Are you sick and tired of the Navy in scifi

The Navy dominates scifi but why? Frankly I'm sick of seeing the navy in outer space riding the cosmic oceans. The navy dominates scifi but I'm not just referring to stuff like 2000 Leagues Under the Sea or Seaquest DSV you got big navy ships in Buck Rogers, Confederation Navy from the Wing Commander, the Navy command structure in Star Trek. Almost every scifi got captains and petty officers and admirals and officer cadets and commodores and boats and sea dogs and pirates. Just check it! It's all in tv shows like andromeda, battlestar and straczynski's crusade (B5 maybe not so much but there is still a good chunk of Navy) and most scifi movies have the navy. Why oh Why I think its over done. Why were they still using Navy structure in DS9 since I thought it was supposed to be a SPACE STATION not a sea vessel. Look at space exploration in our real history! Whenever the Navy got involved they mostly flopped, losing out to the Soviets producing the first "flopnik" while Russia got to put the first man in space and the first satellite. Yes we beat the commies to the Moon with Apollo11. WHOOOoooOTT ! but as I read it most of the people in space didn't come from the USN but came from the Air Force or Marines Corps. Armstrong and Shepard are the two I can think of from the Navy but if you ask me I would read 9 out of 10 of people in space are not navy. Today the people in NASA also come from the Air Force or Corps or have PHDs with science and geology backgrounds and we have the private sector getting into space now that we have this space tourism thing starting. Russia's Navy recently wanted to get some money launching old Soviet navy rockets into space for private donors like Sagan's planetary exploration society. Once again a navy produced another flopnick, rocket goes boom! and the planetary society lost their space probe. IMHO what the whole mindset boils down to is Christopher Columbus (NASA named one of the Shuttles after him even though the Shuttle looks nothing like a ship). If Columbus had "discovered" America by going via hot air balloon or going across the pole on foot and sledge I think our whole perception of exploration would be different in scifi. Personally I'm sick of the navy in space

 

Holy run-on sentences, Batman!

The Stargate Program is run by the Air Force...if that helps at all.

 

I almost forgot that one. Stargate was a cool enough show, they send out a small team of explorers on secret missions through the Stargate to battle the Goaulds. If you have a smaller team maybe its better to use some Air Force command structure or something un-Navy? However I also remember Stargate going Navyish or Trekish. The Doctor Jackson left the series briefly and comes back then suddenly everyone in Stargate has gone "Navy" and everyone is flying some big spaceship like battlestar or andromeda. Then they do this atlantis series which is basically a mix of a lost DS9 space station getting discovered and a mix of a concept with more flying more battlestar/trek ships against a bunch of bad vampire looking guys. I saw one episode when they even get Atlantis to fly, it started look like a silly version of Trek if you ask me.

 

Well, to be fair, Atlantis was always supposed to fly.

 

I'm a big fan of Trek but the whole scifi genre should not be "Navy". Limiting the whole scifi genre to Navy is like limiting a whole genre such as horror around "slasher flicks". Say for a moment you got a group of guys in a scifi setting and you want to colonize, or trade, or invade or build in another alien region. Would it not be better to use groups of army engineers? The Navy to me would just get in the way of things like exploration and construction. I think the first colonists of planet Mars would actually hate the Navy structure because it would be too rigid and un-free

 

I'm not really sure I get what your problem is. Most scifi is about good guys fighting bad guys, and a lot of them do it in space ships. I'm not sure what kind of structure you'd rather have to do that.

Unless you're complaining about the nature of modern scifi action in general...

 

You could easily fly a spaceship without the Navy, for the basics all you need is a launch pad, a control tower and a worthy ship. Michael Collins flew Apollo 11, his launch pad was KSC Flordia, the Control Center in Houston and his ship was the Lunar Command Module. He was a pilot in the USAF not the Navy! and yes my thread is also complaining about the nature of modern scifi in general since I don't think traders or builders on any future Mars colony would really need the Navy for all of their daily activities. The navy command structure would be too rigid just get in their way

 

Well, he probably wasn't blowing up alien spacecraft.

Well, until we start to see more stories about colonization or terraforming or whatnot, you're probably going to have this structure.

I agree that it's been way too long since we've a decent scifi movie like that, though. What was the last real space movie we had that didn't involve space battles? Red Planet? Space Cowboys?

 

Why the Navy? Because we want to see the interaction of people and spacecraft with hundreds of crewman says ship(navy) not space airplane(air/space force) to the audience. Stargate since it follows today's US military being the great exception. Then there are the colonial marines of aliens and the mercenary regiments of mil SF.

Firefly, Blake, Space Rangers and shows without a fleet, yet set in space and not a planet leave an empty screen. What I miss is that if Navies are flying around there should be many more merchant ships, even robot ones, that those Navies are protecting.

 

As long as you've got spaceships, you're going to have a Navy-style set-up. Even a civilian ship will have a captain and a first-mate as well as a chain of command/picking order that won't be completely different from that of actual military ships, just less polished. They may not wear uniforms, they may not address each other by ranks, but there will always be someone called captain.

But to me, comparing the Navy with other armed forces is like apples and oranges. Basically, you've got the exact same kind of set-up just with different terminology being used. Perhaps there should be more sci-fi shows set on planets or space stations and fewer shows set aboard starships. That's where the difference would come in, I would think...

 

Sort of like BSG where the strict Royal/US Navy rank disignators are mixed up with an army rank of Colonel inserted.

 

The Wing Commander games featured a Navy, a Marine Corps, and a Space Force (instead of Air Force). The Marines were used as ground troops when the situation called for them, so there was little need for an Army. I can kind of imagine a similar situation in the future, if we ever develop interstellar travel.

 

For the life of me I can't figure out what the thousands of crewman are supposed to do on the Deathstar and all the fleet cruisers of the space navies. Remind me of a Voyager episode with a crew short of people they had a guy taking a message tube and manually routing it to another tube IIRC. And the TNG episode where the crew kept disappearing. Besides the so-called bridge officers in the trekverse why exactly was everybody there. And if everybody isn't there you don't need Captain, XO, chief of this and that, crewman XYZ. Thus no navy structure on rhe ship. The ship itself is a robot like Sulaco of the Aliens colonial marines.

 

You do often have to wonder what the crews on those ships do with their time. I would assume most of the ship (especially by the time of Trek) is automated.

 

Space and the Navy just kind of go together. Mainly due to the ships as explained above. But have you ever heard of the old Navy program of Operation: Blue Book?

And no, that's not a TV program. Well, there was a TV program based off it back it the 70s. But I am referring to the official classified Navy program.

 

I love this thread. Always there are complaints about how the Navy "dominates" Sci-Fi, or here on Trek BBS there's the frequent thread about how the Navy "dominates" Star Trek.

And then we get Stargate, a show set in the Air Force. And yet, in various Stargate forums (including the one here on Trek BBS) people complain that Stargate needs "more Navy."

Guess you just can't make everyone happy.

 

Personally I'm tired of the Navy in scifi. I like the Navy, I respect anyone who is in the US coast guard or has served in a ship overseas. To me the Navy in scifi has been done to much, done to death. I think scifi should try to base its lives closer to colonists and explorers, ask questions about government like the movie Brazil or took at themes like individuality, genetic material and morality like the film Gattaca. The tv shows should focus more on people building their lives and setting up trade not fighting some big space battle. However if they must do space battles do they really need a Navy structure?? and do battles always have to look like some Naval reenactment like Battle of Santiago de Cuba between Spain and the United States or some other war between ships. Since the end of the WW2 I think there's kind of been a perception we still need a Navy, with the biggest badest ship with thousands of crew to win a war. While I give great respect to the Navy and I think a powerful Navy is a huge advantage it is not completely necessary to win a battle or a war. Look at the Chinese they have a huge military, they are an economic superpower but their Navy kinda sucks when compared to the rest of the world. Why is most of the world scared of thoughts of war against the Chinese? Not because of their ships, its because they got a population of almost a billion and a half and if they had to fight they could put together an army and militia of about 400 Million people !! and they have a lot of high tech missiles and a wmd program to back that stuff up. Why in the future would we need a Naval structure to pilot a spaceship? Is it some as psychologically simple as because the word "ship" is part of the word spaceship. Would the need for a Navy structure be the same if they were all "spacecraft"? If a small crew of ten were part of the ship I don't see why the Navy is needed, they could fly a small crew with a different structure like the Boeing Flying Fortress operated by the US Army and Air Force.

I don't know.....something about the Navy and UFOs was it? A ship that finds an alien sub? I don't know, I think you kind of lost me!? Anyway I'll get back to my point. There are great fantastic ships in the US Navy but it is not always necessary to own the biggest and baddest and most expensive ship. For example a Perry Class Frigate is probably 500 times easier to hit than hitting a B2 Stealth bomber. So why in the future is it still necessary to have the biggest ship? If Roddenberry's Andromeda were done realistic you could have Captain Dylan hunt arriving at some planet trying to force the people of some planet to join his new union. The planet would have no Navy but respond to hostility by sending out a few dozen tiny robotic vehicles and start blowing holes in Andromeda's hull. Getting back to the original point my main feeling is that scifi should stay more around the lives of colonists and focus on everyday activity, food, trade, exploration, money....and if they need to do some space battles, they don't need the Navy for that. Maybe I can't get what I'm looking for on tv and need to read more books or something

this is part if my question does a scifi show always need to have a very large crew?

I don't think they will always need strict Navy hierarchy

Sounds like a good approach, at least they use other forces than just the Navy.

 

Sounds like the TV show that was suppose to be a USAF program. Made by Jack Webb after Adam-12 and Emergency. Sort of a miltary run X-Files.

 

I'm guessing the Navy denied your enlistment application

You're thinking of Project UFO, which was based on the Air Force's Project Blue Book.

 

Well the space opera has transitioned from the James Kirk, Dylan Hunt model of the ship of the line all alone who's captain can bring civilization to the savages. It has become Task Force 58 while focusing on one aircraft carrier and its heroic pilots. Those naval aviators dominate everthing in its path.