To reduce people dying.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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Well, I am rewatching the first season of Disco and one thing strikes me as funny, it's that Starfleet is always a day late and a dollar short with the orders that they give Lorca and the Discovery. Who put these clowns in charge?
I don't see how. In one episode (I think "The Next Phase") they come to the rescue of a Romulan ship and how do these assholes repay them for that, by trying to get them to blow themselves up!!! Why would you sign a treaty with people like that?
If war had broken out with the Romulans, Federation ships would have been actually blown up instead of merely been threatened, so...
I don't see why. The Russians and the Americans or more generally the Est and the West had no treaty for many decades and even were in a state of cold war, yet no actual war ever happened between these two powers. You don't need to sign a treaty with unreliable people, what you need is to show them that you're strong enough to defend yourself against their attacks. Diplomacy is fine but only when there is a modicum of trust between two powers.
Okay.
That was achieved through the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction which, first of all, could easily have backfired and destroyed most of human civilization (and nearly did on more than one occasion), and secondly isn't even an option in Star Trek, anyway. There is no Federation/Romulan equivalent to an unstoppable nuclear arsenal.
Where the stakes aren't literally existential, military rivalries generally tend toward hot war most of the time, not cold war (or at least intermittent hot war).
Mutual annihilation is overkill. You only need to show them that you're willing to retaliate and won't let them get away with anything they'll do to you. The Romulans are no better than any bully, they're only willing to attack if they think that they're going to get away with it.
That's pretty much how you get the other kids to respect you when you are at school you have to show them once and for all that you won't let them push you around, you definitely don't need to kill them all.
The Jar-Jar cross-over we’ve all never waited for....?
Yes... he can.
Because that's the nature of Romulans. If you understand their nature then you know how to work with them. It isn't black and white but a procedure of give and take, and negotiating. Also, the treaty came from the Earth-Romulan War that was done via subspace radio after a terrible war between the two powers. You have to start somewhere.
From a storytelling standpoint the hero ship cloaking just would have been way too convenient. You could avoid basically any problem with "oh we'll just cloak".
Yeah, somewhere but not in an obvious position of disadvantage.
What if the Romulans had said: Ok we will limit ourselves to one ship per month (that is they will attack it) but if you retaliate then it will be an all-out war!!! Should the federation have accepted those terms? Anything is better than war right?
The Federation had no interest in cloaking technology. What would you do?Yeah, somewhere but not in an obvious position of disadvantage.
What if the Romulans had said: Ok we will limit ourselves to one ship per month (that is they will attack it) but if you retaliate then it will be an all-out war!!! Should the federation have accepted those terms? Anything is better than war right?
Cloaking technology would be particularly useful to cargo ships who could cross enormous distances without the fear of being attacked by pirates. Note that Klingon cargo ships have cloaking technology, if them then why not ours?
The producers once said that Starfleet are the good guys and heroes don't go sneaking around. It's a weak-ass argument and excuse but one that probably fits in-universe given how the Federation tends to advertise itself. Ethical. Transparent. We don't do sneak attacks. Only people who want to do bad things hide like that. We're better than that.
So if you're shot at it makes you a bad guy to try to hide from that...It looks like they didn't think this through.
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