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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
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All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.
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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
In Voyager, he's shown to have pips. In fact, switching him over to Command mode shows a deliberate animation of pips showing up on hid collar.
However, it is possible that this is something that only applied on the Voyager thanks to their excsptional circumstances, and regular Starfleet doesn't recognise it as a "proper" rank.
Technically, yes, in practice, it would be a bit more complicated. A lot of the Federation still has issues around recognising the personhood of inorganics, and a good many of them would hold the early Voyager attitude of seeing him as a regular hologram/tool that the Voyager got too attached to, like the Enterprise did with their Data.
The regular way, in theory. The ranking system technically doesn't change depending on what species you are, other than some minor twiddling to account for your species' characteristics.
It would be silly to expect a species who can't speak to give verbal commands, for example, or give them a crew who is not receptive to telepathy.
In practice, there's a lot more complications, like how the crew of the Sutherland nearly mutinied against Data because they believed him to be a dispassionate computer weighing lives at data points.
The EMH is never shown with pips on Voyager. The "ECH" was shown with pips appearing on its first appearance, however:
spoiler
The entire ECH subroutine was created as the result of The Doctor's daydreaming, so the visualisation of a rank appearing out of thin air makes sense in that context.The only other time the ECH mode was used in a genuine emergency (Season 7, Episodes 16/17), he did not have pips.