Iām not talking about stuff like OāBrienās hollow rank pip, Iām talking about stuff like āWhy make Chakotay a lt. commander rather than a full commander?ā
It seems like there was at least some forethought put into who has what rank, but itās 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 āgetā it?
One of the most prominent examples is Sisko starting his series as a commander. Again ā 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 donāt know for sure.)
I think itās striking that rank is significantly downplayed on DSC, except for Burnham and potentially Saru.
Tuvok is such an example as he is almost always referred to as Lieutenant and later heās promoted to Lt. Cdr properly, but he wore Lt. Cdr. rank insignia for like maybe the first season without anyone really correcting it.
Itās true that Tilly was not āpromotedā to any rank and kept her rank simply being assigned a position, however, I think itās weird for her to be the XO except that she was part of the principle cast and they needed to give her a reason to be part of the overarching narrative for each season.
Oh, absolutely, story/cast reasons were the real reason - but while assigning an Ensign to a Commander slot is extreme, assigning people above their rank and above higher ranks in the process is not completely unheard of, even in todayās military. Given their utterly unique situation as an in-universe excuse, I donāt have any real problem suspending disbelief on Tillyās assignment there.
I thought it was a clever way to handle it, but it wasā¦ strange because it telegraphed itās narrative purpose rather than keeping it as part of the narrative. But I mean - to be fair I canāt think of a better way to make it work than exactly what they did and I thought it kind of worked out well all things considered.