San Francisco: Never the same twice

I miss the smaller Federation where there was a Final Frontier. You know, when even Vulcan was three days away from Earth.

 

I think Earth in-universe has a tendency to rebuild certain architecture. Case in point, the Golden Gate Bridge in PIC S1 having the same solar panels on it as in DIS S2. Even though the had gotten rid of the solar panels on the Golden Gate Bridge by TMP.

But considering that Federation HQ has been in San Francisco (at least in 2286), as well as Paris, I don’t think its impossible that there is or was a version of the Communication Research Center in Hong Kong. Seeing other parts of Earth, and in other time periods on top of that, is ridiculously rare in Star Trek.

 

Not to be pedantic, but it's Valkris, as Valeris was probably still at the Academy.

Also, Kruge was acting as a rogue agent in service to the Empire. He obviously didn't want any paper trail until he had secured victory.

 

Only in DS9.

In ST6, Picard and Discovery, the Commander in Chief was an admiral in Starfleet.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Commander_in_chief

 

That's not being pedantic, that's just being right.

 

Let's not forget the view from the Café des Artistes in TNG's "We'll Always Have Paris". Technically it's a holodeck recreation of Paris but we might assume it's supposed to be accurate, even though that tube structure is definitely not there whenever we see the Eiffel Tower from the Federation President's office in either the 2290s or 2370s.

Major changes from the Paris of today are the Pont d'Iéna (the bridge) being a much wider structure with a different pattern of arches and apparently now made of brick, and the Champ de Mars gardens, Place du Trocadéro, and Parvis des Libertés et des Droits de l'Homme apparently no longer exist since that transport tube goes right through the middle of all of them.



Perhaps Picard requested a particular period setting – maybe the early 24th century of his youth – which would explain the visual differences.

 

And then there's Discovery season one, which reimagines Paris as an Into Darkness-style overbuilt megalopolis with the Eiffel Tower dwarfed by the surrounding buildings

 

Then Picard dials it back.

Discovery:


Picard:

 

For a culture that we've been told for at least 40+ years that has managed to make the Earth back into a paradise, does anyone find these cities that would nearly rival Coruscant (or Trantor) to look like any kind of paradise?

 

I would imagine any urban centers would grow up to preserve other natural landscapes.

And paradise means different things to different people.

 

My turn to be pedantic that's "chief in command", not "commander in chief". There is a difference.

The President of the Federation is the actual Commander in Chief of all the Federation's military. I can't see any reason why they wouldn't be. Not the actual top ranked Admiral in Starfleet - that's the "chief in command" you just mentioned. But the specific phrase "Commander in Chief" is always the President.

I mean, isn't that for the best, anyway? Why wouldn't the President have ultimate authority over Starfleet? You can't 'really have a democracy without that. If the President can't control the military, you basically have a military dictatorship.

Edit: Paging @Sci! Paging @Sci! I summon thee!

 

No, they say Commander in Chief.

Both are canon. Maybe during times of war/crisis the President gets full authority, but when at peace Starfleet has full control.

 

Paradise means different things for different people. There are people who like to live in bustling cities, where they can go out and grab something to eat/drink and dance at any hour.

Presumably in the Star Trek Earth of the 23rd/24th century everybody gets to live in the environment they like best, or at least has much easier ways of achieving that than today. So those who love cities live in the cities and those who want the quiet of the countryside live there. After all Raffi got to live in a nice big trailer in the middle of nowhere. Just imagine the kind of nighttime sky she gets from her porch!

 

I would imagine that you would have a mix use environment, with farms and forests being "grown" on vertical terraces, underground dwellings and the like, just to keep people out of the open fields as much as possible. Heck, we might have a Jettison environment with sky cities on one hand, Atlantis-like cities on the other. Architects wouldn't be so encumbered with space considerations like we do now. Why not Micro cities like the Bottle City of Kandor (or in that Matt Damon film)?Why not virtual cities, like in TRON and THE MATRIX? And, I mean, if Moriarty and the Countessa could live out their lives in a simulation within a data storage device, well, why not humans? Of course, there are some implications to consider, but still, we can move beyond the BLADE RUNNER style cities, right?

 

IIRC, in ST09, that's exactly what those huge buildings in the middle of Iowa are.

 

They'd have to look more akin to cities proposed by the Venus Project in order to appear like Earth was turned into a paradise.
I'm guessing that most VFX artists have a different view of how the future should look like, and then project that onto Trek without taking everything else into account.

 

Are you saying that because you assume that Earth in Star Trek's version of the 23rd/24th century would have a much larger population than today?
I don't think we've ever been given that indication.

Really with the information we have it's very possible that Star Trek's future Earth has a lower population than today. A widespread increase in living standards and the wider availability of better kinds of pregnancy control (and the removal of the taboo it still has in many places today) might very well have led to a smaller population than we have today.
Combine that with the fact that humans have spread out across not just the solar system but multiple solar systems and that they are shown to create new colonies with quite a high frequency, it seems very likely to me that while the Galactic population of humans is probably far, far higher than today there might be a lot less humans per planet than today.

 

I like to think there are ghost towns across Earth that was abandoned sometimes after WW3, and would resemble a town/city in one of the apocalyptic movies set in the 2000s...


Like Detroit

 

My turn. The US Navy used to refer to its fleet commanders as 'Commander in Chief' (Abbreviated as CINC).
For example, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet (abbr. CINCPACFLT) was an honorific that was used from 1941 until 2002 for the Admiral in overall command of naval forces in the Pacific, including the Seventh and Third Fleets. That title is now just Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet (COMPACFLT).