It authorizes a starship to eradicate all life on a planet that's deemed to pose a significant enough threat.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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Kind of makes the Talos IV death penalty look like a reasonable measure. 
I've always felt General Order 24 is probably the justification that allowed Sisko to poison the Maquis planet in DS9's "For the Uniform." Sisko's wording to Eddington is that the Maquis have become an "intolerable threat" to the security of the Federation after acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction and attacking a Federation starship.
That's basically the justification for General Order 24 in TOS, that Starfleet is authorized to destroy a planet if a captain deems the situation a threat to the Federation. Fans of Warhammer 40K (i.e., an extremely dystopian science-fiction setting, where human civilization is a cross between the Catholic Church during the inquisition and Nazi Germany) giggle that one of the most optimistic works of science-fiction has their own "exterminatus" order.
I love that in the episode Worf pauses when Sisko gives the order to make the planet uninhabitable to all human life. Worf, the guy who always counseled the aggressive course of action on the Enterprise, is like: "You wanna do what?"
I mean, during the brief Klingon War in DSC both Starfleet and Ambassador Sarek are perfectly willing to detonate a bomb at the core of Qo'noS and blow up the Klingon Homeworld from within. Billions would have died, including uncounted innocents. General Order 24 wasn't Trek's first rodeo at the War Crime Arena.
You know what? That is an excellent reason for that action. And also a good reason why Sisko did not face any repercussions. (None mentioned on screen, anyway.)
Their tech levels are different in different areas; each is better at some things and worse in others. Star Wars appears to have faster FTL and the ability to make over planet-sized megastructures; Star Trek appears to have teleportation, time travel and solid holograms.
There doesn’t seem to be any interstellar body similar to the UN or ICC that enforces something like sanctions or can be used against any of the officials of the various governments for anything we’d currently consider a war crime. It all seems to be based on individual agreements between governments and whether those governments choose to respond to a violation.
That would imply there’s probably not any equivalent to the Geneva Conventions or non-proliferation treaty (e.g., while the existence of the Genesis Device creates controversy for the implication it can be used as a weapon, no one ever even suggests it’s “illegal” or would be illegal to use it in that manner).
There’s an episode of DS9 (“Rules of Engagement”) where the Federation is considering extraditing Worf to the Klingons on war crimes (i.e., allegedly destroying a Klingon civilian transport that had wandered into the middle of a war zone).
When the episode was reviewed over at the AV Club a long time ago, I remember people pointed out some really glaring issues about the entire thing.
1. How do the Klingons have any standing to demand anything? Since they were the ones attacking medical transports in the first place.
2. Similar to how the Klingon ambassador in The Voyage Home is outraged by a Klingon crew being killed while sidestepping the murder of the crew of the USS Grissom, how exactly do the Klingons think the situation makes them look like victims if they put the situation in motion by attacking a medical convoy?
3. The fact the Federation even entertains the request seems crazy. At the very least, you would think they’d demand the captains of the Birds of Prey involved in the battle be turned over for trial by the Federation if the Klingons wanted to play that kind of game.
Classic ending inspired by the similar ending to seminal crime-movies like The Long Good Friday or The Italian Job.
I thought it was perfect. Still do.
Fair enough. 
That wouldn't be surprising. The Republic is much older than the UFP: a history of at least 25,000 years of interstellar travel against the 2,3 centuries of the UFP. Plenty of time for technology to advance. The Federation is still very 'early interstellar era' compared to that, even though it fancies itself technologically advanced (and is, in fact, advancing quickly).
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We have several explanations from which to choose
Nonsense! We see the Enterprise-D drill through planet crusts and blow gaping holes in Borg cubes with its phasers. We can calculate that the power produced by the Enterprise-D's phasers based on what we see on screen must be capable of 68 PW, and possibly as high as 100PW.
We also know that the Enterprise-D carries a standard complement of 275 photon torpedoes, though a Galaxy-class could be outfitted to carry many times that number. A standard photon torpedo has an explosive yield of around 50MT, so the Enterprise-D carries almost 14,000MT of destructive power in torpedoes alone, which is over three times the current estimated destructive power of all nuclear weapons on Earth combined.
How the hell does Slave I come close to matching these numbers? The only thing where Star Wars definitely beats Star Trek in technological terms is hyperdrive being HUGELY faster than warp drive.
How do we know that? I don't know how to convert warp factors to any other speed unit...
It seems like the Millennium Falcon could get you anywhere in the galaxy within a few days, while Voyager would take a century to fly across it all. Star Trek ships have gotten much faster than Voyager in the 25th and 32nd centuries but they're still not Star Wars speeds. Except for Discovery.
I think except for speed, STAR TREK technology is much more advanced than STAR WARS.
Example: the Death Star. It can destroy a planet in one shot, but it is massive. Like, the size of a moon massive.
The Xindi planet destroyer was pretty big, but it wasn't as large as the Death star.
The ability to do the same kind of damage but requiring less space (and possibly power) to do it makes it more advanced.
Example: the Death Star. It can destroy a planet in one shot, but it is massive. Like, the size of a moon massive.
The Xindi planet destroyer was pretty big, but it wasn't as large as the Death star.
The ability to do the same kind of damage but requiring less space (and possibly power) to do it makes it more advanced.
You're counting in Earth's point of view.
Plenty of UFP members have been warping around the galaxy for a lot longer than humans have before Ol' Zeffie fired up the Phoenix. Not to mention the kind of guns they used to shoot each other with.
The UFP actually IS advanced because of those members. Humans just had the guts to get them to talk instead of shoot each other or ignore each other. We're dumb as shit but boy, do we have spunk.
I think so too. The transporter could've quickly finished off the Death Star by beaming a torpedo to its destination. No magic farm boy needed.
True, but are there UFP members that have been in space for anywhere near those 25,000 years? The Vulcans might have been around for 2,000 years or so (and they seem to advance slower than humans), but are there members significantly older than them?
And still, a lot of Star Wars tech is dated by UFP standards. Weaponry, shields, FTL. The Falcon could do .5 faster than lightspeed if I recall correctly. Warpdrive is a lot faster. Computers seem more advanced in Star Trek.
Really, the only thing that seems more advanced are the lightsabers and droids.
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