Presidents of the Federation Are Based in France—Why?

Bigger stakes, too. In the show, they were just another ship (one of 12 or so...) exploring the outer reaches on behalf of an otherwise unseen agency. In the movies (including TNG and Kelvinverse), they're the greatest heroes of all time, saving Earth itself five or six different times out of 13 films (no Earth in Insurrection and Beyond, both considered "episodic" by fans).

Some episodes of the various spin-offs feature Earth-saves as well (BOBW, Endgame, Xindi Crisis), and any time travel episode (even TOS ones like COTEOF) feature the higher stakes of restoring the timeline, and DIS apparently saved the entire multiverse just now. So the divide isn't crystal clear.

 

I figure that by the 23rd century they'd have seismic control systems the same way they have weather control systems.

Even today, it's a well known phenomenon that fluid injection into fault-lines can cause man-made earthquakes, either through oil fracking exploration and extraction or during attempts to bury hazardous materials deep underground. By doing small controlled fluid injections into well known and mapped fault-lines you could ease pressure on the faults by triggering hundreds of tiny quakes in order to reduce the likelihood of or prevent the next "Big One."

http://www.achangeinthewind.com/201...off-earthquakes-on-the-san-andreas-fault.html
http://www.nature.com/news/fluid-injection-causes-ground-to-creep-before-quakes-1.17727

And that's without getting into fanciful seismic and volcanic tech from STID like the "Cold Fusion Device" (which could potentially solidify and secure a fault) or the "Hydro-Bomb" from the DSC finale.

 

TOS I presume wanted to stress the outer reaches angle. A show tethered to earth downplays distances somewhat. A ship that never sees earth makes the final frontier seem more convincing.

TOS movies are about the crew, a family with whom we've already bonded with. Also the technology to showcase a futuristic earth was there with the movies and the opportunity to dazzle audiences was too good to pass up. Futuristic depictions of earth being relatively scarce before the internet and when TV technology was very agricultural.

 

I believe there was also some general thought that they didn't want to get into predicting what kind of socio-economic system won the Cold War. Was Future Earth capitalist, communist, socialist, or something altogether different? As I recall, the original writers guide's advised getting too specific about what Future Earth was like to avoid those kind of predictions.

Clearly, this policy fell by the wayside when it came to the later movies and TV series.

 

I wouldn't say a threat to Earth is necessarily "bigger," just closer to home. I mean, if Khan or Kruge had gotten Genesis, that could've endangered dozens or hundreds of worlds, not just one. If the God Entity had escaped from Sha Ka Ree, much of the galaxy could've been endangered, or at least that was implied, though not really effectively shown. A renewed state of war with a dying and desperate Klingon Empire could've devastated much of the Federation. The Borg are a galactic-scale threat whether they jeopardize Earth or not. And Shinzon's attack on Earth was meant to be just the opening salvo in a larger war of conquest, while Nero's was the second attack in his campaign to wipe out all the major worlds of the Federation. Admiral Marcus's scheme to engineer a war would've devastated many worlds, and Krall intended to lead the Swarm on a war of conquest against the Federation at large.

So if anything, I'd say the movies where Earth was directly threatened tended to have smaller stakes, or else had stakes that would still have been quite large even without Earth being involved. V'Ger and the Whale Probe didn't seem to have any specific hostile agenda beyond Earth, and it was just a starting point for Shinzon and Nero. The only movie in which the attack on Earth raised the stakes in and of itself (beyond the general disruption to the Federation if it lost its capital) was First Contact, because the time-travel attack on Earth's past would have wiped out the whole Federation and probably much of the rest of the galaxy.

It was also to avoid the risk of making predictions that would look outdated or silly later on, like predicting that a technology would develop much slower than in real life (like handheld communication boxes) or much faster than in real life (like manned Saturn probes and cryogenic sleeper ships). That's why TOS tried to be vague about just how far in the future it was -- another policy that fell by the wayside later on.

 

The original question was meant strictly within the context of why they chose France as the main location of the Federation Presidents' office, not to discredit a country for no reason, in case someone perceived it as harsh.

If some people believe that the decision was made solely to save money on a matte painting, that is fine. To me it feels like it was given more thought than that, even if saving money in the process was a helpful side effect.

That is all.

 

We can reasonably conclude that Mojave was accurately shown in the first TOS pilot, even though it was in an illusion.

 

I think they chose Paris because they didn't want to be too Americacentric or Anglocentric, so they wanted Earth's capital to be something that felt more "globalist" to their American audience -- although they couldn't quite let go of their Eurocentrism and put the capital in Beijing or New Delhi or Sao Paulo, say. Paris is a natural choice, because it's a city that's been the site of countless international treaties over the centuries, including the treaties that ended the World Wars and America's involvement in Vietnam, and forward-looking, scientifically important international agreements like the establishment of the International System of Weights and Measures (i.e. the metric system) and the Paris Climate Agreement (though that was long after TUC, of course).

So if they wanted a city that was familiar to Western audiences, non-American, and associated with globalism, peace, and progress (as you'd want for the Federation capital), really, what other city could they have picked but Paris?

 

True. Although all we really see is a pretty green picnic area in what used to be a desert.

 

Are we talking in universe or production reasons?

Production reasons, I just assume it was just an attempt to be recognizable to the audience. San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. Paris and the Eiffel Tower. Earth and humans. They are just easily recognizable things.

In universe, I have my own theory on why Paris and Earth. Lets first admit that Paris is a beautiful city (I assume. Never been) so Earth (and the Federation) want to look their best to everyone. Look at this nice city we have. Now why Earth is the capitol of the Federation? Enterprise did establish that Earth and humanity is what brought all these different aliens together. By the time the Federation formed, they all may have viewed Earth as being honest in its desires for peace, but still didn't fully trust each other. If we assume the possibility that the Earth government and its Starfleet were consumed by the Federation (that it wasn't simply just a member of the Federation, but is the Federation) it would make sense also that the Federation would simply take over the existing government infrastructure.

 

I'll admit, one thing I always found odd is that Starfleet Command and the Federation President are in two different places with very noticeable time zone differences. There's nine hours difference between Paris and San Francisco. That must create some unnecessary complications.

 

^ Perhaps in the Trek future, there are no time zones. That could be one of the reasons stardates were invented.

 

There are. Time zones were mentioned in on screen dialogue in the Homefront/Paradise Lost story.

 

The President of the US and the Pentagon often have to deal in real time with military crises happening in distant countries with different time zones. Leaders of different countries around the world often have to discuss urgent business on the phone at all hours of the day. Time zone differences are a minor inconvenience, but nothing that can't be worked around.

Besides, dealing with different time zones on Earth is nothing compared to reconciling timekeeping on different planets with different rotational and orbital periods, and that's before you even consider relativity and non-simultaneity. The science teams that control Mars rovers like Spirit and Opportunity live on Martian time, where a "day" (sol) is 2.5% longer than Earth's, so they have to get up and go to work 37 minutes later every day, and many of their work shifts are in the middle of the night.

 

Yeah, but at least the White House and the Pentagon are in the same time zone, same city even. I just imagine how difficult it must be having a nine hour gap between the Federation President and Starfleet Command.

"Get me the Starfleet Chief of Staff right now!"
"Ah, he's still in bed, Mr. President."
"But it's one in the afternoon!"
"It's only four AM in San Francisco."

 

If it's that much of an emergency, presumably someone could wake them up?

 

You'd still have to wait for them to get woken up. Whereas, if they were in the same time zone, that much more efficient.

 

I daily work with such time differences when talking to colleagues on other continents (mostly Indians and U.S. people, being Western European myself). You get used to taking such things into account, though we rarely have urgent matters that can't wait for a few hours. I suppose accepting that you can be called out of bed for really urgent matters every now and then with would come with such high-ranking job descriptions as in your example.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the 'working distance' between the Starfleet Fleet of Staff and the Federation president is much larger than between the U.S. president and his military chief of staff, so that the frequency of their contact is lower, barring extreme emergencies of course.

 

Yeah, but if a crisis happens in the Mideast or Asia or somewhere when it's the middle of the night in Washington, then both the President and the Joint Chiefs have to be awakened in the middle of the night. It's an expected part of the job.

Besides, if the Borg or the Dominion decide to attack the Federation, do you really think they'll bother to time their invasion to the President's convenience?