The Cloud Minders & The Federation

Discussion in 'Star Trek - The Original & Animated Series' started by Methuselah Flint, Sep 20, 2019.

  1. Marsden

    Marsden Commodore Commodore

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    Marsden is very sad.
    That's what I've been saying about anyone falling to their death when antigrav tech is in use.

    It would have been funny if he jumped off the rail and just floated there. The guards could have pulled him back in with butterfly nets.
     
  2. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Even if someone jumped from a ledge, and was falling(let's say head first, so there can be no doubt), and they were transported...

    Wouldn't they just crash into the transporter pad and die?
     
  3. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Ships moving at impulse transporting people between them.

    Planets rotating on their axis.
     
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  4. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Prax
    Let's not complicate the matter
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2019
  5. cgervasi

    cgervasi Commander Red Shirt

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    I wonder if some, esp those with initiative, intelligence, and support from friends and family, do leave. But I imagine it's not easy for a Troglyte to leave their extended family and everything they know, arrange for transportation, make arrangements to for housing in an immigrant community on some other planet, find work, etc. They may be jaded and think have heard of Troglytes who left facing discrimination. Some variants of Troglyte variants of the Ardanan language are far from the standard Stratos variant, resulting in wonky translations. So it's easy for them to just stay in crappy situation they know. Some Troglytes even express anger, possibly driven by some envy and some effects of zenite gas, toward members of the diaspora who were apparently too good to do an honest day's work and are now sweeping the floors for stuck up professors at a university on Vulcan or cleaning hotel rooms and doing god-knows-what-else for rich people on Risa.
     
  6. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    There is no money in the Federation.

    Housing is provided.

    Planets are provided, if the Trogs want their own planet, or they can live anywhere where there is room.

    Transit is provided.

    If any one has told the Trogs that a team of Starships will blow up anyone who tries to impede their freedom, and that if they are given someone in the system to have a conversation with, like a diplomat or a clerk, a few of them can leave quickly, or the Trogs, defended by Starfleet security, can begin an education campaign to let rest of the them know that relocation is a 20 second conversation, and a ten minute queue.

    The UFP is a Nanny State who looks after it's own.

    Of course...

    Ardana's behaviour, could see the planet get kicked out of the UFP, and then the Trogs lose all rights as UFP citizens, so they better get used to being mine dwelling slaves.

    Catch 22.
     
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  7. johnnybear

    johnnybear Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Maybe the Stratos authorities hid their treatment of the Troglodytes which may have raised some eyebrows and interest from Federation officials! A bit like how the people of England have all these rights and yet are not allowed to use them! :p
    JB
     
  8. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    The Federation is an alliance of different planets with different cultures. We could assume that by the TNG era, the Federation is more homogeneous and maybe more centrally governed, with more stringent requirements for new members, but that is not at all the case in earlier times.

    It's implausible that all these other members simply dropped their own customs and adopted a human value system upon entry into this alliance. Andorians also used torture. Vulcans were equally ruthless in other ways. I'm sure the Federation tried to help resolve the conflict on Ardana, but I doubt their membership status was at risk.
     
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  9. Tenacity

    Tenacity Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Except when it doesn't. More likely the UFP protects against external threats, but largely stays out of it's member's affairs.
     
  10. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    In the deleted scenes with Col. West, how many Member Worlds were involved in the Khitomer Conspiracy?
     
  11. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Worlds? All we saw were well-meaning individuals.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  12. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    "Member World Council Representatives"

    I couldn't find it on Youtube, and if I did see it, it was a very long time ago.

    So it's just a triumvirate of Cartwright, Chang, and whosoever that was representing the Romulans?

    Three coups in 100 years, if you count Insurrection and DS9 Homefront/Paradise Lost, from Starfleet.

    Starfleet's powers, and leadership need to pulled apart and weakened or completely replaced.

    TNG Conspiracy doesn't count.
     
  13. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Well, warriors gotta fight. What's to say there isn't a constant coup going on normally, what with the UFP (or the US, say) always being at war and all?

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  14. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I was curious about how many times that we have seen a (named) member world representative misbehaving.
     
  15. BK613

    BK613 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Czenite? Let me guess, it was first refined by a little ol' chemist from Leningrad. :lol:
     
  16. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    I don't see the big deal? The Federation was simply a different entity in the 23rd century versus what came later. More a loose alliance than central, homogeneous state.

    They knew what was going on and didn't care.
     
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  17. Tenacity

    Tenacity Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Journey to Babel is the only time that comes to mind.

    Oh, and Laxanna Troi.
     
  18. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That Orion was a fake Andorian?

    It's been a while, was there something else as well?
     
  19. cgervasi

    cgervasi Commander Red Shirt

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    I think of it like the US and the wild west. Roddenberry explicitly sold TOS as a western in space.

    Our on the frontier, UFP institutions aren't that strong. Kirk has tacit authority to bend the rules and take the law into his own hands.
    More of TNG takes place in the more civilized areas of the UFP, where political and legal institutions usually work, given Picard fewer opportunities to act like the law.
     
  20. cgervasi

    cgervasi Commander Red Shirt

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    This is a lot of passive voice. We aren't told who does the providing and what motivates them to produce. I know there are countless interesting ideas that we should probably save for another thread. For this discussion, we can take at face value the claim from TNG that human social problems have been solved, and they were probably close to solved by the age of TOS.

    When I imagine such a utopian society, I imagine there still being people who struggle. People raised in a mine where there is gas that causes mental disability are a perfect example. I imagine they didn't get the same treatment as children as people with parents with professional jobs on earth. So they grow up to be different people. Some get out of it, but some repeat the behaviors of their parents, even if they are removed from exposure to the gas.

    I think of Ensign Ro as an example. She visits that camp of Bajoran refugees and says they reminded her of her childhood. She got out of that life and wants nothing to do with it now. Despite being out of it, she still has a different attitude from people who group up in prosperous conditions.

    Maybe it's my own limited vision because I consider these social problems to be a fact of life. Maybe to a reader from TNG times, my view would read like someone in antiquity saying city-states being at war most of the time with the victors murdering or enslaving the defeated is just a fact of human life. I imagine in some perfect world where we can snap our fingers and get as much food, transportation, housing, etc as one person can practically use, there would still be people struggling. In my head-canon, this is how the Troglytes live. The UFP has amazing technology to produce things for pennies that aren't worth accounting for. It has evidence-based social programs that help troubled people before they turn to crime or end up in poverty and do it in a way that respects individual rights. And despite those amazing achievements, there're a bunch of Troglytes who speak a variant language that the UT can't always translate right, whose parents smacked when they got frustrated with their own lives, and who don't have the tools to understand how the galaxy works. They can't read Ardanan fluently. They don't know math, so they can't understand concepts like solving for an unknown variable. They don't know logical fallacies. Folklore about demons and weird conspiracy theories sound plausible to them. They have a vague sense that their struggles are someone else's fault or that maybe they really are losers.

    When Kirk sees all this, he says the Federation Bureau of Industrialization can help solve these problems. It's possible Kirk is somewhat overstating how effective Federation institutions are at solving problems like this, but I generally think Kirk is an honest person telling the truth. Vanna is rightly skeptical. She says the Ardanan gov't said this centuries ago, and the problems were never solved. In my head-canon, they are both right. Federation institutions can solve social problems on Ardana, but Vanna is right that social change will be slow in coming. Providing for the Troglytes' material needs is not enough to solve their problems overnight.
     
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