error?

[beccaelizabeth]

Reading "Another Life" p 113-115
has an error, I think
plausibly Gwen's error
but
she reckons a Lietenant-Colonel with the army is annoyed about our Captain Jack being the boss of Torchwood because he's "a Captain from the RAF, someone he would conventionally outrank."
But the wiki reckons that RAF Captain is Group Captain is equivalent to Navy Captain or Army Colonel, and outranks Lt Col. (The Brigadier still outranks Jack.)

So is it my error or the book?

... these things bug me. Aliens from outer space can do what they please in fiction without irritating their RL counterparts (thus far), but there's a whole lot of people who'd have Opinions if the military stuff isn't right.

Comments

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

The captain error is more of the whole Whoverse series error than one place in particular, but Gwen's reasoning is correct for the universe in regards to Jack's rank.

Or that captain is the nearest equvilant to Jack's rank in the Time Agency, so when he introduced himself to Rose and the Doctor in the Empty Child he used his time agency rank instead of what his rank was in the RAF - and that when the writer's wrote "Captain Jack Harkness" they forgot that fact and had him simply addressed as Captain instead of his proper Group Captain, as that is what they both served as in the RAF.

And I'm very close to thinking that in that universe that Group Captain is just simply Captain, because it requires a few less leaps of logic. = )

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

Or they're RAF Squadron Leaders, and Jack keeps translating it to the US title of Captain and it's an accidental application of Group Captain strips to Squadron Leader as the patterns look v. similar. (The difference is that the lesser rank has a thinner bar in the middle, other wise the design is the same.)

[beccaelizabeth]

And I'm very close to thinking that in that universe that Group Captain is just simply Captain, because it requires a few less leaps of logic. = )
That's pretty much what I've decided on, that in the DWverse Captain actually is the correct form of address. It simples things up rather.

But it doesn't fix the comparative ranks thing. I've stared at the ranks tables on Wiki quite a lot and he's still more the boss than the other guy.