La'an and Spock both have 1 and 1/2 stripes, and they're LTs. Une has 2 full stripes, and she's a LtCdr. Pelia has 1 and 1/2 stripes and she's a Commander. This rank system makes no sense! Tell me they're just making fun of when Spock had 2 full stripes on TOS and was a LtCdr!
Interestingly, the ranks were "correct" in AQOM. In my Adventures game, 1.5 is "department head": useful for showing Lt Spock as senior to Lt Kirk, for example. Pelia is subordinate to Una despite a higher rank, which the stripes also reflect. Seniority stripes, not rank stripes.
I saw some other suggestion that it was more about position than rank, and that could be it
Don't forget that in The Cage we just had one stripe for officer and two for Captain, so if you squint your eyes and tilt your head a bit it's almost like a transition step between The Cage and TOS. That's how I keep it from bugging me, at least 😂
Yeah and I think that was because Roddenberry envisioned just three rank levels: captain, lt, and crew
Aye, which is also somewhat consistent with the evolution of ranks in real history, too. I love that ENT is missing the half pip ranks. I like to think that Starfleet has phases of pretending it's a space agency and flattening the hierarchy, only to realise that granularity was useful after all.
I remember seeing something back in the day that suggested Tucker was supposed to be a LtCdr, but then they never had the insignia for it
Potentially, but it wasn't functionally necessary for him to be. Even if Phlox and T'Pol had been Starfleet officers from the get-go, that's still only 4 Lieutenants or Commanders. The lack of intermediate ranks helps sell the smallness of Starfleet, I dig that.
And yet there was Major Hayes, which should be equivalent to LtCdr, taking orders from Lt Reed 🤣
I think that's weirder for Americans than the rest of us. 😂 The MACOs and Starfleet aren't even the same flavour of organisation, there's no reason to imagine the rank hierarchies line up any more than, say, the Coast Guard and the LAPD.
It's interesting for example that TOS and TNG seem to have very flat NCO hierarchies, but TMP+ and DS9 reintroduce those ranks in a big way, only for them to disappear again. Even if it's only for the audience, rank complexity only in wartime fits with DISCO vs SNW ranks, too.
I also thought it was interesting that STII had the NCOs in completely different uniforms, going along with Meyer's more millitaristic vision of Starfleet
I thing TNG especially had an assumption, again by Rodenberry, that most of the crew were some sort of degreed professionals, so there were no traditional enlisted until Worf's father mentioned that he was a CPO like O'Brien
We need @tyranicus.net I am not a uniform expert.
The rank insignia has never made sense on SNW. I try to ignore it. 😅
And i won't mention how some sources including IDW say Chapel is a LtCdr 🤣
Yeah I'm trying to ignore it too! 🤣
According to the internet (YMMV) in the Army Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel are often just called ‘colonel’. The writers of the original series might have done that with commander. Lots of ranks get simplified in speech depending on the branch. Una is probably mostly referred to as “First officer”.
Yeah that's been pretty common throughout Star Trek, as have rank insignia issues 🤣 They've also accidently called LtCdrs lieutenant, which is not correct. I think that happened to both Troi and Data in the pilot