Michael

What are you saying is the intention? The original intention, and what happened on screen is that the various insignia were based on the type of duty posting. In TOS, other than the one anomaly (the Exeter), which was a noted mistake, all starship personnel wore the arrowhead.

The fan theory that every starship had its own insignia actually suffers from what virtually all fan fiction suffers from, and that is small universe syndrome. Making it so that Starfleet adopted the arrowhead to honour the Enterprise takes away from the notion that there is life outside the Enterprise. And what about Pike? Saving a bunch cadets by sacrificing himself isn't good enough?

The theory doesn't match what we see on screen and it is cheesy and makes the universe small and turns the Enterprise crew into unrealistic caricatures.

If you want to talk about what we saw on screen in TOS, what exactly did we see?

We saw one episode where a starship crew wore a different insignia. That was The Omega Glory with the rectangular insignia. That's it, and the showrunners quickly put a stop to it and corrected it going forward.

The starburst flower was always reserves for starbases personnel. Commodore Wesley, in the Ultimate Computer, took temporary command of the Lexington. His starburst flower was not the Lexington insignia. It was the same insignia people serving on starbases wore throughout series.

Then we have Court Martial. Again we see the starburst, which is expected as the show took place on a starbase. But we also see starship crew in the lounge who are clearly not Enterprise personnel and are wearing the arrowhead insignia. We can easily infer that due to Kirk making note to Bones "our class looks to be well represented here", and to how those officers spoke to Kirk in a condescending and demeaning manner. No officer under Kirk's command would speak to him like that.

In the Cage/Menagerie where we see what is obviously some sort of flag officer sitting next to an out of uniform Pike. And he is sporting what? Oh, the arrowhead.

Commodore Decker's insignia is not the insignia of the Constellation. For one, his insignia does not have the command star emblem denoting his department (command), like Kirk's and on the Exeter's insignia. For two, if you look closely, the insignia is literally an enlarged single petal of starburst/starbase insignia. Again,denoting a flag officer with a field command. There is no disputing this.

Then there's the Tholian Web. When we see crew members of the Defiant they are wearing the arrowhead. And please don't tell me about how the production crew went out of their way to turn the dead bodies over so you couldn't see the insignia. If they went to that much trouble to hide the insignia then why would they show it?

Okuda is wrong. And that isn't canon. What we see on screen is that, minus the Exeter, which was a noted production error, the different insignia we see in TOS are based on the type of duty posting. In every other episode where see see different starship crew they are wearing the arrowhead.

That's a terrible analogy. But if you want to talk about what we saw on screen in TOS, what exactly did we see?

We saw one episode where a starship crew wore a different insignia. That was The Omega Glory with the rectangular insignia. That's it, and the showrunners quickly put a stop to it and corrected it going forward.

The starburst flower was always reserves for starbases personnel. Commodore Wesley, in the Ultimate Computer, took temporary command of the Lexington. His starburst flower was not the Lexington insignia. It was the same insignia people serving on starbases wore throughout series.

Then we have Court Martial. Again we see the starburst, which is expected as the show took place on a starbase. But we also see starship crew in the lounge who are clearly not Enterprise personnel and are wearing the arrowhead insignia. We can easily infer that due to Kirk making note to Bones "our class looks to be well represented here", and to how those officers spoke to Kirk in a condescending and demeaning manner. No officer under Kirk's command would speak to him like that.

In the Cage/Menagerie where we see what is obviously some sort of flag officer sitting next to an out of uniform Pike. And he is sporting what? Oh, the arrowhead.

Commodore Decker's insignia is not the insignia of the Constellation. For one, his insignia does not have the command star emblem denoting his department (command), like Kirk's and on the Exeter