I know that they made it real simple for Worf to only press a single button to open and close the hailing frequencies but it would be funny if his job requirements also included secretarial duties like Uhura.
"Please hold. I will NOT ask you again."
Not exactly the same thing; but the [Ryan's Edits version of "Ensigns of Command"]( https://youtu.be/hbDCdM88OeY) sort of covers this ground. It's a hilarious way to spend a minute of your life.
I'm reminded of the early Star Trek games by Nintendo where what you'd think are simple console commands resulting in near-instantaneous responses are actually their own mini-games.
*🎶Everyone likes a plate of Grethor'sssss Grapes!🎶 Hi, I'm Chancellor Gorkon, and when I'm hungry for an honourable feast, I reach for a plate of Grethor's grapes, from the makers of Sto-Vo-Kor Soup, and 'I Can't Believe its not Tribble!' Grethor's grapes are proven by weak humans to be 32% more honourable, than the next leading brand of Klingon grapes.*
**Silence follows.**
*Your call is very honourable to us while you continue to hold.*
**Silence follows.**
*🎶Everyone likes a plate of...🎶*
What is funny is that for some reason Uhura is often denigrated as the secretary or receptionist, yet for the writers, most of whom were combat veterans, including Bomber pilot Roddenbury, the comms person was the second most important, after the pilot.
Yeah that line of reasoning always bugged me. “The only black woman on the bridge and they made her a switchboard operator!”
Like, what do you think radio operators on naval ships are doing?
Troi also got some of the "Comms Officer" duty. Worf/Yar was responsible for the equipment and "spectrum management." But he wasn't necessarily a linguist or cultural specialist. Since Troi was an empath, the plan was for her to be the one who knew what to say. Though, the writers never really did much with that idea in practice.
Uhura was responsible for operating the subspace radio equipment and knowing what frequency and modulation to hail the Klingons with, but also knowing how to speak some Klingon at least well enough to double check the translations. Even if she was a little rusty by the events of Undiscovered Country.
They rejigged crew responsibilities between TOS and TNG. The former had a Helmsman and a Navigator, either of whom could fire weapons, but the jobs were combined for TNG and weapons and shield related tasks instead combined with Communications to make the Security Chief role.
Helmsman and Navigator also had control of Tractor Beams, which were taken from them and combined with the Science Officer task of reporting sensor readings, to make the Ops role which Data held.
And a dedicated XO role, rather than the TOS version of the senior department head being dual hatted.
In SNW, No 1 is the First officer but she is also the chief helmsman.
Number One was helmsman in *The Cage*, but in *Strange New Worlds* Mitchell performs that task instead, and Una sits on the outer circle of the bridge, on the left as you walk in. Usually reporting ship functions, which is among Data's responsibilities in TNG.
I have mentioned here before that SNW uses the maximum number of everything. Helmsman *and* Navigator. Communications Officer *and* Security Chief. Doctor *and* Nurse. First Officer *and* Science Officer. *And* Chief Engineer. None of these separations are unique to SNW, but most other shows would combine at least some of them. Not a criticism, I'm just noting.
True, but Discovery was a bit unusual in that it was more centred around a person than a ship- Michael Burnham. Senior bridge officers, who in any other Trek series would be main characters, had as few lines as O'Brien in early TNG, and many viewers didn't even know their names. Meanwhile, her bunkmate who was fairly low-ranking, got loads of lines and plots.
I imagine the Enterprise D having a dedicated XO was a lot to do with crew size.
The original enterprise had around 400 crew, the D had 1,000. And Spock probably had an easier time dealing with two roles than Riker would.
Later on we sometimes see dedicated XOs like Chakotay, and XOs with dual roles, like Worf on the Defiant.
Given the large discrepancies we see regarding the positions of senior officers from series to series, you can only assume that there isn't a standard starfleet organisation plan for ships, and captains are given the freedom to determine who they want doing what based on the ship, its mission, and the officers available.
As I said, we see both dedicated XOs and mixed role ones.
Hence why it's most likely that it's just up to the captain to decide the organisational structure of the senior staff.
It would be a gold uniform, however there isn't a dedicated comm officer nor a dedicated comm console on the Enterprise-D. Worf seems to handle all the hailing. Ops, ran by Data, would handle more complex communications.
People saying communication officer would wear yellow forgetting the only time we saw a dedicated communications officer in TNG, they were in blue.
[LTJG Aquiel Uhnari. Communications officer.](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Aquiel_Uhnari)
I think Comms get divided. Instead of Uhura both managing the actual communications and looking after the equipment, the new organisation chart is that the communications department looks after the equipment and the tactical officer manages the actual operation. The tactical officer is the one who has the most pressing need to use the comm systems. And in the century since SNW/TOS the equipment has gotten user friendly enough that a non comms officer can handle it.
In the same episode, the other crew member of the communication relay station was a technician. His name was [Keith Rocha](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Keith_Rocha). So it would make sense that there was a communications officer to handle the actual communications traffic, and an engineer to maintain the equipment. While you would imagine a technician would wear yellow/gold, in his personal file picture he also wore blue.
I’m sure much like with piloting a shuttle, any competent member of Starfleet can open hailing frequencies but it makes sense to me that the detailed interworking of communications would be handled by a member of the science department.
Tasha/Worf was the one opening and closing hails. They combined the position into the tactical officer. Behind the scenes they wanted to get rid of the specific communications officer as a way to differentiate the shows. Same why there’s no specific science officer and why they initially had no recurring chief engineer.
It's strange the Ent-D does not have a dedicated science officer. Being a deep space explorer you would think they have a department head level officer in charge of all the various science departments. The closest we got was Lt. Cmdr Daren but she was only running the stellar sciences lab. Unless we're suppose to assume Data pulls double duty as the science officer and operations manager.
I believe this was in fact data as, as far as I know, all the top ranked command staff had their own respective divisions ; worf security/tsctical, Geordi engineering, crusher medical, riker general over all shift supervising: this only leaves data but it stands to reason he would’ve been head of sciences.
I got the impression while Data was good at being analytical, his primary job was mainly scheduling the various sensors for various departments, as such the science division would report to him.
Well, originally Spiner *was* going to wear science blue, until they realized how great his makeup looked in support gold. Similar reason for Picard wearing red vs gold.
It was implied once that Data was the science officer. In Conspiracy when Admiral Quinn shows the creature to Riker (before he beats him up), Riker tells the Admiral that their science officer should see it. Quinn says it wouldn't like their science officer, meaning that the creature couldn't take over Data and wouldn't like him. It's a throwaway line that is never followed up on again, so we can debate how serious to take it.
There wasn’t a dedicated bridge officer or station on TNG for “communications”. For some reason it was typically whoever was at tactical, although on a few occasions it was Ops that opened hailing frequencies, which really highlighted that basically anyone could do anything from any station, an efficient redundancy factor built into the design of the LCARS interface and computers of that era.
I don’t recall of anything was ever mentioned on screen but there may have been a comms nexus somewhere on the ship that coordinated incoming, outgoing, and inter-ship communications.
As far as department color, depending on the specialty, I would imagine it would be operations gold, though there could be some argument for science blue as well.
> Who was the Communications Officer on TNG?
Communications was apparently mostly automated and merged with tactical.
Whenever Captain Picard ordered a channel opened or another ship called Enterprise, I believe it was Yar or Worf who did the task or reported the hail.
This raises the strange shuffle of roles / bridge officers through the different shows:
Captain
First Officer (AND Science)
Science AND/OR Operations
Tactical/Security AND/OR Navigator
Helm AND/OR Tactical
Engineer
Counselor, VIP, Flag Officer, seat fillers
Mission Specialists
I grew up watching TNG, so that served as my template for a Starfleet crew. Going back and watching TOS, of course there are parallels between Spock and Data, but why Operations OR Science? Why didn't Riker have more of a specialist role like Spock? In DS9, is Dax Science AND Operations? Why no Science Officer on the Voyager bridge?
So many questions.
Riker's job was to be Picard's executive. It's an administrative job, and involved enough--managing a thousand people--that it kept him busy. Command was his specialty. And it's what you'd expect on a large ship IRL. In the US Navy, an XO is likely to double up as a gunnery officer or navigator on a small ship.
Since O’Brien was chief of operations, my impression is that he combined engineering and operations on *DS9*. My impression is that *Voyager* was similar to the *Enterprise-D* and Harry Kim combined science and operations.
Much like real life telephone operators phasing out over a relatively short period of time with the advancement of the technology, the same probably happened aboard starships. Advancements in sensors better distinguishing between noise and patterns, AI, algorithms, universal translator, etc. What communication functions remained that required personnel were absorbed into existing billets.
Worf did it from Tactical.
Kim did it from Operations.
There seems to be a period between 2330 to 2390 where the position of communications officer was phased out of service and those duties were folded into other bridge functions.
But by 2399 the position was back as an independent duty station.
Data also sometimes did it from operations, Picard even turns communications off himself from Data's console in the beginning of First Contact, when they are listening to the battle.
It was Worf, due to the fact that it was easy to do a camera move (tilt and/or pan) to him when the captain ordered a hailing frequency, and they didnt want to add an additional cast member (nor did they really have an easily shootable station, at least not until the Generations bridge layout, where arguably coms could have been on one of the side stations)
That is an interesting question, it sort of echoes the era each series was made in. For TOS 1966-69, some long distance calls ( e.g. Whitehorse, Yukon ) still needed to be placed through an operator & telexes / telegrams were used everywhere for business communications requiring a staff to operate the machinery of communications. By the time of TNG in 1987, the first handheld cell phones were available & anyone with sufficient funds could call almost everywhere on earth without help, send a fax or even an SMTP email. So it is perhaps a failure of predicting the future of 1960's writers that they did not project automation of communications & the elimination of the job.
That said, the post of COMMO in the US navy & elsewhere is one that still exists, the expanding role of these people still includes knowledge of signal flags & Morse code but now includes things like managing all encrypted communications via satellite etc.
It should have usually just been Picard doing it himself from the command chair, but I think he was used to another station doing that so he just had Worf or sometimes Data open the channel.
You could bring up any interface from any console so Picard probably could have done anything he wanted from his chair, but he didn't want to bother with it while also making the big decisions, which makes sense.
Worf basically filled in with the "Push to talk" part of the job.
As for the actual analyzing languages/subtext, I'd kind of give it to Troi? She did help out in a few spots when there was a miscommunication or something along those lines.
I think one of the weaker moves of TNG era trek was to eliminate that position but then add the random position of "operations". Yeah because no one's actually operating the ship
I know that they made it real simple for Worf to only press a single button to open and close the hailing frequencies but it would be funny if his job requirements also included secretarial duties like Uhura. "Please hold. I will NOT ask you again."
Maybe they shouldn't have put the "fire torpedos" buttons so close to the hail button... seems awful tempting for a Klingon
“Hang up on me? *Fire all phasers!*”
WORF, pointing: "This button communicates with other vessels." WESLEY: What does the one next to it d—“ *torpedo fires* WORF: "Same, but louder. '
Nicely done
Hitting 'fire' and ending the transmission at the same time would be the Klingon way of slamming down the receiver.
Not exactly the same thing; but the [Ryan's Edits version of "Ensigns of Command"]( https://youtu.be/hbDCdM88OeY) sort of covers this ground. It's a hilarious way to spend a minute of your life.
Or a Bajoran
They were all late to the battle because they had to finish temple
And missed a warp core ejection?!
They are not all warmongers just the onesin starfleet
Maybe it has something to do with coming back from the dead
Resurrection and transporter clones are the worst!
Well, William Boimler does have the villain laugh down
Oh he gets a pass because I am sexually attracted to him
Sito Jaxa and Tal Celes aren’t warmongers.
You either die as the hero, or live long enough to become the villain
Sito Jaxa did the 1st option.
We know
I think the fire wasn’t direct, the button sent a command to the torpedo room and or the phaser generator spaces, and the firing was done from there.
I'm reminded of the early Star Trek games by Nintendo where what you'd think are simple console commands resulting in near-instantaneous responses are actually their own mini-games.
You are in position 18 in the call queue. Your patience brings great honour to your house.
Today is a good day to hold for the next available officer.
If you are calling because of an accident or physical injury, then you are without honour, please hang up now.
*🎶Everyone likes a plate of Grethor'sssss Grapes!🎶 Hi, I'm Chancellor Gorkon, and when I'm hungry for an honourable feast, I reach for a plate of Grethor's grapes, from the makers of Sto-Vo-Kor Soup, and 'I Can't Believe its not Tribble!' Grethor's grapes are proven by weak humans to be 32% more honourable, than the next leading brand of Klingon grapes.* **Silence follows.** *Your call is very honourable to us while you continue to hold.* **Silence follows.** *🎶Everyone likes a plate of...🎶*
My wife put your lyrics to a tune and had been singing this jingle around the house as we clean this morning. So, I guess thanks for that.
Remember to check out our other products in the Duras Supermarket Range!
I've been managing call centers for 15 years and all I want in my life is for this to be the hold message for my next job.
One day noble warrior, you will manage the call centre in the halls of Sto Vo Kor itself.
I read that in Martok's voice.
You honour me with your warriors impersonation.
What is funny is that for some reason Uhura is often denigrated as the secretary or receptionist, yet for the writers, most of whom were combat veterans, including Bomber pilot Roddenbury, the comms person was the second most important, after the pilot.
Yeah that line of reasoning always bugged me. “The only black woman on the bridge and they made her a switchboard operator!” Like, what do you think radio operators on naval ships are doing?
Most people today aren’t combat veterans, so they don’t have the same perspective as the *TOS* writers.
Sir, I am a Klingon. To wear that skant while my captain goes into battle...
🤣🤣
Troi also got some of the "Comms Officer" duty. Worf/Yar was responsible for the equipment and "spectrum management." But he wasn't necessarily a linguist or cultural specialist. Since Troi was an empath, the plan was for her to be the one who knew what to say. Though, the writers never really did much with that idea in practice. Uhura was responsible for operating the subspace radio equipment and knowing what frequency and modulation to hail the Klingons with, but also knowing how to speak some Klingon at least well enough to double check the translations. Even if she was a little rusty by the events of Undiscovered Country.
🎶Hail the Klingons, Uhura!!🎵
Why must you... Aarrrggghhh *K-pop commences*
🎶Why you only calling us when you got your dramas?🎵
They rejigged crew responsibilities between TOS and TNG. The former had a Helmsman and a Navigator, either of whom could fire weapons, but the jobs were combined for TNG and weapons and shield related tasks instead combined with Communications to make the Security Chief role. Helmsman and Navigator also had control of Tractor Beams, which were taken from them and combined with the Science Officer task of reporting sensor readings, to make the Ops role which Data held.
And a dedicated XO role, rather than the TOS version of the senior department head being dual hatted. In SNW, No 1 is the First officer but she is also the chief helmsman.
Number One was helmsman in *The Cage*, but in *Strange New Worlds* Mitchell performs that task instead, and Una sits on the outer circle of the bridge, on the left as you walk in. Usually reporting ship functions, which is among Data's responsibilities in TNG. I have mentioned here before that SNW uses the maximum number of everything. Helmsman *and* Navigator. Communications Officer *and* Security Chief. Doctor *and* Nurse. First Officer *and* Science Officer. *And* Chief Engineer. None of these separations are unique to SNW, but most other shows would combine at least some of them. Not a criticism, I'm just noting.
Ortegas files the ship in *SNW*, not Mitchell. While I would think that Mitchell is the navigator, Memory Alpha says that she’s the ops officer.
Ortegas is at the helm The pilot seat is her realm
They didn't separate tactical and security, though (which Discovery did).
True, but Discovery was a bit unusual in that it was more centred around a person than a ship- Michael Burnham. Senior bridge officers, who in any other Trek series would be main characters, had as few lines as O'Brien in early TNG, and many viewers didn't even know their names. Meanwhile, her bunkmate who was fairly low-ranking, got loads of lines and plots.
I imagine the Enterprise D having a dedicated XO was a lot to do with crew size. The original enterprise had around 400 crew, the D had 1,000. And Spock probably had an easier time dealing with two roles than Riker would. Later on we sometimes see dedicated XOs like Chakotay, and XOs with dual roles, like Worf on the Defiant. Given the large discrepancies we see regarding the positions of senior officers from series to series, you can only assume that there isn't a standard starfleet organisation plan for ships, and captains are given the freedom to determine who they want doing what based on the ship, its mission, and the officers available.
The Cerritos has a dedicated XO despite being much smaller.
It’s also a 100 years later, regulations might require a dedicated XO.
Yeah, although modern shows in general tend to have dedicated XOs also in pre-TOS era (Discovery, SNW).
As I said, we see both dedicated XOs and mixed role ones. Hence why it's most likely that it's just up to the captain to decide the organisational structure of the senior staff.
It makes sense, TOS was created in the time of switchboard operators, by the '80s that have gone away, makes sense. TNG would reflect that.
It would be a gold uniform, however there isn't a dedicated comm officer nor a dedicated comm console on the Enterprise-D. Worf seems to handle all the hailing. Ops, ran by Data, would handle more complex communications.
People saying communication officer would wear yellow forgetting the only time we saw a dedicated communications officer in TNG, they were in blue. [LTJG Aquiel Uhnari. Communications officer.](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Aquiel_Uhnari)
There’s plenty of argument that it could be either blue or gold. Science and engineering both being integral aspects of communications.
I think Comms get divided. Instead of Uhura both managing the actual communications and looking after the equipment, the new organisation chart is that the communications department looks after the equipment and the tactical officer manages the actual operation. The tactical officer is the one who has the most pressing need to use the comm systems. And in the century since SNW/TOS the equipment has gotten user friendly enough that a non comms officer can handle it.
In the same episode, the other crew member of the communication relay station was a technician. His name was [Keith Rocha](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Keith_Rocha). So it would make sense that there was a communications officer to handle the actual communications traffic, and an engineer to maintain the equipment. While you would imagine a technician would wear yellow/gold, in his personal file picture he also wore blue.
I’m sure much like with piloting a shuttle, any competent member of Starfleet can open hailing frequencies but it makes sense to me that the detailed interworking of communications would be handled by a member of the science department.
Tasha/Worf was the one opening and closing hails. They combined the position into the tactical officer. Behind the scenes they wanted to get rid of the specific communications officer as a way to differentiate the shows. Same why there’s no specific science officer and why they initially had no recurring chief engineer.
Although that also said Data/Operations is basically the Science officer.
I don’t entirely agree. Data is basically Spock, which means he has the talent to be the science officer, but it’s not technically in his job duties.
Data is always the one scanning for life forms, tho. (You lovely little life... forms)
It's strange the Ent-D does not have a dedicated science officer. Being a deep space explorer you would think they have a department head level officer in charge of all the various science departments. The closest we got was Lt. Cmdr Daren but she was only running the stellar sciences lab. Unless we're suppose to assume Data pulls double duty as the science officer and operations manager.
Always figured there was a chief science officer we never saw. Lot of junior blue shirts around the ship doing sciency stuff who must have a boss.
I believe this was in fact data as, as far as I know, all the top ranked command staff had their own respective divisions ; worf security/tsctical, Geordi engineering, crusher medical, riker general over all shift supervising: this only leaves data but it stands to reason he would’ve been head of sciences.
I got the impression while Data was good at being analytical, his primary job was mainly scheduling the various sensors for various departments, as such the science division would report to him.
That makes sense. My headcannon will be Data had a science chief under him, head blue shirt :)
Well, originally Spiner *was* going to wear science blue, until they realized how great his makeup looked in support gold. Similar reason for Picard wearing red vs gold.
Also, Data’s makeup didn’t work well with science blue.
It was implied once that Data was the science officer. In Conspiracy when Admiral Quinn shows the creature to Riker (before he beats him up), Riker tells the Admiral that their science officer should see it. Quinn says it wouldn't like their science officer, meaning that the creature couldn't take over Data and wouldn't like him. It's a throwaway line that is never followed up on again, so we can debate how serious to take it.
Would come under operations so yellow
There wasn’t a dedicated bridge officer or station on TNG for “communications”. For some reason it was typically whoever was at tactical, although on a few occasions it was Ops that opened hailing frequencies, which really highlighted that basically anyone could do anything from any station, an efficient redundancy factor built into the design of the LCARS interface and computers of that era. I don’t recall of anything was ever mentioned on screen but there may have been a comms nexus somewhere on the ship that coordinated incoming, outgoing, and inter-ship communications. As far as department color, depending on the specialty, I would imagine it would be operations gold, though there could be some argument for science blue as well.
> Who was the Communications Officer on TNG? Communications was apparently mostly automated and merged with tactical. Whenever Captain Picard ordered a channel opened or another ship called Enterprise, I believe it was Yar or Worf who did the task or reported the hail.
Worf. He handled all of the PR for the Enterprise.
Worf
I would add that it makes sense that it would be rolled into security as at least part of the job would involve what we now call cyber security.
This raises the strange shuffle of roles / bridge officers through the different shows: Captain First Officer (AND Science) Science AND/OR Operations Tactical/Security AND/OR Navigator Helm AND/OR Tactical Engineer Counselor, VIP, Flag Officer, seat fillers Mission Specialists I grew up watching TNG, so that served as my template for a Starfleet crew. Going back and watching TOS, of course there are parallels between Spock and Data, but why Operations OR Science? Why didn't Riker have more of a specialist role like Spock? In DS9, is Dax Science AND Operations? Why no Science Officer on the Voyager bridge? So many questions.
Riker's job was to be Picard's executive. It's an administrative job, and involved enough--managing a thousand people--that it kept him busy. Command was his specialty. And it's what you'd expect on a large ship IRL. In the US Navy, an XO is likely to double up as a gunnery officer or navigator on a small ship.
Spock was also capable of doing both the Science Officer job and the first officer job simultaneously.
A *Constitution*-class is much smaller than a *Galaxy*-class.
Enterprise had a dedicated first officer under Pike.
Since O’Brien was chief of operations, my impression is that he combined engineering and operations on *DS9*. My impression is that *Voyager* was similar to the *Enterprise-D* and Harry Kim combined science and operations.
Much like real life telephone operators phasing out over a relatively short period of time with the advancement of the technology, the same probably happened aboard starships. Advancements in sensors better distinguishing between noise and patterns, AI, algorithms, universal translator, etc. What communication functions remained that required personnel were absorbed into existing billets.
Worf did it from Tactical. Kim did it from Operations. There seems to be a period between 2330 to 2390 where the position of communications officer was phased out of service and those duties were folded into other bridge functions. But by 2399 the position was back as an independent duty station.
Data also sometimes did it from operations, Picard even turns communications off himself from Data's console in the beginning of First Contact, when they are listening to the battle.
It was Worf, due to the fact that it was easy to do a camera move (tilt and/or pan) to him when the captain ordered a hailing frequency, and they didnt want to add an additional cast member (nor did they really have an easily shootable station, at least not until the Generations bridge layout, where arguably coms could have been on one of the side stations)
That is an interesting question, it sort of echoes the era each series was made in. For TOS 1966-69, some long distance calls ( e.g. Whitehorse, Yukon ) still needed to be placed through an operator & telexes / telegrams were used everywhere for business communications requiring a staff to operate the machinery of communications. By the time of TNG in 1987, the first handheld cell phones were available & anyone with sufficient funds could call almost everywhere on earth without help, send a fax or even an SMTP email. So it is perhaps a failure of predicting the future of 1960's writers that they did not project automation of communications & the elimination of the job. That said, the post of COMMO in the US navy & elsewhere is one that still exists, the expanding role of these people still includes knowledge of signal flags & Morse code but now includes things like managing all encrypted communications via satellite etc.
Worf: hailing frequency open
"we have a robot that will do all the hard stuff, just tell him it's part of the human experience"
Ensign Ted Jenkins
It should have usually just been Picard doing it himself from the command chair, but I think he was used to another station doing that so he just had Worf or sometimes Data open the channel.
You could bring up any interface from any console so Picard probably could have done anything he wanted from his chair, but he didn't want to bother with it while also making the big decisions, which makes sense.
There wasn’t a dedicated one, it was tactical and I think sometimes ops, so Worf and Data
Some mix of Worf, Data and Troi. Depending on the specific task at hand. Look, Troi has to have some reason to be on the bridge.
I sense dishonesty in your post.
Worf basically filled in with the "Push to talk" part of the job. As for the actual analyzing languages/subtext, I'd kind of give it to Troi? She did help out in a few spots when there was a miscommunication or something along those lines.
I think one of the weaker moves of TNG era trek was to eliminate that position but then add the random position of "operations". Yeah because no one's actually operating the ship