because on the screens of the era, it didn’t really matter because who’s gonna look that closely at the guy’s neck?

Maybe I was a weird kid but I was keenly aware of the pips on the uniforms after the point in TNG where they vaguely explain how the rank insignia pips work. It was never for any particular reason except to know another “thing” about my favorite characters.

That’s not to say that you’re wrong, maybe that’s what they told themselves when they didn’t change it! But if so they definitely underestimated some fans, lol

with Sisko it’s specifically because, until they discover the wormhole, DS9 is considered a backwater post.

Typically, base commanders are at least captain rank. Sometimes bases are commanded by lower ranks, and there can be different reasons but in this case: it’s remote and considered a less important “backwater” post compared to other bases. His eventual promotion to Captain belatedly corrects for how important the station became, as a trade/transit hub and as a strategic asset, after the wormhole discovery

Likewise mostly Enlisted people would be spending a few years at most and moving onto other careers in civilian life as most people don’t want to be in the military forever and if they do they become officers.

We see this bear out in Miles O’brien. He enlisted in starfleet rather than attending the academy. He climbed the ranks (mostly in backstory) and by the time we meet him in TNG he’s a chief petty officer, non-commissioned but officer nonetheless. When he accepts the promotion/transfer to DS9 he achieves the rank of senior chief petty officer.

Its hard to say for sure that the rest of the show is inaccurate (or otherwise) in this regard because the shows mainly focus on bridge officers. Many characters receive offscreen promotions throughout the shows and you have to pay close attention to their uniforms and rank insignia to catch it. But also, you have to bear in mind how narrow a view we get of any crew outside of like Voyager.

For example, the Enterprise-D, as a Galaxy-class starship, can have a crew complement of anywhere from 1,000 to 6,000, and TNG as a show overwhelmingly focuses on just 7 of them. “best” case that’s a view of about a half a percent of them, so it would be easy to draw nonsensical conclusions if you overly extrapolate from that small percentage. Maybe a lot of crewmen do actually retire after just a few years, it’s hard to say for sure since there is basically no evidence either way.

Basically everyone in the commissioned officer corps (ensign and above) attended the academy first in order to receive the officer commission. You would not go to officer academy in real life if you did not intend to dedicate your main career to being a military officer, and likewise, people who attend starfleet academy generally intend to dedicate their careers to starfleet. Every depiction of the Enterprise is that it is the federation flagship and so we can consider a station there as being highly sought after and likewise regarded, it represents a high potential for being a crowning point on anyone’s career, so it kinda makes sense that the core officers might be reluctant to trade in for an inferior assignment, even if it meant a bigger promotion. Another aspect of this is loyalty: most of the officers depicted across all of the shows are supposed to be stand-out talents among the federation, with solid leadership skills that clearly foster loyalty. Loyalty that can create a reluctance for too much change. We see this reflected in Riker’s long resistance to getting promoted off the Enterprise to Captain. He doesn’t want to, partly out of loyalty to Picard, but also partly out of loyalty to the officers that report to him, and by extension the rest of the crew, and partly out of the chance that his potential new command is simply not as cool as being the first officer of the Enterprise.

Voyager has different circumstances, of course: the crew complement is much smaller, and they are stranded, but Rick Berman also decided that field promotions would be unlikely in their circumstances since they have no real way to gain more crew

There would be fewer officers

Important to note that even among the enlisted ranks, the NCO corps begins just one rank above crewman. Similar to real life military there are only 3 ranks of non-officers

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

It’s very easy to take a point of view that makes it look like mysogyny whenever a show with a woman-led cast gets canceled but let’s face the simplest facts first: Paramount+ is a shit streaming platform with a limited library. Prodigy is a kids show and kids shows don’t drive subscribers. If they really wanted the show to succeed they would have put it somewhere with an actual audience.

When it comes down to it, Paramount+ itself was an idiotic play. They should never have tried to go solo but all they could see was a gold rush, now they are finally starting to see that they were actually late and are stuck scrabbling for scraps with their limited offerings

to be perfectly honest, order doesn't really matter. There is a small amount of interplay between TNG and DS9 and that's about it. Watch it in whatever order fancies you, as long as you don't watch Enterprise first because it's high level of boredom might turn you off

Trust me when I say that if Trek strikes your fancy, you probably will want to devour the rest

personally I would suggest starting with TNG, that one definitely qualifies as the "most universally loved". Plus, if you liked Lower Decks, then TNG-era Trek is likely to be your jam anyway

after TNG, watch DS9 and Voyager in whatever order you want. They ran concurrently originally, with DS9 having started a couple years before Voyager. You can watch the TNG movies anytime after finishing TNG bearing in mind that First Contact has minor consequences in DS9 (you will mainly notice a uniform change that coincided with the release of that movie)

watch the TOS movies at some point! they are much easier to get into than TOS proper. Just bear in mind that the even numbered ones are generally better liked than the odd numbered ones.

the thing about Enterprise is even at its worst, it’s not an entirely bad show - the supporting cast is good, they are set in an interesting time period, and the premise is ostensibly interesting.

The main problem for me is that, setting aside the fact that the main theme comes straight from the Patch Adams soundtrack, the show is straight up boring. They came so close to something really interesting with Archer being flawed because he was the first, and perhaps even not really the right guy to be captain. But then the writers had to make him a mary sue, he fails is way to success every episode, and becomes like the ship’s alcoholic dad, constantly getting into the dumbest yelling arguments with his ~~wife~~ first officer — who he is also canonically racist against by the way. You would think/hope they were setting him up for some growth on that, but, instead they chose to try to make a lot of the show indirectly relevant to 9/11

By the time the show finally set the stage to become interesting the majority of its audience had already been alienated

What Paramount ought to realize about it is that Enterprise failed because of the writers and producers and not because of the cast or setting and it should not be very difficult to do significantly better than the original

I didn’t watch this video but to me, the “where Picard went wrong” was clearly revealed in the first after show about it: one of the main writers was rock hard with excitement to tell us all about how he really wanted to prove he could do a dark star trek show, which to me, seems to miss the whole point of star trek. That guy is what went wrong with it

It’s not so wrong as to not be worth watching, but it does drive a need to be ready for it rather than a need to consume it, and so I have still not seen the whole show yet

I’m not going back to reddit so “interacting” for me will be limited to if they come here

I bear ongoing users no ill will, I’ve just already deleted my account and I’m just not going to support reddit by using it anymore even as a lurker

Well I’m not going back to reddit even if this place fizzles out. Reddit has become way too corporate

not sure I could stick to just one thing, I would be the captain that sometimes says something cool and the rest of the time embarrasses/annoys the bridge crew with the worst dad jokes

DS9 Trials and Tribble-ations

it's not an "episode" but Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

TNG Yesterday's Enterprise I've also always found to be an intriguing glimpse at an era we've never really seen otherwise

I saw most of TNG and all of Voyager and DS9 during their initial runs as a kid and to this day Voyager is still my favorite Trek series. It can be a little variable at times with guest writers, like the warp 10 thing, and the series finale manages to be one of the most anti-climactic of anything I’ve ever seen, but it had a real killer of an ensemble cast, a larger story, and a surprising amount of character development. And I know I already mentioned the cast but it’s hard not to love mama bear Janeway

My wife has always casually liked TOS but had never seen all of TNG or any of DS9 or VOY. We watched all of them together during lockdown. She liked them all, but Voyager was her favorite of the bunch, too