Age of the Federation....

[Kemaiku]

Irrelevant to a discussion since Enterprise gives the canonical representation whether certain individuals are capable of acting like adults and accepting that rather than sticking their heads in the sand.

It's been shown to us at this point, it's the height of childishness to ignore that in favour of imaginary scenarios.

 

[Warped9]

Irrelevant to a discussion since Enterprise gives the canonical representation whether certain individuals are capable of acting like adults and accepting that rather than sticking their heads in the sand.

It's been shown to us at this point, it's the height of childishness to ignore that in favour of imaginary scenarios.

Whatever. The discussion is simply looking at things from a certain perspective. If it annoys you then just ignore it.

 

[uniderth]

Irrelevant to a discussion since Enterprise gives the canonical represe...

Hahaha!

 

[Christopher]

Doctor Who had a planet called Vulcan back in 1966 too but it was called earth colony Vulcan and according to the Radio Times of that week the story was set in the year 2020 so we have only four more years to get there before we become a separate reality!
JB

Err, so you still believe that all the invasions UNIT fought off in the '70s and/or '80s actually happened?

Anyway, that's another Vulcan that was portrayed as a hot planet and might have been intended to be the cis-Mercurian Vulcan rather than an extrasolar planet.

Also, you can't rely too much on the RT's dates for Doctor Who's future-based stories. This is something I've picked up through the DVD commentaries in my recent rewatch -- all the stories had to have dates assigned for the benefit of the costume and scenery departments so they'd know what era to design for, but all the stories set in the future tended to use "2000" or the like as a catchall for "sometime in the distant future." So even stories that logically had to be centuries ahead were marked as c. 2000 as a placeholder, and the Radio Times sometimes took that too literally.

Considering how much GR was influenced by Forbidden Planet it's possible that some sort of Federation or alliance of some form was in the back of his mind even though early on there are no refrences to it.

A work of fiction that posits an interstellar federation or alliance of planets isn't necessarily positing a multispecies alliance. There were plenty of SF works in the '40s, '50s, and '60s that were based in a rather imperialist mindset, with humans building vast empires across the stars and aliens, if they were present at all, tending to be comparatively backward, generally objects of anthropological study or outright conquest (often under the assumption that being conquered and culturally assimilated by humans would benefit them), or else once-advanced races that had long since destroyed themselves due to some fatal flaw.

Indeed, that seems to be the model Forbidden Planet used. The United Planets appeared to be a strictly human civilization, probably consisting of Earth and its colonies. The Krell are the only aliens suggested to exist, and they're long-extinct.

Note that this is also what Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual implied -- that the Alpha Centauri Concordium of Planets, the United Planets of 61 Cygni, and the Star Empire of Epsilon Indii (sic) were human civilizations. The UP's flag was based on a swan (Cygnus), and the Star Empire's flag had an "EI" in the middle -- both suggesting human civilizations based in Western/European heritage, not Tellarites and Andorians as later postulated. So FJ's model seemed to be that the Federation was a collection of mostly human worlds with a few alien members here and there.

When Gene Coon coined the term "Federation," he may have had the same thing in mind, which is why it could be used so interchangeably with "Earth." It wasn't until "Journey to Babel" that we saw the UFP portrayed as a truly interspecies alliance, rather than as a human civilization with the Vulcans tagging along.

It's easy to rationlize some references to "Earth ship" (singular or plural) as throwaay references in similar vein as people always do in conversation where they are not being consciously specific. It's a little different when it's referenced in an official ship's log where the recorder should be making an effort to be precise.

I thought rationalization after the fact was the thing you wanted to avoid. We're looking for evidence of what the original intentions of Star Trek's creators may have been. And it's pretty clear that the early writers intended the Enterprise to be an Earth ship, until Coon invented the Federation.

Thanks. Is that also instance #1 in production order?

I always favor production order, but "Arena" came first in airdate order as well.

 

[Nerys Myk]

TOS is always a tough one when these subjects come up. The show was constantly evolving, especially in Season One. Ideas were being tossed aside and new ones brought in to replace them. Some were one offs and never mentioned again. Some just fit the story. Tight continuty wasn't always a Star Trek hallmark.

 

[Longinus]

As someone already pointed out, there doesn't need to be a contradiction between Enterprise being both an UESPA ship and a Starfleet ship. My interpretation is that during TOS era, Starfleet was an umbrella organisation consisting of space agencies of the Federation's member governments. This could even explain the different patches. Maybe Enterprise's badge was actually an UESPA mission badge, Decker's pretzel indicated that Constellation was commissioned by Andorian Imperial Fleet, etc. (That's also might be a reason why it had a registry that doesn't match with UESPA's 17XX registries for Constitution class ships.)

 

[Christopher]

As someone already pointed out, there doesn't need to be a contradiction between Enterprise being both an UESPA ship and a Starfleet ship. My interpretation is that during TOS era, Starfleet was an umbrella organisation consisting of space agencies of the Federation's member governments. This could even explain the different patches. Maybe Enterprise's badge was actually an UESPA mission badge, Decker's pretzel indicated that Constellation was commissioned by Andorian Imperial Fleet, etc. (That's also might be a reason why it had a registry that doesn't match with UESPA's 17XX registries for Constitution class ships.)

I think you must've picked that up from my Rise of the Federation novels, or from online discussions thereof. I did portray the early Starfleet as the amalgam of the member worlds' space agencies, and I established that the "arrowhead" insignia was the UESPA emblem (already confirmed in Voyager: "Friendship One," and by the inclusion of tiny arrowheads on the Earth Starfleet enlisted rating patches in Enterprise), the Constellation "pretzel" was Andorian Guard, the Antares "hoofprint" was the Tellar Space Administration, and the Exeter rectangle was the Alpha Centauri Space Research Council.

 

[Longinus]

I think you must've picked that up from my Rise of the Federation novels, or from online discussions thereof. I did portray the early Starfleet as the amalgam of the member worlds' space agencies, and I established that the "arrowhead" insignia was the UESPA emblem (already confirmed in Voyager: "Friendship One," and by the inclusion of tiny arrowheads on the Earth Starfleet enlisted rating patches in Enterprise), the Constellation "pretzel" was Andorian Guard, the Antares "hoofprint" was the Tellar Space Administration, and the Exeter rectangle was the Alpha Centauri Space Research Council.

I'm afraid I've never read any of your books, but it is possible that associating the pretzel with Andoria is due someone saying so on these forums, and that person may have gotten it from your books...
TOS Enterprise is pretty similar to UESPA/Starfleet icon from ENT:

Which in turn is pretty similar to NASA logo:

Seems like a logical evolution to me.

Anyway, Starfleet as an umbrella organisation is a logical extrapolation, and seems to fit to most canon facts pretty well.

 

[Timo]

It's a bit implausible that a "United Earth Space Probe Agency" would be Earth's contribution to the eventual UFP Starfleet, when Earth already had a Starfleet. Sure, UESPA might have become part of the mix, but not as Earth's contribution to the fighting force - or even as Earth's primary contribution to the exploration force, since UE Starfleet entered that business big time in ENT.

Why would "space agencies" be included in the merger of empires, when the time for such organizations would essentially be past in the respective empires long before they decided to merge? At least on Earth, NASA style agencies would surely rapidly give way to organizations that treated space like they would treat any other piece of dirt - fighting forces, commercial enterprises, exploitation-oriented administrative branches. This would happen long before WWIII, too, giving Vulcans (and their potential antipathies towards Earth flexing a military muscle) no say in the business.

And I cannot think Tellarites or Centaurans would be any "better" here. A NASA style bunch of academicians and engineers enamored with space probes would have to look from the third balcony when proper space exploitation organizations squabbled for prominence in the merged Starfleet - which at no point of TOS was an exploration-only, much less research-only, force, but already a "combined service" with major military duties including facilitation of gunboat diplomacy.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

@Timo, I don't really understand what you're saying. Earth Starfleet in ENT was merely a part of UESPA (see the logo in my last post.) The relationship was never detailed, but I'd assume that Starfleet was the branch of UESPA with the responsibility of actually running the ships (a fleet of starships, thus star fleet.)

I also don't follow you on the time of space agencies being over thing. Obviously someone is building and manning these ships and organising their missions. Even TNG era unified Starfleet is just a massive multistellar space agency. Future space agencies don't need to operate exactly like NASA.

 

[Christopher]

TOS Enterprise is pretty similar to UESPA/Starfleet icon from ENT:
Which in turn is pretty similar to NASA logo:
Seems like a logical evolution to me.

As I said, Voyager: "Friendship One" established that the UESPA logo in the 2060s was the same as the Enterprise arrowhead insignia, turned on its side: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/File:Friendship_One_logo.jpg

 

[Vandervecken]

The Federation is secretly the Foundation secretly 2nd Foundation secretly manipulated by the Brennan Monster.

But you know, I am only half kidding. There is a sense of historical inevitability to the Federation's progress that reminds me of the Foundation.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Irrelevant to a discussion since Enterprise gives the canonical representation whether certain individuals are capable of acting like adults and accepting that rather than sticking their heads in the sand.

It's been shown to us at this point, it's the height of childishness to ignore that in favour of imaginary scenarios.

That would depend on how highly one values "canon". It's possible to enjoy and speculate about Show A in its own context without knowing or caring what Show E had to say about it 40 years after the fact.

 

[Christopher]

Any long-running canon is an evolving thing that will change its assumptions over time, and if one is talking about the overall whole, it stands to reason to consider the entirety of its history and to acknowledge that its view of itself has changed. However, one can also examine it from a historical perspective and consider how the assumptions it made early on were different from the way they are now. Either is perfectly valid, and there's no reason to treat them as conflicting or incompatible approaches.

 

[Timo]

Earth Starfleet in ENT was merely a part of UESPA

That is the same as saying that the United States Navy is merely a part of NOAA.

It doesn't happen that way. The military is the boss. Or if it isn't, it takes out the guns, and rule one applies again. And Earth already has a military when it gains starflight: ENT gives the canon Starfleet, but even ENT denialists would be hard pressed to argue that Earth somehow loses its proud tradition of being ruled by its armed forces in the 21st century. The Earth being rid of militaries through WWIII? About as plausible as the UFP being united by war...

I also don't follow you on the time of space agencies being over thing. Obviously someone is building and manning these ships and organising their missions.

But no agency is building the ships for today's navies or organizing their missions, let alone doing both. State or private contractors deliver the ships, after which they get their money and are shooed away.

There never was a day in Earth's history where there would have been a "sailing agency" akin to NASA, because people were smart enough to figure out sailing all by themselves. There was something akin to a "flight agency", or several, in the earliest days of flight, perhaps - small cabals of pioneers. But that was over before WWI already. In Trek, the time of tentative attempts at building spacecraft should be over by the 1990s, although we see signs of it in the 2030s - and this is different from our world where tentative attempts are likely to continue for at least half a century still.

Will the Age of the Agencies kick in again with the introduction of warp drive? I rather doubt it. Spacegoing military organizations would be reality by that time already, and would take (that is, keep) the lead in going to space militarily. Things like NASA, ISA, ACI or UESPA or for all we know UNCLE and NUMA might be graciously allowed to tag along, of course.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

I am under the impression that Starfleet was under UESPA originally because it was a small part of the Space Probe Agencies services, fairly new, and possibly the first semi-military under the new United Earth's control rather than one of its number nations. Remember that Lt. Reed was suppose to join the Royal Navy under family tradition but went with Starfleet instead.

The general impression of Earth's Starfleet in 2151 is that it is fairly small. It seems everyone knows everyone else at least by reputation. All the captains know each other. There maybe as few as one or two dozen ships spread across the Earth colonies or warping between them as less than Warp 3. Enterprise being one of a handful of Warp 5 ships even when Earth starts trying to talk the other species to form an alliance in 2155. And that's if one assumes the Intrepid type is potentally a Warp 5 combat ships built as a smaller patrol design to the larger NX-class exploration vessel design.

 

[Timo]

I am under the impression that Starfleet was under UESPA originally because it was a small part of the Space Probe Agencies services, fairly new, and possibly the first semi-military under the new United Earth's control rather than one of its number nations.

This is one of the possibilities - that a space exploration agency sprouts its own private army at one point. But it would be quite odd for this private army to be prominent, when surely the recently extant nation-states would have had their own militaries with ambitions of space control, and would either have pursued those ambitions alone with the relative winner becoming the de facto space fleet of the UE, or then pooled their assets in 2150s at the very latest so that there would remain no ambiguity about the unification process, no relics of nationalism left standing.

Mind you, UESPA isn't representing the entire Earth when first mentioned: it launches Friendship One a century before Earth really gets united for good. The UE part of the name is there originally for marketing purposes only, apparently. That Earth's de facto starfleet would emerge from this particular faction of the competitive exploration business simply is not my top candidate among the possibilities.

The general impression of Earth's Starfleet in 2151 is that it is fairly small. It seems everyone knows everyone else at least by reputation.

Amusingly, the same is true of the TOS era UFP Starfleet, perhaps directly tying into this "age of the Federation" argument. (It is no longer true of the TNG era, thankfully!)

Or then this just shows that there are subcultures and brotherhoods within Starfleet, with certain cliques getting all the top jobs exactly because they are cliques where everybody knows everybody else and shuns all others.

FWIW, Starfleet exists before its exploration program does. When Archer sails out to spearhead said program, Earth is already stocked with warships, well armed with modern death rays Archer's own team fails to install when scrambling for an innocent-sounding ferry mission. No skipper with exploration experience appears to be available, so the son of the superengine developer gets the job. All this makes it sound unlikely that UESPA, if indeed an agency of space research, would be behind or above UESF.

And that's if one assumes the Intrepid type is potentally a Warp 5 combat ships built as a smaller patrol design to the larger NX-class exploration vessel design.

Again FWIW, the Intrepid mounts warp engine nacelles that are markedly larger than those of the Enterprise. A more primitive drive that allows near-w5 performance thanks to sheer size? A more primitive drive that comes nowhere near w5? Hard to tell, as the only time we see interstellar deployment of the type is as part of a ragtag fleet that probably moves at no better than w2 anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Before then, Spock came off more like a lone alien immigrant within an Earth-based civilization. (Think of Worf, who became a Starfleet commander without his homeworld being a Federation member.)

Interestingly, TNG did the opposite of TOS in this regard -- Worf is assumed to be Klingon in citizenship as well as race, and there are a few early episodes that imply (or outright state) that the Klingons are now members of the UFP.

I forget exactly when the "raised by humans" backstory was created for Worf. The third season around the time he got discommodated, perhaps?

You don't have to count other productions that followed TOS. That is actually part of the point of the discussion. We already know what has been established throughout the subsequent productions. The question is basically trying to derive whether what seems to be being said in TOS gives us a clue to the Federation's age and how it might/might not conflict with what was established later.

Christopher cited references in TAS and if one includes that as an extension of TOS then it does argue for the Federation existing about a century prior to TOS.

As Michael Okuda wrote when he did the first Star Trek Chronology, the Trek timeline really does hang together pretty well considering that people were just making things up as they went along. It certainly hangs together better than the chronology of, say, the Sherlock Holmes Canon, and that was just written by one person, instead of several dozen.

 

[The Old Mixer]

That is the same as saying that the United States Navy is merely a part of NOAA.

Or it's like saying that the United States Navy is a part of the Department of Defense.

I forget exactly when the "raised by humans" backstory was created for Worf. The third season around the time he got discommodated, perhaps?

IIRC, it was later in first season, in "Heart of Glory", that the basic story was established.

 

[Timo]

"Department of Defense" is already a much-wussified version of "Department of War". What sort of duplicity would be implied by the UE calling its warfighting force a "space probe agency"? The USN isn't part of the Department of Education, now is it?

The UFP certainly doesn't go for that sort of duplicity. Its Starfleet isn't hiding behind some sort of a UFP Space Probe Agency, or driving a formal wedge between the combat and research assets and ambitions by other means.

IIRC, it was later in first season, in "Heart of Glory", that the basic story was established.

That episode also first indicates that the Klingons still stand apart - although it fails to explicitly reintroduce the concept of a Klingon Empire yet.

Timo Saloniemi