Communications Officer - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Hailing frequencies open, Sir."

—Lt. Uhura, Star Trek: The Original Series

When The Captain needs to contact Mission Control to talk to the Voice with an Internet Connection, he has a number of options. He could call him up on his Comm Link, or maybe even find a pay phone. But maybe this is a job for someone more specialized, or maybe The Captain needs someone to delegate this to while he deals with other things. He needs the Communications Officer.

The Communications Officer need not be an officer, and in fact, will often be a lower ranking member tasked with maintaining and operating the complex radio equipment. On a sci-fi show, they will often have a workstation on the bridge of the ship, while in a war movie, you can expect to see this guy running around two steps behind The Captain with a cumbersome backpack radio with a huge whip antenna. Whenever we see Mission Control, expect to see an entire squad of these guys at work. More mundane examples include a secretary in an office, who has the job of screening calls to their boss and sending out messages for them.

Against Dangerously Genre Savvy enemies, he can expect to draw fire, especially if he has one of the bigger backpack radios. You can't call for help if nobody alive can use the communications equipment. If The Radio Dies First, they can be expected to be hard at work trying to fix it, or helplessly declaring that it can't be done.

Overlaps with Mission Control. Will often be working as one of the Bridge Bunnies. A key member of the Command Roster.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime And Manga

In Zettai Muteki Raijin Oh, the giant robot in question is so complex to operate that it needs two communications officers.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Fuery

Film — Animated

Mrs. Packard on Atlantis: The Lost Empire, although she spends most of the time chatting up her friend over the phone (which, unless she's also in the submarine, would be quite a feat using 1914 technology).

Film — Live Action

Down Periscope has Nitro, a skilled but very eccentric electrician who manages to coerce the aging ship's radio equipment to work via various short-circuits (including several passing through his own body).
Fantastic Voyage has Charles Grant, a rare example of where the Communications Officer is also The Hero.
Parodied in Galaxy Quest with Lt. Tawny Madison, Gwen's character from the Show Within The Show. All she did was relay orders to and from the computer.
I have one job on this lousy ship, it's stupid, but I'm gonna do it! Okay?
In Small Soldiers, Link Static serves this role in the Commando Elite.
Starship Troopers had a series of (often short-lived) characters fulfilling this role, with Dizzy and Ace each taking on the role towards the end of the film.
Super Troopers has Farva given this job at the highway department as punishment after the school bus incident. Meanwhile, Ursula is tasked with the same job at the Spurbury Police Department because she's a woman.
Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea (1961). The comm officer aboard the Seaview (a U.S. government vessel) was called Sparks.
We Were Soldiers: A number of radio operators are mixed in amongst the soldiers, with several unnamed ones getting shot and killed during firefights. Another one, after proving himself particularly skilled by managing to tune in on radio transmissions from a battle happening on the other side of the Earth*
Reality Is Unrealistic. This actually happened, owing to a quirk of UHF radio signals that allows them to bounce off the upper atmosphere
, is assigned as Colonel Moore's personal radioman.
- The movie also had a radioman whose primary responsibility was calling in fire support. According to the book the film was based on, he was actually a fighter pilot by trade.

Literature

Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast. When Hildy Burroughs is captain of the Gay Deceiver, Zebadiah ("Zeb") Burroughs acts as her comm officer, especially when talking with the British colonists on Mars.
Adele Mundy in the Republic of Cinnabar series.

Live Action TV

Babylon 5: On the station itself, this job would typically fall to Lieutenant Corwin (in the first season, it alternated between him and an un-named Bridge Bunny.) If Sheridan or Sinclair was in Command and Control, this job would instead go to Commander Ivanova. When traveling out and about aboard one ship or another, this job would fall to whichever character was serving as The Lancer for that mission (Lennier or Marcus, usually).
Battlestar Galactica originally had Commander Adama's daughter Athena in this role in the original series. In the reboot, the job was performed by Corporal (later Lieutenant) Dualla, as well as her replacement, Hoshi.
In MASH, Radar was usually called up on to operate the communications equipment
Star Trek
- Star Trek: The Original Series brings us one of the most famous examples, Lieutenant Uhura. In the Star Trek Expanded Universe and the 2009 film she is also a xenolinguistics expert.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: This was the original duty for Worf, perhaps owing to his bicultural background.
- Star Trek: Voyager: Harry Kim got a battlefield promotion to chief communications officer, despite only being (perpetually) an ensign.
- Star Trek: Enterprise: Hoshi Sato handled communications. Her linguistics expertise also came into play because the Universal Translator was still a work-in-progress.
Robert RO Dixon in SeaPatrol is a very snarky Communications officer. He does go on boarding parties and is the best person with software.

Tabletop Games

In Warhammer 40,000, the Imperial Guard has "vox operators" with radio backpacks.
One of the crew specialties in GURPS Traveller Starships.
One of the standard Mandatory Bonus Duties in Paranoia. In practice, it mostly plays into the Commie Hunt dynamic.

Toys

In every incarnation of Transformers, some version of Soundwave is the Decepticons' Communications Officer. And in many continuities, Blaster serves the same role for the Autobots. There are also some occasional secondary characters who also fill the role, such as Hubcap in Transformers Generation 1 and Kup in Transformers: Wings of Honor.

Video Games

In the Mass Effect series, this role is typically filled by Joker, Yeoman Chambers, or Specialist Traynor.
In Wing Commander III, "Radio" Rollins is both this in the literal sense, being the TCS Victory's communication's officer, as well as in the informal sense, considering himself as the one person on the ship who will tell you exactly what's really going on. You have the option upon first meeting him to lay down the law and get him to stop hurting ship's morale with his rumors.*
His rumors, that the Terran Confederation
is on the ropes in its war with the Kilrathi, are largely true, but it is disastrous for morale to just come out and state that openly when there is still a fighting chance for them to recover.]]

Western Animation

Exo Squad features team member Alec DeLeon, with his specialized Communications E-Frame.
In Sealab 2020 and its Gag Dub Sealab 2021, the com officer for the title installation was Lieutenant Sparks (apparently his real last name).

Commanding Coolness

Military and Warfare Tropes

Consummate Professional

The Commissioner Gordon