I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts.

[Sci]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Guy Gardener said:

Sci said:
No -- I'm suggesting there's a mostly-ceremonial president who, like the mostly-ceremonial British/New Zealand Queen, is the legal commander-in-chief of United Earth's armed forces and who needs to sign off on the UE PM's decisions. I figure that the UE President's options would be the same as the NZ G-G's options -- go along with the PM, resign, or dissolve parliament and call for a new general election. This would allow us to have Samuels be PM while remaining consistent with the fact that he was not in the UE Starfleet's chain of command (the PM wouldn't be, only the President would).

You do realize how many assumptions and leaps of logic you have made to create an air where this government is possible?

Not really. It's a system that exists and works well in countries such as Italy, Israel, and Germany (though their head of government is called a Chancellor rather than Prime Minister).

You will also remember that Starfleet Year One contradicts Enterprise completely as an alternative storyline telling a different founding of the Federation because the writer was annoyed at how Enterprise ignored all the Easter Eggs left behind by previous series,

As has been thoroughly noted in previous posts, Starfleet: Year One contradicts much of Enterprise because it predates ENT's premire, not because of author Michael Jean Friedman being annoyed at how ENT ignored previous series' Easter eggs.

so Littlejohn and his position has no due reason to be respected in the Enterprise TV of Novel Time Lines?

I'm not sure what you mean by "reason to be respected." All novels have the otpion of being in continuity with or ignoring other novels, or of being in continuity with parts of other novels but not all. (Look at SCE: The Future Begins, which contains an acknowledgement of Talin IV from Prime Directive, yet whose depiction of the Federation government is consistent with that of Articles of the Federation, whose depiction radically contradicted Prime Directive.)

In any event, given the following things that have been established:

1) Nathan Samuels as a high-ranking Minister in the United Earth government ("Demons," "Terra Prime")
2) Samuels specifically as the Prime Minister of United United (The Good That Men Do)
3) Existence of United Earth Prime Minister ("Eleven Hours Out" [Tales of the Dominion War], The Good That Men Do)
4) Existence of United Earth Presidency (Starfleet: Year One, SCE: The Future Begins)
5) Samuels not being in United Earth Starfleet chain of command ("Terra Prime")

It just seemed that the logical inference would be that United Earth follows the type of parliamentary democracy that exists in many republics, where there's an elected, mostly ceremonial president who is the legal commander-in-chief. This is consistent with all that has been established both canonically and in the novels, and doesn't require us to make up an entirely new form of government, either. In short, it seemed the simplest theory for the evidence at hand.

I don’t want to be mean, I am enjoying this discussion, but can you cite me one conical tv/movie reference where it said there was ever a UE President?

None. Similarly, there are none there it was ever said there was a UE Prime Minister. (Hell, canonically, it's also possible that United Earth is led by a military dictator.) But the novels are not constrained to only following what has been established in the canon. That's why Haroun al-Rashid could appear in The Good That Men Do -- even though the canon established neither his existence (he was first mentioned in Articles of the Federation as an early Federation President) nor his position as United Earth Interior Minister.

But other novels have established both a UE PM and President, and since there's no inherent contradiction between UE having both, why not assume it has both?

Sci said:
Well, I don't think that the exact makeup of the UE Cabinet has been determined -- but I think it's fairly obvious that UE has a parliamentary system akin to Israel's or Italy's or Germany's.

In the book or on TV?

Again, this is an inference based upon canonical evidence (use of the term "Minister," Samuels not being in UESF chain of command) and novel-original evidence (existence of UE PM and Presidential offices).

In DS9 when that other guy, Akorem the poet who found the Wormhole first, he forced everyone to return to their D’Jarras, a cast system which dictated by their family status and occupation and strict codes of conduct, from dung eaters up to leadership and who was allowed to beat who for no reason, Sisko freaked because the Federation did not allow entry to any world which still respected a cast system or ran a government based upon lineage.

United Earth, there was one Planetary Government with no figurehead or ceremonial effects of power which are not duly representative of the people.

Canonically, the details of how United Earth's government functions have not been established -- it's entirely possible, looking only at the canonical evidence, that UE is run by a King or Queen or Emperor or Generalissimo, at least as of this point before the Federation's founding.

And surely if this was a second body of elected official acting in tandem to control the earth, then it’s an UnUnited Earth?

Tell that to the Roman Republic. Instead of a single head of government, they had two Consuls that served at once!

But, as I said before, the PM/Pres type government exists and works just fine in the real world.

Sci said:

Andy and Martin screwed the pooch as far as the Government is concerned since first the willfully shoved back the founding of the UE a decade to 2140 for no reason other than probably to unclutter the Enterprise Timeline thinking no one would notice, and second they foolishly cited Australia as the last holdout to the fomentation of the United Earth Government because they misremembered Picard saying that it happened when really he created a hypothetical question for Beverly in attached of “What if it happened?”.

2) Yeah, I don't know why they moved back the date of the last holdouts joining UE to 2140 instead of 2150. It's possible that this was actually a mistake, not a retcon.

3) They didn't move back the date of the founding of UE. United Earth was established to have been founded in 2130 with the signing of the Trate d'Unificiation in Paris in the novel Articles of the Federation. M&M just moved back the date of the last holdouts joining ship.

That’s interesting. Noncaonical, but interesting,

There are several continuity references between The Good That Men Do and Articles of the Federation -- Andorian Ambassador Avaranthi sh'Rothress, for instance, was first mentioned in AotF as another early Federation President. The novel line in general often (but not always!) has strong non-canonical continuity points between one-another.

Sci said:
In any event, there are many countries that have both PMs and Presidents. The Italian Republic, the State of Israel, the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Russian Federation come to mind right off the top of my head. Some are semi-presidential systems, like France, where the president holds real political power and the PM works for him. Others are more Westminster-type systems, such as Germany or Italy, where the president has a mostly ceremonial role, but retains powers such as dissolving parliament and calling for a general election and appointing the PM according to the rules established by the parliament -- and serving as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Thank you. Did not know that. Seems you’re not crazy.

Swear I'm not! Well, except for the voices in my head.

Sci said:
As I noted above, given the reference to a UE President in Starfleet: Year One and SCE: The Future Begins, and the references to a UE PM in the Tales of the Dominion War short story "Eleven Hours Out" and in this novel, I'd infer that UE has a parliamentary-style system with a mostly ceremonial president and a PM. This scenario is wholly consistent with everything about the UE government that's been established in the canon and in the ENT novels.

I can usually make a decent argument that the Federation is a communist state. Ooo, that gets people riled. But as you said, we have no information about the make up of the government,

No canonical information. We do have information -- it's just from other novels!

and then you begin making “logical guesses” based on smoke and other novels.

You mention other novels like they don't matter. Most novels keep continuity between one-another. Yeah, sure, it could all be contradicted by a future canonical installment, but unless that happens, why *not* accept apocryphal information from other novels?

The only thing we know for a certainty is that there are Ministers, and that every country is fairly represented (or renumerated for a lack of representation somehow?).

Actually, we don't even know that second part. All we know canonically is that there are Ministers.

I did say “probably” called senators, meaning I have no idea what the presidents underlings are called who are representatives of political blocks on Earth.

I sincerely doubt that the president's underlings would be part of the legislature. In a presidential system like the US's, a President's underlings are cabinet members and leaders of the executive departments and agencies, as well as the employees of the office itself and its supporting offices. In a parliamentary system, the main lieutenants of the PM are other members of the Cabinet, who are all chosen from the Parliament and who remain Members of Parliament in addition to their Cabinet positions.

Besides, there’s the simple scifi model you seem to have forgotten about, a bunch of Ministers lead by a First Minister and not a Prime Minister,

"First Minister" is just another name for "Prime Minister." The devolved government of Scotland within the United Kingdom, for instance, features a Scottish Parliament and the First Minister of Scotland.

because I assumed the leader of the UE would be similarly selected like UFP President, just form the body of Councillors already sitting in representation of their planet, but yeah “assumptions”.

Canonically, we have no info about how UFP Presidents are determined. The novel A Time For War, A Time For Peace has them being popularly elected from amongst candidates determined by the Federation Council to meet the qualifications for the presidency, and the candidates need not been Federation Council members.

If we accept the idea of a UE PM, though, that implies a parliamentary system where the PM is determined by who can command the confidence of the majority of Members of Parliament. (In modern terms, that translates to the leader of the majority party or majority coalition.)

You have to remember that every government on Earth was smashed, then a tyrant took over building up from the rubble.

Who? Are you referring to Colonel Green? there's no reference to him taking over the rebuilding of the entire planet. "Demons" makes no claims as to the full extent of his power or rule in rebuilding beyond establishing that he managed to kill a great many people with deformities.

There are no complicated finicky traditions, which the people rebuilding Earth had to abide by when constructing their leadership mechanisms.

By that logic, (West) Germany would not have developed a republic again after World War II.

Though I must now google the UE flags.

Go to Memory Beta. We have a United Earth flag based upon one that appeared in "Terra Prime."

Sci said:

god forbid what they called their highest tier of politicians, but if it was either Presidents and Senators, or Prime Ministers and Ministers, I can be sure of one thing, and that is that it wasn’t both, which puts the thumb on the scales for this issue that there probably was no UE President.

Again, there are plenty of republics that have both presidents and prime ministers, so there's no reason to assume that United Earth can't be a parliamentary government with a Prime Minister as head of government and a President as mostly ceremonial head of state.

No reason at all. Except that they have never mentioned the UE President if s/he is so important.

They never mentioned the Federation President throughout the entire original series, nor movies 1-3, nor movie 5, nor in all of TNG or VOY, nor in any but three episodes of DS9. Does that mean there's no Federation President?

The verteron cannon coupled into the Martian power network as soon as it landed, remember that clamping cgi? It was hooked into the infrastructure ergo furtherly supercharged and there might as well have been canals for the blast wave to flow along into the nearby city to melt its citizens because it was a domino game of powder kegs on the red planet. A surgical strike was impossible because the nearby settlements were within the blast wave of even the most taciturn orbital strike, which is why they had to do it like they did to go in with commandoes and Phlox. I watched this episode dozens of times while writing a synopsis and review a couple years back. Thousands of civilians lives were on the line if Hoshi waited to long that the Verteron cannon fired, or thousand of civilian lives were on the line that she gave the order to blow the damn thing up. Killing Archer was just gravy.

Hm. I'm going to have to re-watch the episode, then, because I don't recall the question of civilian life on Mars coming up.

ARCHER: Paxton's holding two of my officers hostage at the array. We can't attack it.
SAMUELS: The Council's aware of that. If you can't bring yourself to fire on them, another Captain can be assigned to Enterprise. No one will think less of you.
ARCHER: It's not just the hostages. Any attack on the array will trigger a massive explosion that could kill thousands of colonists.
SAMUELS: This wasn't an easy decision for the Council. The potential for disaster's even greater than you think. Over the next thirty months, the terraforming project has fourteen comets set to collide with Mars. Without the array to divert them toward the polar caps, the comets could hit anywhere, even the domed cities.
ARCHER: I'll take in a small team. We'll break into the facility and stop them.
SAMUELS: Paxton can destroy any ship that approaches Mars.
ARCHER: If he can't see us, he can't destroy us.

http://www.chakoteya.net/Enterprise/97.htm

Online transcripts save so much time.

Gracias. I stand corrected.

The Klingons were four days away. Who do you think maintained that boarder through truce and muscle?

Space is big. It's entirely possible that even at only four days away, the Klingons simply never got around to expanding in that direction.

I think we know from my first post exactly how much I believe Andy and Michael took heed of continuity for one reason or another. All why did he think he could give Hoshi orders, If he couldn’t?

Most people in life tend to obey their head of government, even if he doesn't have the legal authority to issue someone an order. And he obviously felt that the issue was important enough to attempt to take control of the situation with sheer force of personality alone.

A Minister would be outside the chain of command. A Prime Minister wouldn’t.

Yes, a PM would.

Only through your unfounded hypothesis but not through my unfounded hypothesis. Ocum’s Razor, you’re inventing an entire wing of government out of ether.

No I'm not -- I'm using an entire wing of government that other people invented for other novels to account for an apparent discontinuity!

And it's not an unfounded hypothesis if the UE President has appeared in other novels.

That is if we can sort out if the Prime Minister is the Highest Civilian Authority in the United Earth Government and the commander in chief of the Earths Military?

Keep in mind that terms like "highest civilian authority" are kinda off-base. Government isn't typically a straight linear progression from "lower authority" to "higher authority;" it's not the military. There are separations of powers and checks and balances, especially in a US-style system (where the President is not higher than the Congress and Supreme Court, but, rather, co-equal with them and possessing a different range of responsibilities), but also within a parliamentary system.

The question isn't "highest authority," as though we're comparing a flag officer to a commander. The question is, "head of government" and "head of state."

I say it’s exactly that simple. No matter what hoops Samuels has to jump through, bodies he has to co-ratify and supplicate to, he’s still the guy on top and that there is no UE President. I’m not a fool to think it’s that simple, and you’re not too smart for your own good to weave in new layers of expected government traditionally found in real world models. Either theory is as good as the other, and both as unprovable as the other without more information.

Again, the president exists in other novels, and there's no reason to assume that, in particular, The Future Begins, takes place in a separate continuity.

 

[JD]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Personally, from what I've read so far the existence of both a UE PM and President seems very likely. Especially since we had a Pres. in TFB which is part of SCE which is in continuity with AOTF which is in continuity with TGTMD. It would definitely explain away the inconsistency.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Sci said:
As has been thoroughly noted in previous posts, Starfleet: Year One contradicts much of Enterprise because it predates ENT's premier, not because of author Michael Jean Friedman being annoyed at how ENT ignored previous series' Easter eggs.

It doesn’t matter why Year One contradicts Enterprise. It just does. Claims of a President in Year One mean that there is a President without saying there is a Prime Minister. And claims of either don’t matter because it’s not the same prehistory of Kirk. I wonder if the Movie people will nix Enterprise? I’ve heard claims that the movie people claim they are under no due requirements to respect TNG, DS9 or VOY, or TOS in that anything is possible and nothing is going to stifle their imagination.

Sci said:

so Littlejohn and his position has no due reason to be respected in the Enterprise TV of Novel Time Lines?

I'm not sure what you mean by "reason to be respected." All novels have the otpion of being in continuity with or ignoring other novels, or of being in continuity with parts of other novels but not all. (Look at SCE: The Future Begins, which contains an acknowledgement of Talin IV from Prime Directive, yet whose depiction of the Federation government is consistent with that of Articles of the Federation, whose depiction radically contradicted Prime Directive.)

Novel continuity is not absolute, so it can’t be trusted. I only meant that Littlejohn’s existence and occupation is at the discretion of the writer, and holds no sway over TV canon or other Novel canon, which should go without saying

Sci said:

In any event, given the following things that have been established:

1) Nathan Samuels as a high-ranking Minister in the United Earth government ("Demons," "Terra Prime")

Unless he is a Priest.

Sci said:
2) Samuels specifically as the Prime Minister of United United (The Good That Men Do)

But not in Demons, or Terra Prime.

Sci said:
3) Existence of United Earth Prime Minister ("Eleven Hours Out" [Tales of the Dominion War], The Good That Men Do)

That’s great, but you need to find evidence of a UE Prime Minister working under a nonceremonial UE President.

Sci said:
4) Existence of United Earth Presidency (Starfleet: Year One, SCE: The Future Begins)

That’s great, but you need to find evidence of a UE Prime Minister working under a nonceremonial UE President.

Sci said:
5) Samuels not being in United Earth Starfleet chain of command

Because he was only a Minister on TV, and rather low ranking at that for no one to have discovered his previous Terra Prime Affiliations up to this point… and this is just one of the incongruities from translating Samuels into a figure of literature we’re supposed to suspend belief over, probably because it would be a bit of a laugh.

Sci said:

It just seemed that the logical inference would be that United Earth follows the type of parliamentary democracy that exists in many republics, where there's an elected, mostly ceremonial president who is the legal commander-in-chief. This is consistent with all that has been established both canonically and in the novels, and doesn't require us to make up an entirely new form of government, either. In short, it seemed the simplest theory for the evidence at hand.

I followed those links. Explored a few governments of our world. The Queen of the UK is a welfare mom living in a state house ransoming the national heritage of Britain for a stipend and some dignity. There’s no power there other than she can sever the link of the British people to a 15 hundred year old legacy of Arthur kicking the Romans out… okay, Hastings in1066, then Magna Carter. But if you get rid of the Queen and form a republic, then poor the Brits lose all right to claim they’re old as dirt and better than all the banana republics that can track their history as far back to Thursday. She’s holding the country to ransom, for which the government has made her a clerk for all their documents personifying all the usefulness of an appendix.

If that’s what I’d say about a great gal like Lizzy, you can only imagine how important to the work of state, I see a representatives of the Queen like the “Governor General” where I live. A useless and impotent level of bureaucracy respecting the severed and rotted dead history of this country to our former masters, but we don’t pay taxes to Britain no more, so who cares? Besides, becoming a Republic, which someone usually brings up every couple years (Honestly I sometimes think it’s all Australians talk about.), the only drawback would be that we would no longer be welcome at the Common Wealth Games, which would be sad.

I read through Germany and Italy, which was all new.

The German President is elected through secret ballot by a thousand people, elected officials from Parliament and the Federal levels, and cannot do *&^%, he’s not the Commander in chief and just handles state dinners and diplomacy with other governments and sometimes puts a word in edgewise with the parliament. The Italian President/Prime Minister relationship is much like you have described as being a system similar to the proconsuls of Rome(note, in times of War, the Romans only had one leader, and re/s/elections were delayed if a War continued on too long.) and who you are imagining the set up in the UE, but this President is only elected by 700 people. It’s obviously a form of proportional representation, but really to me it seems like an elite cast system in how they get their President into power, which could not be trusted in the future when most of the population has the ability to be an effete snob concerned about not having a say in how they’re governed.

All though the UFP President in Homefront said he was chosen for the position, so that tracks if the systems of Government are at all similar. I recall, Bajor had a First Minister who was elected, but we never heard them mention they had a President too? Should we assume they did as well because it’s one possible model of government?

Sci said:

But other novels have established both a UE PM and President, and since there's no inherent contradiction between UE having both, why not assume it has both?

Because I live in a country where the Prime Minister is the leader of the country, not a second banana, which is how I read the book originally. You however live in a country, which doesn’t have a Prime Minster so the title could mean anything and you were predisposed to draw your intelligence from a wide Varity of sources. Romantically there is no point in promoting Samuels to Prime Minister if it’s not the top position whatever inconsistencies my crop up between the TV and Novel because it would be an entirely arbitrary and inconsequential shift in his powers form the number 10(?) position to the number 2 position.

In Archer’s ready room, he said he was talking to the “Council”. Are we absolutely positive he was talking to the Starfleet Command Council and not the Council of Ministers (Hey! That’s what Bajor has!)? Because it’s odd that the Admiralty on the Starfleet Command Council didn’t construct 15 plans and tell Archer to hop to it, or that all the many Admirals “concerns” were delivered by a civilian politician who was outside the chain of command, who was able to fetch a new Captain to take over Enterprise if Archer didn’t want all that blood on his hands.

Sci said:

Sci said:
Well, I don't think that the exact makeup of the UE Cabinet has been determined -- but I think it's fairly obvious that UE has a parliamentary system akin to Israel's or Italy's or Germany's.

In the book or on TV?

Again, this is an inference based upon canonical evidence (use of the term "Minister," Samuels not being in UESF chain of command) and novel-original evidence (existence of UE PM and Presidential offices).

That’s just not enough. Its conflicting and disconnected data. There was no mention of a Prime Minister or President in TV Canon, and no mention of both a Prime Minister and President in the novels. There’s no way Samuels was in Charge of the UE in Terra Prime and Demons, but there’s nothing to say that the Prime Minister is or isn’t the highest political office in the UE other than there’s no way that Samuels was in Charge of the UE in Terra Prime and Demons. Although since he magically promoted, how can we tell what else magically happened.

Sci said:

In DS9 when that other guy, Akorem the poet who found the Wormhole first, he forced everyone to return to their D’Jarras, a cast system which dictated by their family status and occupation and strict codes of conduct, from dung eaters up to leadership and who was allowed to beat who for no reason, Sisko freaked because the Federation did not allow entry to any world which still respected a cast system or ran a government based upon lineage.

United Earth, there was one Planetary Government with no figurehead or ceremonial effects of power which are not duly representative of the people.

Canonically, the details of how United Earth's government functions have not been established -- it's entirely possible, looking only at the canonical evidence, that UE is run by a King or Queen or Emperor or Generalissimo, at least as of this point before the Federation's founding.

Samuels said in Demons that the Earths governments gathered in San Francisco after WWIII to try and figure out a way to get along. Of course that was a hundred years before the founding of the UE, or 90 if you follow the amended timeline of TGTMD… That would suggest the worlds governments began a unification process shortly after WWIII, however since the world was divided into two camps at the time it shouldn’t have been too difficult. Meanwhile the hypothetical Picard raised would suggest that the Earths nations wouldn’t have united under one flag if Australia had held out a little longer. Which is a fact and not a hypothetical in this novel. Either way it shows the representations of whatever city-nation-states survived the war to be afforded representation that a country we recognize as a country could have acted as a road block because of a little stubborn pride or nationalism, if they just weren’t holding out for a better deal?

Sci said:

And surely if this was a second body of elected official acting in tandem to control the earth, then it’s an UnUnited Earth?

Tell that to the Roman Republic. Instead of a single head of government, they had two Consuls that served at once!

The consuls of Rome ran as mates, just like Presidents and Vice presidents in America. It’s just that they had powers as equal as they wanted to once they got into power. More importantly, how the Romans kept time back then, the duration of a consularship was what they named each period of 4 years. Which really would have put into context exactly how good or bad the consuls were.

Sci said:

They never mentioned the Federation President throughout the entire original series, nor movies 1-3, nor movie 5, nor in all of TNG or VOY, nor in any but three episodes of DS9. Does that mean there's no Federation President?

No, because DS9 is awesome. I recall starting a thread in the Voyager Forum where I asked if the crew should have civilian representation through the UFP rather than solely rely on the Military stewardship of Janeway for the next 70 years? I didn’t even realize there was an existing UE at the point, who also might have been recourse for representation of their civilian needs too. They don’t like it when you challenge Janeway’s authority over there. I was smacked so hard. I later wrote a story where they announce that Voyager technically being Federation colony needed representation, where upon there was an election between Seska and Tom for Council Representative. I am cheese.

Sci said:

Most people in life tend to obey their head of government, even if he doesn't have the legal authority to issue someone an order. And he obviously felt that the issue was important enough to attempt to take control of the situation with sheer force of personality alone.

I still think she should have gotten in trouble for disobeying Archers orders. Which is a mutinous act. Placing her outside the chain of command.

Sci said:

A Minister would be outside the chain of command. A Prime Minister wouldn’t.

Yes, a PM would.

Yes “some” PMs would.

Sci said:

Only through your unfounded hypothesis but not through my unfounded hypothesis. Ocum’s Razor, you’re inventing an entire wing of government out of ether.

No I'm not -- I'm using an entire wing of government that other people invented for other novels to account for an apparent discontinuity!

[/QUOTE]

Discontinuity feeds a healthy imagination.

Sci said:

And it's not an unfounded hypothesis if the UE President has appeared in other novels.

In novels which didn’t even consider there were Ministers or Prime Ministers. Terra Prime and Demons shoved the entire political structure of the UE on its ear. Arguments changing things retroactively is just like my false claims about JMF being disgusted by Enterprise (Which I should have modified with the use of a “probably”.). Do we have any word on if he digs Enterprise or not?

 

[JD]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

^ yeah, but one of said novels is in continiuity with TGTMD, so it isn't a totally outrageous idea to use it when coming up with this stuff.

 

[Sci]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Alright, Guy Gardener, let's get one thing cleared up here:

We are not deal with a science. We are dealing with individual interpretations of a work of art. You seem to be holding this up to absolute standards here, and that's just not accurate. How you do or do not interpret the UE government working, whether or not you acknowledge things established in other novels, etc -- these are not absolute truths, these are matters of individual interpretation. Please keep that in mind, and keep in mind that there can be multiple valid interpretations, and that an interpretation doesn't have to be "proven" (i.e., live up to arbitrary standards of confirmation) to be valid.

Guy Gardener said:
It doesn’t matter why Year One contradicts Enterprise. It just does. Claims of a President in Year One mean that there is a President without saying there is a Prime Minister.

No it doesn't. The most we can say about the depiction of President Littlejohn in Year One is that she seems to hold major political power. This would, indeed, be in contradiction to The Good That Men Do. However, while much of what Starfleet: Year One established has been contradicted, another novel, SCE: The Future Begins, confirmed the existence of a UE Presidency and of President Littlejohn, but nothing else about what Year One established (including the President as head of government). SCE: The Future Begins is in continuity with Articles of the Federation, which is in continuity with The Good That Men Do. The Good That Men Do, of course, established that the PM holds real political power and is the head of government.

Ergo, we can validly interpret the United Earth government in the common continuity of The Future Begins, Articles of the Federation, and The Good That Men Do as possessing both a UE President and a UE Prime Minister who holds real political power. There is no reason to assume a contradiction between these three novels, especially given the real-life existence of President/Prime Ministerial governments.

so Littlejohn and his position has no due reason to be respected in the Enterprise TV of Novel Time Lines?

I'm not sure what you mean by "reason to be respected." All novels have the otpion of being in continuity with or ignoring other novels, or of being in continuity with parts of other novels but not all. (Look at SCE: The Future Begins, which contains an acknowledgement of Talin IV from Prime Directive, yet whose depiction of the Federation government is consistent with that of Articles of the Federation, whose depiction radically contradicted Prime Directive.)

Novel continuity is not absolute, so it can’t be trusted.

I'm not sure what you mean here. We're not dealing with a science, we're dealing with how one interprets the common continuity shared by many novels. If there is no clear contradiction, why assume a discontinuity? You might as well claim that we can't "trust" that all of the events of A Time to Kill and A Time to Heal happened in the continuity of Articles of the Federation, in spite of all three novels sharing common characters, locations, and events.

I only meant that Littlejohn’s existence and occupation is at the discretion of the writer, and holds no sway over TV canon or other Novel canon, which should go without saying.

More like "is not a hard and fast role." Obviously, the depiction of Littlejohn's existence did "hold sway" (a term that means influence, not absolute control) over other writers, since she was included in The Future Begins years after Starfleet: Year One was published.

In any event, given the following things that have been established:

1) Nathan Samuels as a high-ranking Minister in the United Earth government ("Demons," "Terra Prime")

Unless he is a Priest.

He was representing United Earth at diplomatic negotiations. Priests don't do that unless they work for the Vatican.

Sci said:
2) Samuels specifically as the Prime Minister of United United (The Good That Men Do)

But not in Demons, or Terra Prime.

So? Nothing in "Demons"/"Terra Prime" explicitly contradicts that, either. If you're gonna get riled up against the idea of the novels establishing things not previously established in the canon, then I really don't see what the point of even reading a tie-in novel is.

Sci said:
3) Existence of United Earth Prime Minister ("Eleven Hours Out" [Tales of the Dominion War], The Good That Men Do)

That’s great, but you need to find evidence of a UE Prime Minister working under a nonceremonial UE President.

Why's that? Especially since the only novel that gives any indication that a UE President would be nonceremonial would be Year One, which we've already established is only partially in continuity with other novels through The Future Begins, which makes no mention either way of the presidency's ceremonial or nonceremonial nature. In other words -- another novel cherry-picked part of Year One, and we're just preserving what it cherry-picked. We're not trying to lift the entire thing from YO wholesale.

Sci said:
4) Existence of United Earth Presidency (Starfleet: Year One, SCE: The Future Begins)

That’s great, but you need to find evidence of a UE Prime Minister working under a nonceremonial UE President.

See above.

Sci said:
5) Samuels not being in United Earth Starfleet chain of command

Because he was only a Minister on TV, and rather low ranking at that for no one to have discovered his previous Terra Prime Affiliations up to this point…

That is one valid interpretation -- though I'm not sure how you can argue that the man who is representing United Earth at the negotiations to create an interstellar alliance is in any reasonable sense of the term "low-ranking."

However, that is not the only valid interpretation, and not one that I share.

Sci said:
It just seemed that the logical inference would be that United Earth follows the type of parliamentary democracy that exists in many republics, where there's an elected, mostly ceremonial president who is the legal commander-in-chief. This is consistent with all that has been established both canonically and in the novels, and doesn't require us to make up an entirely new form of government, either. In short, it seemed the simplest theory for the evidence at hand.

I followed those links. Explored a few governments of our world. <SNIP>

I read through Germany and Italy, which was all new.

The German President is elected through secret ballot by a thousand people, elected officials from Parliament and the Federal levels, and cannot do *&^%, he’s not the Commander in chief

Hmm. Seems that at least one German I've spoken to online was under the misconception that the German President was commander-in-chief, and I never thought to verify. I beg your pardon -- Wikipedia informs me that the Minister of Defense is commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Germany during times of peace, and that the Chancellor becomes c-in-c during a "state of defense" as declared by Parliament.

Italian President/Prime Minister relationship is much like you have described as being a system similar to the proconsuls of Rome (note, in times of War, the Romans only had one leader, and re/s/elections were delayed if a War continued on too long.) and who you are imagining the set up in the UE, but this President is only elected by 700 people.

But it's still the same basic idea -- a mostly-ceremonial president with a few reserve powers. Upon looking it up, the interpretation I'd tend to hold to would be closer to the Irish Presidency, though, since the Irish President is directly elected by the people.

All though the UFP President in Homefront said he was chosen for the position,

No. He was described as being "democratically elected" and as having "submitted his name for election."

I recall, Bajor had a First Minister who was elected, but we never heard them mention they had a President too? Should we assume they did as well because it’s one possible model of government?

You certainly could interpret the Bajoran government has possessing a ceremonial president in addition to the First Minister! There's no direct canonical or non-canonical evidence against it. (Heck, given that Kai Winn took over when a First Minister died, I sometimes wonder if the Kai isn't a ceremonial head of state in addition to being the head of the Bajoran religion.)

I would however note that the novel Bajor: Fragments and Omens in Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume II, refers to the Bajoran First Minister as the Bajoran head of state, implying the lack of any other leader.

Sci said:
But other novels have established both a UE PM and President, and since there's no inherent contradiction between UE having both, why not assume it has both?

Because I live in a country where the Prime Minister is the leader of the country, not a second banana, which is how I read the book originally.

That's an odd way to read the book. I don't think Prime Minister Samuels came across as being a second banana at all -- Archer was going to Samuels to describe the potential Romulan threat, Samuels' office was in charge of the negotiations for the Coalition, the press was making a big deal about Archer and Samuels meeting, etc. There was no indication in The Good That Men Do that anyone other than Prime Minister Samuels was head of government.

In Archer’s ready room, he said he was talking to the “Council”. Are we absolutely positive he was talking to the Starfleet Command Council and not the Council of Ministers (Hey! That’s what Bajor has!)?

The transcript reads as follows:

ARCHER: Paxton's holding two of my officers hostage at the array. We can't attack it.
SAMUELS: The Council's aware of that. If you can't bring yourself to fire on them, another Captain can be assigned to Enterprise. No one will think less of you.
ARCHER: It's not just the hostages. Any attack on the array will trigger a massive explosion that could kill thousands of colonists.
SAMUELS: This wasn't an easy decision for the Council. The potential for disaster's even greater than you think. Over the next thirty months, the terraforming project has fourteen comets set to collide with Mars. Without the array to divert them toward the polar caps, the comets could hit anywhere, even the domed cities.
ARCHER: I'll take in a small team. We'll break into the facility and stop them.
SAMUELS: Paxton can destroy any ship that approaches Mars.
ARCHER: If he can't see us, he can't destroy us.

Upon re-reading that, it could refer to the United Earth legislature -- though given the enormous difficulty in getting a majority of legislators to agree to anything in a short amount of time, I rather doubt it. Further, Samuels makes reference only to UESF matters, and in particular to questions of UESF administration -- "The Council is aware of that and another captain can be assigned." Given that fact, it sounds to me like it's the UESF Command Council referenced in "Shockwave."

Because it’s odd that the Admiralty on the Starfleet Command Council didn’t construct 15 plans and tell Archer to hop to it, or that all the many Admirals “concerns” were delivered by a civilian politician who was outside the chain of command, who was able to fetch a new Captain to take over Enterprise if Archer didn’t want all that blood on his hands.

Samuels being on the NX-01 in general was just odd, no matter what his position was, and even if he was delivering news from the UE legislature and not the UESFCC.

Sci said:
Again, this is an inference based upon canonical evidence (use of the term "Minister," Samuels not being in UESF chain of command) and novel-original evidence (existence of UE PM and Presidential offices).

That’s just not enough.

Maybe not enough for you, but it's enough for others, and it's certainly enough to be one valid interpretation.

Its conflicting and disconnected data.

There is no conflict between The Future Begins, Articles of the Federation, and The Good That Men Do.

There was no mention of a Prime Minister or President in TV Canon, and no mention of both a Prime Minister and President in the novels.

There was no mention of UE itself until "The Forge." Should we take that to mean that UE didn't exist in ENT until then?

There’s no way Samuels was in Charge of the UE in Terra Prime and Demons,

Says who?

Sci said:

In DS9 when that other guy, Akorem the poet who found the Wormhole first, he forced everyone to return to their D’Jarras, a cast system which dictated by their family status and occupation and strict codes of conduct, from dung eaters up to leadership and who was allowed to beat who for no reason, Sisko freaked because the Federation did not allow entry to any world which still respected a cast system or ran a government based upon lineage.

United Earth, there was one Planetary Government with no figurehead or ceremonial effects of power which are not duly representative of the people.

Canonically, the details of how United Earth's government functions have not been established -- it's entirely possible, looking only at the canonical evidence, that UE is run by a King or Queen or Emperor or Generalissimo, at least as of this point before the Federation's founding.

Samuels said in Demons that the Earths governments gathered in San Francisco after WWIII to try and figure out a way to get along.

The transcript reads as follows:

[Starfleet Command]

(In San Francisco, Starfleet is acting as a conference centre where representatives from several worlds are seated around a large horse-shoe shaped table, listening to a speech by a human. It is being taped by the press, and there are also spectators, including the Enterprise crew standing on a staircase.)
SAMUELS: Having endured a catastrophic World War, Earth's governments came to this city for the purpose of creating a just and lasting peace among nations. Today, we have assembled here again, representatives of numerous worlds, to forge an unprecedented alliance. With this Coalition of Planets, we seek to strengthen our bonds of friendship, render permanent the peace that now exists among us for the ongoing exploration of our galaxy. Let us dedicate ourselves to these worthy goals so that future generations can look back upon this moment with pride and eternal gratitude. Thank you.

That line is commonly interpreted as referring to World War III. However, when I first saw that episode, I thought it was a reference to World War II; after WW2, San Francisco was where the world's governments met to negotiate and found the United Nations.

That Samuels is referring to a gathering of Earth nations after World War III is a valid interpretation, but it's not the only one, and not one I share.

Of course that was a hundred years before the founding of the UE, or 90 if you follow the amended timeline of TGTMD…

Again, The Good That Men Do established nothing about when UE was founded, only about when the last holdouts joined up. Articles of the Federation established that United Earth was founded in 2130 with the signing of the Treate d'Unification in Paris at the Place de la Concorde. The Good That Men Do established that the Independent Republic of Australia was the last holdout and joined UE in 2140, which contradicts TNG's "Attached," wherein the last holdouts were described as joining in 2150.

Either way it shows the representations of whatever city-nation-states survived the war to be afforded representation that a country we recognize as a country could have acted as a road block because of a little stubborn pride or nationalism, if they just weren’t holding out for a better deal?

That sentence makes no sense whatsoever and I would ask you to rephrase it for clarity.

Sci said:
They never mentioned the Federation President throughout the entire original series, nor movies 1-3, nor movie 5, nor in all of TNG or VOY, nor in any but three episodes of DS9. Does that mean there's no Federation President?

No, because DS9 is awesome.

DS9's relative quality has no bearing on whether or not a background detail must have been mentioned often to be credible.

Sci said:
Most people in life tend to obey their head of government, even if he doesn't have the legal authority to issue someone an order. And he obviously felt that the issue was important enough to attempt to take control of the situation with sheer force of personality alone.

I still think she should have gotten in trouble for disobeying Archers orders. Which is a mutinous act. Placing her outside the chain of command.

Yeah, well, Trek has a habit of letting its officers disobey orders a lot.

Sci said:
Only through your unfounded hypothesis but not through my unfounded hypothesis. Ocum’s Razor, you’re inventing an entire wing of government out of ether.

No I'm not -- I'm using an entire wing of government that other people invented for other novels to account for an apparent discontinuity!

Discontinuity feeds a healthy imagination.

[/QUOTE]

It's the source of a lot of really great novels!

Sci said:
And it's not an unfounded hypothesis if the UE President has appeared in other novels.

In novels which didn’t even consider there were Ministers or Prime Ministers.

But there's still no contradiction, since the question of other government officials wasn't addressed in The Future Begins.

Arguments changing things retroactively is just like my false claims about JMF being disgusted by Enterprise (Which I should have modified with the use of a “probably”.). Do we have any word on if he digs Enterprise or not?

We have no information on it whatsoever. Even adding a "probably" would make no sense and be an utterly unfounded assumption to make about another person.

And of course these arguments are all "false." We're dealing with a work of fiction! None of it is "true." The point is interpreting a work and details of the common continuity in which it and other works are set.

 

[Christopher]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Good grief, you two are generating the longest individual threads I've ever seen, and all over a rather niggly little point of continuity. This debate over novel continuity is rapidly heading toward novel length in its own right. Where do you both find the time?

 

[Sci]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Christopher said:
Good grief, you two are generating the longest individual threads I've ever seen, and all over a rather niggly little point of continuity. This debate over novel continuity is rapidly heading toward novel length in its own right. Where do you both find the time?

I've been in debates that had far longer posts than these on the TrekBBS. But I've only found the time because last week was vacation, and this week I'm only finding the time between classes.

 

[JD]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

You know, these are the times when I wish Star Trek had someone like Star War's Leland Chee, who's job it is to keep track of all of the continuity tidbits like this. I know that not everything for Trek is canon like in SW, but it would stil be nice to have one person who could come in and clear up situations like this.

 

[Sci]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

JD said:
You know, these are the times when I wish Star Trek had someone like Star War's Leland Chee, who's job it is to keep track of all of the continuity tidbits like this. I know that not everything for Trek is canon like in SW, but it would stil be nice to have one person who could come in and clear up situations like this.

Well, it's fair to say that Memory Beta (which I haven't been able to contribute to as often as I used to because of Real Life) certainly aspires to that level of detail-keeping. We're still a long way off -- but every little bit helps!

 

[Turtletrekker]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Sci said:
Memory Beta (which I haven't been able to contribute to as often as I used to because of Real Life)

Tell me about it. Curse "real life", anyway...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Sci said:
Alright, Guy Gardener, let's get one thing cleared up here:

We are not deal with a science.

Right back at you.

Sci said:We are dealing with individual interpretations of a work of art.

Of which I have one you are trying to smash.

Sci said:You seem to be holding this up to absolute standards here,

And you’re not?

Sci said: and that's just not accurate.

It could be? So don’t be so absolute.

Sci said:How you do or do not interpret the UE government working, whether or not you acknowledge things established in other novels, etc -- these are not absolute truths,

They’re my truths, and you keep repeating what you believe at lengths hoping I’ll buckle in my convictions.

Sci said:these are matters of individual interpretation.

I am sure I am an individual.

Sci said: Please keep that in mind,

I only have half a mind.

Sci said: and keep in mind that there can be multiple valid interpretations,

So you admit I am right, thank you.

Sci said: and that an interpretation doesn't have to be "proven" (i.e., live up to arbitrary standards of confirmation) to be valid.

They why am I getting exhausted keeping up with you? That after the failure of logic and reason, you’re now trying an emotional appeal for sanity? Sanity doesn’t live here anymore.

Sci said:

Guy Gardener said:
It doesn’t matter why Year One contradicts Enterprise. It just does. Claims of a President in Year One mean that there is a President without saying there is a Prime Minister.

No it doesn't. The most we can say about the depiction of President Littlejohn in Year One is that she seems to hold major political power. This would, indeed, be in contradiction to The Good That Men Do. However, while much of what Starfleet: Year One established has been contradicted, another novel, SCE: The Future Begins, confirmed the existence of a UE Presidency and of President Littlejohn, but nothing else about what Year One established (including the President as head of government). SCE: The Future Begins is in continuity with Articles of the Federation, which is in continuity with The Good That Men Do. The Good That Men Do, of course, established that the PM holds real political power and is the head of government.

So with novels that are kinda affiliated if anything is sorta the same, then… Novels are fun. Novels are exciting. Bridging them together is in itself an interesting work of imagination and creativity either by the authors or readers. Although, even if just two novels sharing a similar continuity are written by the same person, it’s still a matter of cherry picking, that minds could have changed between projects about a lot of things. Imagining a metacontinuity between novels is fanciful. Besides, I haven’t read The Future Begins.

Sci said:

Ergo, we can validly interpret the United Earth government in the common continuity of The Future Begins, Articles of the Federation, and The Good That Men Do as possessing both a UE President and a UE Prime Minister who holds real political power. There is no reason to assume a contradiction between these three novels, especially given the real-life existence of President/Prime Ministerial governments.

Or you can believe they have a violently opposing continuity where one has a head of state/government called a president and one has a head of state/government called the Prime Minister. There is no single valid interpretation there is only lots of valid interpretations. I’m sticking to mine until I see otherwise, fancifully in a novel which would be cute, or on the TV/Movie Canon which would be very educational.

Sci said:

so Littlejohn and his position has no due reason to be respected in the Enterprise TV of Novel Time Lines?

I'm not sure what you mean by "reason to be respected." All novels have the otpion of being in continuity with or ignoring other novels, or of being in continuity with parts of other novels but not all. (Look at SCE: The Future Begins, which contains an acknowledgement of Talin IV from Prime Directive, yet whose depiction of the Federation government is consistent with that of Articles of the Federation, whose depiction radically contradicted Prime Directive.)

Novel continuity is not absolute, so it can’t be trusted.

I'm not sure what you mean here. We're not dealing with a science, we're dealing with how one interprets the common continuity shared by many novels. If there is no clear contradiction, why assume a discontinuity? You might as well claim that we can't "trust" that all of the events of A Time to Kill and A Time to Heal happened in the continuity of Articles of the Federation, in spite of all three novels sharing common characters, locations, and events.

Unless it’s all written by the same person? I have to take a bit of salt to dispend my disbelief because it can be very jerky transitioning between several writers trying to make a single story(Do you remember Invasion!?) when their ideas and inmutual misunderstandings of the matter and character can be mildly at angles to one another. The continuity of a single novel unrelated to any other issue is pure, as soon as you start contrasting it to the activities elsewhere you’re into all sorts of milk territory, even official canon.

Sci said:

I only meant that Littlejohn’s existence and occupation is at the discretion of the writer, and holds no sway over TV canon or other Novel canon, which should go without saying.

More like "is not a hard and fast role." Obviously, the depiction of Littlejohn's existence did "hold sway" (a term that means influence, not absolute control) over other writers, since she was included in The Future Begins years after Starfleet: Year One was published.

But how much of the rest of Year One fits into TFB continuity? One tiny gem survived because someone thought it would be clever to find a name from the history of novels and history of trek. Frankly these two Littlejohns could be as the same and different as mirror universe version of themselves since that’s practically what they are. So how is that holding to continuity if similar people from different Universes are mistaken by novel readers for the same person? Next time some girl dumps me, I’ll just pop off into the multiverse bleed and find me a crosstime alternate with only a slightly different quantum probability resonance that I wouldn’t notice the difference… Yup she keeps dumping me, but I keep finding timetwin people that look and act and sound just like her. Same name, different Littlejohn. So goodness knows what else was different.

Sci said:

In any event, given the following things that have been established:

1) Nathan Samuels as a high-ranking Minister in the United Earth government ("Demons," "Terra Prime")

Unless he is a Priest.

He was representing United Earth at diplomatic negotiations. Priests don't do that unless they work for the Vatican.

So you admit there are political priests?

Sci said:

Sci said:
2) Samuels specifically as the Prime Minister of United United (The Good That Men Do)

But not in Demons, or Terra Prime.

So? Nothing in "Demons"/"Terra Prime" explicitly contradicts that, either. If you're gonna get riled up against the idea of the novels establishing things not previously established in the canon, then I really don't see what the point of even reading a tie-in novel is.

This would be the least contentious point I made out of that huge twaddle I made in the beginning. C’mon, they’re trying with all their might to make Warp 7 starships, which the Vulcans have had for a very long time, and unless Shran did a spectacular job at the end of Shadows of P’Jem, the government of Corriden were Vulcan Puppets, and any scientific initiative to pursue advanced warp science would have been at the behest and the… This novel is full of crack.

Sci said:

Sci said:
3) Existence of United Earth Prime Minister ("Eleven Hours Out" [Tales of the Dominion War], The Good That Men Do)

That’s great, but you need to find evidence of a UE Prime Minister working under a nonceremonial UE President.

Why's that? Especially since the only novel that gives any indication that a UE President would be nonceremonial would be Year One, which we've already established is only partially in continuity with other novels through The Future Begins, which makes no mention either way of the presidency's ceremonial or nonceremonial nature. In other words -- another novel cherry-picked part of Year One, and we're just preserving what it cherry-picked. We're not trying to lift the entire thing from YO wholesale.

I’ve said it several times. You do not have the raw information to prove your case. It just doesn’t exist. And although the real world might have some good ideas which you have a firm understanding of, there’s no evidence to say which of these many political mechanisms you have mentioned is what the UE uses, if any.

Sci said:

Sci said:
4) Existence of United Earth Presidency (Starfleet: Year One, SCE: The Future Begins)

That’s great, but you need to find evidence of a UE Prime Minister working under a nonceremonial UE President.

See above.

As long as you see above too.

Sci said:

Sci said:
5) Samuels not being in United Earth Starfleet chain of command

Because he was only a Minister on TV, and rather low ranking at that for no one to have discovered his previous Terra Prime Affiliations up to this point…

That is one valid interpretation -- though I'm not sure how you can argue that the man who is representing United Earth at the negotiations to create an interstellar alliance is in any reasonable sense of the term "low-ranking."

Because every one else there was merely (or only) a diplomat. No one else ruled a planet as how I would understand the use of the word Prime Minister, or was the second banana, major domo head of government working under the President like you would suggest. Everyone else there seemed to be of an ambassadorial level delegating with respect to their governments. Sending in the PM is overkill, stifling and threatening to the other ambassadors that they are operating in an entirely different economy of scale from the representative of Earth. It’s not the (space)G8 Summit. In one of his speeches Samules uses the term, “Fellow delegates” so he was there for the duration, and according to T’Pol, the plan was to have that alliance charter hammered out with in the next 6 weeks. A PM, whatever his duties would not be allowed to focus his entire mental resources on a single issue with underlings for that long, especially after a terrorist attack, but Samuels didn’t sub out to look after the concerns of Earth.

Sci said:

However, that is not the only valid interpretation, and not one that I share.

Sci said:
It just seemed that the logical inference would be that United Earth follows the type of parliamentary democracy that exists in many republics, where there's an elected, mostly ceremonial president who is the legal commander-in-chief. This is consistent with all that has been established both canonically and in the novels, and doesn't require us to make up an entirely new form of government, either. In short, it seemed the simplest theory for the evidence at hand.

I followed those links. Explored a few governments of our world. <SNIP>

I read through Germany and Italy, which was all new.

The German President is elected through secret ballot by a thousand people, elected officials from Parliament and the Federal levels, and cannot do *&^%, he’s not the Commander in chief

Hmm. Seems that at least one German I've spoken to online was under the misconception that the German President was commander-in-chief, and I never thought to verify. I beg your pardon -- Wikipedia informs me that the Minister of Defense is commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Germany during times of peace, and that the Chancellor becomes c-in-c during a "state of defense" as declared by Parliament.

Italian President/Prime Minister relationship is much like you have described as being a system similar to the proconsuls of Rome (note, in times of War, the Romans only had one leader, and re/s/elections were delayed if a War continued on too long.) and who you are imagining the set up in the UE, but this President is only elected by 700 people.

But it's still the same basic idea -- a mostly-ceremonial president with a few reserve powers. Upon looking it up, the interpretation I'd tend to hold to would be closer to the Irish Presidency, though, since the Irish President is directly elected by the people.

My goodness! I agree with you and still you bicker!

Sci said:

All though the UFP President in Homefront said he was chosen for the position,

No. He was described as being "democratically elected" and as having "submitted his name for election."

True, but I meant that he was chosen from the existing council members to be put for the position as if it wasn’t his decision to be UFP President, although supposedly that’s what the nomination process is… Can only Council members become eligible for the Presidency? And following the models you and wiki showed me, the election process would only need to be taken from the immediate sample of the Federation Councillors, after maybe a brief word back home? And I would probably believe that that was proportional representation if that Admiral from DS9 The reckoning said that Federation Councillors were also selected… But then its not like UN representatives are elected are they?

Sci said:

I recall, Bajor had a First Minister who was elected, but we never heard them mention they had a President too? Should we assume they did as well because it’s one possible model of government?

You certainly could interpret the Bajoran government has possessing a ceremonial president in addition to the First Minister! There's no direct canonical or non-canonical evidence against it. (Heck, given that Kai Winn took over when a First Minister died, I sometimes wonder if the Kai isn't a ceremonial head of state in addition to being the head of the Bajoran religion.)

Yes, I thought that was possible. She is really bossy.

Sci said:

I would however note that the novel Bajor: Fragments and Omens in Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume II, refers to the Bajoran First Minister as the Bajoran head of state, implying the lack of any other leader.

Sci said:
But other novels have established both a UE PM and President, and since there's no inherent contradiction between UE having both, why not assume it has both?

Because I live in a country where the Prime Minister is the leader of the country, not a second banana, which is how I read the book originally.

That's an odd way to read the book. I don't think Prime Minister Samuels came across as being a second banana at all -- Archer was going to Samuels to describe the potential Romulan threat, Samuels' office was in charge of the negotiations for the Coalition, the press was making a big deal about Archer and Samuels meeting, etc. There was no indication in The Good That Men Do that anyone other than Prime Minister Samuels was head of government.

Um. Why are you making my point for me? I mean you have said that with division of power that it is assuming to believe any branch of the government is more hoity than the other… With how you describe this Samuels is in charge of deciding who the UE goes to war with, as if the president, if she or he exists, is SUPER ceremonial, and not a power in his or her own right.

I think you misunderstood me. I think Samuels in the novel came across as the leader. Peerless Leader. To be the second banana which I didn’t think he was, there would have had to be a very real layer of bureaucracy embodied by another individual which could actually impede or frack with his decision making process like a non ceremonial president. As said earlier, a ceremonial president is a clerk with delusions of grandeur who might as well have a gun pointed at his head.

Sci said:

In Archer’s ready room, he said he was talking to the “Council”. Are we absolutely positive he was talking to the Starfleet Command Council and not the Council of Ministers (Hey! That’s what Bajor has!)?

The transcript reads as follows:

ARCHER: Paxton's holding two of my officers hostage at the array. We can't attack it.
SAMUELS: The Council's aware of that. If you can't bring yourself to fire on them, another Captain can be assigned to Enterprise. No one will think less of you.
ARCHER: It's not just the hostages. Any attack on the array will trigger a massive explosion that could kill thousands of colonists.
SAMUELS: This wasn't an easy decision for the Council. The potential for disaster's even greater than you think. Over the next thirty months, the terraforming project has fourteen comets set to collide with Mars. Without the array to divert them toward the polar caps, the comets could hit anywhere, even the domed cities.
ARCHER: I'll take in a small team. We'll break into the facility and stop them.
SAMUELS: Paxton can destroy any ship that approaches Mars.
ARCHER: If he can't see us, he can't destroy us.

Upon re-reading that, it could refer to the United Earth legislature -- though given the enormous difficulty in getting a majority of legislators to agree to anything in a short amount of time, I rather doubt it. Further, Samuels makes reference only to UESF matters, and in particular to questions of UESF administration -- "The Council is aware of that and another captain can be assigned." Given that fact, it sounds to me like it's the UESF Command Council referenced in "Shockwave."

I agree. Just trying to see if we could conjure something interesting. Though it does seem that this council they speak of is responsible for the teraforming of mars? Wouldn’t other planets and moons , yeah, mostly moons, Christopher’s Landing (hey hey! I’m referencing novels now!)on Titan for instance also be being terraformed that every terraforming project would have it’s own verteron array? Now that would certainly be a War of the Worlds with all the verteron arrays whacking each other.

Sci said:

Its conflicting and disconnected data.

There is no conflict between The Future Begins, Articles of the Federation, and The Good That Men Do.

And one day when I read all that, I will probably agree with you. However how many other novels do those three relate to completely? Three novels out of hundreds share a common continuity? That shows care and effort, which I applaud, but it’s a drop in the bucket.

Sci said:

There was no mention of a Prime Minister or President in TV Canon, and no mention of both a Prime Minister and President in the novels.

There was no mention of UE itself until "The Forge." Should we take that to mean that UE didn't exist in ENT until then?

Whatchu talking about Willis? You don’t think UESPA in TOS, backed up with early season one comments about the “Probe Agency” were talking about the United Earth Government/Civilization? True we wouldn’t have thought about it because T’Pol’s costume was really tight and Tucker was just dreamy, but the information has been there since the beginning almost.

Sci said:

There’s no way Samuels was in Charge of the UE in Terra Prime and Demons,

Says who?

You do. You say he answers to President, ceremonial or otherwise. Of course, I was saying up there that he wasn’t the head of state, which has been your opinion all along. I am also saying he is not the Prime Minister outside the Novel which is a sliced coconut.

Sci said:

That Samuels is referring to a gathering of Earth nations after World War III is a valid interpretation, but it's not the only one, and not one I share.

You’re suggesting he doesn’t know the difference between WWII and WWIII?

Sci said:

Of course that was a hundred years before the founding of the UE, or 90 if you follow the amended timeline of TGTMD…

Again, The Good That Men Do established nothing about when UE was founded, only about when the last holdouts joined up. Articles of the Federation established that United Earth was founded in 2130 with the signing of the Treate d'Unification in Paris at the Place de la Concorde. The Good That Men Do established that the Independent Republic of Australia was the last holdout and joined UE in 2140, which contradicts TNG's "Attached," wherein the last holdouts were described as joining in 2150.

You’re quoting other novels again. The only things I count here is TV/Movie canon and what happened in The Good That men Do

I lifted this the novel…

Earth’s political unity was only around fifteen years old, dating from the time that Earth’s last holdout, the Independent Republic of Australia, grudgingly and belatedly followed the rest of the planet’s nation-states in joining Earth’s global federated government.

What the hell is a Global Federated Government????

Well Micronesia seems the most fitting example of that type of government is federated which most certainly is not parliamentary. Although it’s just a conjugation for federal which makes the UE seem just like the US Government’s make up with all those US States co-operating and acting as if they as a single country.

I further state that the whole notion of any nation being a “hold out” was just part of Picard’s Hypothetical. But in for a penny, in for a pound, because you can’t half screw a pooch. Well you can, but the pooch won’t respect you in the morning.

Sci said:

Either way it shows the representations of whatever city-nation-states survived the war to be afforded representation that a country we recognize as a country could have acted as a road block because of a little stubborn pride or nationalism, if they just weren’t holding out for a better deal?

That sentence makes no sense whatsoever and I would ask you to rephrase it for clarity.

O? Have you played Future Risk? The new map of the world has funny names. “United Indiastan” “The Exiled States of America” and so on… All that I meant by that was that the world hadn’t changed so much that Australia was still a recognizable political power. Of course, the Independent Republic of Australia probably means that the Queen pissed them off, or the Royal family were killed off in World War III.

Sci said:

Sci said:
They never mentioned the Federation President throughout the entire original series, nor movies 1-3, nor movie 5, nor in all of TNG or VOY, nor in any but three episodes of DS9. Does that mean there's no Federation President?

No, because DS9 is awesome.

DS9's relative quality has no bearing on whether or not a background detail must have been mentioned often to be credible.

Maybe, but DS9 was REALLY awesome.

Sci said:

Sci said:
Most people in life tend to obey their head of government, even if he doesn't have the legal authority to issue someone an order. And he obviously felt that the issue was important enough to attempt to take control of the situation with sheer force of personality alone.

I still think she should have gotten in trouble for disobeying Archers orders. Which is a mutinous act. Placing her outside the chain of command.

Yeah, well, Trek has a habit of letting its officers disobey orders a lot.

Almost as if they’re not the military

Sci said:

Sci said:

Sci said:
Only through your unfounded hypothesis but not through my unfounded hypothesis. Ocum’s Razor, you’re inventing an entire wing of government out of ether.

No I'm not -- I'm using an entire wing of government that other people invented for other novels to account for an apparent discontinuity!

Discontinuity feeds a healthy imagination.

It's the source of a lot of really great novels!

HELL YEAH!

Sci said:

Sci said:
And it's not an unfounded hypothesis if the UE President has appeared in other novels.

In novels which didn’t even consider there were Ministers or Prime Ministers.

But there's still no contradiction, since the question of other government officials wasn't addressed in The Future Begins.

Arguments changing things retroactively is just like my false claims about JMF being disgusted by Enterprise (Which I should have modified with the use of a “probably”.). Do we have any word on if he digs Enterprise or not?

We have no information on it whatsoever. Even adding a "probably" would make no sense and be an utterly unfounded assumption to make about another person.

Considering I had no idea who wrote Starfleet Year One when I made that post, I think it does.

Sci said:

And of course these arguments are all "false." We're dealing with a work of fiction! None of it is "true." The point is interpreting a work and details of the common continuity in which it and other works are set.

Not if we clap really hard and really fast! And say “I do believe in Star Trek! I do believe in Star Trek!”

 

[Vulcanian]

Sounds great, Guy Gardener :thumbsup:

 

[Sci]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Alright, so, now that I have some spare time:

Guy Gardener said:

Sci said:
We are dealing with individual interpretations of a work of art.

Of which I have one you are trying to smash.

So, I think it's fair to say this whole thing got more heated than either of us intended, and I want to apologize if I came across as being overly-aggressive.

From my POV, you pointed out an apparent contradiction between the novel and the canon, and I pointed out an interpretation that was consistent with other novels and with the canon that reconciled the issue. To me, it felt like you were being very aggressive and dismissive of that interpretation. Since apparently you felt the same way about my behavior, (as the above quote indicates) I can only presume that we both simply seemed more aggressive than we intended. I want to apologize for my role in that.

We cool?

As for this:

My goodness! I agree with you and still you bicker!

I'm sorry, I obviously didn't make myself clear -- when I started talking about the Irish system, I wasn't trying to bicker, I was actually just refining my own thoughts on the question. In other words, I was bickering with myself "out loud," not with you, and I should have made that more clear. My apologies.

All though the UFP President in Homefront said he was chosen for the position,

No. He was described as being "democratically elected" and as having "submitted his name for election."

True, but I meant that he was chosen from the existing council members to be put for the position as if it wasn’t his decision to be UFP President, although supposedly that’s what the nomination process is...

I don't think the line was ever that explicit. He mentions a "they" who asked him to submit his name for the election. No information was given as to who "they" were, or if he was elected by the Council or the people at large, or what. I interpreted that line as implying a parliamentary system for many years before I read A Time for War, A Time for Peace. Then I went back and realized just how vague it really was.

Can only Council members become eligible for the Presidency?

A Time for War, A Time for Peace makes it clear that non-Councillors can be presidential candidates.

The election process in that novel (which is in continuity with Articles of the Federation, the novel based around the character introduced in ATfW,ATfP) is as follows:

The President ascends to the position through a popular election, serving an unlimited number of four-year terms. Presidential candidates are declared by the Council of the United Federation of Planets, which reviews anonymously-submitted petitions for candidacy before declaring that a given individual qualifies for the office. The election encompasses every single planet, colony, space station, and starship under Federation control, as any adult Federation citizen can vote. The votes are tallied by two independent auditing firms, and the results are announced one week later.

When a president unexpectedly resigns or dies, the Federation Council declares a councillor to be President Pro Tempore; the President Pro Tempore then serves for one month, while a special election is then called by the Council. The President Pro Tempore remains a Federation Councillor, and stays a Councillor after the new President assumes office.

The question of exactly what qualifies someone to be a President is left ambiguous, but the Federation Council declared in A Time for War, A Time for Peace that a Starfleet Admiral, Federation Special Envoy, and Federation Member State Governor all qualified.

And following the models you and wiki showed me, the election process would only need to be taken from the immediate sample of the Federation Councillors, after maybe a brief word back home? And I would probably believe that that was proportional representation if that Admiral from DS9 The reckoning said that Federation Councillors were also selected… But then its not like UN representatives are elected are they?

I think the wording of the admiral in "Rapture" (not "The Reckoning" -- earlier episode) was pretty vague. The TV script reads as follows:

WHATLEY

Ben, I need to know I can count on
you. Bajor's admission is only
the beginning. Now comes the hard
part: Federation council members
have to be chosen... the Bajoran
militia has to be absorbed into
Starfleet... there are thousands
of details that have to be
overseen. And you're our point
man here. That means we need to
depend on you more than ever.

He just says "have to be chosen." He didn't say how many needed to be chosen, or how they'd be chosen.

The novels today have depicted different Federation Member States as determining their Federation Councillors in different ways. In Andor: Paradigm, it's established that the Federation Councillor from Andor is determined by which party controls the Parliament Andoria (Andor's legislature). In Articles of the Federation, the Federation Councillor from Betazed is established to be popularly elected. And in Bajor: Fragments and Omens, it's established that the Federation Councillor from Bajor is nominated by the First Minister and confirmed by the Chamber of Ministers (except under special circumstances, when a temporary recess appointment may be made). So the gist of things seems to be that each Member gets to determine for itself how its Federation Councillor will be selected.

I don't think it's accurate to automatically compare the Federation Council to the United Nations General Assembly, though. The UFP and the UN are very different animals -- the UFP carries all of the characteristics of a state under modern international law, while the UN certainly does not.

With how you describe this Samuels is in charge of deciding who the UE goes to war with, as if the president, if she or he exists, is SUPER ceremonial, and not a power in his or her own right.

That's my interpretation, yeah.

Given that fact, it sounds to me like it's the UESF Command Council referenced in "Shockwave."

I agree. Just trying to see if we could conjure something interesting. Though it does seem that this council they speak of is responsible for the teraforming of mars?

Maybe. That's not the impression I got -- I figured that the terraforming was being done by the locals and that UESF was just worried about the safety of Martian civilians.

To completely digress for a bit...

Mars is an interesting question, if we open the table up to novels. It's established in the novel Section 31: Rogue by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels that there was a War of Martian Independence from Earth some time in the 22nd Century that Mars won (and that in the 24th Century, some Martians feel that Mars has become nothing more than a garage for Earth's spaceships, given the presence of Starfleet's Utopia Planetia shipyards). The novel Genesis Wave, Book I makes reference to politicians from Mars amongst the Federation Council, implying that Mars is a Federation Member State in its own right, independently of United Earth. Last Full Measure, set during Season Three of ENT, also by AM&MAM, refers to Martian uprisings that the MACOs have fought in prior to 2153.

On the other hand, there's no reference to a Martian independence movement in "Demons"/"Terra Prime," nor of negotiations with an independent Martian government to allow the UE government to capture the Veteron Array and the Terra Prime ship. Which is not to say that any of that couldn't have happened off-screen, of course.

There are all sorts of interesting things that could have happened there, of course. The first Martian colonies were established in 2103, if I recall VOY's "The 37s" correctly, so it's entirely possible that some Martian colonies rebelled and others did not prior to the establishment of United Earth in 2130. There could be independent, sovereign polities on Mars, and others that are under UE jurisdiction. Who knows?

The novel Articles of the Federation also establishes that Alpha Centauri was a founding Federation Member State in its own right, which seems to imply that Alpha Centauri (referred to as a UE colony in either Season Three or Four of ENT, I can't recall) achieved independence some time between ENT and the founding of the Federation.

Lots and lots of fertile ground for interesting stories for future ENT novels to cover, even without that whole Romulan War thing brewing...

Wouldn’t other planets and moons , yeah, mostly moons, Christopher’s Landing (hey hey! I’m referencing novels now!)on Titan for instance also be being terraformed that every terraforming project would have it’s own verteron array?

I got the impression that the Veteron Array on Mars was either the only one, or one of only a few, that were present in the solar system, because none other would be necessary. If nothing else, I'd tend to assume that the Array was fairly new in "Demons"/"Terra Prime," because, otherwise, why wasn't it used to defend Earth from the Xindi in "Zero Hour?"

Now that would certainly be a War of the Worlds with all the verteron arrays whacking each other.

Ack!

And one day when I read all that, I will probably agree with you.

The Future Begins is really good and I highly recommend it.

However how many other novels do those three relate to completely?

Hmm. Let's try to figure this out, here...

Well, The Future Begins relates to all of Star Trek: SCE/Corps of Engineers, and it also relates to every single novel referenced on the co-author's annotation page. Some of these include (and I'm not putting them in italics out of expediency):

Gateways miniseries, A Time to Die, A Time to Sow, Gemworld, Wagon Train to the Stars, A Time for War A Time for Peace, A Time to Love, Articles of the Federation, “The Muse Between the Notes” in The Lives of Dax, A Time to Kill, The Wounded Sky, Ship of the Line, Dyson Sphere, Rihannsu: My Enemy My Ally, Crossover, Engines of Destiny, The Two-Front War (NF), “Through the Looking Glass” in No Limits, “Safe Harbors” in Tales of the Dominion War, “Full Circle,” Crisis on Centaurus, Requiem, Ex Machina, eXcalibur: Renaissance, Vulcan’s Soul: Exodus, Vulcan’s Heart, Catalyst of Sorrows, Andor: Paradigm,Avatar Book I, The Lost Era: The Sundered, Restoration

Articles of the Federation also contains a ton of continuity references, which can be seen in its annotation page. These include:

A Time to Kill, Andor: Paradigm, A Time for War A Time for Peace, A Time to Heal, Vulcan's Soul: Exodus, "Eleven Hours Out" in Tales of the Dominion War, Trill: Unjoined, Hollow Men, Titan: Taking Wing, A Time to Hate, the Gateways miniseries, the Genesis Wave series, Stone and Anvil, After the Fall, A Time to Be Born, A Time to Die, The Gorn Crisis, SCE: Balance of Nature, The Belly of the Beast, Fatal Error, Mission: Gamma Book 4: Lesser Evil, Unity, Gemworld, Reunion, Avatar Book I, Demons of Air and Darkness, Mission: Gamma Book II: This Grey Spirit, Ring Around the Sky, Perchance to Dream, Diplomatic Implausibility, The Lost Era: The Sundered, Mission: Gamma Book I: Twilight, Titan: The Red King, Home Fires, IKS Gorkon: A Good Day to Die, Vulcan's Heart, "Blood Sacrifice" in Tales of the Dominion War, Vulcan's Soul trilogy, Rihannsu: My Enemy My Ally, The Battle of Betazed, Homecoming, Errand of Fury: Seeds of Rage, Star Trek VI novelization, A Time to Love, A Time to Hate, The Last Roundup, The Wounded Sky, NEM novelization, The Left Hand of Destiny Books I & II, Gorkon: Enemy Territory, The Lost Era: Serpents Among the Ruins, The Lost Era: The Art of the Impossible, The Brave and the Bold Book II, Star Trek IV novelization, Bajor: Fragments and Omens, Mission: Gamma Book III: Cathedral, Past Life, Enter the Wolves, House of Cards, Cardassia: The Lotus Flower, A Stitch in Time, Ex Machina, Gorkon: Honor Bound, The Final Reflection, Spin, Immortal Coil, The Farther Shore, Hard Crash, "Three Sides to Every Story" in Prophecy and Change, "Pain Management" from Tales From the Captain's Table, "Iron and Sacrifice" from Tales From the Captain's Table, Cold Fusion, Caveat Emptor, Creative Couplings, Vulcan's Forge, Ferenginar: Satisfaction Is Not Guaranteed, Small World


Speaking just in broad strokes, AotF is linked to the DS9 Relaunch, the post-NEM TNG books, the Titan series, the VOY Relaunch, the Vulcan's Noun books, SCE/Corps of Engineers, IKS Gorkon, Star Trek: Klingon Empire, Gateways, Genesis Wave, New Frontier, and, with The Good That Men Do, the ENT Relaunch

Three novels out of hundreds share a common continuity? That shows care and effort, which I applaud, but it’s a drop in the bucket.

See above. Most of the novels published since 2000 or so have shared a common continuity.

Sci said:
That Samuels is referring to a gathering of Earth nations after World War III is a valid interpretation, but it's not the only one, and not one I share.

You’re suggesting he doesn’t know the difference between WWII and WWIII?

No. There's no reference to which war Earth's nations met in San Francisco after. I'm suggesting that that may have been intended by the writers to be a reference to the Allies meeting in San Francisco after World War II to create the United Nations, which some fans have misinterpreted as establishing that the nations of the Earth met in SanFran after World War III to create peace. However, the line is vague enough that either interpretation is equally defensible.

I lifted this the novel…

Earth’s political unity was only around fifteen years old, dating from the time that Earth’s last holdout, the Independent Republic of Australia, grudgingly and belatedly followed the rest of the planet’s nation-states in joining Earth’s global federated government.

What the hell is a Global Federated Government????

I would tend to interpret that line as implying that United Earth is a federal state rather than a unitary state.

Well Micronesia seems the most fitting example of that type of government is federated which most certainly is not parliamentary. Although it’s just a conjugation for federal which makes the UE seem just like the US Government’s make up with all those US States co-operating and acting as if they as a single country.

Well, federalism does not automatically entail the existence of a presidential style of government like the US's, or even a semi-presidential one like France's. There are states such as the Commonwealth of Australia and the Federal Republic of Germany that maintain federalism and a parliamentary government. And the United States is not the only federal state on Earth. There are plenty of others today, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland, the United Arab Emerates, and Venezuela. To me, federalism for United Earth only makes since, since you wouldn't want all of the various countries that would make up United Earth to lose their individuality and be utterly consumed by a common culture.

Of course, the Independent Republic of Australia probably means that the Queen pissed them off, or the Royal family were killed off in World War III.

The novel Federation -- most of which was contradicted by the later film First Contact, so take this as you will -- established that in the 21st Century, the reigning Queen, Mary, was captured by the Optimum movement (the movement responsible for World War III in that novel's depiction of the conflict) and that the rest of the Royal Family went into hiding. Just an interesting tidbit.

Maybe, but DS9 was REALLY awesome.

Like the man said: True dat!

Anyways, this has been a fun discussion. I'm sorry things got so heated and I hope we can continue prattling.

If you'd like:

What city do you think would be United Earth's capital? Starfleet: Year One seems to establish San Francisco, since that's where the President's office is, but of course most of that novel is no longer in continuity with the new novels.

Myself, I'm inclinded to put it in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, as a way of showing how completely transformed the whole Earth is -- that there is no more "Third World" or economic inequality between nations, that racism has been so truly eradicated amongst the current "First World" nations, that peace has been so successfully established that the violence-racked capital of what is today a failed state can one day become the capital of the entire world.

But that's just me.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Do you know how much fun this debate has been for me? So yeah, we're cool.

(You did some very good work, Congratulations. It's been a riveting read. )

But, yes, we've been going in circles for a while and it's lived it's course. But here's a couple final points without all the quoting...

Didn't Malcolm's dad in Enterprise wanted him to join the Royal Navy? I suppose if King Ralph is anything to go by(Or, I Claudius for that matter.) then they can stick anyone on the throne given the most tenuous link to the Royal bloodline.

I've been thinking about how the UFP seat was in Paris. Unless they moved the Eifle Tower at some point in the future (I read a Peter David comic (Wonderman: My Fair Super hero... A spoof of Pygmalion.) recently set in the future were the French were so pissed off with America they sued for, and got the Statue of Liberty back.)

The Martian question of independence would probably rely totally on them being resource dependent from earth surely? Which then comes down to a question of population, before the teraforming of Mars, a couple hundred crazies might have a bee in their bonnet... but after Mars is terraformed? When the population increases geometrically and they can grow their own food?

Zephram Cochrane was described in Metamorphosis as being from Alpha Centauri. I suppose as far as that is concerned, did man establish a colony out there at sub light speeds, or ask a favour from the Vulcans for a little haulage? Which is completely speculative... But the Boomer fleet had to be going between "somewhere" and earth to have been out there all that time before Starfleet and the Vulcan controlled government. The private sector as much as the church might have been less hamstrung in Enterprise continuity about heading out into space out past the rim of our solar system.

The verteron array and Zero Hour. I've been screaming about that for a while.

 

[pookha]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

the way i saw cochrane and the alpha centuri issue is that at some time he grew weary of the adulation on earth and went to live there.
and it was listed as his residence when he disappeared.

as for the book and the finale.

i do like the idea that there were indeed two deaths for trip and that this program for some reason blended them into one.
i can actually think of of a reason why his death would be faked a different time closer to the founding of the federation.
as for canon issues the finale has some serious ones between it and tng especially with pegasus.

as for starfleet, it itself seemed to have been fairly young because evidently archer came of age before it was founded.
but since united earth space probe agency is already in existance (you see it the floor emblem and uniform patches)
there probably was a previous exploration arm already in existance.

and while yes the public may have some awareness of some of the names of the crew how much would the average person know of the fate of the crew.

and even with that in mind wait a generation and have a worm program go into electronic databases and manipulate the data you wish.

sorry if some of this has been covered.
because even though some of the discussion appears to be interesting i havent had time to read through it.

 

[Vulcanian]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Argh! Too many words.

I am about half way through the book and I'm on the part with the battle against the Romulan Bird of Prey.

Two Questions:
-Wasn't those ships supposed to be a prototype?
-Doesn't that violate canon?

 

[Sci]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

Vulcanian said:
Argh! Too many words.

I am about half way through the book and I'm on the part with the battle against the Romulan Bird of Prey.

Two Questions:
-Wasn't those ships supposed to be a prototype?
-Doesn't that violate canon?

I'm not sure what you mean. The drones seen in "Babel One"/"United"/"The Aenar" were prototypes, and the bird-of-prey in "Balance of Terror" was a prototype, but that doesn't mean that the term bird-of-prey -- which seems to refer to a type of vessel rather than a class (i.e., the Enterprise-D is a Galaxy-class ship whose type is explorer) -- couldn't have been in use for Romulan ships in the past. So there's certainly no continuity violation with the Romulans having ships.

 

[Christopher]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

In "Balance of Terror," Lt. Stiles said that Romulan ships during the Earth-Romulan War were recognizable by the bird of prey painted on their hulls. Therefore, it stands to reason that Romulan ships of that time could have been described as "Birds of Prey" just as validly as the 23rd-century design. And of course in "Minefield" we saw them using ships following the same basic contours as the "Balance of Terror" vessel.

The prototypes being tested in BoT were the cloaking device and the plasma torpedoes, not the ship design itself.

 

[Vulcanian]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

I thought we weren't supposed to see a Romulan until Balance of Terror?

 

[Christopher]

Re: I just finished The Good that Men Do. Some thoughts. *D

The Federation didn't know what Romulan people looked like until BoT, but dialogue within BoT itself made it clear that Earth forces had seen plenty of Romulan ships during the war a century earlier.