Sci wrote:
Christopher wrote:
Well, the Enterprise had a mostly Earth-human crew, so maybe Starfleet was divided into different fleets under different planetary governments' administrations. The Starfleet we saw in TOS seemed very Earth-centric; maybe there were other subfleets that were Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite, etc. The Intrepid could've been under the supervision of the Vulcan branch of Starfleet, for instance.
|
That theory goes a long way towards explaining why the Federation Starfleet would seem so species-specific during the TOS era, and also gives us some retroactive justifications for Kirk's referring to the Enterprise as a United Earth ship and as being under UESPA command during TOS episodes produced before they came up with the idea of the Federation and the Federation Starfleet. |
Who knows? Maybe when Kirk said there were "only twelve [starships] like it in the fleet," he was referring to the Earth fleet, which was anchored by the
Constitution-class starships. Maybe there were other fleets with different classes of ship. Since we never saw the
Intrepid, maybe it was a Vulcan ringship, one of the capital ships of the Vulcan branch of Starfleet.