Exactly. That's literally what "martial" means in this case.
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Location of Federation HQ post The Burn
- Thread starter mattman8907
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Exactly. That's literally what "martial" means in this case.
In the Star Trek universe Starfleet officers are not the armed forces and law enforcements officers are not the police, they are explorers of the legal system....
Scotty: His military service came to an end when MACO was disbanded.
Kirk: Why? What happened?
Scotty: The Federation, sir, Starfleet. We're not a military agency.
Starfleet is a combined service that includes the formerly separate tasks of police, disaster relief, firefighters, coast guard, defense force (the former MACO), while performing their primary function as explorers. They're only soldiers in times of war. They're only the police when needed. They help with evacuations and medical relief when that's what's required. It makes perfect sense to have a unified force that can perform all these functions depending on the situation.
This seems to be the same confusion around the Jedi's role in Star Wars. They keep saying that they're keepers of the peace and not soldiers, yet we always see them in a military context.
Wiki defines it like this:
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare.
And also adds:
The primary reason for the existence of the military is to engage in combat, should it be required to do so by the national defence policy, and to win. This represents an organisational goal of any military, and the primary focus for military thought through military history.
Do you see Starfleet there? I don't.
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare.
And also adds:
The primary reason for the existence of the military is to engage in combat, should it be required to do so by the national defence policy, and to win. This represents an organisational goal of any military, and the primary focus for military thought through military history.
Do you see Starfleet there? I don't.
I see parts of Starfleet there.
Yes but still military.
precisely. While Starfleet definitely involve themselves in warfare when necessary, it’s not their primary role. They’re explorers, diplomats, engineers, peace-keepers, researchers and much more. And also military, yes. On occasion.
You could make that argument for the US Navy as well, it has the largest fleet of research ships in the world. They are still part of the military.
At the end of the day, even if on a research assignment, Starfleet officers do not have the right to a civilian trial, they get court martialed.
Perhaps a good analogy would be the US Coast Guard, it is a civilian agency during times of peace, and can, under order of the US President, be transferred to the Department of Defence during times of war.
I think Starfleet wears multiple hats and trying to say it is/is not military is not a black and white binary question. It simply is a matter of the task. The US military engages in a lot of research and exploration activities. As is frequently noted the European navies were highly exploratory in the age of sail. It's not antithetical to Starfleet to call it military when militaries can encompass exploratory aims as well.
Airlines and cruise lines use a military rank (captain).
When officially assigned to a military unit; normally they fall under civilian law like the rest of us.
If you look at the actual law, USPHS officers do not have naval ranks; the surgeon general's title is just that, not vice admiral. But it has become accepted practice that they are addressed by courtesy with the equivalent naval rank.
Even Archer threatened Reed with a court martial during that Section 31 business, not a civilian trial. So Archer says in one episode he's not military (in contrast to the MACOs) and in another episode is considering using a military action against Reed. Sounds military to me.
It's called Unification III, so it will almost certainly deal with Vulcans and Romulans just like Unifications I and II did.
Isn't that dramatically meaningless for the characters though? The Discovery crew don't have any experience with Romulans and only know what they read about in history class, and likely only just found out through 32nd century computers that they were related to Vulcans. A reunification between them means more to the audience than it does to the characters.
It would be like if we found out one episode that the Denobulans are related to Cardassians, and in the next we found out they reunified. It would come out of nowhere for us, just as Romulans and Vulcans reuniting would come out of nowhere to the Discovery crew.
The only way it has meaning for the Discovery crew is if they read about Spock's efforts at reunification, but his actions were a thousand years ago, and it's hard to see how it would be relevant to Discovery's current situation. Plus any reunification had to have happened long after Spock disappeared/died (depending on if the Federation ever found out about the Kelvin timeline and what happened to Spock).
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I'm not willing to bet with any certainty that it involves the Romulans and the Vulcans.
it might be meaningless to them and surely it will come as a surprise, but a Vulcan-Romulan unified society sounds very important in the political map of the 31th century.
Also, it’s something Spock worked on for many years and Spock is important to Michael.
This is the universe that thinks its a good idea to promote inexperienced cadets to be heads of departments of a starship. If they are not the military, then those more experienced officers should take them to a tribunal for constructive dismissal. Lt. Hawkins got kicked out of a job cos he did not speak Romulan and was replaced with a graduate.
I think real life armies help with evacuations and relief, but they are still the army
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