Which goes back to what a previous poster said about the First Contact uniform change. Which even explains why Voyager would not change their uniform design even after getting the new refs from Starfleet.
Why is there resistance to the idea of Starfleet being military?
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Which goes back to what a previous poster said about the First Contact uniform change. Which even explains why Voyager would not change their uniform design even after getting the new refs from Starfleet.
Thing is that dialogue only infers a thing rather than explicitly stating it. It's been explicitly stated that Starfleet is not a military. There is no 'Starfleet is a military' line to counter that. That's aside from the fact it's horribly clunky dialogue from someone wanting a specific milieu rather than keeping with the way characters usually talk. "The Starfleet (possibly Star Fleet) . There are no other agressors that Starfleet deals with? The Romulan don't exist? All those other times the Enterprise needed to fire weapons at non Klingons? Not only does that dialogue infer a military, but it also infers it's only a military whose sole purpose is fighting the Klingons. They even hive off the exploration as projects, when the Starfleet morro is Ex Astra Scientis. It's clunky if you stop and think about it, but then...it's trying to look like twentieth century politics and military so hard to make its point. Later on we will have leather bound books and a tracking device you see from thirty feet away on a coat. VI is a clumsy piece of fun, and if it wasn't as fun and in receipt of fan affection for the old crew, it would be the Nemesis of the Kirk era when examined in isolation. Meyers Starfleet...probably is a military. Everyone elses...probably not. Even in IV Kirk states he is not with the military (admittedly they could be a lie or useful construction of truth, but it's still there.)
The objection to a standing EU armed forces is not because the nations are anti military, They have their own armed forces already plus they know the EU is not a popular vote winner in their home nations.
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Except for the fact that they're mostly seen doing "non-military" business, were founded as a NASA-like agency, have consistently said they not a military, their mission statement has nothing to do with defense, and the main "military" trappings seem to be in rank structure and the like.
What specifically does? I don't recall anything specific.
Besides, he never described himself as a solider, as I recall.
Captain Picard, star character and Captain of the flagship of the fleet acros xx episodes is wrong or lying. Admiral Cartwright, with two appearances of less than an hour screen time, is right. Oh...and dude was a villain in one of those appearances.
Hmm.
Rank has its privileges?
It's always going to be circular, until Discovery has the Captains Log "Stardate Xxxx.x when I signed up for the military career in Starfleet, I had no idea that I would spend so much money on sandwiches and cigarettes......"
That would put a bunch of stuff to rest, especially if it runs for just over 14 years and launches 5 movies.
There's nothing wrong with heroic militaries, or the military, or shows about them (actually...I didn't like sg1, but that cos I liked the film better.) I have no antipathy there...I just think Trek doesn't have that, and the way they go about their world building as a result is one of the things that makes it interesting. Same for all the other 'genes box' problems writers and some fans whinge about.
And is that possibly a thing in the federation too? After all, it has more in common with the EU model in many regards than it does with the American federal model or even the UN model it was drawn from. Did people vote in Andoexit referendum a few years back? Various expanded universe sources have posited a resistance to Starfleet formation...is by not being explicitly and primarily a military organisation a way round that at its inception? Is Starfleet the Through-Deck Carrier that the Federation came up with after some Vulcans said Non to Aircraft Carriers?
Starfleet predates the invention of the Federation.
Given that early Starfleet starship didn't (apparently) engage in exploration, but were armed and were capable of driving off a Klingon BOP.
Starfleet was originally invented for defense.
So was the internet, but now we use it to watch cat videos and talk about Star Trek.
So was the internet, but now we use it to watch cat videos and talk about Star Trek.
I have great fun reading your posts in my head with BALOKS DECOY VOICE now and then. Just saying.
Because over the past fifty years Starfleet has been depicted as a military by every definition of the word with the exception of the five times where someone has said it isn't military. The first such reference doesn't come until twenty-three years after the franchise began, the next fourteen years after that, than the next three spread out over the course of the next fourteen.
Besides, sit down and watch TOS, it is very clear those writers thought they were writing about the military. The only reason Starfleet stopped being a military in Roddenberry's eyes was so he could discredit Harve Bennett and Nick Meyer. Also, by the time TNG came around he had also developed some weird hatred of the military, as evidenced by the infamous incident where Diane Carey wanted to dedicate her TNG novel to a friend in the Marines who had recently been killed in service, and Roddenberry lost his shit because "Star Trek isn't about military" and summarily banned her writing Trek novels, a ban which wasn't lifted until after he died.
And that's what it all comes down to. Judge Advocate General is a term that can only exist in the military, and the term court martial literally means military court. So Starfleet isn't military, but has a military court? That's like claiming the sport you play in which you skate on ice with a stick to whack a puck around isn't hockey.
No, Measure of a Man was to protest Starfleet orders regarding Data and his status as a citizen. What did happen under short notice was Picard serving as defense and Riker as the prosecution since the starbase in the episode was new and didn't have any legal staff assigned to it yet.
What the hell? His time with the Starfleet Infantry is part of Chief O'Brien's backstory and we actually do see them in two episodes of DS9.
Behind the scenes sources for the movie says those guys are Marines, and their uniforms are not the same as Kirk's. Note their "turtleneck" shirt is blue, as opposed to Kirk's white.
No one in the real world does that.
No, everything we've seen them do can and has been done by militaries.
Star Trek TOS: "Errand Of Mercy":
KIRK: Gentlemen, my government has informed me that the Klingons are expected to move against your planet with the objective of making it a base of operation against the Federation. My mission, frankly, is to keep them from doing it.
…
KIRK: You have this planet and its strategic location. I assure you that if you don't take action to prevent it, the Klingons will move against you as surely as your sun rises. We will help you build defences, build facilities.
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KIRK: That's the first thing that would be lost! Excuse me, gentlemen. I'm a soldier, not a diplomat. I can only tell you the truth.
So, is Captain Kirk, "star character and Captain of the flagship of the fleet" across 79 episodes and 7 (Prime) movies wrong or lying?
KIRK: Gentlemen, my government has informed me that the Klingons are expected to move against your planet with the objective of making it a base of operation against the Federation. My mission, frankly, is to keep them from doing it.
…
KIRK: You have this planet and its strategic location. I assure you that if you don't take action to prevent it, the Klingons will move against you as surely as your sun rises. We will help you build defences, build facilities.
…
KIRK: That's the first thing that would be lost! Excuse me, gentlemen. I'm a soldier, not a diplomat. I can only tell you the truth.
So, is Captain Kirk, "star character and Captain of the flagship of the fleet" across 79 episodes and 7 (Prime) movies wrong or lying?
Honestly I chalk that up to one of the many early-Trek "figuring out what we're doing" inconsistencies. For every one example of a character implying they're military/soldier, there's like ten examples of characters saying they're explorers.
Explorer does not necessarily mean non-military. And there is only five references in the entire franchise to someone saying Starfleet isn't military.
And that's kind of my point when I mention Picard. This whole thing eventually boils down to the thirty year Kirk vs Picard debate. (At best.) It Will never ever end. The portrayal of starfleet is inconsistent over its fifty years, the best you can hope for is '23rd century it transformed from military focused organisation into an exploration focused paramilitary/non military organisation, as it was prior (nx01 didn't even have weapons on board at launch did it? Something like that) and by the 24th century is entirely exploration and research focused, whilst keeping its historical defence mandate as a vestige of those earlier times' and the transition has to occur then because even later day Kirk movies portray Starfleet in the sort of mould. If you go for one massive sweep across fifty years...then it's gonna get bogged down with the only clear concrete 'we are X' coming down on the side of non military. Especially as a lot of the time, characters may be speaking from the perspective of getting something across to who they are speaking to simply and directly. (Either Kirk or Picard in that sense can be essentially lying....do you think 'I'm just a traveller not an ambassador' is going to convince the Organians as Kirk sees them? ) Gene Rodenberry, as mad as a box of frogs as he allegedly went, defined them as non military, for whatever reason. But that's why we have to look at what's presented on screen I guess.
Perhaps there's only five examples of them explicitly saying they're not military. But in pretty much every episode where they encounter a god-alien or something like that, and have to explain themselves or why they're trespassing, they say something to the effect of "we're just explorers, expanding our knowledge, seeking new life, etc and so forth."
I don't disagree that Starfleet shares elements with the military and fulfills that role, but again, the term "military" puts Starfleet in a box which is too small to reflect their full scope or their first purpose (exploration).
And militaries can't behave the same way? Because they certainly do in the Stargate franchise, and they really are military there, in fact they belong to a military which actually does exist, the USAF. The show even had a USAF advisor.
I still wa t to know where O'Briens backstory is shown or stated onscreen, I do not recall it, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
And I am afraid I am one of those people who do not think those officers shown fighting on the ground in the Ds9 eps are dedicated Starfleet infantry. Starfleet security sure, but in most cases, the technology shown and the procedures named in Trek. Infantry are completely irrelevant tactically speaking (at least most of the time,..you can write in situations that render them the only option, but they are like Ezris sniper rifle....anachronistic and therefore rare in use until really totally needed.) once you have transporters and starships that can glass a planet or cut tiny bits out of it as needed. The fighting in Trek, military or explorer, is gonna happen in orbit, not on the ground. (Yeah...they said something similar about planes and missiles in the 20th...and now about drones and cyber warfare....and we still need boots on the ground. But transporters are starships would be game changers.)
Traditionally, or at least in modern real-life contexts, the military exists for defense purposes. There's some R&D and science thrown in there sometimes, but those activities are in the service of their primary defense role. If you play a word association game with someone and say "military," they're not going to respond with "exploration" (or "Starfleet" for that matter, lol). NASA, on the other hand, is primarily a science and exploration organization -- they frequently employ military officers or veterans for missions, but NASA's essential purpose is not defense, even if their discoveries and technologies are later used by military organizations.
Coming back to the point -- Starfleet is, to my mind, a combination of these two organizations, with a heavy dose of diplomacy as well. They keep NASA's primary purpose and fulfill the role of the military in a cursory "only when necessary" way. The UFP's default setting is peace, and it's considered unusual when that peace is breached in a significant way (the Dominion War, for example).
To be fair, Picard looked and sounded a little uncomfortable with the line as if he knew he was exaggerating, that he really meant it was not fundamentally or primarily a military organization. But for such exercises to be really rare, for it to be a request in response to a problem as alarming as the Borg, suggests a lot of people agreed with him that it was not.
But Meyer also believed and projected that with peace being made with the Klingons Starfleet would become a lot less like a military than it had been in the original series or the movies; Kirk in TUC also felt that Starfleet's mission and nature would significantly change.
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