the night has a thousand saxaphones

There are lots of ways that I find written SF to be better than TV/movie SF. But most of those ways are explainable by the limitations of filming: magical gravity generators everywhere, all planets have exactly the same gravity and atmosphere conditions, magical inertial dampeners, no intelligent consideration of inertia or g forces, tactically idiotic space battles, super-slow and magically visible energy beam weapons, fires and sound in space... yadda yadda. All explainable by limitations and expectations inherent to TV or movies.

But why the hell does the visual medium require everybody to be an officer?

(oh, look. My pet peeves! You have found them!)