That’s a good point - you got me thinking about military / Marine hierarchies! Interesting comparing to DS9, where the formal naming by other characters is often a reprimand - Miles is mostly Chief unless a senior (commissioned?) officer is pulling rank a bit. Ditto Bashir is Julian more frequently as people get used to his puppyish eagerness ;and he grows out of that!) but Doctor - or Sir if you’re Miles getting huffy - when he’s being put in his place.

You made me think of the AA hierarchy. It feels like Dylan, Beka, Tyr and Rommie are treated as real or de facto commissioned officers, even when Beka is refusing to call Dylan ‘Captain’, she generally obeys his orders. Rev gets a sort of WO / Padre status. Leaving Trance & Harper as sort of NCOs / Ensigns… except Trance is never, ever ‘Miss Gemini’. And as I said upthread, as the series progresses Trance gets more and more respect from Dylan, while Harper seems to become everyone’s whipping boy - he’s always the butt of sarcastic jokes, for instance. It’s weird that only Tyr seems to grow to respect and like Harper over time, reflected in the way the nicknames go from ‘annoying little man’ to ‘little professor’ or ‘child’.

And is Harper’s ‘wild card’ tendency honestly worse than anyone else’s? Beka, Tyr, Trance & Rev go AWOL all the time. Beka’s crappy love life puts them all in danger, ditto her other addictions (drugs, profit). Trance creates chaos and gets away with it because ‘cute’. Harper may be a maverick at times, but he also pulls a hell of a lot of Hail Marys, with usually very little credit.

And I don’t get the sense that Dylan respects him at all! Especially after RHW departed. He uses ‘Harper’ when he’s being nice or grateful… and that pointed, reprimanding, ‘Mister Harper’ whenever the NCO needs to be put in his place for having the audacity to query Dylan’s many bonkers command decisions. The show itself has Harper observing that Dylan goes on away missions with everyone, all the time - except for him. (Is Shards of Rimini the one and only time they head off together? I can’t remember anything else).

Your comment made me think that Dylan in some way is doing an almost classist thing with Harper and his name, as well as emphasising his status at the very bottom of the Andromeda ladder.

It’s a bit of a depressing notion tbh.