O'Brien wasn't a helmsman in Star Trek, he was the Transporter Chief before he became Chief of Operations in Deep Space 9.

He was a helmsman in the pilot episode, and moved down to Transporter when the regular season started. I forgot about the change.

John was supposed to be almost as good a pilot as Gordon, from what they said in the first episode. Not sure it makes sense to transfer him. I suppose it's a writing issue, having two clowns on the bridge versus one clown on the bridge and one in engineering. The engineering guy they'd been using wasn't very funny.

In the case of Sulu, he went to the captaincy.

That's a matter of seniority and promotion and stuff. But for example, once they found out Geordi was a whiz of a chief engineer, if he'd asked to go back to helm/con, the response should have been "Ummm, no."

"I suppose it's a writing issue, having two clowns on the bridge versus one clown on the bridge and one in engineering. "

John mainly hasn't been a clown. Unfortunately the writers made him one in "Majority Rule" and it stuck. They should have used Gordon in the MR episode.

Interesting that both NEXT GENERATION and ORVILLE had trouble in the first seasons figuring out who to put in charge of engineering.

"In the case of Sulu"

Incidentally, I saw a commercial with Georgia Takei in a Broadway play. Apparently he's playing an elderly Japanese-American man bitter over ethnic persecution during World War II.

@CharlesTheBold said:

"I suppose it's a writing issue, having two clowns on the bridge versus one clown on the bridge and one in engineering. "

John mainly hasn't been a clown. Unfortunately the writers made him one in "Majority Rule" and it stuck. They should have used Gordon in the MR episode.

They set him up as basically another clown in the very first episode, but maybe there just wasn't enough total clowning available for both of them. Which could also be partly why him being like that for Majority Rules didn't seem right.

Interesting that both NEXT GENERATION and ORVILLE had trouble in the first seasons figuring out who to put in charge of engineering.

TNG started out with Chief Engineer McDoogal, Argyle, etc, they were trying to copy TOS but it didn't work.

I like the idea that if you are smart, you can instantly jump to engineering. School? Training? Nah, who needs it?

Unless you're a doctor.

Well, everyone at the Academy has to study and pass SOME engineering. Obviously. And it seems Geordi was particularly skilled and/or interested. Remember the story Picard told about how when Geordi took him somewhere in a shuttle and Picard made an offhand remark about the power not being as efficient as it could be, Geordi worked on it until it was?

Apparently they're all qualified to be trial lawyers, as in the episode where they debated whether Data had human rights. ORVILLE said the First Officer had some legal training.

Starfleet Academy teaches legal stuff too, of course. They can't just have every cadet wait for some higher officer to explain the Prime Directive to them, etc.

I think the point for The Orville was that the other crew members hadn't studied beyond the general legal stuff of the Planetary Union, not the individual laws of the various planets. Except for Cmdr. Grayson, at least a little.

@Knixon said:

TNG started out with Chief Engineer McDoogal, Argyle, etc, they were trying to copy TOS but it didn't work.

I'm just glad that they didn't go with the crew names they originally proposed when creating TNG!

Proposed TNG crew:

Captain John Caligula Quirk, 1st officer Commander Spork, Chief Engineer Glasgow Scotch, Doctor Linus "Skeleton" McBoy, Helmsman Hideo Zulu, Communications Officer Ohara, and Ensign Pablo Smirnoff.

Since this is the premier season, I figured they had there central main cast and their extra's, when they got renewed they must have got the green light to expand on some character development, so they moved him to Engineering, All the TNG series, not sure about STD, have done that. The first season is always the rough season as far as casting moves. I look for them to introduce another helmsman to fill Gordon's spot.