Can a colony separate from the Federation?

[C.E. Evans]

As far as we know, there are probably hundreds of worlds within the Federation that are independent and owe no allegiance to its government, but likely remains under Starfleet's protection simply due to their geographical location. An example would be Planet X may be an independent world in Sector 002, but Starfleet would still protect Sector 002 should the Borg attack because it's in the Federation's backyard.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The novel Prime Directive by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, said that every unique prewarp culture/planet located inside the Federation's boarders is allocated a reserve of 50 nearby neighbouring uninhabited planets, so that they have room to breathe after they eventually discover warp.

 

[USS Triumphant]

I haven't seen many Enterprise episodes either. Was the bolded word a typo?

No. You do not want to come across an Onion Battlecruiser in the wrong part of space. Their women are quite tasty and have been known to peel off, but male or female, they'll leave you in tears before long.

 

[BillJ]

Tasha Yar's homeworld, Turkana IV, left the Federation according to "Legacy".

 

[Guy Gardener]

"Failed" is the word I remember. Did it fail because the Federation refused to give more aid/help, or because the Turkanians refused to accept more aide help? Seriously, 20 years later they were handing out industrial Replicators like they were bottlecaps.

1. Lets assume that the Turkanians couldn't pay their taxes, or some commitment to a communist Federation resources reserve, after they maxed out their allocation aid packages and fiscalpocalypse insurance. The Federation at some point has to cut it's losses to a dead weight?

Or...

2. The Turkanians said "stick it" and somehow avoided forced relocation.

Okay, the memory alpha blurb...

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Turkana_IV

...Called Turkana a "Human Colony", not a "Federation Colony populated by mostly Humans". That would mean that Turkana was "governed" by Earth, and financed by Earth, and would only receive Federation aid by using the Earth Seat on the Federation council as a proxy. It would be skeevy Earth's responsibility/liability to piece out peacekeepers and a bailout, not the benevolent Federation, unless leverage was applied.

 

[Vandervecken]

The Federation is like those kid sports leagues where everyone gets a trophy just for participating. You get a trophy--membership--just for showing up, literally: having warp drive. The Federations is the losers' league.

oh, hey, so what did your race do?

oh, we collapsed 124 quantum singularities around species 8472 ships...what was it you said you did again?...

er, we created our own warp drive?

 

[Finn]

The novel Prime Directive by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, said that every unique prewarp culture/planet located inside the Federation's boarders is allocated a reserve of 50 nearby neighbouring uninhabited planets, so that they have room to breathe after they eventually discover warp.

Even the ones that would most likely achieve warp drive thousands of years from now?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Season one TNG, one of the scientists said that they were not allowed to teraform any planet with any "potential" life at all on it, that is even if that life is maybe a billion years away from becoming even fish.

LUISA: What we're doing is so exciting, so inspiring. We take a lifeless planet and little by little transform it into an M class environment, capable of supporting life. Terraforming makes you feel a little god-like. The first phase involves selecting the planet. That's very important. It must have the right mass and gravity, the correct rate of rotation, and a balanced day and night. The planet must also be without life or the prospect of life developing naturally. The Federation determines if that's so. Then, we take over. This station is phase two. Phase Three involves water. Usually we create basins using hydraulic landscaping, but the water on this planet is subsurface, and extremely high in salt content. We are just about to begin pumping and filtering the water, removing the salt, oxygenating and replacing. Next, we introduce micro-organisms, and when the process is complete eventually, we'll have a lush, arable, biosphere.

MANDL: What do you mean a life form?! What life form?! A Federation recon expedition certified Velara Three lifeless.
PICARD: Understandable, given this particular life form's novel nature.
MANDL: What is that nature?
PICARD: Doctor Crusher is still making her determination. Mister Mandl, you know the Prime Directive.
MANDL: Are you saying that I knowingly defied it?

 

[JeffinOakland]

I always understood that membership was voluntary and hard to get in (if you met certain standards and agreed to the Fed's rules) but revocable (if you misbehaved) and you could leave whenever you felt like it. Sort of like a country club of planets.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Urban Legend: The Vietnam War was a trick to steal eighty thousand Jeeps from the US Military.

A graceful uncrippling exit takes time.

A standard exit from the UE I was reading yesterday, takes 2 years minimum after you tell them you want out. How many years is it going to take Britain to start the paper work on that?

Immediate expulsion is another matter entirely?

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Emphasis mine. "Idle hands are the devil's playground" isn't just a saying, it is often at least metaphorically true. It seems to me that the only explanations there can be for the way we see humans on Trek are:
1. Humans have been genetically or otherwise medically modified to be more cooperative and docile. If genetically, whomever did it also altered all of the records so that doctors like McCoy, Crusher, and Bashir think that the current genome is the natural one. So... Section 31? Vulcan?
2. MOST of humanity was wiped out during WWIII and the Eugenics Wars, and they've actually kept to the population limit on the Georgia Guidestones ever since. (Which should imply that Miles and Keiko needed licenses/permission to have their children, since they were both residents of Earth - but we weren't shown any of that.)
3. Troublemakers who stay in the Federation and push things beyond a certain point are sent for "reconditioning" in New Zealand. What we saw Paris going through when Janeway went to get him was actually the most gentle level of adjustment performed there, merited because of his family connections and a desire not to mess up his Starfleet training.
4. Most troublemakers leave to start their own independent colony. And most independent human colonies end up like Turkana IV with roaming rape gangs and other horrors, or like Tarsus IV under totalitarian regimes or dictatorships. The Federation actually generally finds these useful, since they act as examples of what humanity could do if pushed too far while allowing them to also disavow them as "not us".

I agree with all of this. There is this dark side that isn't spoken about.

Tom Paris was in a reeducation camp. So what exactly do they do to the prisoners in there? We're never shown that side of the Federation. It would make for an interestint story to see that dark side and what goes on there.


The Federation wouldn't forcibly relocate people now would they? Oh hang on, they did try that in Insurrection didn't they? Oops.

 

[Timo]

Tom Paris was in a reeducation camp. So what exactly do they do to the prisoners in there? We're never shown that side of the Federation.

Huh? We saw it twice up close in TOS already. There used to be prisons where people were tortured by taking away their freedom, and then came Dr. Adams and basically singlehandedly remade the entire system. Now criminals everywhere get brainwashed and released, and never again commit the specific crime they were diagnosed with. And generally are no worse off for it, not losing their initiative or becoming zombies or whatnot - evident not only in the person of Harry Mudd, but also in the simple fact that even Dr. Adams eventually going off his rocker did nothing to reduce the popularity of his pre-madness methods... At least not during the run of TOS.

DS9 suggests Adams remains popular in the 24th century, as the lengths of the "sentences" for attempted genocide and smuggling of band-aids are identical. Such a setup would serve no punitive function, so the "sentences" probably still are but necessary minimum confinement to facilitate treatment. And Tom's time in New Zealand thus quite possibly falls in the same category (and successfully so, as he never goes Maquis again!). The only factual jail sentence, from "Dr. Bashir, I Presume", is for an "ancient" crime - I bet similarly outdated sentences exist, forgotten and unenforced, in many current laws for things like witchcraft or zoophilia...

Is that a "dark side" to the UFP? A look at any prison today would suggest the opposite!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Guy Gardener]

Increasing her love at Sisko, making it painful to disappoint him, and yearn to become barefoot and pregnant, should suppress Cassiday's civic interest in terrorism.

How high into the government did Sisko have to be before he had a word in deciding in how those around him were brainwashed.

She got Stepfordwifed?

 

[at Quark's]

The novel Prime Directive by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, said that every unique prewarp culture/planet located inside the Federation's boarders is allocated a reserve of 50 nearby neighbouring uninhabited planets, so that they have room to breathe after they eventually discover warp.

Hmm.... but what about the category we actually get to see in Trek, that of the generic prewarp cultures?

 

[Kevman7987]

I bet similarly outdated sentences exist, forgotten and unenforced, in many current laws for things like witchcraft or zoophilia...

Is that a "dark side" to the UFP? A look at any prison today would suggest the opposite!

Timo Saloniemi

In that case shouldn't Spock's mother be jailed? She married an alien creature with mind-powers and had enough sex with it to bear a non-mule child somehow.

 

[Guy Gardener]

In Voyager The Disease they hinted at lists of medically approved races that can copulate betwixt each other, which skimmed across legally approved and politically approved fuckery too.

The Deltan Celibacy Oath.

 

[jaime]

I haven't seen many Enterprise episodes either. Was the bolded word a typo?

Yes.
Orions

Spellcheck
Gah

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

In Voyager The Disease they hinted at lists of medically approved races that can copulate betwixt each other, which skimmed across legally approved and politically approved fuckery too.

The Deltan Celibacy Oath.

Yeah that really surprised me when I watched the episode and felt really off for such a freedom loving Federation.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Trip was pregnant after 5 episodes.

 

[Rollar]

freedom loving Federation

Where do people keep getting this idea that the Federation is "freedom loving?"