Talk:Impersonating a Starfleet officer

I wonder if this should be under a simpler title, like Impersonation. I'm not sure how to do that.--31dot 12:43, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm sure this could probably be merged with another article. --From Andoria with Love 05:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think keep it as is. It's an article about a specific criminal offence, not really any different to articles on murder or counterfeiting. Yes, it has a long-winded title, but criminal offences are really titled like that. :-) – Cleanse 12:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As Sisko did list it as a specific offense, I would probably oppose a merge. If there were other examples of a criminal act of impersonation, I could see having a single Impersonation article.  I think this is the only example, though.--31dot 21:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Scope of this Page
While thinking about the above, I realized that this page can actually cover a lot - we can list all occurrences of people impersonating Starfleet officers. I added two refs so far and there's probably many more. It is of course related to espionage, and we may want to divide those occurrences from the rest.– Cleanse 03:23, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As this particular article started out as being a specific reference to a so-called "crime", expanding it to a "list of people who wore Starfleet uniforms that weren't in Starfleet" broadens the scope beyond the original intent, me thinks. I can recall no other instances where it was mentioned to Q or Ardra that their donning of a Starfleet uniform was 1) an act of "impersonating a Starfleet officer" or 2) was in any way illegal. In fact, Picard had even said to Q, "if you'd earned that uniform, you'd know it's the unknown that brings us here" – nothing of the sort about it being a "crime", just that he didn't earn it. In the case of Patrick and Dala (et al, for both), they were actually impersonating Starfleet officers, and acting in the capacity of said officer (again, as described in the article) not just simply wearing the uniform of one. In the case of McDuff, impersonating a Starfleet officer was the least of his offenses... Furthermore, if this was broadened to simply "impersonation" you could broaden the scope to include references to all the cases where someone misrepresented themselves on the behalf of personal advancement or espionage. T'Pel for example. --Alan 03:43, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with what you're saying in regard with Q/Ardra et al. - you're right in that they aren't "impersonating" Starfleet officers by our definition, nor would they be charged. Somehow I don't think that Timothy (Vico) would be charged either for his imitation of Data ;-) I'm happy to keep such trivial/prank occurrences out, and removed the Q reference accordingly.

For the espionage related references, I'm not so sure. "MacDuff" fits all the criteria on this page (as did Julian Bashir (Changeling) et al.) Just because it was the least of their offences doesn't mean it isn't worth noting here, IMO. It was still pretty serious.

At the very least, I think a note stating that Starfleet officers are on occassion impersonated by spies is in order. But I'd prefer these occurences to be listed here.– Cleanse 05:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)