Riley Frazier

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by c0rnedfr0g, Jul 4, 2013.

  1. c0rnedfr0g

    c0rnedfr0g Commodore Commodore

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    I'm referring to the 3x17 episode "Unity." Wouldn't you think she would jump at the extremely unlikely chance of being rescued by a Federation starship? It hadn't been that long since Wolf 359.

    If not that, wouldn't she be duty-bound to go with the Voyager crew? I mean, she never officially resigned from Starfleet and by her not going with Voyager, I would think of her as a deserter.

    Opinions?
     
  2. JanewayRulz!

    JanewayRulz! Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I don't think Janeway would have trusted her, after that "brainwashing Chakotay to bend him to their will" thing, even if Riley tried to leave the collective after it was re-established.

    And once she was in the collective, it would have been difficult for Janeway to separate her by force.

    Recall, in season 4 Janeway didn't have to fight a collective to keep Seven on board, she only had to fight Seven.
     
  3. Captain Clark Terrell

    Captain Clark Terrell Commodore Commodore

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    Given what happened to her, I don't think deserter is the right word for it. She was a victim of the Borg and had to make a new life for herself. Janeway offered to let her come back with Voyager but didn't order her to do so. She recognized that Riley and the other members of the Cooperative had established their own society on their planet and were better off continuing with their lives as they were.

    --Sran
     
  4. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Are their Starfleet deserters? Can't you quit whenever you like? Or do you sign up for a set amount of years and are then legally bound to it?
     
  5. Captain Clark Terrell

    Captain Clark Terrell Commodore Commodore

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    It's not really clear. We know that Spock and McCoy (and Kirk) left Starfleet for periods of time but returned later. Others like B'Elanna Torres quit the Academy but later had charges filed against them because they joined a known terrorist group. If I had to guess, I'd say that it doesn't matter if one quits as long as they go through the proper channels. If one goes AWOL and simply disappears, that's a different story.

    --Sran
     
  6. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    So it's all about paperwork.
     
  7. Captain Clark Terrell

    Captain Clark Terrell Commodore Commodore

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    I would guess. I mean, I can't imagine that someone would be punished for leaving a position that he doesn't want to be in. That's not good for the person in question or for Starfleet. More oppressive governments on Romulus or Cardassia might have different rules, but the Federation seems to be okay with people coming and going as they please, as long as they don't break any rules in the process.

    --Sran
     
  8. Jeri

    Jeri Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Riley seemed to feel a strong obligation to help her group; she was needed there more than she was in Starfleet. Maybe if they were in the Alpha Quadrant where they could get help, she would have gone back to the service. But they were marooned.
     
  9. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Marooned my ass.

    If they started with just one working replicator in less than a year, even without Janeways help, they would have been building transwarp coils. Isn't it amazing that Seven never built a transwarp shuttle? Those Drones in ENT Regenerate figured it out pretty fucking quickly how to make a transwarp shuttle out of basically a dingy. It's almost like Seven didn't want to go home.

    You've noticed that there are two sorts of Star Fleet Teacake?

    Officers and Enlisted ranks.

    In most of the current military, the average ratio of enlisted to officers is 9:1.

    With automation in the future it is possible that less enlisted are needed, but I doubt it. Everything still needs to be swabbed and repainted continuously.

    It's a question of training. 4 years in the Academy, only the best of the best to make an officer. 12 weeks in bootcamp, almost anyone, to make a yeoman or petty officer.

    The enlisted do shit work, the officers tell the enlisted what shit work to do.

    O'Brien "Don't call me sir! I work for a living!"

    An Officer can resign their commission within certain limits. Not during war and not during a mission and not when they're doing something essential. It's pretty silly to force someone to be in a position where they have their finger on the button, but if the don't follow the correct exit protocol, its off to New Zealand for 20 years.

    Enlisted ranks do probably sign a contract for a fixed duration, like in the real world, and then re-up or walk away. Why would anyone do that? I imagine that Starfleet looks fantastic on your resume if you want to do something of value in the private sector or for the government, and Starfleet if you work it right, is probably a superb technical college where you can walk out of it with magnificent degrees and qualifications, again which translate into being prime tottie on the job market. Remember no money, vs boredom, vs civic pride = the human philosophy to better themselves and therefore the entire species.

    Lets just assume that a great government job, comes with a great house, meanwhile some who sits on their ass, is in a small box with a couple pads and a replicator... Which kinda does what money does with out money. Work = status, yet the lowest conceivable subsistence is still fantastic to stupid 21st century us... Who today wouldn't kill for a replicator, a couple padds and a box to sleep in?
     
  10. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    A box that comes with hot water and electricity. Yes there must be some status otherwise there would be no beach not covered in mansions. It's a shame all we see of future evolved humanity is on starships though, where the captain's quarters are smaller than an average apartment. Picard's estate doesn't count since that has been in the family through WWIII.

    I believe there must be an underclass of creative and/or whacky drop outs who find having everything stifling, just as we have people today who find having everything (which we do) stifling. I want to know what the graffitti looks like in the 24th century on earth. I hope there is still yarn bombing.
     
  11. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Bashir's dad tried and failed constantly at a variety of careers.

    Education is free, but you still need the grades and a healthy respect for the waiting lists.

    The further off world you get to find a school that will take you, the further away from the heart of the Federation, the closer you get to there being money and graft that the waiting lists can be compromised.

    Also I'm guessing the shittier the colony you move to the bigger the box they give you until you prove your worth, and because of the lower population there's actually opportunity to prove your worth to earn yourself an even bigger box.

    Transit is free, but then again the waiting lists must be long, even if there was a colony ship in TNG Ensigns of Command that could carry a hundred thousand people, which I'm guessing is is not a ship you want to take into battle or run any races in... The Federation still boasts a population into the hundreds of trillions.

    Picard has two boxes. His quarters and his ready room.

    His ready room is for convince. I wonder if he has a third box which is his actual office? Thinking he probably has a fourth box too if Enterprise came with a Captain's Mess... The Captain's Yacht is his 5th box... But still Jean-Luc needed to crawl into the vents to find somewhere private to play his little pipe.

    Meanwhile consider how much a Federation trained/educated person would be worth on the open market as a worker to an alien government/alien business? Cassiday Yates went into work for herself but it's not like it must not have taken a while for her her to get to that point with her own ship?
     
    Last edited: Jul 5, 2013
  12. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Bashir's dad was interested in status so I guess failing was a problem to him. Maybe you just don't get to interact with people socially outside of your place in evolved society. So all his friends on earth are a bunch of other wannabes living in their boxes without groupies.

    I don't think Earth is that crowded. A lot of the population died off in WWIII and it takes a long time to rebreed that many. I assume they have immigration laws still otherwise they'd be flooded with folk from shittier planets looking for their own box with a view of the park.

    I bet the back to the land movement is huge with people growing their own food.
     
  13. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Sometimes I just want to shake Star Trek until it gives me the people I want.

    WHO writes the graffiti? WHAT is it about? Is there still tagging?! Yarn bombing? Murals in the night?

    If it's a world without such things I'd have to leave.
     
  14. Third Nacelle

    Third Nacelle Captain Captain

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    No, the entire surface of Earth is one giant holodeck filled with refugees from all over the Federation. Everything is automated, everything is taken care of. Sisko's restaurant, the Picard vineyards, the Janeway farms in Indiana... all fake. People pretend to go about their business because the government pumps them full of drugs that make them forget the pointlessness of it all, to prevent mass suicides.

    That's what Sisko meant by "paradise."
     
  15. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    None of that would surprise me.
     
  16. Brit

    Brit Captain Captain

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    I've always thought that Riley's little "cooperative" is the forerunner of a real "collective" with it's own queen. Guess who that would be, she is already experienced in the art of mentally bending people to her will?
     
  17. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    What you're describing is the Terran Federation from Blake's Seven.

    What about population control between ones legs?

    I can see idiots who can't manage their contraception being shipped off to a colony.

    Besides, Earth isn't really Earth.

    Most of the landscape would be the administrative and regulative bodies for the Federation.

    Millions of office complexes.

    When they were figuring out division of labour for the Federation in the beginning, Earth was the ugly redhead. Politically young and technologically pathetic, they were the only power at the table who could be trusted to act as the seat of the Federation because they were the most powerless to take advatage of the situation.

    Although they wouldn't hand over Earth outright, I can see a series of hundred year leases which are renewed amid a huge amount of yelling as the Federation et al has to hand over god knows what to "humanity" to keep their government in working order and the Earthlings off Earth.

    Not too dissimilar to the debt ceiling crisis and the sequester in the US of Late.
     
  18. Tiberius

    Tiberius Commodore Commodore

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    Ro Laren.
     
  19. Bry_Sinclair

    Bry_Sinclair Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Ensign Stefan DeSeve from "Face of the Enemy" would be another, he deserted when he defected to the Romulans.

    One thing always did puzzle me about Riley Frazier, how'd she get out to the DQ? Are they implying that following Wolf 359 the Cube launched a Sphere that travelled all the way back to Borg space with several assimilated crewmembers from the battle? Seems a very odd thing to do in the middle of an invasion (surely they would need every available drone for taking on something the size of the UFP). And they managed to do it without it being detected.
     
  20. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Federation offered no Resistance.

    One drone should have been able to take the entire Federation after they got the phaser frequencies sorted out.

    Besides did the Queen seduce Picard by teletransmission into his mind, or was she actually there, as according to a literal reading of the movie, that she must have left before the Cube was scuttled.

    All the ships that Cube attacked were not necessarily destroyed more so than boarded and their crews assimilated. The Cube didn't have to release a Sphere, because all that wreckage was recycling itself into a new Borg Fleet... Or at least the larger chunks. Maybe they took back booty, and maybe the Borg issued a retreat order when they saw that the Cube had been lost?

    The fact of the matter is that Riley was a survivor of Wolf 359.