User:Morwen/ranks2

Scratchpage to work on something showing what Starfleet ranks and insignia ought to be aiming towards.

Pilots
In "The Cage", some costumes have the detail of a stripe (shown to the right), including the Captain's.

In "Where No Man Has Gone Before", all officers wear this stripe, except the Captain, who wears two stripes.

No flag officers are ever shown wearing uniforms of this type.

The Making of Star Trek (p 184) says

Although the Enterprise is a military vessel, its organisation is only semimilitary. The "enlisted men" category does not exist. Star Trek goes on the assumption that every man and woman on the U.S.S. Enterprise is the equivalant of a qualified astronaut, therefore an officer.

TOS and TMP
In the series proper, the uniforms had been redesigned, and new rank insignia designed, based again along sleeve stripes. There were still less stripes than in real US navy costumes, apparently because four stripes would have looked too militaristic.

No enlisted insignia are seen in The Original Series. For Star Trek: The Motion Picture, uniforms were redesigned, by Bob Fletcher, but a similar rank insignia scheme was used.

In TMP, the Enterprise assignment patch has now been adopted by all of Starfleet.

A memo describing the sleeve stripes on August 3, 1978 does not mention the rank of "Lieutenant Junior Grade". It identifies the three close-together stripes on the Rear Admiral as one, double-width, stripe.

Movies era
For Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Starfleet uniforms were again redesigned. The sleeve-stripe insignia were replaced by a pin design, worn on a strap on the right shoulder.

For officers, rank pins used in the films are as follows :

A variant of the "Captain" insignia appears in Shane Johnson's 198x Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, where it is said to indicate Commodore. This appears in the 3rd edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia as insignia for Fleet Captain.

Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise also shows a shows a different pin for Lt Cmdr (left), than is actually worn in Star Trek VI by the character Valeris. The Star Trek Encyclopedia has this variant as Lieutenant Commander.

Fletcher also designed insignia for enlisted ranks. According to Spike, Fletcher's are entirely silver. The versions here are apparently based on depictions in the Encyclopedia, which include gold bits.

The Encyclopedia also lists a Master Chief Petty Officer 2nd class insignia, which is the same as the MCPO, but without a hat.

TNG-era
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, new uniforms were designed, which indicated rank by pips on the right collar.

Flag officers
In TNG season 1, these admiralty insignia are shown, in the episodes XXX, YYY and ZZZ.

In new Trek from season 2 of TNG, new admiralty insignia are shown instead (what was the first episode). They are worn in pairs, with a set of pips on each side of the collar. The rank "Commodore", which had been abandoned by the US Navy in 19xx is not used in TNG or later series, but neither is its real-life "Rear Admiral Lower Half"

Enlisted personnel
Miles O'Brien originally wore two gold pips, and is referred to as a Lieutenant. In the episode "Family" he, whilst wearing this insignia, is referred to as a Chief Petty Officer by Worf's stepfather. The TNG Companion regards this an error.

He continued to wear Lieutenant insignia until the sixth-season episode when he started wearing a hollow gold pip, which is identified by the Star Trek Encyclopedia as "Chief Warrant Officer", and by the novelization of "Encounter at Farpoint" as being "Ensign Junior Grade". In the pilot episode of Deep Space Nine, "Emissary", he again wears the two-pip Lieutenant insignia, which is corrected from the next episode, "Past Prologue". From the 4th season, he wears a newly designed rank insignia, shown to the right. The episode "Hippocratic Oath" identifies him as a "Senior Chief Petty Officer".

"All Good Things" has him in that episode wearing two silver pips in the "Encounter at Farpoint" timeframe?? This was presumably intended as a retcon, saying "ah, yes, he was wearing two silver pips all along! they just looked gold". Check what he actually wears in "Encounter at Farpoint". -> Camera never gets a good enough angle to tell.

Another Enterprise crew member, Simon Tarses, from the episode "The Drumhead" was explicitly identified as a Crewman, and wore no rank insignia at all.

Voyager provisional ranks
In Star Trek: Voyager, the crew of the Voyager contains a number of Maquis, who have been integrated into the Starfleet ship's crew. They do not wear the regular pip insignia worn by the regular Starfleet crew. The Encyclopedia outlines this system as follows

Other insignia
In the first-season TNG episode "Where No One Has Gone Before", a propulsion specialist named Kosinski, who is not identified by rank, wears insignia on his right collar which have not been seen again.

In the DS9 episode "Inquisition" Luther Sloan, wears an insignia similar to the four-pip captain, but with a long bar beneath the pips. Sloan claims to be "Deputy Director of Internal Affairs".

Enterprise
Observed rank insignia in Enterprise are as follows: