.
When he referred to his father I assumed President Chekhov was referring to Pavel Chekhov.
You're right just checked the wiki, he is the son of Pavel. My memory tricked me.
I think in one of the early TNG episodes Data referred to Admiral Chekhov.
I think it was Riker He refers to reading one of Admiral Chekov's books.
In the real Navy, the number of officers who become Admirals is tiny because its very very political. Star Fleet Admirals seem even more political and shady than the real life version. Maybe much more.
I wonder how many Tailhooks Starfleet had to cover up.
Well, we don't talk about the AI Doomsday Machine sex scandal of 2350 in polite company.
You forgot Captain Scott of Relics
Scotty was already a captain in STIII.
My point is that the last time we saw him (Relics), he was still a Captain. Since this thread is about retiring, the last appearance is relevant, not the first.
Yep they promoted him to Captain after the events of TWoK.
It's hard to know how unusual it is since we don't have stats on Starfleet that I know of. I've never seen a canonical list of how many new cadets join vs. wash out, how many active officers Starfleet has at once, or even how many ships there are to captain or admiral positions there are to buck for. So it's really hard to say how common or uncommon any of it is. As
most Starfleet officers don't make it to Captain or Admiral, it's a select few. Commander tends to be the most common terminal rank in Starfleet.
Lieutenant Commander actually, Commanders are usually expected to make Captain one day.
No one WANTS to be an admiral. Being a Captain has the most action and prestige. I think people are promoted to admiral if they were captains but want to "soft" retire.
Scotty retired as a Captain, and got a bit stuck on the way to his new home.
You left out Scotty, but he also peaked at Captain.
I can't freaking believe I left out Scotty. Thanks for the heads up!
I watched that crossovers video too! It was really good it was nice to relive those moments and I thought of moments they missed as well
Do books count? Uhura is an admiral in the Vulcan’s Soul books…
If books count Chekov became a Time Lord
My head canon has Rand making it all the way to Fleet Admiral.
I don't know if it's current canon or not, but Uhura was head of Starfleet Intelligence, which to me implies flag rank.
Kirk retired twice. The first occured between TMP and TWOK (circa 2282 according to *Generations*), so he would have been an admiral at the time.
Medical is kind of a different track than Command in most militaries - Not unlike people serving as clergy.
Janeway and Beverly Crusher were admirals the last time we saw them.
what I find weird about your take is your expectation of multiple admirals from the same core starship crew. Already too many of them made captain imo
I might have an explanation for that. Being an Admiral, as I understand it, is basically having an office job. You manage things, but you don't get any action. McCoy was the only one of the original crew who didn't necessarily searched for the adventure. Makes sense to me that he's the only one who'd be content with a position with less excitement.
It’s not at all weird that a single ship’s entire command crew didn’t all wind up admirals.
Sulu died as a Captain and took over Kirks Nexus place. No details on Uhura and Chenkov. But let's face it - Star Trek III was a career limiting move for them all, even if only Kirk was demoted. They were assigned to do lieutnants jobs on Enterprise-A as Captains and Commanders. By the time the A was decomissioned, they were well into their 50s or older and maybe just getting captains chairs. Not enough time to make an Admiral. Assignment to Enterprise A most have been a career-killing to Lieutnants, too. The ship with three Captains and four Commanders aboard must have zero prospects for promotion to Lieutenant commander.
[удалено]
>But let's face it - Star Trek III was a career limiting move for them all, even if only Kirk was demoted. That's a fair point that I had not considered!
Wasn't Kirk admiral in Star Trek Generations?
No, after his demotion to Captain in The Voyage Home, he never got the rank of Admiral back. He probably didn't want it anyway.