Age of the Federation....

[Warped9]

The "Probe" in UESPA doesn't have to automatically refer solely to unmanned probes. It could also have a broader meaning in terms of manned and unmanned craft probing interstellar space.

In the beginning UESPA might have been intended as a far future analogy of NASA, but it was soon dropped in favour of Starfleet. To that end we needn't accept UESPA as anything more than a long existent Earth based space agency with no ties to Starfleet. In the few (two?) instances we hear references to UESPA it isn't hard to rationalize them in a context outside of Starfleet.

I never cared for there being an Earth Starfleet before the Federation. Why would an interstellar alliance adopt the name of an Earth agency for its unified military arm?

 

[Timo]

The "Probe" in UESPA doesn't have to automatically refer solely to unmanned probes

Indeed not, as the "Earth-Saturn probe" that made the son of John Christopher slightly significant to history a) sounds like an achievement where he personally distinguished himself, rather than a desk job in charge of an unmanned mission, and b) should, if unmanned, have been old news already by the time this son came of age!

Whether the language that gave us the name of that mission to Saturn would be the same as the language that gave us UESPA can be argued. But both would probably be 21st century expressions, so the meaning of the word "probe" could be assumed to remain constant (even if contrary to real-world usage today and, in all likelihood, in "our" mid-21st century).

To that end we needn't accept UESPA as anything more than a long existent Earth based space agency with no ties to Starfleet. In the few (two?) instances we hear references to UESPA it isn't hard to rationalize them in a context outside of Starfleet.

The USN assisting NOAA, or the Royal Navy of old assisting the Royal Society, on frontier research sounds like a simple and natural basis for such rationalizations...

Why would an interstellar alliance adopt the name of an Earth agency for its unified military arm?

Because the name is immensely generic to begin with?

Everybody and his bump-headed cousin could have a Starfleet, either as the formal or the informal name of their space sailing organization. Or if they have subtle variants of that, it would be perfectly justifiable for Earthlings to translate that to Starfleet. Andorians are welcome to refer to the UFP organization as the Great Heavenly Icebreaking Armada in their own language and in their own official correspondence. A noticeable part of the USN personnel would speak of the Armada de los Estados Unidos, now wouldn't they?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

A small aside. In the 1972 series Search the field agents sent out to investigate various cases were referred to as Probes. So the usage of the word can easily be adopted to mean something significantly more than automated or autonomous machinery.

 

[Christopher]

The "Probe" in UESPA doesn't have to automatically refer solely to unmanned probes. It could also have a broader meaning in terms of manned and unmanned craft probing interstellar space.

Yes, naturally. To probe is to explore. Unmanned probes are called that because probing is what they do, not because "probe" intrinsically means a machine. You often hear about the government launching a probe into a scandal, say. That doesn't mean they're sending a robot, it means they're assigning people to investigate it.

And there is precedent in science fiction for using the term "probe" to refer to a crewed vessel, as in the Twilight Zone episode "Probe 7, Over and Out," or the Morestran probe ship in Doctor Who: "Planet of Evil."

Or it could be that UESPA started out dealing mainly with uncrewed space probes like Friendship 1, but then expanded into crewed expeditions, with the name remaining as an "Artifact Title," as TV Tropes would call it.

I never cared for there being an Earth Starfleet before the Federation. Why would an interstellar alliance adopt the name of an Earth agency for its unified military arm?

Well, as I pointed out in my first Rise of the Federation novel, "starfleet" is a pretty generic label for a fleet of starships. For all we know, the Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite words for their own space services might translate as "Starfleet" or "Space Fleet" anyway.

 

[J.T.B.]

As far as I am concerned UESPA is a non-issue. It could have been a legacy Earth organization that still conducted research and was allowed to use Federation Starfleet ships for that purpose. I have no problem imagining "military" vessels being loaned for that purpose, since space exploration was shown to be highly dangerous and often turned out to be "defense" related.

I never cared for there being an Earth Starfleet before the Federation. Why would an interstellar alliance adopt the name of an Earth agency for its unified military arm?

Maybe that had just become the word for what it is, for a "space navy"? In English we use "air force" generically because the British chose that when they formed the RAF in WW1. But the French and Spanish versions are literally "air army," German and Swedish "air arm," Italian "military aeronautics" etc.

 

[Longinus]

I never cared for there being an Earth Starfleet before the Federation. Why would an interstellar alliance adopt the name of an Earth agency for its unified military arm?

Probably for the same reason they adopted Earth as their capital, English as their primary language and most of their personnel being human.

Well, as I pointed out in my first Rise of the Federation novel, "starfleet" is a pretty generic label for a fleet of starships. For all we know, the Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite words for their own space services might translate as "Starfleet" or "Space Fleet" anyway.

Or this.

Or it could be that UESPA started out dealing mainly with uncrewed space probes like Friendship 1, but then expanded into crewed expeditions, with the name remaining as an "Artifact Title," as TV Tropes would call it.

Sounds plausible. For example, NATO has expanded far beyond North Atlantic.

 

[Longinus]

@Timo, your objections still make no sense to me. We know from ENT that Starfleet was part of UESPA. Whilst I have many issues with the show, this is not one of them. It seems to be clear that building massive warp ships like NX-01 is beyond capabilities of any single nation state, let alone a corporation. Only with pooled resources of the entire planet could such things be achieved. UESPA was created to coordinate such efforts. And once you have several of such ships, it makes perfect sense to organise them into a fleet and build a command structure for this fleet, thus Starfleet.

 

[Kor]

To me, the whole question of Starfleet/UESPA/Earth command/whatever is just insignificant background minutiae that gives no extra insight as far as understanding the show as it aired.

Kor

 

[Kemaiku]

Before the Federation, we do seem to have the UESPA, ECS and some form of private sector industries working on projects like the Warp 5 engine and NX prototypes. Starfleet, although around for about 10-20 years before, is a fledgling group still replying on others to provide the material and construction side of things.

I assume that didn't change overnight even with the other races drawing up plans to help share technology and resources in 2161.

The Federation may have allowed the UESPA to continue operating as a joint venture as well, with civilian and private/scientific groups from various worlds sending out small craft and probes ahead of planned exploration later. In TOS, the Enterprise was chasing up such probes on a regular basis much like the Seeder/Destiny arrangement of SG:U.

As much as Starfleet doesn't want to come across as entirely military, other races might want a way to cooperate but with a conscientious objection to being aboard armed starships. The Enterprise novels have the Vulcans decommissioning their entire fleet post Romulan War, and we see little of a proper fleet from them again in the TNG era. I could see them creating a new research flotilla instead with the new members joining.

 

[johnnybear]

Err, so you still believe that all the invasions UNIT fought off in the '70s and/or '80s actually happened?

Anyway, that's another Vulcan that was portrayed as a hot planet and might have been intended to be the cis-Mercurian Vulcan rather than an extrasolar planet.

Also, you can't rely too much on the RT's dates for Doctor Who's future-based stories. This is something I've picked up through the DVD commentaries in my recent rewatch -- all the stories had to have dates assigned for the benefit of the costume and scenery departments so they'd know what era to design for, but all the stories set in the future tended to use "2000" or the like as a catchall for "sometime in the distant future." So even stories that logically had to be centuries ahead were marked as c. 2000 as a placeholder, and the Radio Times sometimes took that too literally.



.

You mean they didn't actually happen?
JB

 

[johnnybear]

Well yes, obviously it wasn't the same Vulcan that we know and love, Chris but it's very odd that both shows used the name back in the same year isn't it! Plus yes it was probably meant to be a hidden world between Mercury and Venus!
JB

 

[C.E. Evans]

Before ENT, I had kind of rationalized UESPA as being a civilian exploration organization that Starfleet sometimes carried out missions for. I don't think every agency in the Federation actually has "Federation" in its name. Some institutions could be specific to individual worlds--like the Vulcan Science Academy--so UESPA could be something that still exists well into the 24th-Century.

 

[Longinus]

My theory is that at some point the component parts of Starfleet were merged and UESPA, Vulcan Space Agency etc. ceased to exist. Perhaps between TOS and TMP (or maybe TWOK) as that's when Enterprise/UESPA symbol seemed to be adopted by whole Starfleet.

 

[Warped9]

Before ENT, I had kind of rationalized UESPA as being a civilian exploration organization that Starfleet sometimes carried out missions for. I don't think every agency in the Federation actually has "Federation" in its name. Some institutions could be specific to individual worlds--like the Vulcan Science Academy--so UESPA could be something that still exists well into the 24th-Century.

Still works well enough...particularly given I personally ignore ENT anyway. Ever since FC I detest how they've depicted that era of Trek.

 

[Christopher]

Well yes, obviously it wasn't the same Vulcan that we know and love, Chris but it's very odd that both shows used the name back in the same year isn't it! Plus yes it was probably meant to be a hidden world between Mercury and Venus!
JB

No, the hypothetical Vulcan posited in the 19th century was between the Sun and Mercury, not Mercury and Venus. (That's what "cis-Mercurian" means -- inside Mercury's orbit.) And my point is that it isn't that odd that both franchises would use the name, because it was once well-known as the name of a hypothetical undiscovered planet and was used in a fair amount of SF before Star Trek monopolized it in people's minds.

 

[johnnybear]

Oh right! I must have read it wrong then!
JB

 

[Timo]

We know from ENT that Starfleet was part of UESPA.

There never was a single character associated with UESPA in any fashion in ENT. Nobody from UESPA gave orders to Starfleet or vice versa. No resources were exchanged between UESPA and Starfleet. The only aspect of UESPA that existed in the show was one piece of floor art, which for all we know had been installed in the previous century (or even millennium!) and referred to a bygone arrangement.

Whether that arrangement (had) involved one party being part of the other is unknown, too. The symbol might exist to hail fruitful cooperation instead - an Apollo/Soyuz badge of sorts.

It seems to be clear that building massive warp ships like NX-01 is beyond capabilities of any single nation state, let alone a corporation.

Yet a bunch calling itself UESPA assembled Friendship 1, a vessel that far outperformed NX-01, back when Earth was far from united... Competition rather than unity may have been a driving force there, giving all the more emphasis to military organizations that would promote and protect the factions.

Only with pooled resources of the entire planet could such things be achieved. UESPA was created to coordinate such efforts. And once you have several of such ships, it makes perfect sense to organise them into a fleet and build a command structure for this fleet, thus Starfleet.

At which point the military steps in and waves goodbye to UESPA, just like the US Army decided not to take orders from the Wright Brothers.

Before ENT, I had kind of rationalized UESPA as being a civilian exploration organization that Starfleet sometimes carried out missions for. I don't think every agency in the Federation actually has "Federation" in its name. Some institutions could be specific to individual worlds--like the Vulcan Science Academy--so UESPA could be something that still exists well into the 24th-Century.

Heck, there's even an American Continent Institute, an organization apparently hailing from a mere fraction of a planet.

UESPA in the later centuries could be a very close analogy to DARPA for all we know, as the name mainly appears in starship dedication plaques, perhaps denoting a role in design or construction. In TOS, though, it seems to be behind a project wherein transport ships visit alien worlds that otherwise wouldn't be valid destinations for any sort of transport, thus probably a bit more actively involved in field research and operational projects than DARPA.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

There never was a single character associated with UESPA in any fashion in ENT. Nobody from UESPA gave orders to Starfleet or vice versa. No resources were exchanged between UESPA and Starfleet.

Starfleet personnel are UESPA personnel.

The only aspect of UESPA that existed in the show was one piece of floor art, which for all we know had been installed in the previous century (or even millennium!) and referred to a bygone arrangement.

Well this is just absurd denial of obvious proof.

Yet a bunch calling itself UESPA assembled Friendship 1, a vessel that far outperformed NX-01, back when Earth was far from united... Competition rather than unity may have been a driving force there, giving all the more emphasis to military organizations that would promote and protect the factions.

That EUSPA existed then shows that United Earth government existed in some form that early. It was probably created in response to the first contact with the aliens. All nations may have not been part of it, but it still was a significant pooling of resources. Sure it made no sense that the probe would have gotten that far, but that's a separate point.

At which point the military steps in and waves goodbye to UESPA, just like the US Army decided not to take orders from the Wright Brothers.

UESPA had its own military, the Starfleet. It makes perfect sense for the Starfleet to be originated from NASA-like scientific exploration organisation, sure it is also the main military arm of the Federation, but it is much more. They are not only soldiers, they're also diplomats, scientists and explorers.

 

[Christopher]

Well this is just absurd denial of obvious proof.

I'd say, rather, that what needs to be considered is not who "installed" the floor emblem in the fictional universe, but who conceived of it in reality and what their intention was. Clearly it was an attempt by the show's art department and/or producers to finally offer a reconciliation between UESPA and Starfleet and answer a question fans have been wondering about for decades. I think a lot of people fail to keep in mind that most of the people who were making Enterprise by that point were longtime Trek fans just as much as any of us. They'd participated in the same discussions and debates as the rest of us, wondered the same things as the rest of us, and imagined possible solutions for the inconsistencies the same as the rest of us -- and once they were actually writing and producing the show and designing its sets and graphics, they were in a position that most of us would envy, a position that let them actually incorporate their answers and plot-hole fixes into canon.

So I don't understand why anyone would object to the fact that fans just like us took the opportunity to sneak in an explanation for the UESPA/Starfleet question by putting both names on the same emblem. If anything, I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner. (Honestly, if I'd been in charge of Enterprise, I would've had the ship answer to UESPA instead of Starfleet. But maybe that's one of those cases where the network insisted on including more familiar Trek elements.)

UESPA had its own military, the Starfleet. It makes perfect sense for the Starfleet to be originated from NASA-like scientific exploration organisation, sure it is also the main military arm of the Federation, but it is much more. They are not only soldiers, they're also diplomats, scientists and explorers.

Keep in mind, though, that the United Earth Starfleet presented in ENT was not actually the UE's military arm at all. NX-01 set out with a goal of pure exploration, and when the crew found themselves encountering combat situations more often than they expected, they actually had to refit the ship to install heavier weapons. When the Xindi attack happened, NX-01 was sent out to respond to it because it was the only ship fast enough, but it had to take on a new contingent of specifically military personnel, the MACOs (basically space Marines), to do the actual fighting. As late as season 4, Captain Hernandez said she hesitated to include MACOs in her crew because she wasn't comfortable having military personnel aboard her ship. So even after the Xindi crisis, UE Starfleet was still considered a non-military body, despite using military ranks.

The way I see it, the way I've gone about it in the books, is that the Federation Starfleet is different from the UESPA Starfleet because it's a hybrid of different worlds' space services. It's a joint exploration-defense force that includes UESPA as its exploratory arm, the Andorian Guard as its defense arm, the Vulcan Space Service as its research and scientific arm, etc. Over time, these functions become more integrated and we get more multipurpose ships and crews that combine all the functions.

 

[Kemaiku]

There never was a single character associated with UESPA in any fashion in ENT. Nobody from UESPA gave orders to Starfleet or vice versa.

Actually, there were arm patches on the uniforms that had the full UESPA name above the arrow, Starfleet Command written underneath.

Edit: Sorry, floor decoration, from the second last episode.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/uespa-demons.jpg