I don't know if anyone's done this before, and don't bring up any of "well it's canon", but just from a story point of view, if you had to pick how humans first met Vulcan's and the birth of the Federation, which first contact story do you prefer?
Strangers From The Sky Vs. First Contact
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Um, Strangers From The Sky isn't about the official first contact between humans and Vulcans. In fact the meeting in that book was covered up.
Well, let's see. It's worth noting that both SFtS and canon have an earlier Vulcan contact on Earth before the official first contact recorded by history. In SFtS, a Vulcan ship crashed on Earth in 2045 and the incident was covered up by the government, with official first contact coming 20 years later when a human warp vessel rescued a disabled Vulcan ship. In canon, a Vulcan survey crew crashed in Carbon Creek, PA in 1957 and lived there secretly for a time, with official first contact coming 106 years later when another Vulcan survey ship detected Cochrane's first warp flight.
Of the two, I think I prefer the canonical version in one key sense, because it makes the Vulcans more advanced, Earth more the underdog. I feel there's too much of a tendency in SF in general, and particularly in Trek, for Earth and humanity to be made too powerful and dominant in the galaxy. I can't fault the novels of the '80s for following the lead that TOS had set in that regard, but I like the fact that more modern productions countered that notion (rooted in the American frontier myths of that era) and showed early warp-era Earth encountering a universe already populated by other, more advanced starfaring peoples.
Another thing the two have in common is that they both involve a time-traveling Enterprise crew getting involved with the events of one of the two "first contacts" with the Vulcans; in the novel it's an involvement with the first, secret contact, while in the film it's with the events surrounding the second, official contact. That's pretty much equally contrived in either case, but maybe a bit more so in the canonical case. But I was never comfortable with the method of time travel in SFtS, since it was just too mystical. Then again, the Borg's use of time travel in FC is a horribly contrived plot device that raises a ton of logic and credibility questions (if the Borg had time travel, then why haven't they already gone back in time and conquered the whole galaxy?), so maybe they're both equally implausible in their own ways.
I think that what I prefer is simply having more than one version of events. It's interesting to get to see different creators' ideas about how key events in Trek history could've happened.
True, but I tend to prefer the 80s attempt to make the Federation a more cooperative interstellar group than modern Trek's seemingly Federation = Earth thing.
I mean before Enterprise came along they seemed to be going with Starfleet being n organization created by the Federation and their ships being the result of sharing their technology. Whereas Enterprise had Starfleet start out as an Earth organization and Federation ships would look to be descended from those, and the novels seemed to make it worse by making the Federation capital the United Earth capital.
So sure there might be problems with Earth starting out on an equal footing to the rest of the galaxy, but at least they didn't go from Noob to top dog over older more advanced races.
Since when? We hardly saw any other Federation races in TOS; it wasn't until "Errand of Mercy" that it was even acknowledged that the Federation included any alien worlds (specifically Vulcan) at all. And even though TMP, TVH, and the later shows included a lot of other races within the Federation, the signage was always solely in English and everything involving the UFP seemed to center around Earth.
Visually, perhaps -- in terms of their exterior shape and design. But if you look past surface appearances, you come to a very different conclusion. ENT explicitly established that Vulcans and Andorians had such technologies as deflector shields and tractor beams before Earth did, as well as having superior sensors and faster warp drives. And at least two races (Klingons and Vissians) were seen to have photon(ic) torpedoes before NX-01 was equipped with them in "The Expanse;" it's reasonable to conclude that Starfleet reverse-engineered the technology from its study of those races' weapons, or maybe bought it outright from the Vissians after the Xindi attack. And of course the show established very early on that the Xyrillians invented holodeck technology. (Also, Phlox is the only character in ENT to use the word "tricorder," which was really a continuity error but could be interpreted to suggest that the tricorder was a Denobulan invention.) So if anything I'd say ENT does more than any prior series to show that Federation technology is of multispecies origin.
The Voyage Home put the Federation Council in San Francisco, and TNG put the UFP capital in Paris. So you can hardly say the novels created the idea of Earth being at the center of the Federation.
You say that as though it's implausible, but it's exactly what happened with Europe in real life. Half a millennium or so ago, Western Europe was the "noob," coming out of the Dark Ages and entering a new age of trade with older, more advanced nations in the Middle East and Asia. It used the wealth and technologies it acquired from those more advanced powers to become prosperous and to spark an industrial revolution that launched its growth into high gear, so that within a few centuries it had surpassed the older, more stable civilizations around it and pretty much come to dominate them.
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I was refering to the 80s novels, not the show
Okay you have a point there. Of course this still begs the question why the Federation would use someone else's space fleet organization as theirs.
Which isn't the same as having the Federation capital in the same building the United Earth used as their capital.
Weren't those older civilizations in some kind of decline at the time though.
What do you mean "someone else?" The Federation includes Earth.
Think of the European Space Agency. Each government within the European Union still maintains its own separate space agency, and they all contribute to the ESA as a collaborative effort -- some build the rockets, some build the probes, others just provide personnel or funding. There are a number of reasons why a collective effort of different planets' space administrations could turn out to be dominated by Earth's space fleet in many respects.
Seems like a trivial distinction to me.
That's what Western-biased history claims, but in reality they were simply in a more stable period. Westerners tend to assume that our current state of rapid progress and growth is the natural order of things and that any society that isn't advancing at the same rate must be "stagnant" or "in decline" or some condescending term like that. But in reality, the development of civilizations, like that of species, follows a pattern of punctuated equilibrium -- rather than evolving at a constant pace, they remain stable as long as they're well-adapted to the conditions they live in, but can undergo rapid change when they need to adapt to new conditions. Civilizations like China and the Islamic world were prosperous, wealthy, and stable, and so had little incentive to make any major alterations in a system that was working for them. But Western Europe was comparatively impoverished and backward, so its people had much more incentive to pursue change and growth. Combine that with a social structure that was supportive of merchants and inventors, a need for faster transportation to reach the treasures of the East or better factories to compete with them, and the convenience of a large supply of coal to power those new technologies, and the necessary factors for industrialization fell into place.
But this isn't really using member's space agency as part of a bigger agency made up of other member's space agencies, its one member's space agency being used as the bigger space agency. I mean they even carried Section 31 over for peets sake (yes I know its not an official or legal organization but nobody seemed to call them on the fact that their possibly using a defunct or at least less powerful organization as their justification for existence).
I just think its one thing to use earth as a capital planet its another to use the same exact place that a member government uses as their capital, it just make the rest of Federation come off as the Uited Earth's puppet states, especially since using the place as the UE capital kind of cme off as lazy writing.
It's worth noting that France is not only the single largest contributor to the ESA, edging out Germany barely, but that the ESA is headquartered in France, mainly uses rockets designed by a French-led consortium, and launches satellites into orbit from a spaceport on French sovereign territory.
There's some precedent for an ambitious, expanding Earth being a dynamic force within the Federation. We know that the Vulcans and Tellarites seem to be more status quo powers, while over the next two centuries the Andorian sphere will contract substantially. Plus Earth, unlike Vulcan or Tellar or Andoria, has been largely neutral in the conflicts of local space, with the signal exception of the Romulan War.
But is the ESA a repurposed version of France's space agency?
Which still doesn't explain why the UE's government headquaters was repurposed as the Federation's government headquaters.
No, but it might appear that way to someone who only knew about it from watching a TV show and didn't have access to more detailed information about its organizational structure. Don't be so quick to assume that your perception of things in the Trek universe is absolute fact. What we see is a work of entertainment, not a scholarly dissertation, and so things get glossed over and simplified.
Lets see
- Same name
- Same job
- Same charter apparently
- Same ships at first
Heck the relaunch even had them using USS designations and NCC numbers.
Yeah I can't help but think that their supposed to be the same organization based on all of this.
It's not obvious to me that Strangers in the Sky is completely incompatible with the current timeline. Both the Carbon Creek encounter and the SitS contacts were kept secret, Carbon Creek arguably to a lesser extent than SitS--T'Pol knew of it in the 22nd century. Some version of SitS does seem to exist in the current novelverse--didn't a TNG character mention in one of the Typhon Pact novels that they'd read a certain unnamed book and that it really wasn't how it happened?
With Carbon Creek, one has too wonder if that actually happened, or if that was a lie by the Vulcan government to cover a mission gone wrong, such as the events of "Strangers From The Sky". As I recall at the end of the episode T'Pol mentions about trying to find info on the one Vulcan who stayed and wasn't able to find anything.
But story wise it is interesting how SFTS has the events pushed farther away from World War III, whereas FC was set basically on the doorstep of the War. It's almost like we have two stories about the same thing, but one is set in the late-1940's after WWII, while the other is set in the late-1960's.
With FC I find it surprising that Zefram Cochrane was able to even acquire the necessary materials in order to redesign the missile---in the middle of a refugee camp, and most likely a highly devastated country.
But story wise it is interesting how SFTS has the events pushed farther away from World War III, whereas FC was set basically on the doorstep of the War. It's almost like we have two stories about the same thing, but one is set in the late-1940's after WWII, while the other is set in the late-1960's.
With FC I find it surprising that Zefram Cochrane was able to even acquire the necessary materials in order to redesign the missile---in the middle of a refugee camp, and most likely a highly devastated country.
First -- seriously? "Starfleet" is just about the most generic name possible for a fleet of starships. The term was in use in science fiction for decades before Star Trek used it. You might as well complain that the United States still used the terms "Army" and "Navy" for its armed forces after becoming independent from Britain.
Second and third -- it's trivial to point out that they have the same job and charter. The whole reason you're comparing them in the first place is because they fill the same role. So it's pointless to devote half your list to something so completely circular, let alone to claim it's probative of anything.
And fourth -- of course they use the same ships! Why wouldn't the Federation Starfleet keep using the ships its member fleets had used? That would surely include Earth ships as well as Vulcan, Andorian, etc.
I think that was a bit of a continuity glitch. Clearly Earth Starfleet ships in canon did not use USS designations, so that was an error on the books' part.
In a sense, they are, in that the later organization includes the former. So naturally they have a lot in common. But that doesn't mean they're completely identical either.
It is, because it references a lot of events from the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology's version of history that have since been contradicted -- the sublight colonization of Alpha Centauri in 2048, the warp drive breakthrough in 2055, and first official contact with the Vulcans being when the UNSS Amity rescued a damaged Vulcan ship near Neptune in 2065.
Actually there was nothing in "Carbon Creek" about a government coverup. T'Pol said the incident was well-documented on Vulcan, and said nothing about trying to determine Mestral's fate. Rather, she allowed Archer and Trip to believe she'd made up the whole thing as a tall tale -- "You asked me to tell you a story." Although the final scene of her holding T'Mir's handbag in her quarters implies that it really did happen.
Except that SFTS was written before TNG, so at the time, there was a very different concept of when WWIII was. TOS pretty much said that the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s were the third world war. It was "Encounter at Farpoint" that retconned WWIII into a mid-21st-century conflict, because it was only a few years before the 1990s at that point so Roddenberry pushed it farther back for credibility. Yet another reason the continuities aren't compatible.
But with the way the Vulcan government was run at he time of "Carbon Creek" (and even centuries before) it is very possible that the whole thing was a deception on the Vulcan people, and T'Pol possible "found" something that the Vulcan government had planted years earlier.
Sloan in DSN: "Inquisition" said that Section 31 was "part of the original Starfleet Charter" -- implying the existence of multiple, separate Starfleets. It makes perfect sense to assume that the Federation Starfleet is a separate organization from the United Earth Starfleet and that it inherited or absorbed many UESF ships, facilities, and personnel (including the conspirators to the Section 31 criminal syndicate), just as it would have inherited or absorbed many Vulcan Defense Force ships, facilities, and personnel, and just as it would have inherited many Andorian Imperial Guard ships, facilities, and personnel.
I see no more reason to assume that the Federation Starfleet is the same organization as the United Earth Starfleet than I do to assume that the United States Navy is the same organization as the Massachusetts State Navy.
You keep coming back to this concern, but I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're asking. Are you asking about the Federation and United Earth capitals, or the Federation and United Earth capitols?
A capital is the city (or, in Star Trek's case, the planet) in which a sovereign state's government is officially headquartered. A capitol is a building in which a government (or, more specifically, a legislature) is officially headquartered. A capitol is located within a capital.
Now, as far as the Federation sharing a capital planet with United Earth -- let's face it, this is pretty much inevitable. The Federation capital planet was realistically-speaking going to be one of its Members' capital worlds. That it is Earth actually suggests a compromise between Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar, since Earth was the "honest broker" rather than a hegemonic power. In fact, United Earth had very recently been little more than a client state of the Confederacy of Vulcan.
Now, as far as the capital city goes -- this is flatly false, so far as I can tell. Unless I missed something very major in the ENT novels, the capital city of United Earth has not yet been established. We know from ENT: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing that the United Earth Prime Minister maintained offices in Paris, France, in which he sometimes held Cabinet meetings. But we also know from the immediate prior novel, ENT: Kobayashi Maru, that the United Earth Prime Minister maintained offices in San Francisco (which was the city which also housed the Coalition of Planets Security Council). I can recall no mention of what city housed the Parliament of United Earth. The actual capital city, if any, of United Earth was not revealed so far as I can recall.
As far as their respective capitols...
I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to.
The closest I can think is that you've gotten the Palais de la Concorde confused with the Place de la Concorde. A Time to Kill and, later, Articles of the Federation, established the Palais de la Concorde to be the Federation's capitol, housing both the Federation Council and the Federation President. ENT: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing established that the United Earth Prime Minister's Paris office was located in the Place de la Concorde.
Now, the thing is, the Place de la Concorde is a real location. Place, in this context, refers to a large public square in Paris, of which the Place de la Concorde is one of the most famous. Indeed, Articles established that the Palais was built on the Place in part because of its historical significance.
Now, I tend to agree with you that it was a subjectively bad decision to reveal that the U.E. P.M. had an office at the Place, because it implies a certain Earth-centric mentality in the symbolism for the Federation capitol. However, we should bear in mind that we don't really know what the Federation capitol's exterior looks like -- it could full well be a hybrid of Human, Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite architectural styles.
And it's not exactly unprecedented for new governments to build upon those buildings that came before: the Soviet Union used the czarist regime's Moscow Kremlin; the President of the French Repubic resides in the Palais de l'Élysée, which once housed French aristocracy; the President of Ireland resides in Áras an Uachtaráin, which was once the official residence of the Lords Lieutenant of Ireland, the British Crown's viceregal representatives in Ireland before independence. If anything, going to the trouble of building a new capitol on the site of a well-situated government building once used by one of the Member governments is more egalitarian than we often see in real life.
(Side note: Even if the Palais had existed before the Federation as a United Earth Capitol, its appropriation by the Federation wouldn't be unprecedented in history. Before the construction of the United States Capitol in Washington, the U.S. Congress and its predecessor, the Congress of the Confederation, sat in what was then the Pennsylvania State House [now known as Independence Hall], the Maryland State House, and what was then New York City Hall [and came to be known as Federal Hall]. And during the Civil War, the [illegitimate, obviously] Confederate States Congress appropriated the Alabama State Capitol and Virginia State Capitol to serve as the Confederate States Capitol.)
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To what end? I fail to see how perpetrating such a fraud in their own historical records would benefit the Vulcan government. If anything, it makes the Vulcan space service seem somewhat incompetent, given that their ship malfunctioned and crash-landed during a recon mission against a two-bit pre-warp planet.
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