TNG - Best of Both Worlds

[Yukaphile]

Could have been redefined at some point, you know.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Could have been redefined at some point, you know.

Especially when SF isn't a military.

[Yukaphile]

Defense is one aspect of its charter. The others are culture and science.

[Jonathan101]

Despite the protestations of Gene Roddenberry, it's pretty clearly a military organisation. Gene was just in denial because he is the one who made it and he didn't want it to be.

The only way it isn't military is if he's using an ultra-specific definition of "military", but it's hard to think of one that wouldn't also exclude a great deal of actual real-world militaries.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah we talked about this in another review thread. I think the Coast Guard was the closest modern equivalent I could come up with, with naval exploration vessels sent by a state in the 1500's being a closer yet archaic example.

[TrueMetis]

If a given term has been redefined in the setting of a story, then that needs to be explained.

[Beastro]

I counter that with the Peter principle. Suppose you got someone who is excellent as 2iC, but would be a liability in command, then you make him 2iC of the bestest ship in the Galaxy.

2iC - 2nd in Command

Ryker refuses Captaincy because directive that 2iC gets to shag the Green space Babes.

Unless that station is a very specialized and specific one, it doesn't merit disrupting the system to do that.

WWII air forces showed the best example of both extremes on display.

The Japanese, and especially the way the Germans were oriented, had their best men fighting until they died. They were very good, individually better than any Allied pilot, but their individual contributions to the war effort were small and their acquired experiences died with them. Compared to that, the British and especially the Americans, rotated their experienced pilots out and sent them back home to train the new recruits. The result was that no individual Western Allied pilot could match the best of the Axis, but the average competency of the Allies was higher while experiences as the combat in the war changed and evolved kept pace as it went along meaning that your typical Allied pilot had a distinct advantage over their average Axis counterpart (similar to the quantitative advantage the Allies had, most often brought up whenever individual Germany tank superiority is brought up).

The end result is that institutional proficiency in the Allied air forces constantly increased as the war went on while the Axis, at best, declined, and in the case of the Japanese, plummeted once enough of their veterans were dead leaving their air arms a hallow shell only good on a large scale for Kamikaze attacks.

With Trek, one could explain this issue away by saying both Enterprises were "the flagship" of Star Fleet, and that silly term could then be explained as the label assigned to a specific ship that was crewed by exceptional people given larger leeway than normally allowed. That doesn't hold water though given that it's clear even in the TOS movies that it's up to the whim of all Star Fleet personnel as Enterprise is reduced in importance in the later movies and Kirk demoted, but still allowed his choice to assignment (and not given command of an asteroid in the ass end of Fed space or left to command a desk like anyone demoted would be).

That is part of the naivety within Federation culture over how "perfect" it is that people would not only choose to join up for Star Fleet of their own accord for purely noble reasons, such as Picard not being an archeologist as he loves, but that they could have their cake and eat it too getting the assignments they want that falls apart once you think about the practical application of that to an entire organization, let alone one as massive and as demanding as Star Fleet.

Yeah we talked about this in another review thread. I think the Coast Guard was the closest modern equivalent I could come up with, with naval exploration vessels sent by a state in the 1500's being a closer yet archaic example.

Star Fleet would like to think it's just a Coast Guard, but we all know that to best explained by ideological wishful thinking on the part of Federation folks.

As for the 1500s, it's the diametric opposite. Navies of the time relied heavily on private enterprise to supplement the limited number of warships that could be directly financed by the state. It differed in places, by one of the best examples of the time was how the Royal Navy was run more as a corporation with the monarch bringing on private individuals to flesh out the bulk of the force and play a role in the command structure with a clearly laid out idea of how would bare the costs and how everyone would share in the prizes gained (even after this period for centuries the RN was run more as a company than as a military arm, hence the emphasis on success and results it placed upon individual captains and that all were let known they were answerable to the Board for failure, not the Admiralty nor the Monarch if they failed).

This is best shown in the aftermath of the Armada when England struggled to bring the war to Spain. Instead of conducting things with an eye towards achieving clear military goals, the need to factor in the return on investment from those opting into the scheme resulted in repeated futile attempts to attack the treasure fleets and other wealth baring targets that were too well protected and infrequent to really do damage hitting.

[RobbyB1982]

The big named wars with both Klingons and Romulans predated TOS. The neutral zone was established prior to TOS, and the Klingons weren't in open hostilities, just sort of a cold war.

By the time Next Gen started, the Federation hadn't been in a big intergalactic war in a century. They were allowed to think that peace was now going to last forever, they COULD just be explorers and not military guys. The enterprise was set on Negotiation missions, or to ferry cures to distant worlds, and basically just explore and do science. They were armed with lasers and torpedos because space is dangerous and they had to defend themselves, but overall, the galaxy was at peace. You had planetary problems like Bajor/Cardassia, but nothing on a galactic war scale.

So for 100 years they, for all intents and purposes, WEREN'T a military orginization. There were no prolonged battles to fight, no wars to win, and they could indulge in being cultured, and elitist assholes like in S1.

Then the borg attacked, decimated their entire fleet, and things changed. They started making more combat ships and promoting other kinds of people. Sisko had the defiant commissioned. ANd then the founders came in and led to Klingons fighting, and war with Romulans and Cardassians and the federation had to change. The science guys BECAME war guys, different types became Admiral than had been the case prior, and they were forced to become a military like they hadn't been before.

Compare the first Borg attack where they decimated the entire fleet, compared to the one in First Contact where the ship was taken out pretty handily. (Though why the Borg didn't just send 3 cubes, or 300, I don't know.)


See also Janeway getting promoted to admiral after coming back, while Picard was still in the Captain's seat. Stuff changed.

[Artabax]

By the time Next Gen started, the Federation hadn't been in a big intergalactic war in a century.

Cardassi war???
Picard encourages Cardassi arms shipments because he is so terrified of the War being official so soon. TNG Wounded? the one where o'Brien sings the Minstrel Boy>

[Yukaphile]

Those were more border skirmishes, as DS9 later proved. That was only because of Wolf 359, though.