More aliens in Starfleet...?

[Timo]

It still very much remains a budgetary limitation that the entire cast cannot consist of people who need latex applied on their faces and perhaps elsewhere for hours upon hours per working day. Thus, the spinoff shows did well to stick with the original TOS dramatic concept of a conservative crew of human soldiers contrasted against one or two aliens of more liberal or radical outlook.

Yet shows of other sort are manageable both budgetarily and dramatically, as Farscape demonstrates. A nearly all-alien regular cast with all-alien guests and extras contrasted against a single human regular is hideously expensive, unless you can somehow convince the audience that doing it on the cheap is still dramatically valid. Farscape managed that by bringing in lots of absurd humor. But if Trek attempted that, it would be laughed out of the court - it would no longer be Trek.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Therin of Andor]

Yet shows of other sort are manageable both budgetarily and dramatically, as Farscape demonstrates. A nearly all-alien regular cast

Some of whom were puppets.

And what kept the cost of "Farscape" down was filming it on the Gold Coast, Australia, using relatively cheap and hungry Australian guest cast.

 

[robjkay]

I think it would've been cool to see a more diversified crew on a starship, like instead having a nearly 90% human crew and then a small percentage made up of the odd Bolian, Vulcan, Andorian etc then how about having, say, around 40% to 50% human crew and more numbers of Andorians, Vulcans, Bolians and whatever.

I guess why we don't see it is because of the reasons already given above but also something that was suggested a while back on a similar topic where Starfleet might choose to there have there ships crewed by a majority of the same species for the reason, I guess, for working conditions (I think) like having a Starship crewed by almost all Humans, a Starship crewed by almost all Vulcans or Andorians etc.

i think there was an all andorian ship (at least I read online, could be crap)

No there was not an all Andorian starfleet ship in any ST series, but there was an all Vulcan starfleet ship!

There could have been very well have been a all Andorian SF ship, but there was no mention of it like any of the races in ST.

 

[asdf1]

Of the major, regular characters, TOS had a Vulcan (1); TNG had an android, a Betazoid, and a Klingon (3); DS9 had a Bejoran, a Changling, a Ferengi, a Klingon, and a Trill (5); Voyager had a Borg, a hologram, a Klingon, an Ocampa, a Talaxian, and a Vulcan (6); Enterprise had a Denoblian, and a Vulcan (2).

Of the above who served in or with Starfleet, TOS had one (Spock); TNG had three (Data, Troi, and Worf); DS9 had two (Worf and Dax); Voyager had three (the Dr., B'leana and Tuvoc); Enterprise had one (Flox).

What have I missed?

Was Phlox actually in Starfleet? I thought he was there because of some sort of Medical exchange programme.

 

[captcalhoun]

correct. Phlox was never a Starfleet officer, although T'pol was...

 

[3D Master]

I like to think its because earth is you know the premier member of the federation, and star fleet academy is on earth.

Which is another problem. Start counting the number of starships, starbases (in space and on planets) and thus the number of Starfleet personnel, as well as the size of the Federation (and the time it would take to fly there) and there's no way in hell every single one of those millions of personnel can be trained and educated in just one academy.

There must be more than one Starfleet Academy, spread throughout the Federation on multiple member worlds.

It still very much remains a budgetary limitation that the entire cast cannot consist of people who need latex applied on their faces and perhaps elsewhere for hours upon hours per working day.

Indeed, thus it isn't just budgetary restraints, but also TIME restraints. Every alien is another several hours of makeup, and if you want to get it done in time, you would need another makeup artist.

Thus, the spinoff shows did well to stick with the original TOS dramatic concept of a conservative crew of human soldiers contrasted against one or two aliens of more liberal or radical outlook.

Yes, and I always imagined there were many more non-human crew members, we just didn't see them.

 

[Timo]

...there's no way in hell every single one of those millions of personnel can be trained and educated in just one academy.

I don't really see why not. What are the showstoppers?

Basically, Starfleet has an entire city available for campus area, enough to house the teaching staff and quite plausibly the entire student body as well - but more probably just part of the student body needs to be physically present for most of the training. Perhaps the cadets spend most of their time physically present (although Ben Sisko seemed to live home rather than on the campus at least initially), but the assorted other trainees could literally phone in their contributions. "Classrooms" can be the size of a planet, then, or bigger if interplanetary and interstellar communications are fast enough.

A university-level facility with a throughput of a million people per year would present scant practical problems for the 23rd century. And a Starfleet with, say, 10,000 ships of 500 crew each, plus three times that in support personnel, would still only number only a couple of million, requiring much more modest throughput. Today's largest universities boast total student bodies in the quarter-million range already, with a few going past one million.

Starfleet could make do with just one Academy if it wanted to. And there are some reasons for wanting to. But of course, it is still possible Starfleet doesn't want to, and sufficient leeway in the onscreen material for postulating any number of "auxiliary" installments.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[3D Master]

...there's no way in hell every single one of those millions of personnel can be trained and educated in just one academy.

I don't really see why not. What are the showstoppers?

Basically, Starfleet has an entire city available

Starfleet doesn't have an entire city available. There are people living in that city you know. It doesn't turn into a deserted ghost tome come summer break.

for campus area, enough to house the teaching staff and quite plausibly the entire student body as well - but more probably just part of the student body needs to be physically present for most of the training. Perhaps the cadets spend most of their time physically present (although Ben Sisko seemed to live home rather than on the campus at least initially), but the assorted other trainees could literally phone in their contributions. "Classrooms" can be the size of a planet, then, or bigger if interplanetary and interstellar communications are fast enough.

So... where then do these people on other planets do the physical parts of the training, hmm? At their planet? Requiring a... Starfleet Academy facility? Oh, yeah.

A university-level facility with a throughput of a million people per year would present scant practical problems for the 23rd century. And a Starfleet with, say, 10,000 ships of 500 crew each, plus three times that in support personnel, would still only number only a couple of million, requiring much more modest throughput. Today's largest universities boast total student bodies in the quarter-million range already, with a few going past one million.

There would be FAR more than 10,000 ships, not to mention the Starbases, both in space and on the ground. There are 200 million personnel EASILY, and I'm probably being pessimistic in the numbers now. It's probably higher.

Starfleet could make do with just one Academy if it wanted to. And there are some reasons for wanting to. But of course, it is still possible Starfleet doesn't want to, and sufficient leeway in the onscreen material for postulating any number of "auxiliary" installments.

No, they can't make do. There are simply too many.

 

[Timo]

Starfleet doesn't have an entire city available. There are people living in that city you know. It doesn't turn into a deserted ghost tome come summer break.

FWIW, the original TMP concept was that San Francisco was virtually deserted and turned into parkland in the 2270s. The city mattes with a drastically scaled-down skyline and lots of green were to support that concept.

But that's neither here nor there. Starfleet would still easily have a city's worth of room for its students if it wanted. There's no practical hindrance to that. And with transporter-based mass transit, they essentially have a whole planet for their campus area, really.

There would be FAR more than 10,000 ships, not to mention the Starbases, both in space and on the ground.

Would there? If Starfleet goes to six digits, then the figures quoted for foreign navies in DS9 make no sense, as none of them would ever dare oppose the Federation. Also, if Starfleet goes to six digits, none of the figures quoted for Starfleet itself make sense, as a mere two-digit collection of three-digit combat fleets as presented would leave about 99% of Starfleet in the category of "noncombatant, never seen".

And we know that can't be true, because even the humblest Starfleet ship designs were considered combatant in DS9. There really couldn't exist an appreciable number of vessels with multi-hundred crews to bolster the figures.

If one decides to contest the DS9 numbers, one must realize that they are the only ones available. Sometimes we may have to pick and choose between conflicting pseudofacts, but here we are given one set of those only.

Also remember that Starfleet is never there when needed. It doesn't have the strength to defend or assist all its member worlds with the presence of even a single permanently deployed starship. So dramatically speaking, it would be untenable for Starfleet to have more than a five-digit collection of ships, as long as we accept that there is just a four-digit collection of planets to look after.

As for the ratio of ship crews versus shore personnel, all sorts of guesses are possible. Perhaps 1:3 is indeed too low. But for example the Royal Navy has about 40,000 employees for about a hundred ships which have about 100 crew on the average (the balance being between numerous small vessels with a crew of 50 and a dozen large combatants with complements of a couple of hundred).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[3D Master]

Starfleet doesn't have an entire city available. There are people living in that city you know. It doesn't turn into a deserted ghost tome come summer break.

FWIW, the original TMP concept was that San Francisco was virtually deserted and turned into parkland in the 2270s. The city mattes with a drastically scaled-down skyline and lots of green were to support that concept.

That was a show how cities in the 23rd century had changed to become much more green and one with nature, an entirely different building philosophy. NOT that it was deserted.

But that's neither here nor there. Starfleet would still easily have a city's worth of room for its students if it wanted. There's no practical hindrance to that. And with transporter-based mass transit, they essentially have a whole planet for their campus area, really.

Which still wouldn't address the time needed to travel there, even IF you could them all in one planet and one facility.

There would be FAR more than 10,000 ships, not to mention the Starbases, both in space and on the ground.

Would there? If Starfleet goes to six digits, then the figures quoted for foreign navies in DS9 make no sense, as none of them would ever dare oppose the Federation. Also, if Starfleet goes to six digits, none of the figures quoted for Starfleet itself make sense, as a mere two-digit collection of three-digit combat fleets as presented would leave about 99% of Starfleet in the category of "noncombatant, never seen".

The foreign navies would have the same numbers.

And we've never seen many figures quoted if at all, most certainly not figures that encompass the entire Starfleet.

Also remember that Starfleet is never there when needed. It doesn't have the strength to defend or assist all its member worlds with the presence of even a single permanently deployed starship.

If it didn't, it would never have stood a chance against the Dominion. The "only the Enterprise is in range" said I mostly ignore as anything but flukes, required to get the story going. Taking that as reality would make no sense.

So dramatically speaking, it would be untenable for Starfleet to have more than a five-digit collection of ships, as long as we accept that there is just a four-digit collection of planets to look after.

And that's the one I do NOT accept. Across 8,000 lightyears there are some 200 to 500 MILLION stars; and the potential for far MORE inhabited worlds, whether M-class, or domed colonies. They are not all of them inhabited - unless we go by Star Trek II - but ONLY four-digit is hopelessly low, considering there are 150 members. If only half those members have the amount of colonies that the Humans and Vulcans have, we'll already be in the 5 digits, and it's probably more.

 

[Timo]

Which still wouldn't address the time needed to travel there, even IF you could them all in one planet and one facility.

That's exactly what it would do, as travel time by transporter is essentially zero. Of course, virtual presence would take care of much of it anyway, as it allows for universities with hundreds of thousands of students today already.

As for traveling from one's homeworld to San Francisco, there's no support for the idea that any known part of the Federation would lie beyond a travel time of several years from Earth. Somehow, the distances and warp speeds work together to create a Federation accessible by starship within the context of the plot. And what if travel there takes six months? It's just part of the great unifying experience.

Perhaps there are outlying holdings 8,000 ly from Earth that cannot effectively participate in Starfleet training because the cadets would need to travel for three-four years to reach the Earth facility. But such holdings wouldn't benefit much from a local training center, either, when Starfleet itself lies closer to the core worlds and cannot respond quickly to a threat against such an "island".

The foreign navies would have the same numbers. And we've never seen many figures quoted if at all, most certainly not figures that encompass the entire Starfleet.

I know you are very fond of selective acceptance of evidence - all of us are, around here, to greater or lesser degree. But these figures most definitely are there: DS9 speaks of Starfleet formations called "Fleets" involving hundreds of ships, in a way that precludes them from involving thousands, and mentions several of them, but never a Fleet numbered higher than 10. It's statistically utterly implausible, then, that there would exist sixty Fleets, or that all the unseen ones would be larger than the witnessed ones.

Before DS9, we had little or no data to judge Starfleet's size by. After DS9, we have it more or less nailed down for us.

That is, unless we decide to write a science fiction show of our own, using characters and storylines copyrighted to Desilu/Paramount/CBS.

The "only the Enterprise is in range" said I mostly ignore as anything but flukes, required to get the story going. Taking that as reality would make no sense.

I know you have problems accepting any reality but your own. But this is Star Trek we are talking about. Your alternate scifi show should really get a forum of its own.

If only half those members have the amount of colonies that the Humans and Vulcans have, we'll already be in the 5 digits, and it's probably more.

The amount of colonies Earth has is unknown, but onscreen count hardly goes past fifty. And you don't know of any Vulcan settlements of worth (because you don't accept ENT). So what to make of the "We're on a thousand planets and spreading" line of Kirk's? Doesn't sound applicable to the human species in light of this, but does sound plausible for a Federation where a percentage of 150 species push into space.

Also, the number of colonies attributed to individual members, rather than to the Federation, is pretty much zip anyway. That is, after the founding of the UFP, but material from ENT supposedly doesn't count.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[stew123au]

Well obviously it was budget oriented in TOS. However I also think most of the audience wouild have been unabloe to relate to too many aliens.

As time has gone on more aliens have been introduced. Alhtough Star Fleet is still mostly human and even the aliens are humanoid. (Cost again I guess)

I loved the Titan series of books. There is more Freedom in books to try new ideas compared to movies or TV where cost is always anissue.

 

[3D Master]

Which still wouldn't address the time needed to travel there, even IF you could them all in one planet and one facility.

That's exactly what it would do, as travel time by transporter is essentially zero. Of course, virtual presence would take care of much of it anyway, as it allows for universities with hundreds of thousands of students today already.

You can't transport from planet to planet, from star to star. With the size of the Federation it could take months, even YEARS, before they finally find themselves on Earth. They'de be transiting longer to get to academy in some extreme cases, than they'd attend the academy.

As for traveling from one's homeworld to San Francisco, there's no support for the idea that any known part of the Federation would lie beyond a travel time of several years from Earth. Somehow, the distances and warp speeds work together to create a Federation accessible by starship within the context of the plot. And what if travel there takes six months? It's just part of the great unifying experience.

8,000 lightyears, that means at Warp 9 it takes 8 YEARS to get to Earth at the most pessimistic, 3 YEARS at the most optimistic. It would make them traveling longer than they'd be at the Academy. And 6 months, aka a year of travel time back and forth. (Oh, do remember, I lied in the above example, I'm actually being EXTREMELY optimistic with even the most pessimistic number - this is after all the number, of several years of sustained Warp 9 flight.)

With the amount of students there are, you'd need more ships just to shuttle the graduated ensigns to their new assignments than actually doing any work.

It is just not feasible.

Perhaps there are outlying holdings 8,000 ly from Earth that cannot effectively participate in Starfleet training because the cadets would need to travel for three-four years to reach the Earth facility. But such holdings wouldn't benefit much from a local training center, either, when Starfleet itself lies closer to the core worlds and cannot respond quickly to a threat against such an "island".

They would have their own training center, they'd have to man their own defense force. Whether it gets the name Starfleet is another question, and I would at a guess say, yes:

Which is exactly the point. What is a satellite in past, is one of the "core worlds" or "main body" now. Yet the distance to Earth is still as great, and there's barely been a speed increase - only with with Intrepid-class do we have indefinite high-warp sustainable engines. It would take massive amounts of time to get to Earth back when they were satellites, and still today. The satellites self-setup, would become the Starfleet Academy for the region.

The thing is, you can jump high and low, but you'll never convince me that "Earth is the only place with a Starfleet Academy" is not a ridiculous concept. We should have heard of Starfleet Academies on other worlds by now, that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

The foreign navies would have the same numbers. And we've never seen many figures quoted if at all, most certainly not figures that encompass the entire Starfleet.

I know you are very fond of selective acceptance of evidence - all of us are, around here, to greater or lesser degree. But these figures most definitely are there: DS9 speaks of Starfleet formations called "Fleets" involving hundreds of ships, in a way that precludes them from involving thousands, and mentions several of them, but never a Fleet numbered higher than 10. It's statistically utterly implausible, then, that there would exist sixty Fleets, or that all the unseen ones would be larger than the witnessed ones.

Before DS9, we had little or no data to judge Starfleet's size by. After DS9, we have it more or less nailed down for us.

Not so much, because we've only heard numbers after battles and after a major war, where they've always said they've lost lots of ships.

Also, fleets only exist in war time, during peace the ships are much more spread out. I would hazzard a guess, that not all ships are assigned to war fleets.

60 fleets of some several hundred ships, I find horrendously little for the size of the Federation.

The "only the Enterprise is in range" said I mostly ignore as anything but flukes, required to get the story going. Taking that as reality would make no sense.

I know you have problems accepting any reality but your own. But this is Star Trek we are talking about. Your alternate scifi show should really get a forum of its own.

Anyone who takes plot-contrivances as a way to measure numbers is ridiculous.

The Enterprise-B is the most horrendous violation of this. How in hell, can the capital of the Federation, the solar system with one of the main fleet yards, a system that should attract MASSIVE amounts of traffic, both Starfleet and civilian, and is the system that by default should have one of the most heavy defensive presence and patrols even without all the traffic flying around, have but one, incomplete starship around?

This so completely makes no sense whatsoever, to take that as a sign for Starfleet's numbers is ridiculous.

If only half those members have the amount of colonies that the Humans and Vulcans have, we'll already be in the 5 digits, and it's probably more.

The amount of colonies Earth has is unknown, but onscreen count hardly goes past fifty. And you don't know of any Vulcan settlements of worth (because you don't accept ENT). So what to make of the "We're on a thousand planets and spreading" line of Kirk's? Doesn't sound applicable to the human species in light of this, but does sound plausible for a Federation where a percentage of 150 species push into space.[/quote]

Uh, there aren't a 150 species until the latter half of the 24th century. There were a lot less by TOS. And for the size of the Federation, a thousand planets with humans (many amongst them mixed with other species no doubt) sounds quite right actually. The total number of worlds under the UFP in the TOS area I would hazzard a guess by that number is close to 10,000, which by the 24th century would be double that or more.

Also, the number of colonies attributed to individual members, rather than to the Federation, is pretty much zip anyway. That is, after the founding of the UFP, but material from ENT supposedly doesn't count.

Absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence.

However, you'd be wrong. We've seen quite a few a colonies set up that are quite new, which means that even in the 24th century new colonies are being established all the time. Not among the least of which, the colonies that would later become the Cardassian-Federation DMZ.

So we know the spreading didn't stop.

 

[Timo]

The thing is, you can jump high and low, but you'll never convince me that "Earth is the only place with a Starfleet Academy" is not a ridiculous concept. We should have heard of Starfleet Academies on other worlds by now, that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

Why, that's my opinion as well. Since we haven't heard of them, it's now implausible that they could exist.

While the Federation may be 8,000 ly across along some axis, we also know such distances can be traversed in a matter of years at most ("Q Who?"), and we often get the impression that travel within civilized space is faster than through unexplored space (issues of navigation or maintenance, perhaps). There is no canonical data on how fast the high warp factors really are, but there is plenty to indicate that people can travel to what they call "the other side of the Federation" in a practical manner.

Perhaps there's the inconvenience of spending up to a year in transit, but that's balanced against the convenience of tying the entire Starfleet to its central government by pumping them through a unifying facility, even if only for long enough to provide them with a shared graduation ceremony.

Not so much, because we've only heard numbers after battles and after a major war, where they've always said they've lost lots of ships.

Granted that. But when Sisko scrapes together his forces for retaking DS9, we're still talking about formations that have not been near-annihilated. It just doesn't make sense to assume that the ships Sisko got from the 2nd and 5th Fleets, 600 put together, are just a pittance from a total of thousands. The Dominion force of 1,200 would then be so pitifully small in the general scheme of things that Starfleet would have absolutely nothing to fear from a Dominion redeployment of these forces against Earth, where the thus supposedly thousands-strong Third Fleet still sits.

And the 7th Fleet, with just over a hundred ships remaining as the season opens, would no longer be worthy of the title of Fleet if it represented less than ten percent of the original strength. Something like 30-50% of original strength is more realistic.

Also, fleets only exist in war time, during peace the ships are much more spread out. I would hazzard a guess, that not all ships are assigned to war fleets.

Agreed, certainly. But that won't affect things by orders of magnitude: it will only provide fine-tuning.

60 fleets of some several hundred ships, I find horrendously little for the size of the Federation.

But once again, the Federation is making do with a horrendously small force: its planets are not protected in peacetime, nor in wartime, and intruders almost always penetrate deep within before being observed let alone intercepted. Mobile defenses, consisting of starships or starship formations that have to be in the right place at the right time, are the reality we are being offered, episode after episode, spinoff after spinoff.

Be horrified all you wish, but that is Star Trek. Without the element of there not being a Starfleet presence there when it is most sorely needed, there could not exist a TV show featuring the adventure types we witness.

Anyone who takes plot-contrivances as a way to measure numbers is ridiculous.

But the only alternative you can offer is making up numbers out of thin air.

Which might still be fine if it didn't contradict the very essence of Star Trek.

Uh, there aren't a 150 species until the latter half of the 24th century. There were a lot less by TOS. And for the size of the Federation, a thousand planets with humans (many amongst them mixed with other species no doubt) sounds quite right actually. The total number of worlds under the UFP in the TOS area I would hazzard a guess by that number is close to 10,000, which by the 24th century would be double that or more.

Hazard any guesses you wish. Only don't use them as "proof" for whatever pet theory you have for the week. By piling seemingly realistic guesstimates atop each other, you only manage to build a house of cards that doesn't match any of the explicit requirements of the actual TV/movie drama.

Humans may be on a thousand planets (possibly with three miners on each), but Starfleet definitely isn't on a thousand planets, either in TOS or in TNG. As we clearly see, Starfleet is barely there, a symbolic rather than a practical presence, a deterrent more comparable to the Royal Navy across the globe than to the ubiquitous London City Police in the capital.

However, you'd be wrong. We've seen quite a few a colonies set up that are quite new, which means that even in the 24th century new colonies are being established all the time.

None of these count as the thing I specified, "colonies attributed to individual members". Bu the 24th century, the Federation is expanding by sponsoring Federation colonies; it's a joint effort, not something at which all the members compete, whipping each other to an expansion frenzy.

Also, we see that instead of exponential growth, the Federation keeps running into opponents who form an impenetrable block in their respective directions. Despite this, the UFP has easy access to uninhabited Class M worlds. Hardly a situation where we could estimate the UFP population by multiplying the number of planets within its supposed volume by suitably many thousand people, after dividing for the fraction that are habitable.

Timo Saloniemi