In a Soviet elementary school, the pupils are asked to tell stories about Comrade Lenin's good deeds. Little Mashenka is first: "When in the winter Comrade Lenin saw that his neighbors had no firewood, he went out to the forest to chop some logs for them himself." The teacher nods and compliments her. Grishenka is second: "During the revolution, Comrade Lenin ordered his soldiers to always be polite and kind to women and children, and so they always treated them with respect." Grishenka gets his praise as well. Then little Vanyusha raises his hand to speak: "When kids were playing football outside Comrade Lenin's study, they kicked the ball in through his window. Comrade Lenin yelled profanities at them, then cut the ball open with a springblade and threw it onto his house's roof." The teacher looks at him in confusion: "But why is it a good deed, Vanyusha?" "Well, ma'am, he could've had them shot, couldn't he?"
None of this is relevant to the point, or to Star Trek in general, which is par for the course with you. As for the rest of this post, it is truly astonishing. Feel free to discuss Native American history, and how kind the US Army was to them, in an appropriate forum. This is not one.
Yes, we should call people traitors who are forced under threat of violence to give up their land then renege on it. Never heard of the blankets with Small Pox or the Trail of Tears among other atrocities. Lots of mercy was being handed out.
I think there was a Trek ship called the Beagle. Named after Darwin's research ship, or after Archer's pooch?
Agreed. Well those are incredibly disappointing things to learn! It's a perfectly good name for a starship. Nog was the first Ferengi to join Starfleet -- he was a pioneer who broke down barriers. He was already an extremely accomplished officer in the latter seasons of DS9 and I'm sure his career after the show ended was even more accomplished. I mean, fascists and imperialists are fund of overly-violent names for their projects. *shrugs* Laika seems like the sort of name you give to a shuttlecraft or runabout attached to the USS Yuri Gagarin. I completely agree. No way Starfleet would name a ship after an imperialist murdering bastard like him. I like to imagine that the USS Cortez is actually shorthand for the USS Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Jesus fucking Christ. Or maybe he's regarded in the 24th Century the way figures like George Washington or Winston Churchill are starting to come to be regarded: People who did amazing things that deserve praise and memory, but also did terrible things that deserve condemnation. I'm sure Starfleet named the USS Crazy Horse -- and I would hope the ship is actually the USS Tȟašúŋke Witkó, just colloquially called the Crazy Horse -- to honor his fight against U.S. imperialism rather than in honor of harm he may have caused innocent people. I mean, most names would sound weird if you run their etymology through a translator. "The alien captain is Erica Johnson... Wait. How can her name be 'Eternal Female Monarch Who is the Son of the One Graced by the High Sky God?'"
Don't forget the bald guy, He Who is Graced by the High Sky God from the Land of Sacred Light (TRANSLATION MATRIX ERROR: etymology uncertain; alternative suggested: land-of-wolves, land-of-sacred-woods) Who is Somehow Also From the Land of the Woodpeckers.
The High Guard from Andromeda had some really cool names for its ship classes, such as Glorious Heritage (the Andromeda itself), Victory's Crucible, Siege Perilous, Four Freedoms, Asceticism of Action - I have absolutely no idea what that means, I just thought it sounded kinda neat - and my all time favorite, Righteous Fist of Heaven.
Well - there was a French ship during the 1790's with basically the same type of name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Droits_de_l'Homme_(1794)
Most of those names are still more apt than the name of the company cleaning the toilets at my previous working place - New Life. (No joke, that was their name for real) Made me me a bit hesitant to use these toilets.
Might be a problem if Starfleet ever names some starships after the Apollo 10 LEM Snoopy and CSM Charlie Brown.
I would prefer emphasis on discovery/exploration captains, innovators and vessels, over military vessels, captains and leaders. Yet often at points in time, they were one and the same. And even Stafleet still seems to blur those lines and missions.
My first fan starship I ever designed when I was a kid was the U.S.S. Infidel and it bummed me out when I came to the realisation that it was probably not the best name for a starship.
I named one of my early kitbashes USS Kirov, 'cause the name sounds cool and the Russian cruiser was a powerful, cool-looking ship, and only later found out who Kirov himself was. And then the Wall fell, and they changed the name of the actual ship, and I realized nobody 300 years in the future would probably name a ship after a prominent Soviet... Oh well.