the delphic expanse

Okay, this is something I was never 100% sure of. And since I am trying to get into the writing scene I like to be as accurate as possible.

Is Travis a member of the senior staff? He is only an ensign, and he is only a helmsman. While Hoshi is also an ensign her position gives her a place of seniority because it's so vital to first contact missions. While flying the ship (shuttle, ect) is important, it is not vital to first contact missions.

I know in the episode 'The Expanse' he is brought into the briefing room along with everyone else who are seen as senior staff, but I am still unsure. It could very well be simply because he was main character and the writers did not want to leave him out.

I also noticed he has engineering skills, or at least it is implied that he does. In 'Dead stop', Trip mentions that Travis would consult him before making repairs which assumes he DOES in fact make repairs. And in Terra Prime he seems to know his way around repairing shuttles. Several other episodes make note of his technical skill.


So....talk to me about Travis.

Old Post

It never made sense to me that Travis was part of senior staff, but I think he is. I wish I could give you a specific example (I'm so tired now), but I think he's referred to as senior staff even before "The Expanse."

It also never made sense to me that he would be the one doing so much engineering work. Very frequently when Trip was working on something, he'd ask Travis to assist him. That always bugged me. I guess the writers just wanted to give him something to do, but I thought it was a great opportunity to showcase a secondary character, like Rostov. I never thought about the fact that his experiences as a boomer probably forced him to learn a lot of technical skills very early. That does seem plausible. It's also very plausible that he just has a real interest in engineering and Trip is fostering that, even if flying is Travis's first love. Actually, with a crew that size, I suspect that a whole lot of people are cross-trained in other areas. Cutler seems to be cross-trained in bugs and medicine. I could also see Hoshi leading a language club, for example, to teach the crew all kinds of different alien languages just in case the UT is offline and she's not available.

I do see Travis as senior staff. His position is often "need to know" when it comes to what's going on, and it stands to reason that as alpha-shift helmsman it would be his responsibility to disseminate information to the beta/gamma/backup helmsmen. He also was left in command of the bridge several times, especially during the first season. That's not a junior officer function, and honestly it bothered me to see someone with a rank of ensign given that kind of responsibility. Functionally, he was at least a lieutenant. (The same goes for Hoshi, but that's a different conversation.)

As for him taking on other duties, it stands to reason that a helmsman who isn't cross-trained would be expected to cross-train. There's a lot more that needs doing on a starship besides flying it, and Travis would be pretty useless if that's all he could do. With limited personnel, nobody has the luxury of being useless.

Brandyjane wrote:It also never made sense to me that he would be the one doing so much engineering work. Very frequently when Trip was working on something, he'd ask Travis to assist him. That always bugged me. I guess the writers just wanted to give him something to do, but I thought it was a great opportunity to showcase a secondary character, like Rostov.

This never bothered me because modern day Air Force pilots are required to have a four year degree before they even apply for the Air Force Academy. Pilot programs for the military do tend to favor those who have degrees in things like aerospace engineering, computer science, physics, etc. and I would expect that Starfleet would have similar kinds of requirements.

Also, I have two pilots (commercial airlines) in my family and both of them did have to learn a little about "what's under the hood" so-to-speak, as a matter of course in their training. I suspect that a few basic engineering courses were part of Travis's Starfleet Training, if he didn't already have that. When we do see him working with Trip, it's often something to do with navigation or guidance systems. Again, something that Travis should have an "under the hood" understanding of.

I asked someone whose father was in the navy about this once. I can't remember everything she told me, but it went a little something like this: Travis is only an Ensign, but he's part of the bridge crew, so in certain situations that would give him authority over people of higher rank. He would have knowledge and expertise that others who didn't regularly work on the bridge have.

I'll hunt her up and ask for clarification, but that's what I took away from our conversation.

Would the fact that Travis has bridge duty when the rest of the senior staff generally have bridge duty count? He's A string, so to speak, the best of the helmsmen on board (except for Archer who is in the role of captain). So if there is a senior officer meeting, he would be there as the senior helmsman/navigation expert.

I remember having a discussion one time. The gist was that while Hoshi and Travis have the rank ensign, which is considered a "junior" officer, they are also senior officers in that they are on the bridge while the captain is usually on duty as well. So as far as rank, they're junior, but for bridge or staff duty, they're senior.

Not to mention...does everyone remember in ''Fight or Flight' when Travis was helping Malcolm with the targeting sensors? I can't think of why, you'd assume one of the armory staff would take care of that sort of thing with Malcolm, not the alpha helmsman....