Spook/Hoorah! Admirer wrote:
Sure, there is some military-style training that goes on in Starfleet for protection purposes, but as you saw with Malcolm, he specifically said that he did not join the military in order to join Starfleet, an officially non-military force.
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Okay, but then he becomes a security officer? Some fuzzy writing there...
Spook/Hoorah! Admirer wrote:
The military's main job is defense, not exploration of space.
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Speaking as a member of the military myself (albeit a desk-bound paper-pusher), I'd say that a military's main purpose is to fight wars. Whether a given conflict is offensive or defensive in nature is a thin line, and has always been so.
Consider, however, that in the early post-Revolution days of the American Republic there was no permanent standing army, and hardly a Navy to speak of. I assume there's no more Earth wars in Enterprise's time, so I
guess the MACOs could be considered a sort of planetary SWAT police force, but that's pure speculation.
Spook/Hoorah! Admirer wrote:
If you remember what Archer said, he didn't think that any kid of defense outside of the basics was necessary.
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I don't actually remember that, and it seems a pretty absurd claim, given all the battles the crew got into in the first two
episodes, never mind the first two
years.
Spook/Hoorah! Admirer wrote:
You have to remember that this was the beginning, and Starfleet was still evolving.... So, you essentially didn't get the context you wanted because they quite literally aren't there yet. At least, that's my view based off of what I've seen so far.
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But my good
Admirer, don't you see that the fact that this is the beginning means that it's the
perfect time to give these things said context? By the
TOS and beyond era, one could always blame a lack of specificity on the part of the writers by saying that Starfleet has its own traditions to coast on. Here, however, they don't, making this the perfect time to have lots of dramatic, intelligently-written, low-budget conversation scenes, hammering these sorts of details out - a bit of a
West Wing in space, if you will. Instead, we get whole episodes geared towards having a blonde fondle Polly's feathers.
You've been handing out mostly Cs to the show so far. Surely you agree that the show needed many more intelligently-written scenes?