O’Brien is a “chief,” Jonas and Cutler hold the rank of “Crewman,” and I think those are the only enlisted personnel who have lines and appear in more than one episode. Starfleet seems ridiculously officer heavy.
Is the enlisted/officer distinction different in Starfleet from traditional armed forces? And where are all the warrant officers?
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Strictly speaking, O’Brien is a “Senior Chief Petty Officer” in rank, and a “transporter chief” in role. Those two happen to both include the word “chief”, but they’re no more related than “Lieutenant Commander” and “chief engineering officer” are for La Forge. I believe “chief”, on its own, is referring to any of the ranks of NCO with chief in the title, [master | senior] chief petty officer.
Starfleet seems ridiculously officer heavy
Indeed it does. Whether this is actually true, or just an artifact of the fact that we tend to primarily watch the actions of those in command, I’m not sure. But if it is the in-universe reality, that’s probably a consequence of the post-scarcity society and the abundance of time and education people have in order to become officers.
And where are all the warrant officers?
I’m gonna be honest, I’ve tried numerous times, but have never managed to really understand what WOs are. I have this vague sense that their rank sits somewhere between that of NCOs and of commissioned officers, and that they’re involved in more unusual or specialised tasks, but I don’t think they normally sit in a regular chain of command, and I’m not really sure how it works.
It’s only seems officer heavy because the main characters are ranked officers. You rarely see the hundreds of grunts.
Enterprise D has a complement of 1000+ personnel, yet it seems like we only see like 50 of them the entire series.
It would be nice if the next Trek series does something to address this.
You’re describing Lower Decks in a few ways
Lower Decks kind of talk about this, but they are still officers I think. I haven’t watched it in a bit
lower deckers aren’t officers, they’re absolutely the kind of thing we don’t see in the trek shows.
The main crew of Lower Decks are officers. Ensign (arguably Cadet) is the lowest ranking officer in Starfleet. All the characters we follow in LD start as an Ensign in the first season.
As for the cadet thing, if you go to Starfleet Academy you are given the rank of Cadet and basically everyone goes to Starfleet Academy.
Everything points towards Starfleet being basically a organization of Officers with no grunts.
It’s hard to show the intricate workings of hundreds of crewmen. It’s just not practical or in the budget. Crewmen pop up every now and then if you pay attention.
Someone said Master and Commander can be seen as similar to Star Trek, and it certainly has the same ship command structure. The crewmen play a larger role and they really cover the dynamic. Very much worth a watch with or without connection to Star Trek.
