Hayes is outside the chain of Command because he’s a ‘Not Navy’, or rather ‘Not Starfleet’.
His sole responsibility is his Company/Small Battalion; and by virtue of his appointment to the Enterprise...assisting the Security personnel in the defence of the ship and it’s Crew in coordination with it’s current chief of security (Reed).
So if Reed says ‘This is where I want your MACOs’ then that is where is MACOs go, because Reed is the naval officer aboard a naval ship, Hayes and his MACOs are ‘Guests’.

Well what can i say about this one - Bloody good show old son - it always irked me that he never gave T'Pol a uniform and rank pips in S3, when she was weaing the pips and piping on her cat suits in S4 and obviously had a starfleet commision. really wpuld have loved to see this in the show.

Hello Admiral,

i only just found this fic - by accident LOL! - while looking for something else, and have to say i love it!

i will be reveiewing all five chaps individually so here we go with "Rank and Privalidge":

I have to say that you hit the nail square on the head with this one, Reed was being a whiny little bitch al throughout that episode - and the Major was only trying to do his job.

As for the "sir" thing, chalk it up to the writers not having a clue about millitary protocol, what Hayes should have done was call read by his rank "Lieutnant".

Plus Archer chewing Reed out was something i really would have liked to see on the show! Please if you can do some more of these fics.

Whilst a Major outranks a Lieutenant, the Lieutenant holds authority in the naval capacity.

If Tucker, T'pol and Archer were incapacitated, Reed would become de-facto Captain. Even Mayweather would be 'Captain' in the event that everyone above him was rendered unable to perform their duties.

Hayes, is a MACO commander, he commands 'marines', those are his duties. Any missions requiring the use of marines falls under the jurisdiction of the senior marine commander.

Anything falling under the ship welfare, falls under the jurisdiction of the Armoury Officer.

It's due in part to courtesy and also to other niggly things like 'restricted-line' officers.

Even TOS got it wrong with Commodore Dekker taking command of the Enterprise off Kirk. That can’t happen because Kirk is the ‘Captain’. The ship is his Command ‘Under God’ to use the Wooden-navy style of thought.

At best, Dekker would stand there and say ‘Righto Kirk, fly your ship at that scary giant ship-eating monster thing’.

The Chain of command works around relaying orders and who is in charge of what. Not ‘I have more rank so I automatically get command over your ship or over your security team’.

I do agree that Hayes was under no obligation to call Reed ‘Sir’ but perhaps he was merely being polite, or more likely it was simply a faux pas on the writer’s sakes. At best, Hayes would simply call him Lieutenant Reed. Only the Captain and the XO could call him ‘Mister’ Reed. Anyone else calling him that, it would be rather rude considering Reed isn’t some wet-behind-the-ears Ensign. The Captain is entitled to more leeway and the XO as the ‘Voice-of-god’ is entitled to the same courtesy.

Atleast Enterprise got the whole ‘Captain-does-not-need-to-go-on-every-mission’ aspect. He has a perfectly capable Chief Engineer to fix those alien ships, and a perfectly competent Armoury Officer to disarm mines.

One small point here.

Vulcan Commander Earth Captain.

Just like Army Colonel Navy Captain.

They are different rank structures.

So a SUBcommander is an Earth Commander.

Thank-you for a good dose of common sense to offset some of the stupid writing decisions made for a show that had great potential. Some of these decisions may have been done to stay with the traditions of Star Trek, but that doesn't necessarily make for good writing.

The only point you raise that I couldn't see happening in Star Trek as it is today is the episode with Rajiin. The solution you present is truly practical and logical, and makes good sense, but I doubt that it could be made to fit with the long-established "tone" in Star Trek. TOS has the most rough "common sense" approach to many things, and I still doubt that even Captain Kirk would kill a spy in those circumstances. It is a solution I could see on many other shows, including Firefly, B5, NuBSG and Farscape, but trek is too PC and nice for the most part and its fans would consider it too much like cold-blooded murder. The only ST captain that I can think of that might do this would be Sisko, but then again DS9 is the red-headed child of the franchise.

Thank-you for a great read! Any chance you could skewer some of the other stupid decisions of the other series (seeing the sacred TNG get taken apart would be a treat!)?

Them knowing about it doesn't mean they can do anything about it.

And canon defines the rules of the universe, so throwing that away throws away any hope of understanding the Star Trek universe. And basically what it says to me is that in Star Trek everything is really happening at the same time. At the same moment someone is shoving an Earth destroyer in 16th century Earth's orbit there's alerts being sounded in the 29th and 31st and every other Federation era with time travel and they're saying sheilds up.

That's what it looks like to me.

Jason,

Dude, think OUTSIDE the show for two seconds.

The fact that Reed was a starship veteran doesn't matter. He was a lower rank. Period. Hayes had every right to issue orders and expect Reed to obey them on that basis alone, and he sure as hell didn't deserve to be treated like crap by a subordinate practically from the moment he stepped aboard.

And your dissertation on time shielding completely ignores two salient points:

1) The Sphere Builders most likely know about it...

2) ...and they can TRAVEL THROUGH TIME.

Which means unless they are complete morons - or they were villains created by ENT's writers, which is essentially saying the same thing - all they would have to do is go back in time to an era in history where Earth DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS to time-shielding technology and build a sphere in orbit with the moon and the device would have had CENTURIES to affect reality around Earth before anyone here even knew it was possible to shield themselves. That's why I mentioned Galileo. Do you honestly think that if a sphere showed up in the sky during the Renaissance the human race would be able to do anything about it say "Oh" and "Ah"?

Stop relying on what canon tells you and THINK!

I can't really argue with your first response that is what they did. Perhaps they were uninformed themselves. I know I personally wouldn't expect a starship veteran to take orders from someone who wasn't. But as to the second point Star Trek has shown it's possible to be protected from temporal change, so someone would be available to stop it. Things like Kirk's landing party at the Guardian of Forever. Temporal shielding in Star Trek Voyager. ANd while it might not make much sense it exists within the fictional rules of that universe.

Jason,

1. What about those viewers that know the difference between Hayes and Reed's ranks - you know, like Me? All you're really saying is that the writers treated the situation in a way that said they expected the vieweres to be uninformed, which is exactly my problem with the whole situation. Hayes outranked Reed, period. Hayes's death was a cowardly way to resolve it.

2. The point of the spheres was to alter reality. The Sphere builders were time-travellers. If you put one in orbit around the time of, say, Galileo, then all Humanity could do is observe it, and in the future there might not be a Starfleet to just "move it". See the problem?

The sphere builders were part of a temporal cold war. Something so blatent might attract the future Starfleet who'd jsut remove it and consider it an act of war.

Not to be to big a complaint but there's one thing about your complaint about Hayes and Reed. And this concerns the viewer If a new character comes on board and he isn't explicitly stated to be a superior officer to another, then the fans will expect the older character to be in charge by din of "seniority." And someone like Reed if Hayes really was a legitimate superior officer he'd follow order. But Hayes subordinated himself and died so Reed wouldn't have the problem then I think Reed was supposed to be the guy considered in charge.

Giving the NX-01 a 'dazzle' scheme, are we? Good call.

Not that was a far more convincing and effective repimand than Archer's "acting like a bunch of 5-year-olds" speach in Harbinger. This was an Archer I would have liked to have seen. Though I think maybe you let Hayes off the hook a little too easily. He bears some responsibility for the buildup to the fight as well as Reed, neither of them tryed very hard to sort things before they got to boiling point.

I'm not sure if I agree with your interpretation of the ranks, as Star Trek ranks have always been very fuzzy, and not seemingly related to any current military organisation. That said, this was a well written story and I thoroughly enjoyed it. More than made up for the resolution in the episode.

** "...and you WILL follow that order, without any bitching, moaning, whining, equivocating, kvetching or flat out doing anything that gets on the Major's nerves! Do I make myself clear, LIEUTENANT Reed?" **

Now thats a good line! *applause*

Well written.

Another excellent point regarding T'Pol and the position of First Officer. It's sad that tPtB didn't even think this far ahead...

And, if I'm not mistaken, the Chief Engineer on modern American warships is almost always the 3IC.