Talk:Bajoran ranks

What exactly is a "field colonel"? I've never heard that term before. And Col. Kira's rank pin was gold with the circle being silver.
 * Field colonel was the description of Day Kannu's rank given in the script for the episodes he was in -- where he wore a different insignia than Kira's regular colonel rank insignia you mentioned (indicating it was a different grade). -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 19:34, 19 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * Interestingly, Kira and Holm wore different rank insignia. Could Kira have been a Lt. Colonel?


 * Did Lenaris Holem wear the "gold badge with one hollow field" insignia that Day Kannu wore? -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk


 * No, it was a Major's insignia with an additional golden rim.

Kira's temporary StarFleet commission was issued by Sisko, himself a StarFleet Captain. It is possible that he only had the authority to give a field commission up to the rank of Commander, which would be consistent with canon (excepting the Red Squad episode) and common sense. --
 * How would this be consistent with canon? We haven't seen all that many examples of this. In addition, as I am fond of saying (or at least thinking), common sense is not canon on Memory Alpha, it is speculation. --OuroborosCobra talk |undefined  18:31, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we can safely say. It is highly unlikely that Kira skipped an entire rank, esspically when still under Captain Sisko, I think the assumption can, and should, be made that (if we accept Field Colonel as a rank) that Kira was a Filed Colonel, and simply referred to as Colonel, much like Day. Also, field could refer to the fact that it would be more likely to find a junior grade Colonel in the field. Maevok 03:30, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Field Colonel
Surely a Field Colonel would, as on Earth, be someone of an enlisted rank given a commission. In Star Trek, the term "Field" seems to refer to someone given a temporary rank, or appointed to a rank by a senior officer rather than by Starfleet Command (so, Wesley Crusher was given a field promotion). The "roughly equivalent to" seems like pure speculation. Madred 04:31, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Colonel Equivalence
I think the idea is that Bajoran "main" ranks are equivalent to starfleet "half" ranks. So a major is equivalent to a 2.5 pip officer (lieutenant commander) and colonel equivalent to a non-existing 3.5 pip officer, or a vulcan subcommander. The bajoran equivalent to starfleet "main" ranks would then be derived as junior ranks of the immediately higher named ranks. So the equivalent to a starfleet 3 pip officer (commander) would be a lieutenant (or field ?) colonel. Following that logic, the equivalent of a starfleet captain would be a junior-grade or lower-half brigadier. So when Kira's colonel rank had to be converted to an equivalent starfleet rank, they had a choice of either "promoting" her to a captain or "demoting" her to a commander. They would have chosen the latter in order to maintain clear the fact that Sisko was still her superior, not just her senior. --Sapient 02:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

missing images
Why were some of the images in the Bajoran Militia ranks and insignia table deleted, or are the filenames placeholders? 72.188.120.48 17:31, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
 * It's just a bug in the system which prevents some images from being shown. Just reload the pages and the images should re-appear. It may take more than one reload. --From Andoria with Love 06:22, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I think some (like "general") actually aren't there... --OuroborosCobra talk 06:46, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Ahh, you're right. In that case... 72.188.120.48, yes, those are just placeholders. No one's uploaded the actual images yet. :) Thanks for pointing that out, Cobra. --From Andoria with Love 06:49, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Starfleet equivalence of Bajoran "Captain"
I see that the Bajoran rank of Captain is currently listed as being possibly equivalent to a Starfleet Lieutenant. Yet, there seems to be no hard evidence for this. If memory serves, no Bajoran Milita member was ever referred to as a Captain at any point on screen, and likewise there is no citation for this surmise.

If it is just surmise, then, then it seems a rather illogical one. Also, there is a bit of a confusing potential clash between (Bajoran) Ensign and Second Lieutenant, both of which "may be equivalent to Starfleet Ensign". So, I did some thinking, and thought of this: assuming that "Captain" either does not exist in the Bajoran Militia (or, is used somewhere higher up the rank table), then the other ranks would fit perfectly, possibly like this:

I didn't include Field Colonel on the list because it would seem most logical for "Field Colonel" to simply be a regular colonel, except assigned to field duty (ground troops, etc.) rather than naval duty (starship, starbase, etc.)

This arrangement solves a number of problems that exist in the currently presumed system. For one, Colonel=Commander lines up with Kira's temporary Starfleet commission. Two, it would seem rather odd that Kira would be promoted to the equivalent of a Starfleet Captain in DS9 Season 7, because then she'd be holding equal rank with Sisko, yet still holding the position of first officer (though of course by positional rank he would still hold preeminence). Thirdly, it completely removes any collision between 2nd Lt. and Ensign.

Of course, the above correspondence table is entirely surmised. Nonetheless, for that matter, so are all of the correspondences listed on the existing page. Thus, I propose that the above table be adopted for all the "x may be equivalent to x" denotations. (We might want to remove Captain from the chart entirely since that one is completely surmise. Possibly a little "possible other ranks exist

BTW: if anyone knows of any hard evidence for a Bajoran Captain really being referred to on screen, please feel free to speak up. If evidence can be found for the existence of such a rank, then we'll definitely want to keep it on the page after all. :-)

Mdettweiler 20:51, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for bringing this up. It's all speculation, which is forbidden here. :) The offending text has been removed. &mdash; Morder 21:00, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. Looks like you missed one, though: I presume "Captain" should be removed, too, since it was not seen or referenced anywhere on screen or in a script? 74.37.226.253 21:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC) Edit: oops, forgot to log in when I wrote this one. Mdettweiler 02:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh, the one brought up - I've removed it but left the item there - for now - as it may be used in the future. &mdash; Morder 22:02, 10 June 2009 (UTC)