Starfleet is a Space Navy (military fleet)

[Baxten]

STARFLEET BRIG

Merriam-Webster: Brig

Legal Definition of brig

1. : a place (as on a ship) for temporary confinement of offenders in the United States Navy
   
   
2. : a military prison

Wikipedia: Military Prison (Brig)

A brig is a United States military prison aboard a United States Navy or Coast Guard vessel, or at an American naval or Marine Corps base. The term derives from the Navy's historical use of twin-mast sailing ships—or brigs—as prison ships.​

Therefore, Starfleet is a space navy and a military organization at all times.

 

[psCargile]

These are nothing more than examples of poor world building.

 

[Baxten]

These are nothing more than examples of poor world building.

Or Starfleet is a big stinking liar.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

STARFLEET BRIG

Merriam-Webster: Brig

Legal Definition of brig ​

lol @ Legal definition

Even cruise ships have brigs

Cruising can be a fun and carefree vacation experience. But that doesn't mean some people don't find ways to get into trouble — and even kicked off cruise ships.

When you sign on for a cruise, you agree in your cruise contract to a code of conduct, promising not to do anything inappropriate, discourteous, or unsafe — including sitting or standing on outside railings. Break the rules, and shipboard security personnel may confine you to your cabin, or worse, send you to the brig.

Cruise lines have the right to remove misbehaving passengers from their ships at the next port of call. If you've done something illegal, you can expect to be turned over to local law enforcement.

Also:

Many cruises have a brig or jail cell, although it's really just a small room and you have to do something very bad to get locked up in there. Depending on what the offender did, they may be arrested at the next port of call, or just returned to their cabin and put on home arrest.

I'll give you three guesses what staff members on cruise ships call "the little room where we lock people up when they get in a shitload of trouble." And yes, they DO call it this specifically because the Navy calls it this and because alot of the people who came to work for cruise lines as crew members are ex-military themselves.

That almost makes me wonder if that's the reason starfleet started convening court martials, come to think of it. I could totally see Macolm Reed saying "Well, if this had happened in the Royal Navy we'd probably court martial him" and then Archer saying "Court martial, you say? Okay, let's do that."

 

[BillJ]

In my opinion, Starfleet not being "military", much like "no money", simply doesn't work within the context of what the series actually show.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

In my opinion, Starfleet not being "military", much like "no money", simply doesn't work within the context of what the series actually show.

"No money" works fine in a limited context (namely, EARTH, having some kind of single-payer/collectivist economy). What we SEE is that everyone EXCEPT for Earth still uses money, so we can interpret it on that basis and fill in the blanks.

Same for Starfleet. "Not military" works in a specific context, since what we SEE is that while everyone considers them to be an armed combat force, NOBODY ELSE considers them to be military either. Hell, some Klingons in the 24th century aren't even sure if Starfleet is that much. This, in a galaxy were basic war-fighting capability -- assuming you even have or need it -- can be completely automated, works just fine. It makes the Federation kind of weird, but that's never been up for debate either.

 

[BillJ]

I'll give you three guesses what staff members on cruise ships call "the little room where we lock people up when they get in a shitload of trouble." And yes, they DO call it this specifically because the Navy calls it this and because alot of the people who came to work for cruise lines as crew members are ex-military themselves.

That almost makes me wonder if that's the reason starfleet started convening court martials, come to think of it. I could totally see Macolm Reed saying "Well, if this had happened in the Royal Navy we'd probably court martial him" and then Archer saying "Court martial, you say? Okay, let's do that."

The thing is, if it were an isolated incident of military terminology being used, an isolated incident of Starfleet doing something the military does, then I could see an argument being made for it not being the "military". But there aren't isolated incidents, the multiple series are peppered with military terminology, military slang, military rank structure, military duties and military justice.

For a franchise that wants people to believe (I guess) that Starfleet isn't the military, they go out of their way to use everything associated with the modern military.

They don't do a very good job of selling the idea that Starfleet isn't the military.

 

[psCargile]

Baxten, you can slap military labels on things all day long, it, doesn't make it a military. A military is much more than terms. None of the fictional fleets in Star Trek behave as real militaries do.

Notice how cadets go to a university, and not a boot camp. Boot camps build the essential core of what militaries are.

 

[BillJ]

Notice how cadets go to a university, and not a boot camp. Boot camps build the essential core of what militaries are.

We've seen very little of the Academy, so do we really know what they go through? Don't officer candidates go to something much more akin to a university than the enlisted folks?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

For a franchise that wants people to believe (I guess) that Starfleet isn't the military, they go out of their way to use everything associated with the modern military.

From what I can tell, they're mainly going for the "blended service/NASA" model. Consider that even Star Trek Beyond, which gives us the most explicit line of confirmation yet, depicts a more disciplined and focussed Starfleet than anything we got to se in the 24th century and yet that very line is delivered by an actor who helped write the screenplay. There's clearly more going on here than what you keep trying to simplify as "military or ANTI military? Why are you so antimilitary?"

I'm happy to concede that ALOT of this just comes down to sloppy worldbuilding and new writers carrying on tropes without trying to remember the reason they were originally created. But in-universe, it fits just fine; police departments, gun clubs, private militias, PMCs, even boy scout troops borrow military styles for all sorts of reasons, primarily because they work. 22nd century Earth Starfleet was made up of ALOT of active and ex-military officers (Edison and Reed, for example) at a time when they were still trying to figure out how to do everything, so it shouldn't be surprising that they started using some of the same terms and techniques the military does. As, again, in the above example: why is a jail cell on a cruise ship called a "Brig?"

Here's a question worth pondering: do you think groups like the Royal Navy or the US Coast Guard still exist in the 24th century? I would think the defense of Earth would be THEIR responsibility, not Starfleet's.

We've seen very little of the Academy, so do we really know what they go through? Don't officer candidates go to something much more akin to a university than the enlisted folks?

Officer candidates still go through boot. Even ROTC programs on actual universities.

 

[BillJ]

Here's a question worth pondering: do you think groups like the Royal Navy or the US Coast Guard still exist in the 24th century? I would think the defense of Earth would be THEIR responsibility, not Starfleet's.

Then where we they during the Dominion War? Why weren't they charged with defending Earth instead of Starfleet? It was Starfleet "troops" that were beamed to every street corner when it was thought a Dominion attack was imminent?

We have to agree to disagree. The show uses way too much of military ideas, military functions for me to see Starfleet as anything other than the Federation's armed forces. Armed Forces do more than just fight, there is a good portion of any armed force that will never have to pick up a weapon or fight, even in a time of war.

SISKO: Sir, the thought of filling the streets with armed troops is as disturbing to me as it is to you, but not as disturbing as the thought of a Jem'Hadar army landing on Earth without opposition. The Jem'Hadar are the most brutal and efficient soldiers I've ever encountered. They don't care about the conventions of war or protecting civilians. They will not limit themselves to military targets. They'll be waging the kind of war that Earth hasn't seen since the founding of the Federation.

SISKO: You want proof? Order Admiral Leyton to withdraw his troops from the streets. See what he does.

JARESH-INYO: He may not have to give up anything. If what you say is true, if the power outage was part of Leyton's plan, then it's worked perfectly. Right now the public overwhelmingly supports the increased security. If I tried to remove those troops over Leyton's objections, I'll have a planetwide riot on my hands.

ODO: With that, you could force Leyton to stand down, make him withdraw the troops.

It is my opinion that they are talking about troops in the military sense of the word. They could have used Starfleet Security or any of a number of ways to describe those folks. General audiences are going to look at the situation and connect troops to the military. Not paramilitary, not the boy scouts, not the French Foreign Legion.

You can say the writers were lazy or come up with a dozen different excuses, but that is what made it to the screen for people to consume.

 

[psCargile]

It would be realistic to have the Security Department be the actual military element of a starship, with all the hallmarks of a military. In a combat situation, the tactical officer is transferred command.

 

[psCargile]

You can say the writers were lazy or come up with a dozen different excuses, but that is what made it to the screen for people to consume.

It also wasn't meant to be this critically analyzed, but here we are.

 

[BillJ]

Officer candidates still go through boot. Even ROTC programs on actual universities.

But we don't know that Starfleet doesn't have something similar, we know very little about the Academy.

 

[fireproof78]

These are nothing more than examples of poor world building.

Which is what this boils down to. Starfleet isn't the military until story telling necessitates that it behaves in a militaristic function.

Or, to misquote "Starship Troopers" "I was a military when the writers said I was. The rest was just red tape."

 

[BillJ]

It also wasn't meant to be this critically analyzed, but here we are.

I do think they knew, by the time they were making DS9, that people were critically analyzing Star Trek to death.

 

[Baxten]

@Crazy Eddie

Uh-huh, combined with JAG and courts-martial, guess what that means? Not an isolated usage.

If it's never been defined as "paramilitary" (it's your speculation) and it's not civilian, and it has been defined as military before, then all the military terminology, especially unique military terms like JAG and court-martial, could only mean one thing: military.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Then where we they during the Dominion War? Why weren't they charged with defending Earth instead of Starfleet? It was Starfleet "troops" that were beamed to every street corner when it was thought a Dominion attack was imminent?

Why would Admiral Leyton have farmed that job out to local military forces? The ENTIRE POINT of that operation was to put Earth under HIS control. Even if you deny the existence of regional militaries, there's no question that Starfleet was usurping the authority of local law enforcement, who ALSO should have been involved in the security effort.

Starfleet was only able to coordinate the defense efforts in that case because the Lakota happened to be in orbit at the time; apparently, all their ground assets (Starfleet or otherwise) were disabled, but Leyton's personal flagship was the only one unaffected, and they used that to push Inyo -- extremely reluctantly -- into declaring a State of Emergency and giving Starfleet total control of Earth's security.

It was a power grab, not an example of standard procedure. And it's telling that Leyton had to sabotage Earth's entire defense grid in order to get it; if Starfleet were the ones responsible for Earth's defense, none of that would even have been neccesary.

It is my opinion that they are talking about troops in the military sense of the word. They could have used Starfleet Security or any of a number of ways to describe those folks.

Why use a four syllable word when a one-syllable colloquialism will do? Besides which, even the word "troop" has widely known civilian uses.

You can say the writers were lazy or come up with a dozen different excuses, but that is what made it to the screen for people to consume.

And yet it wasn't "laziness" that prompted multiple writers to canonize the phrase "Starfleet is not a military organization" at three different times in the organization's history. THAT made it to the screen too.

So I'm asking again: why is it so important to you that Starfleet be a FULLY military organization (not partially, not paramilitary, but fully state-sanctioned military) despite their explicit claims to the contrary?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It would be realistic to have the Security Department be the actual military element of a starship, with all the hallmarks of a military. In a combat situation, the tactical officer is transferred command.

If I was going to reboot TNG, I'd make Tasha Yar a MACO and the designated captain of the Battle Section.

 

[BillJ]

So I'm asking again: why is it so important to you that Starfleet be a FULLY military organization (not partially, not paramilitary, but fully state-sanctioned military) despite their explicit claims to the contrary?

Important? This is a bullshit session. But the evidence for Starfleet being the military far outweighs those statements. At least, for me.

We're on two different sides of a wide river with no bridge.

Time to go play Breath of the Wild!