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Because of his original purpose, it makes sense that the Doctor wouldn’t have held a Starfleet rank during Voyager.
However, in Prodigy, he still doesn’t have pips. This leads to my questions:
According to the STO wiki, he doesn’t wear them by choice but does have a rank. That might be a reasonable explanation; I can’t imagine Janeway not at least trying to field commission him.
I can’t imagine Janeway not at least trying to field commission him.
Cries in Ensign Kim
I thought he was the commander of the Atlantis expedition.
I've never watched Stargate, except for the first film and a few random SG-1 episodes. I knew Sirtis was in it at some point, but not Picardo.
Connor Trineer (Trip) and Colm Meaney (O'Brien) playing villains too.
I like to play a game where if you see one Star Trek actor you often see others and you have to spot them.
Quite a few have been in CSI over the years.
He would most certainly be assigned a rank if for no other reason than to ensure he (as an asset) is treated by crewmen with care and respect. It is the same approach in logic that militaries and police use with K-9 units. Dogs always outrank the handlers as a further mechanism to ensure proper treatment of the self-aware asset.
That didn't stop that one guy from trying to dismantle Data. They had to have a whole court episode to re-affirm Data's autonomy and personhood.
Who could stop Janeway from field commissioning him?
Admiral Jellicoe, apparently.
The bor- no, no . . 8472? No wait.. her and Paris’ lizard kids coming to earth instinctively and for some reason hating the doctor?
Even without an official rank, on Voyager he was still considered a Department Head and (more importantly) the CMO, which gave significant authority (even exceeding the Captain on certain medical matters), regardless of whether or not he was ever given any pips. The same thing would likely apply on subsequent postings.
If he ever had to be assigned a rank for clerical/administrative purposes, it would probably be the default required rank for a Starfleet CMO candidate for the class of ship he was serving on.
Voyager's original CMO was a Lieutenant Commander, which is presumably pretty typical for a ship of Voyager's size. Bashir was commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade to be the CMO on a backwater space station, so that's presumably the bare minimum.
I would expect the Doctor's first official rank (whatever that might be) to stick with him, plus promotion as appropriate. Adjusting it up and down based on posting would be a bizare thing to do for any other crewperson, and I'm sure The Doctor would object vigorously to such a thing.
Data was artificial and autonomous. The Dr originally wasn't autonomous, it could be argued he's just part of the ship, but the holo emitter changed that. I'm amazed the Daystrom institute let him keep it, but since it's apparently his, and that makes him autonomous, I would argue he's just like Data (minus the permanent corporeality of course). I suppose there's a question about ownership given his origins as a Starfleet asset, but since he can be replaced with a copy of the original program, there's no real material loss in letting him leave the ship.