I’m not talking about stuff like O’Brien’s hollow rank pip, I’m talking about stuff like “Why make Chakotay a lt. commander rather than a full commander?”
It seems like there was at least some forethought put into who has what rank, but it’s not clear to me how much thought, nor how much meaning was supposed to be baked in to those decisions.
For example, Dr Crusher was a full commander from Day 1, matched only by Riker on the main cast. Was that supposed to signify the authority afforded to the CMO? Was it supposed to be blatant enough for the audience to “get” it?
One of the most prominent examples is Sisko starting his series as a commander. Again — was that supposed to signify that he was more junior, a younger officer?
Behind the scenes, I wonder if we can trace a waxing and waning military influence in the writers room over the years. I know Roddenberry served, and I think some of the early TNG writers did as well. But I feel like that became less common in later series? (But I don’t know for sure.)
I think it’s striking that rank is significantly downplayed on DSC, except for Burnham and potentially Saru.
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.