Minor correction to SD.net

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Mike, in the Brain Bugs page you state:

No such luck. In TNG and beyond, every single member of the crew went to the Academy! No more basic training in the 24th century. Chief petty officer Miles O'Brien, for example, went through Starfleet Academy, but chief petty officer is an enlisted rating, not a commissioned officer's rank. Nobody thought to mention basic training in the original series, and the brain bug that resulted from that omission led to a ridiculous state of affairs in TNG and beyond, where the entire crew of the ship apparently had to go through the Academy.

However, in TNG "The Drumhead"

PICARD: Please sit down, Mister Tarses. For the record, will you state your name and position?
TARSES: Simon Tarses, Crewman First Class, medical technician.


So he's a crewman. Later:

TARSES: Yes, sir... All my life I wanted to be in Starfleet. I went to the Academy's program for enlisted personnel... took training as a medical technician... served at several outposts... and the day I was posted to the Enterprise was the happiest day of my life.
PICARD: Did you ever consider applying to the Academy... going the whole route and becoming an officer?
[snip stupid sitting under a tree thinking dialouge]
TARSES: No... I was eighteen, and eager... the last thing I wanted to do was spend four years sitting in classrooms... I wanted to be out there... traveling the stars... I didn't want to wait for anything...

[Ender]

Mike, in the Brain Bugs page you state:

No such luck. In TNG and beyond, every single member of the crew went to the Academy! No more basic training in the 24th century. Chief petty officer Miles O'Brien, for example, went through Starfleet Academy, but chief petty officer is an enlisted rating, not a commissioned officer's rank. Nobody thought to mention basic training in the original series, and the brain bug that resulted from that omission led to a ridiculous state of affairs in TNG and beyond, where the entire crew of the ship apparently had to go through the Academy.

However, in TNG "The Drumhead"

PICARD: Please sit down, Mister Tarses. For the record, will you state your name and position?
TARSES: Simon Tarses, Crewman First Class, medical technician.


So he's a crewman. Later:

TARSES: Yes, sir... All my life I wanted to be in Starfleet. I went to the Academy's program for enlisted personnel... took training as a medical technician... served at several outposts... and the day I was posted to the Enterprise was the happiest day of my life.
PICARD: Did you ever consider applying to the Academy... going the whole route and becoming an officer?
[snip stupid sitting under a tree thinking dialouge]
TARSES: No... I was eighteen, and eager... the last thing I wanted to do was spend four years sitting in classrooms... I wanted to be out there... traveling the stars... I didn't want to wait for anything...

Enlisted personel go to A-Schools, not the academy. This actually backs his point, rather then disporving it. And it's nice to see the writers fucked up ranks again, a crewman would be a BM, not a corpsman. If they went throough the apprentice program, it still would have changed from crewman to corpsman.

[Ingersoll]

Enlisted personel go to A-Schools, not the academy.

Couldn't the Academy's program be the a-school?

[Ender]

Enlisted personel go to A-Schools, not the academy.

Couldn't the Academy's program be the a-school?

No, they are two totally seperate things. Some officers attend an A-school (pilots, nuclear engineers, doctors), but the Academy and an A-School are totally different.

[Patrick Degan]

It would seem that Starfleet runs all military training through Starfleet Academy for both enlistees and officer cadets, instead of operating the Academy as a seperate institution specialising in the training of the future officer corps and leaving the training of enlisted recruits to the general military structure.

Heaven forfend that there should be anything as primitive as boot camp, with the poor dears subjected to 5 a.m. revelie and DIs shouting in their faces sixteen hours a day.

Paris Island's probably a resort park.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Enlisted Engineers don't go to the Acedemy...

DS9: Starship Down
O'BRIEN: With all due respect, I think you're riding these men a bit too hard. You have to understand, they're out of their element. They're not bridge officers, they didn't go to Starfleet Academy. They're Engineers. They're used to being told to repair something, and figuring out how to do it on their own.