Formation of the UFP Question?

[Jax]

I was watching Enterprise and I got thinking about the formation of the UFP and something began to bug me. The picture of the flag of the UFP shows many stars with 3 of them being very bright showing the founding members BUT there were 4 founding members...

Humans, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites so why only 3 main stars ?

 

[sojourner]

From this angle the fourth star is behind one of the other three.

 

[Blue Squadron]

Because that particular UFP emblem was designed by the art department for a different series well over twenty years ago and it was then retrospectively used as the "established" UFP emblem for any ST production that followed, regardless of the in-universe timeline. All of this was long before Enterprise was even thought of.

Moral of the story? Trek is, on many levels, just a bunch of TV shows and movies - so don't expect everything to be 100% accurate or consistent when it comes to internal continuity! Some things just are what they are; accept it and move on!,

 

[Jax]

I bet which ever founding race didn't get a star are pissed . Well since Vulcans/Andorians are right next to each other we could say they were given the same star as a gesture of unification

 

[C.E. Evans]

Then there's the possibility that the three bright stars don't represent any Federation members at all, but are simply three bright stars to slightly jazz up what would have been just a field of randomly placed white dots...

Privately, though, I'll go with them representing the first three members of the Federation--Earth (the left one), Alpha Centauri (the upper right one), and Vulcan (the lower right one).

Screw Andor and Tellar...problem solved.

 

[kkozoriz1]

The three stars represent Vulcan, Andor and Tellar. Earth is represented by the Laurel leaves bring all together in peace.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Two things about that pic:

- Can Bakula's uniform be any MORE ugly?

- Who's the Andorian?

 

[Jack Bauer]

- Who's the Andorian?

The Andorian Ambassador.

 

[MikeS]

The three stars represent the Andor, Tellar and Vulcan stars. Sol was left out to appease the founding members that were jealous about Earth getting the President of the Federation's office and Starfleet headquaters. Also the Earth-centric labelling of the Sol system as 001 in the stellar mapping convention of 2199.

Or what "Blue Squadron" said.

 

[captcalhoun]

the stars were originally supposed to represent Earth, Vulcan and Kronos when they thought the Klingons were in the UFP. they were left undefined after that idea fell aside.

one article i saw claimed they were Vulcan, Andor and Tellar seen from Earth.

 

[Timo]

Why are we thinking that there would have been four founding members?

Our knowledge of UFP founders is limited to three pieces of evidence:

1) TNG "Gambit" established Vulcan as a founding member.
2) ENT "Zero Hour" had the ever-unreliable Daniels indicating that Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites were with Archer when the latter signed the charter for the future Federation.
3) Picard's scrapbook in ST:GEN contained a newspaper clipping indicating that the founders were Earth, Vulcan, Andor, Tellar and Alpha Centauri.

However, Daniels never said that those species next to Archer were also founding members. Nor did he limit their number, except by saying that later there would be "dozens" and "hundreds" of member species, suggesting that initially less than a dozen signed. OTOH, if those four and Alpha Centauri were the original signatories to the treaty, Daniels would be correct in not mentioning Alpha Centauri because he speaks of the UFP in terms of species. According to TOS "Metamorphosis", the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri are humans (or at least Zephram Cochrane was).

But we don't have to believe in five founders, either, because Picard's scrapbook text was never shown on screen. All we really have to believe in is that Vulcan was among the founders. Not even Earth necessarily was.

As for those three stars in the modern UFP logo, they actually predate the Federation. Earth's Starfleet Command and UESPA logos have the three bright stars long before there's any inkling of an interstellar alliance in ENT. Either old Earthlings had three stars they valued above others, or then they had three virtues they depicted as stars in heraldry. Or then they just found three stars aesthetically pleasing - quite similarly to how the European Union flag officially features twelve stars for purely aesthetic reasons, and the number is completely unrelated to the number of, say, EU member nations.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MikeS]

the European Union flag officially features twelve stars for purely aesthetic reasons, and the number is completely unrelated to the number of, say, EU member nations.

Timo Saloniemi

12 represents perfection and completeness.

 

[Timo]

...That is, pure aesthetics. Eight might have stood for perfection, too, but that wouldn't have looked quite as nice.

Which is bullshit through and through - of course the 12 stars stood for the 12 founding nations originally. But that's not what they stand for today, because nobody wants to add stars to that flag on a yearly basis. Or worse still, remove them!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[sevenstars]

Tellarites? Are you kidding me?

 

[MikeS]

...That is, pure aesthetics. Eight might have stood for perfection, too, but that wouldn't have looked quite as nice.

Which is bullshit through and through - of course the 12 stars stood for the 12 founding nations originally. But that's not what they stand for today, because nobody wants to add stars to that flag on a yearly basis. Or worse still, remove them!

Timo Saloniemi

You are correct that the twelve stars are about nothing more than aesthetics. It has nothing to do with founding nations. Check out Wikipedia for an interesting article on the flag.

And yes, I am intelligent enough to realise that wikipedia isn't a reliable source for everything, but in some cases it can be useful for general knowledge.

 

[Timo]

In this case, I wouldn't fault the Wikipedia for getting its facts tangled up - but the original sources for flat out lying. The flag might have ended up with fifteen stars, or nine, or 22 like the Paramount symbol (which also features no numerological symbology whatsoever - 22 just looked good). But the fact that there were 12 founding nations was obviously decisive in which one of the multi-star flags was chosen, once the decision was made to go with a multi-star motif.

Wikipedia is generally either trustworthy, or then fairly easy to cross-check. Trusting a decisionmaker to utter a true word is fallacy, tho.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[EmperorTiberius]

Tallerites can see in a different light spectrum. When they look at the emblem, there are 4 stars. Others keep telling them they've been tricked by the Vulcans, but they insist: "there. are. FOUR. stars!"

 

[Darth Picardous]

May represent the three bright stars in the local star group as observed by the founding worlds, Sirius, Procyon and Alpha Centauri, or represent the three brightest stars in the local part of the galaxy, Deneb, Adhara and Rigel.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I say the three stars stand for the fundamental rights in the Universal Declaration: life, liberty, and security of person.

 

[Timo]

Or then a trio of stars on a flag is a pleasant aesthetic grouping unrelated to reality - just like a single star on a flag is a pleasant aesthetic construct (more accurately named a mullet, for typically idiotic heraldic reasons) unrelated to reality and specifically unrelated to the astronomical phenomena known as stars.

Timo Saloniemi