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Once again.. Starfleet Seems to be a homo sapiens only club

AaronMorse

AaronMorse

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
Was really hoping to have alot more diversity amongst Starfleet. So far we've seen so very few non-humans..
One Vulcan Admiral
One Kelpian Commander
One (possible) Tiburon Crewmember
Two gigantic headed aliens.. look the same but different colors.
One female alien crewmember with different colored hair.
The Bolian looking crew member that died on the Shenzhou.
Did I miss any?

The conference table at the rebel MU base was WAY more what I would expect to see in the way of a multiracial organization... An Andorian Captain would be nice as well...
 
in the same time frame there are Vulcan only starfleet ships. This may imply there are Andorian and Tellarite only starfleet ships as well. Starfleet is not really a melting pot. It was desribed by Kirk as a combined service, his ship specifically under the authority of the United Earth Space Probe Agency. So yes, human ships tend to be a homo sapiens club.
 
CorporalClegg said:
The idea that Starfleet should be considered to be anything other than mostly human is about as ridiculous as it should be considered to be anything other than a military.
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Why?

If everyone is truly equal under the law in the Federation, and Starfleet is the primary space exploration/defense service of the UFP, than the only way that humans could remain so dominant is if the total population of the federation was 90%+ Human. This would basically require humans to be much, much more fecund than basically all other species.
 
eschaton said:
Why?
This would basically require humans to be much, much more fecund than basically all other species.
Click to expand...
They might be. Or some species might just be going inwards. Regardless I don't see what starfleet has to be more intregrated than it is. Take the Andorians for instance, they are going to find human comfortable ship temperatures higher than they find pleasant. Vulcans are going to find humans smelly. Tellarites are going to have more issues than National Geographic with everyone. That leaves other, not so well established species to take the extra slots on ships. In a situation like that you might have the occasional human on an Andorian ship. By the TNG era things are a little different, but not much.
 
eschaton said:
Why?

If everyone is truly equal under the law in the Federation, and Starfleet is the primary space exploration/defense service of the UFP, than the only way that humans could remain so dominant is if the total population of the federation was 90%+ Human. This would basically require humans to be much, much more fecund than basically all other species.
Click to expand...
Herein lies the problem.

No government in its right mind would ever allow that. If you were Andorian, would you like the idea of the only organization entrusted with your planet's defense be trained on Earth, stationed on Earth, and built in the Sol system?

I didn't think so.

The much more reasonable explanation is Andor has its own fleet and own ships. (And there's been enough scattered evidence across the Berman series to suggest this is probably true.)

As far as the exploration side, Starfleet probably does a lot more of it than any of the other system fleets, but that doesn't mean they don't do any exploration at all. And if you happened to be an Andorian scientist, and wanted to explore space, you could join your own fleet or join Starfleet. But doing the latter would mean having to go to school on an alien planet.

When you get right down to it, it's just another one of those silly Star Trek pretenses that really don't hold much water.
 
In fairness, Starfleet being a "Homo Sapiens Only Club" is consistent with TOS and the first movies. It shouldn't have been. As I've said elsewhere, the crew should have people represented from all continents of Earth and other Federation worlds should be better represented. Andor and Taler are supposedly key worlds of the Federation, yet we hardly ever see them, thus making it hard for me to believe they really are Key Federation Worlds.

But, this is a problem with all Star Trek, not just TOS or DSC. I mean, I suppose you could say they group similar species with each other, so the crews are mostly the same race but -- in the context of Star Trek -- that borders on 23rd Century Jim Crow.

In Real Life, I know it's because of make-up budgets. So, it's one of those situations where: no, it's not remotely accurate, and yes it would look bad if it were real but as a show, being produced in 20th and Early-21st Century Hollywood, what are you going to do?
 
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If you look at the inception of Starfleet, it was a United Earth service so naturally it WOULD be human. But the other three services had large, arguably better fleets with their own design identifiers. We never see any of those ships in the UFP Starfleet, except maybe the Apollo class.
Since there is virtually no canon material on screen for the Romulan war or how starfleet was integrated into the UFP, it almost has to be assumed that the other specie's fleets are still out there. It's canon that the Vulcan Expeditionary Group is still around. It makes sense the Andorian imperial fleet and whatever the Tellarite equivalent is still out there as well. They just don't get seen much. It would also explain why Starfleet ships tend to have Earth-centric names.
 
Lord Garth said:
In Real Life, I know it's because of make-up budgets. So, it's one of those situations where: no, it's not remotely accurate, and yes it would look bad if it were real but as a show, being produced in 20th and Early-21st Century Hollywood, what are going to do?
Click to expand...

The thing is, Discovery has a high enough budget that they could have had another non-human regular or two besides Saru (and Tyler, but he doesn't count because he's not in makeup) if they really wanted it. This is an area where some sort of retcon would have been totally understandable.
 
They probably have different atmospheric, gravitational, and temperature settings specific for the maximum comfort of each species. For example, a ship crewed by 90% Vulcans may have a higher gravity setting than a 90% Human ship.

There's probably some Humans on an Andorian ship who don't have a problem with the temperature setting, but probably don't have a 50:50 split so half the crew have to work in a temperature range that isn't ideal for their species.

And so on.
 
CorporalClegg said:
The idea that Starfleet should be considered to be anything other than mostly human is about as ridiculous as it should be considered to be anything other than a military.
Click to expand...

Absolutely.

The show's about human beings, and human beings dressed up as "aliens" talking about doing various things that are of interest only to human beings.
 
Serveaux said:
The show's about human beings, and human beings dressed up as "aliens" talking about doing various things that are of interest only to human beings.
Click to expand...

Yet at the same time, it's canonically established that the UFP isn't just some "United States of Man" - it's a multi-species interstellar state. Indeed, oddly enough it's the only one other than the Dominion we really ever see. We never actually hear about the subject races that the Klingons, Romulans (minus the Remans) or Cardassians have, even though given they form threats to the Federation there must be at least dozens of races subsumed into the empire.

Regardless, what makes the Federation different - what makes it the Federation - is that it's multi-species, and humans are most assuredly not the ones in charge, even if they're often shown as demographically dominant on screen.
 
A Romulan War/Post Romulan war miniseries could solve a lot of that buy showing what happened, how humans became ascendant, if they did, and why almost all the Starfleet ships we see look human now.
 
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