10 Weird Times Star Trek Characters Changed Divisions

This is actually one of the more unusual entries on this list, as Data received his promotion, and demotion, in two versions of reality. First, he was promoted to First Officer in the years following William T. Riker’s ascension to captaincy of the Enterprise-D. This saw him remove his gold operations uniform and don the then-standard command red.

But wait - no, that’s not right, because that turned out to be a holographic program, conceived by the alien child Barash in the episode Future Imperfect, designed to encourage Riker to remain with him. So, let’s scratch that.

Flash forward to the arrival of Edward Jellico, late of the USS Cairo, who took over for Captain Picard once the latter was captured by the Cardassians. To put it mildly - he didn’t like Riker, not one little bit. This led to Riker being relieved of duty, with Data taking his place as First Officer. This again saw a costume change for the android - and while it felt slightly wrong, this one had more to do with Data being put in the unfair position of taking over for Riker, rather than the simple colour shift.