This will be the discussion thread for "Chloe Bishop"

Bio

Alright, I have a question about Chloe's bio that I wanted to run by everyone. I've slowly been making some progress, and I've got most of it added to the manifest now. My question is about the way I had her enter Starfleet. In the 24th century, or even the 23rd, Starfleet Academy is a full post-secondary institution. I don't know about what it is in the pre-Federation days, but we know it's called Starfleet Training Command. Since Chloe didn't initially start out looking to join Starfleet, she didn't join right away. Instead, I've sent her to Stanford where she would learn her linguistic skills. From there, she worked for Starfleet as a civilian for a while and decided that she wanted to join. Since she already had a four-year degree and job experience, even if only for a year, Starfleet let her take a shortened course, only two years (actually three semesters as I have it written now) to cover aspects of her job that she wouldn't have learned at Stanford. Mainly, they taught her things about serving on a starship or working with junior officers or non-coms. She didn't need those extra years since she didn't go to learn to be a pilot, engineer, scientist, etc.

Does that make sense from a technical standpoint? I've kinda wrote her to be new to the whole space travel thing, but I'm afraid she's going to be too much like Hoshi in that sense. But I see Chloe taking it all in more as a wide-eyed kid than someone who was afraid she was getting in over her head. Maybe that's not a good enough of a distinction. I'm not opposed to making her older and give her more experience, but with the way Hoshi was introduced on Enterprise, it felt like having a linguist as opposed to a radio operator was a novel idea. It might have been something that Starfleet picked up on after Archer asked for Sato to be on his crew. I don't know though. That's just my train of thought, but I'm open to any suggestions if that doesn't make enough sense.

I had a similar issue with Leo. He's a pretty accomplished scientist in the civilian world and came to Starfleet after getting his PhD. I wondered about whether he could be commissioned straight in as a science officer, given his qualifications. In the end, I decided to have him go through the whole 4 years at Training Command because it was something he wanted to do, rather than needed to do. He's odd like that.

I'd expect, though, that there wouldn't be anything getting in the way of gaining a commission without going through the full 4 year course, particularly when somebody has earned a relevant qualification. The way it's described in Chloe's bio is pretty realistic, I think.

Thanks. I'll leave it how it is then. Chloe's not really accomplished in the civilian world, but she does at least have that degree.

Yeah, the way I look at it, is that Starfleet is far smaller with a far smaller recruitment pool than its form in the later centuries, being limited to the population of Earth and her few colonies and cargo ships. On top of that, aside from the cargo boomers, they're going to be severely lacking in experience - meaning that for those with the skills that they need, they're probably going to make the training requirements a lot more flexible than 24th Century Starfleet would.

It's also part of why I've had it set so that we don't have anywhere near as many ranks as the future Starfleet does; it's less of a regimented structure, and has more of a vibe of an expansion of NASA. I'm thinking the recent film Gravity; without giving any details away, the main character is a specialist in her field; not really astronaut material, and has only gone through enough astronaut-related training for her to know the basics necessary for going up into space - all because her expertise is needed up there.

I know this may not seem relevant at first but, In the Australian Army there are 2 methods of entry for officers, (I would class the Australian Army as similar to Starfleet due to it being relatively small, around 80,000 strong).

There is the General Service officer (GSO), this person has no real qualifications and goes in undertaking about a years worth of training to be commissioned. So these people would be akin to Armoury or Helm officers.

The other method is Specialist Service officer (SSO), this person has or will have the qualifications such as a Doctorate or Degree that the Army needs. SSOs dont need as much 'military' training as their major role is their specialty. I believe they only get a month to 3 months training before being commissioned.

I would say that Chloe would be the latter of the two.

After typing this I did realize the last discussion on this was July last year.. hmm.

It's alright if it's been a while since the last post. These threads are used in general for discussing a character, so I doubt anyone will give you a hard time about waking up dormant threads.

Anyway, I agree that Chloe would fit in the second group. Three months training is significantly less than what I guessed though, but at least I was on the right track about having a shortened training period.

Just because a character is a college graduate or an expert in their field doesn't mean that the academy has nothing to teach. Little things like how to get in and out of spacesuit, how to handle zero-G, how to run the transporter, and other aspects of being an astronaut are things that every crewmember, officer or enlisted needs to learn. Just because a character has a PhD doesn't mean that Starfleet has nothing to teach them.

Agreed. I figured Chloe's xenolinguistics degree meant nothing when it came to life aboard a starship. She probably had to learn some basic equipment maintenance, possibly weapons training, and maybe even a crash course in piloting a shuttlepod. I suppose the weapons training is debatable though. At this point in "history" is Starfleet really military or just a more advanced form of NASA. Obviously they still have defenses and an armory officer, but would the communications officer or the helm officer really need combat training. Starfleet may expect the ship security teams and MACOs to do all of the shooting, meaning that Chloe should just run and/or hide if she's on a mission and shooting breaks out.

The way I've always approached it is that Starfleet would only require very basic weapons training on the part of the non-combat roles - just enough to be qualified to use a phase pistol for self defence. But most of the shooting would be done by the armoury officers. The MACOs take on a lot of that as well, but aren't technically part of Starfleet.

And yeah, I tend to look at Starfleet in the NX era as 'NASA with guns' - they tend to act and interact a lot more like a civilian agency would in a lot of respects, and the militarisation would come along after the formation of the Federation, and the incorporation of the MACOs, the Andorians and others into Starfleet.