#section ii

The Office of Naval Intelligence Section III Interplanetary Fly Team is an Office of Naval Intelligence unit that specializes in small-unit tactics, law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and diplomatic cooperation.

The subsequent data releases have been authorized by CINCONI.

This, is the ONI Interplanetary Fly Team. And these are their stories.

Semper Vigilans.

Not once is Napoleon ever called Section II Number 1 in dialogue, or any variant thereof. Nor is he ever called Chief Enforcement Agent †, or CEA, or any of the other titles fans call him by in fic. Closest I could find anywhere in the first three seasons was a Thrush agent making the very vague statement that he was “considered the top agent in UNCLE” in a scene that only appeared in the movie The Spy With My Face. In fact, I couldn’t find anything in the show itself about his rank whatsoever until season 4, where both his and Illya’s ranks as 1 and 2 of Section II appear in text when we see their Thrush files during Thrush Roulette (he or Illya are also referred to as being among UNCLE’s top agents in Deep Six, Survival School, and Master’s Touch. Season 4 seems unusually big on telling us Napoleon and Illya are supposed to be important). Waverly, by contrast, is referred to as Number 1 of Section I on a regular basis, but he’s reminded Napoleon that he’s expendable more times than he’s mentioned Napoleon’s rank, as far as I can find.

Even so, the message that Napoleon's important still gets across to the audience, because if Napoleon isn’t somewhere near the top of the pyramid, why would he be the one taking command when Waverly is out of action in Brain Killer; why are he and Illya working directly out of Waverly’s office while Waverly’s away in King of Knaves and Green Opal? And if Illya’s Number 2, Napoleon’s obviously got to be the rank above him, right? Besides, we can presume that Illya and Napoleon’s ranks must’ve been part of some version of their bios, given the story Vaughn and McCallum have told about how they wound up with those badge numbers ‡. The scriptwriters apparently just didn’t see it as being something the audience needed to be reminded about very much, if indeed at all.

I don’t know that there’s anything very important to takeaway from this, but it’s a neat little bit of trivia, if you like useless trivia as much as I do.

* True, he’s wearing badge 17 in the pilot, but he’s definitely in badge 2 by The Shark Affair, and I’m not sure it’s worth reading too much into badge numbers as an indication of rank in any case. (See point ‡ below)

† Though I have seen him called "Chief Enforcement Agent” in promotional articles that came out while the show was on air, so fans didn’t get it from nowhere.