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Mandatory Starfleet service

If you're allowed to force people back into service and stop them from leaving the service, are you really that far away from conscription?

Yes, in that a reservist is someone who a) already volunteered and ; b) agreed to remain in the reserves, either when they left active duty or as a pre-condition of their enlistment contract.

A reservist called back to active service is not a conscript- they are a volunuteer fulfilling a service obligation they agreed to.
 
Yes, in that a reservist is someone who a) already volunteered and ; b) agreed to remain in the reserves, either when they left active duty or as a pre-condition of their enlistment contract.

A reservist called back to active service is not a conscript- they are a volunuteer fulfilling a service obligation they agreed to.

McCoy didn't sound like he was volunteering in TMP.
 
I doubt an organization that considers itself as enlightened as starfleet would ever have conscription. I also don't see member nations of the Federation endorsing that.

If you leave starfleet but remain in the reserves, then yes, there is the seldom-used 'reserve activation clause.' But that is the very essence of what being a reservist is: you are the 'reserve' to be called up in times of emergency or need.

Actually, in todays military, the normal enlistment is 4 years, however, the length of time is actually 8 years of enlistment. 4 years active duty, 4 years of inactive duty, during which, you can be recalled if needed, although its not like the reserves where you do a weekend a month etc. your done with active duty unless needed.
So however long active ( 4, 5,6 years) even takes in to account the time your waiting to enlist, so if you say sign up in high school , the time your waiting to ship off counts on the 8 years.

now for McCoy? maybe there's a term of service? Officers are different, atleast in the military, where they can quit at any time by resigning there commission. but they do have contract lengths like enlisted I do believe, so maybe McCoy signed up for 10 years, and then retired after TOS, but was still in his Term of Service, but In active. so they called up and told him to report in.
 
They can just build a billion A500 Soong-type android synths and summon 5 billion holograms to fight all their wars in a post-Picard universe.
 
Starfleet does have a little known, seldom used reserve activation clause in the 23rd century.

It seems clear that there is no actual "reserve activation clause" - Kirk simply pulled the strings with Admiral Nogura to get McCoy reactivated. Kirk as much as admits that it was his idea. Starfleet wouldn't have done this if Kirk hadn't told them to.
 
I'm not so sure.

I believe it's "The Siege of AR-558" where a Starfleet crewman shoots his own foot with a phaser in order to get out of there. Starfleet service can't be voluntary otherwise people would be able to quit without putting a hole in their foot. If it's based on a contract, like US military enlistment, what goods and services are Starfleet offering in a society without money and post scarcity? If Federation law is similar to the American legal system, a valid contract needs the exchange of things of value from one party to the other to be valid. What is a person's labor getting for service in the Federation that an average civilian wouldn't already be entitled to?

I think another interesting side question to this would be whether the Federation has something similar to "basic" in The Expanse, where the citizens of the United Nations get "basic" (or automatic welfare) as a subsistence level of support.

"NOR THE BATTLE TO THE STRONG" in early season 5 was when we saw a Starfleet guy shoot his foot with a phaser. He did it because he was scared at the front lines and saw someone else get carried off when they were injured.

That was a situation of simply not being able to handle a battle than wanting to leave Starfleet.


To answer the original question, no. Starfleet doesn't have a draft (at least, before you sign up to begin with, as McCoy was 'drafted' back in TMP) and I doubt they ever would, even in a giant emergency.

Now, I believe Starfleet may have relaxed their entrance standards since the Borg attack (both times), the brief Klingon War in 2373, and the Dominion War.
 
I can think of no good reason why Starfleet as an entity would specifically want McCoy out there in TMP, when there must be thousands of doctors experienced in dealing with all kinds of alien life and unknown entities in Starfleet- it must have been Kirk's personal preference.
 
I can think of no good reason why Starfleet as an entity would specifically want McCoy out there in TMP, when there must be thousands of doctors experienced in dealing with all kinds of alien life and unknown entities in Starfleet- it must have been Kirk's personal preference.

Undoubtedly. Any Captain would surely want familiar, reliable officers around him on a dangerous mission.
 
It seems clear that there is no actual "reserve activation clause" - Kirk simply pulled the strings with Admiral Nogura to get McCoy reactivated. Kirk as much as admits that it was his idea. Starfleet wouldn't have done this if Kirk hadn't told them to.

I always read it as both. Kirk wanted Bones back and exploited a loophole in his contract do so. That the clause was real, but was virtually unknown and rarely, if ever, actually enforced. Somewhere in the smallest of small prints.
 
Also, we don't know whether there was really no way around for McCoy to get out of it.

After all, we know that he loves to complain about stuff and be grumpy about it, so that's no indication in itself that, from the depths of his heart, he really didn't want to come along on another mission with his old captain.
 
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If I remember right, at the beginning on TMP, Kirk has the title of head of Starfleet Operations. I’m guessing that gives him a LOT of leeway when it comes to crew assignments and the distribution of ships and resources.

McCoy at first thinks it’s Admiral Nagura that invoked the reserve activation clause, but then realizes it was Kirk that did it.

Also, if you think about it, Kirk had to have used some favors to keep his crew together. He kept most of his senior officers together for DECADES, where in any real situation they would have been moved around to different duty stations, given their own commands like Sulu, and opened up those positions over time to allow other junior officers to move in to learn under Kirk and the rest of the command staff.
 
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