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In Star Trek, what are all the low-ranking Command Division officers doing?


There are three division in Starfleet as evidenced by the three uniform colors:


Command Red (Gold in TOS era): Command decides what to do


Operations Gold (Red in TOS era): includes security, operations and engineering. In the greater sense Operations means accomplishing that which Command decides, so it includes scheduling, and keeping things safe, running, and working.


Science Blue: includes medical. Science is science. It means acquiring and using knowledge.


So (TNG-era) red for commanders, captains and admirals makes sense: their job is to decide what the missions are and what the crew should do to accomplish the mission.



Helmsmen and "the conn" are generally manned by junior officers in red (TNG era). This makes sense because they are carrying out orders and "commanding the ship".


But there are junior officers all over the place in red (TNG). They are obviously not making decisions and giving orders all day long. And there clearly don't need to be very many helmspeople on the ship.


What jobs do all these officers in red have? (TNG era -- for TOS era, read as gold)



Everyone seems to be pointing out the things they have seen them do. Helm, escorts, bridge relief. Possibly, 'lesser management tasks'. But none of these assertions explain how there can be so many of them. It would require only a few officers out of a crew of a thousand -- maybe a hundred -- especially since we know that most management personnel in ops and science are wearing gold or blue uniforms. If it was like people are saying, you would expect the sight of extras in red to be relatively rare. If we have no in-universe explanation, okay -- that's an answer.




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