Bureautician

A bureautician is a bureaucrat or high member of Colonial society, such as a member of the Quorum of Twelve.

A survivor ejected from the Rising Star forcibly informs Captain Apollo that the bureauticians luxuriate in luxury aboard the Star. The said bureautician is later discovered to be Sire Uri, a newly elected member of the Quorum post-Battle of Cimtar (Saga of a Star World).

Notes

• According to Encyclopedia Galactica (a non-canonical piece of merchandise published in 1979):

Bureauticians (spelled "buriticians" in the book), traditionally called sire or siress, are the "hereditary nobility of the Twelve Colonies". Originally, the bureauticians were families appointed by the last Lord of Kobol to rule over each colony, but these families died out over the millenia. These families were later replaced by those chosen from great military and political leaders.

It is said that during the "great economic growth that followed the scientific renaissance, anyone whose business success reached intercolonial importance could be called sire or siress". Of course, the bureauticians "never held complete political power after the exodus itself". In the antiscientific period of the Colonies, mystics of the Books of Kobol and military leaders held considerable control over the Colonials; even later, this power was transferred further to the military leaders during the Thousand-Yahren War, although they kept their military titles as they "never fully identified with the older nobility".

After the scientific renaissance, bureauticians "faced repeated populist challenges from the common people" seeking self-government, and government was shared with "commoners and with the rising industrial classes". Bureauticians who could not adapt were either "violent overthrown, or else retired to their luxurious vast estates to dream" about past glories.

The "strength of the great [bureauticians] has been their strong sense of family unity, and their code of honor and self-sacrifice strengthened by an awareness of a tradition stretching across the millennia."

Original Series definition: bureaucrat, politician ^{(TOS: "Saga of a Star World")}