Star Trek Federation Ships Achilles Heel

[Relique du Madde]

Of all the threats they face the Romulans or Cardassians were really the most competent. Luckily for the Federation the Romulans appear more interested in detente through mutual threat and segregation and the Cardassians simply weren't large enough scale-wise to last against them.

Technically, I think the Borg could have been an extremely competant threat, if they were written correctly. BUT, Star Trek the next gen needed a lobotimized giant to threaten the series for a few episodes so they never became the threat they were ment to be (Maybe too many assimulated Star Fleet officers ended up dumbing down their hive mind).

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Technically, I think the Borg could have been an extremely competant threat, if they were written correctly. BUT, Star Trek the next gen needed a lobotimized giant to threaten the series for a few episodes so they never became the threat they were ment to be (Maybe too many assimulated Star Fleet officers ended up dumbing down their hive mind).

Basically correct the borg had great potential as an enemy. But I think the writers got worried when they realized just how good a threat they could be and watered them down for fear of inadvertently causing metaplot change in the overall behavior of the Federation and other Alpha quadrant powers.

 

[Rykion]

You need more than rank badges, uniforms, and firearms to be military.

Correct. You need to be the authorized Armed Forces of a government as well. Starfleet serves as the Armed Forces of the United Federation of Planets. They act as police and explorers/scientists as well, but many militaries past and present have found themselves doing the same.

Their incompetence stems from being created to fit into a fictional Utopian society, and the fact it's a TV show. The bridge crew is the focus, therefore they end up doing everything and needlessly endangering themselves. Every system on the ship, as well as their inherent weaknesses, exists to further the plot. Most TV shows involving military organizations end up making them look incompetent since they are created to look cool and by writers with little or no military experience.

 

[Ranger REG]

I think it was sort of clear his point was that it was a "laughingstock as a military force", not that all paramilitary forces are inherently laughable, even in the roles they're actually designed for.

Regardless... The problems with the logic behind Starfleet stem from the same source as many other issues with Star Trek - the society presented in the series is a fantastic utopia, based largely on wishful thinking and hopes that humans will one day be able to "transcend" their violent ways.

Unfortunately, that can sometimes be pretty hard to reconcile with the need for dramatic starship battles, dangerous away missions, and menacing galaxy-destroying foes.

That's because utopia is boring.

Stories need conflict. We need drama, even to the point of injecting drama into our real life.

BTW, is it possible for humanity to allow a military man to be a studious explorer for the sake of science and discovery of new knowledge? Or we cannot meld the two?

 

[TanisFrey]

If it helps you, Whisperfoot:
At least the Battle Star Galactica has no "Achilles Heel Bridge". (But they don't have shields and photon torpedoes, either. And the Cylon Basestars have their weak junction point... )

yup. they had a nice thick heavy metal plate that slid in front their view port on the OBG.

At one point I read something about how the bridge on the the Federation ships being 180' turned about. "in order to reduce the damage of a metor strike" This is BS to me. A section of a ship that become damage in a metor strike will lose O2. This means this section will be lost quickly if you can't find and fix the brech. ooop their goes your comand staff.

After reading several of the novels of star trek unverise it appears that the Federation has 3 Groups of Goverment ships. 1) Star Fleet - the explorer/Diplmaot shuttle group. This Group is the best well known. And the one we see in the TV series. 2) Federation Border Gard/Police patrol ship. They ships have be descriped as being very cramped. Much more like a millitary should be. 3) the local systems may have their own "Coast Gard" equivalent.

How I see it is, that these 2 other groups allow Starfleet to be idealist.

 

[freebfrost]

And here I thought this thread would be about how easy it is to disable a Starship with a 5-digit prefix command code...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

As others have pointed out - The federation is a utopian society. Their "military" isn't realistic. And it doesn't help that it's a show that needs to create compelling, dramatic stories with a small regular cast to make it more realistic.

Interestingly, other critics of Startrek like to point out that the federation is a militaristic / dictatorial society, because Starfleet appears to be responsible for the Executive and Judicative parts of the society (and we rarely, if ever see the Legislative part of it).

Unless you want to remove the Utopian premise of Startrek, both types of critics don't really lead anywhere.

 

[Ranger REG]

As others have pointed out - The federation is a utopian society. Their "military" isn't realistic. And it doesn't help that it's a show that needs to create compelling, dramatic stories with a small regular cast to make it more realistic.

Interestingly, other critics of Startrek like to point out that the federation is a militaristic / dictatorial society, because Starfleet appears to be responsible for the Executive and Judicative parts of the society (and we rarely, if ever see the Legislative part of it).

Because the legislative part is boring, too. Not like we need to have scenes from Capitol Hill in the next episode of JAG or NCIS.

I believe Star Trek IV have the scene with the Klingon Ambassador speaking in front of the Federation Council Assembly, and later a scene in which the Federation President (who leads the UN-like council) presided over Kirk's hearing that resulted in his demotion.

 

[Wolf72]

If it were a human (ie Riker, Picard or Tasha Yar when she was alive) (s)he would either die of internal bleeding or ended up spending half of an episode in the sick bay getting thier bones reset or wearing a sling for multiple episodes.

but they never (rarely?) showed a human get hit around the same time ... at least so we could see that worf was tougher. Mostly he growled a lot and had great one liners ... "If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand!"

 

[Relique du Madde]

Wolf, there is alot to respond to in your message...

Let's ignore Worf for now and remember that the star fleet from NG was portrayed differently from the other vesions of starfleet. Where as OS portrayed star fleet as being adventurers and explorers not affraid of taking risks, star fleet in NG was utopian and civilized. For this reason, I don't expect many members of star fleet to have had combat training beyond learning how to point a tv remote at a screen since physical combat tends to be viewed as being in many utopian societies. This is probably why hand to hand combat was appeared more often in the other series since they were either at the edge of civilization (DS9) or in the wilderness (Voyager and OS).

Now, because most star fleet members are not trained in melee combat, its only natural that they would refuse to fight. However, Riker, Tasha Yar (when she was living), Data and Worf do seem to be the only star fleet members on enterprises bridge crew that were experienced in hand to hand combat, so they would be expected to fight, right?

Unfortunately, because of his nature, Worf often charges into a fist fight with an alien (maybe to rebuild his family's lost honor by defending the enterprise or to avoid ribs by his fellow crewmates). If Worf easily takes one alien out, all is good. However, if Worf gets one-punched, I don't expect many non-combat trained crewmen to join the melee battle considering that the toughest non cybornetic/android crew member was floored. Instead, I would expect them to wet themselves, hide behind Data or get cover and pull out their phasers (which happens 9/10 times after Worf goes down). To me, this would explain why more humans were never involved in hand to hand combat in ST:NG...fought because they were all extremely smart COWARDS!


Note: I'm not really sure how often hand to hand combat occured in Enterprise, but I would expect it to break out as often as it did in voyager (thought not as much as in the original series).