Daystrom Institute
Welcome to Daystrom Institute!
Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.
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Rules
1. Explain your reasoning
All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.
2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.
This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.
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Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
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What bothers me the most is that Data was still a Lt. Cmdr after 25+ years of exemplary Starfleet service. It's not like he'd fail the bridge officer's test.
I think it's clear throughout TNG that many in Starfleet had reservations about treating an android equivalent to a biological officer, as evidenced by A Measure of a Man (where it was clear many in Starfleet had considered him a piece of property) and by Pulaski's early interactions with him. Data raised the question in Redemption Part 2 about whether Picard's initial failure to assign him to command one of the ships was because of unease about an android captain, indicating that such unease was not an outlandish concept to him.
If I recall correctly, Data also indicated at some point that even though his positronic brain meant he could ace his way through any Starfleet tests, he intentionally didn't seek to advance through the ranks any faster than a biological officer.
He was clearly a qualified bridge officer. As a member of the regular chain of command (and being the one regularly in charge of the night shift due to not needing to sleep), he had to be. (In fact, he was put in command of another ship once which would have been impossible if he didn't have the qualifications.) In his case it's probably a lack of ambition that led to him being stuck in that rank; he had no real desire to be promoted to another ship when his friends were on the Enterprise and he had every opportunity to learn about meatbags there.