So, you want to be a Starfleet Communications Officer, but...
So, you want to be a Starfleet Communications Officer, but...
... you're worried that people won't think that your job is awesome? Worried that people might think that you're nothing but a glorified telephone operator? What to do?
Seriously, I've seen a lot of people going on either about how Uhura is only in the movie to be Spock's girlfriend and/or that all she does is answer the phone, and it's kind of annoying me. This was originally planned as an answer to
zvi's post about Uhura and her awesome job, but it turned into more of a job description than anything else.
I am not a military buff, nor do I play one on TV. What I know about hypothetical interstellar Comm Officers mostly comes from reading a fair amount of military SF [1]. So yes, this is just my opinion and I welcome comments from people who have things to add. :)
A Comm Officer's job is all about the flow of information, whether it's information between officers on board the ship, information between the ship and other ships both friendly and hostile, or information from Command/HQ. If the chief Comm Officer [2] and her department are any good at all, every department on the ship is connected with every other department and the Captain has whatever information he needs from each department right at hand from one source.
As the Comm Officer for the flagship, Uhura would be expected to coordinate the movement of an entire fleet in battle; when she tells a ship to complete a certain maneuver, her words would be taken as if they came from the Commander of the fleet, because that's what she is, the voice of the Captain/Admiral in charge.[3] Also, during action (either a fleet action or a single ship battle) the Comm Officer coordinates all the departments, so if, for example, there's a hull breach near Sickbay, she can coordinate with Scotty to get guys working on that so that Sickbay both can receive injured and send out medical parties. [4]
One of the other things that a Comm Officer in Starfleet could conceivably do is either serve as the ship's Intelligence Officer or work very closely with the Intelligence Officer. She would receive and coordinate the intelligence briefings received from Starfleet and then pass on the information the captain needed to know, either electronically or in a general briefing. So when Kirk, for example, says in his log that Klingons have been sighted in this area, you can bet that Uhura not only knows that Klingons have been sighted, but how many warbirds and maybe even the names of the ships and possible names of the captains, all information that will make a difference if they actually encounter the Klingons.
Also, because she is considered a part of Engineering and not Sciences, you have to assume that the Comm Officer has detailed knowledge of how her equipment works and is probably able to fix everything from the ships main Communication's array to the universal translator software in the ship's computer to a busted Communicator. Yes, she'd coordinate with the Chief Engineer, but she'd need to know how to direct the repairs as well as being able to get her hands dirty and repair things herself.
Finally, did I say that Trek is military SF? Because it is and yet, it isn't. They're also explorers and even with the universal translator, communicating with aliens isn't exactly easy ("Darmok, and Jalad... at Tanagra!" to use a classic example). A lot of people have talked about the fact that Uhura is a xeno-linguistics expert, so I'm not really going to go into that too much.
So, let's sum up, okay? A Starfleet Comm Officer needs:
a degree of tactical knowledge so that she can not only help coordinate both a fleet and the various departments, but know which information the captain needs during battle and encounters with aliens.
the ability to sort through large amounts of intelligence/information, process it, prioritize it and know what information the captain needs even before he knows he needs it.
a working knowledge of the communications equipment, both hardware and software, she uses.
not only an understanding of a number of fairly common galactic languages, but everything that falls under the banner of xeno-linguistics.
So yes, it's a vital job in which the person doing it is actually more visible if they screw it up. It's also a job where you spend most of your bridge time sitting there listening to stuff and passing it along. And that, of course,makes it really hard to convey just how important the Comm Officer is.
I personally think that, given the kind of movie ST XI was, Uhura did have an important, Communications Officer type moment; something that had absolutely nothing to do with her being Spock's lover. It wasn't much, but then the other secondary characters didn't get much either.
In my mind, no matter what they did in the movie, Uhura's got a vital and pretty awesome job. If there is a new series, I hope they will show her being awesome and fixing things or acting as the ship's Intelligence Officer or reaching an understanding with an alien whose very concept of language doesn't match that of the Federation's. That? Would be awesome.
[1] Which is, in effect, what Trek, particularly TOS/Reboot, is. Roddenberrry may have called it "Wagon Train to the Stars" but it's really a big damn space opera. Only not, but I'll get to that.
[2] In TOS Uhura was head of the Communications Department. In Reboot, the guy Pike had Uhura replacing probably was. That he couldn't differentiate between Vulcan and Romulan is patently ridiculous (how many centuries separate the Vulcans and Romulans? that's a lotta linguistic drift) and was, in fact, a quick way for the screenwriters to show us how awesome Uhura is.
[3] Just what a flagship is in Starfleet is one of those things that causes wank between casual fans and Navy/Military SF buffs. I'm not gonna go there except to say that of course Trek isn't going to do things the way most modern navies do because it's not good TV.
[4] Even if we assume that a ship the size of the Enterprise (any Enterprise) would have a designated Damage Officer who would coordinate the damage parties during battle or disaster, keeping the Captain up to date on the damage control process would still be the Comm Officer's job.
... you're worried that people won't think that your job is awesome? Worried that people might think that you're nothing but a glorified telephone operator? What to do?
Seriously, I've seen a lot of people going on either about how Uhura is only in the movie to be Spock's girlfriend and/or that all she does is answer the phone, and it's kind of annoying me. This was originally planned as an answer to
zvi's post about Uhura and her awesome job, but it turned into more of a job description than anything else.
I am not a military buff, nor do I play one on TV. What I know about hypothetical interstellar Comm Officers mostly comes from reading a fair amount of military SF [1]. So yes, this is just my opinion and I welcome comments from people who have things to add. :)
A Comm Officer's job is all about the flow of information, whether it's information between officers on board the ship, information between the ship and other ships both friendly and hostile, or information from Command/HQ. If the chief Comm Officer [2] and her department are any good at all, every department on the ship is connected with every other department and the Captain has whatever information he needs from each department right at hand from one source.
As the Comm Officer for the flagship, Uhura would be expected to coordinate the movement of an entire fleet in battle; when she tells a ship to complete a certain maneuver, her words would be taken as if they came from the Commander of the fleet, because that's what she is, the voice of the Captain/Admiral in charge.[3] Also, during action (either a fleet action or a single ship battle) the Comm Officer coordinates all the departments, so if, for example, there's a hull breach near Sickbay, she can coordinate with Scotty to get guys working on that so that Sickbay both can receive injured and send out medical parties. [4]
One of the other things that a Comm Officer in Starfleet could conceivably do is either serve as the ship's Intelligence Officer or work very closely with the Intelligence Officer. She would receive and coordinate the intelligence briefings received from Starfleet and then pass on the information the captain needed to know, either electronically or in a general briefing. So when Kirk, for example, says in his log that Klingons have been sighted in this area, you can bet that Uhura not only knows that Klingons have been sighted, but how many warbirds and maybe even the names of the ships and possible names of the captains, all information that will make a difference if they actually encounter the Klingons.
Also, because she is considered a part of Engineering and not Sciences, you have to assume that the Comm Officer has detailed knowledge of how her equipment works and is probably able to fix everything from the ships main Communication's array to the universal translator software in the ship's computer to a busted Communicator. Yes, she'd coordinate with the Chief Engineer, but she'd need to know how to direct the repairs as well as being able to get her hands dirty and repair things herself.
Finally, did I say that Trek is military SF? Because it is and yet, it isn't. They're also explorers and even with the universal translator, communicating with aliens isn't exactly easy ("Darmok, and Jalad... at Tanagra!" to use a classic example). A lot of people have talked about the fact that Uhura is a xeno-linguistics expert, so I'm not really going to go into that too much.
So, let's sum up, okay? A Starfleet Comm Officer needs:
So yes, it's a vital job in which the person doing it is actually more visible if they screw it up. It's also a job where you spend most of your bridge time sitting there listening to stuff and passing it along. And that, of course,makes it really hard to convey just how important the Comm Officer is.
I personally think that, given the kind of movie ST XI was, Uhura did have an important, Communications Officer type moment; something that had absolutely nothing to do with her being Spock's lover. It wasn't much, but then the other secondary characters didn't get much either.
In my mind, no matter what they did in the movie, Uhura's got a vital and pretty awesome job. If there is a new series, I hope they will show her being awesome and fixing things or acting as the ship's Intelligence Officer or reaching an understanding with an alien whose very concept of language doesn't match that of the Federation's. That? Would be awesome.
[1] Which is, in effect, what Trek, particularly TOS/Reboot, is. Roddenberrry may have called it "Wagon Train to the Stars" but it's really a big damn space opera. Only not, but I'll get to that.
[2] In TOS Uhura was head of the Communications Department. In Reboot, the guy Pike had Uhura replacing probably was. That he couldn't differentiate between Vulcan and Romulan is patently ridiculous (how many centuries separate the Vulcans and Romulans? that's a lotta linguistic drift) and was, in fact, a quick way for the screenwriters to show us how awesome Uhura is.
[3] Just what a flagship is in Starfleet is one of those things that causes wank between casual fans and Navy/Military SF buffs. I'm not gonna go there except to say that of course Trek isn't going to do things the way most modern navies do because it's not good TV.
[4] Even if we assume that a ship the size of the Enterprise (any Enterprise) would have a designated Damage Officer who would coordinate the damage parties during battle or disaster, keeping the Captain up to date on the damage control process would still be the Comm Officer's job.