Eh, any spaceship capable of even approaching warp speed is a potential star-killer. Like in a very physical sense those ships each have the ability to kill all life within a solar system.
Comment on Things you feel Star Trek handle poorly? (In general, political, technical, etc, share your opinion)
it_depends_man@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It would ruin the concept, so I get why they don’t tackle the topic, but:
The federation, particularly humanity inside of the federation, is run by essentially a military government. There are elections, probably, we never really get to see them, and the decision making process of the admirals is not shown to the viewer, for world building and story telling reasons. The admirals are the problem posers, the calls to adventure, the exposition. “Go there, do this, top secret, very important, blah blah”.
They don’t do misuse them in lore, that much, but even the lesser capable space ships are enormously dangerous. If I recall correctly, there are even some mentions of not being regularly allowed to warp inside solar system boundaries. The risk of misuse or accidents is unimaginable. I’m pretty sure humanity has resigned itself to being ruled by some admiralty board that could order to vaporize the planet. They’re not going to do that, but the implication is certainly… looming.
I also really don’t like how they changed styles after the 80s/90s series. The perceived need to reinvent themselves has yielded mostly bad results. Only “Strange New Worlds” is tolerable, because it’s well done, but it’s still “too much” in my opinion. The special effects are nice, but there was no need to design corridors like that.
Same for uniforms. Look at how much “the suit” has changed since the 1870s. Barely at all.
impairedimperator@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
Neither humanity nor the Federation are run by a military government. I’m not even sure what gave you that impression. The federation, as its name suggests, is a federal system like the US, or the EU. Each planet retains its political structure while participating in the federation. Earth is the exception where it’s essentially the DC of the federation and is run directly by the federation council. Earth is also unique in being communistic rather than having a currency based economy like most other planets and the federation itself. Starfleet is a human organization that predates the creation of the federation and at that time was absorbed as its military arm. The president of the federation is the commander in chief of Starfleet. There is even a two parter in DS9 where an admiral tries to overthrow the president and fails and it is referred to as a “military coup”.
While I agree with you that it’s almost certainly not the intent, we unfortunately have seen that a shocking number of uniformed Starfleet officers sit on the Federation Council.
The Federation Council as seen in Star Trek IV, featuring no less than thirteen Starfleet officers.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
That was a review board for disciplinary action within Starfleet. The federation council members were there because it was an intragalactic incident.
If Starfleet disciplinary hearings are directly conducted by the UFP president, that raises even more questions, and certainly doesn’t dispel the notion of a “military government”…