Pre-Burn UFP membership...

[TJ Sinclair]

If this is what bugged me most in season three, overall, it's a success. But nonetheless, this made me go "huh?" more than anything else...

Vance says that at its peak, pre-Burn Federation membership reached 350 members. Assuming that's full member worlds, it's only 200 more members than the UFP had in 2373, according to Picard. That's... absurd, to me.

In roughly 210 years, then Federation went from 4 or 5 member states to 150. You're telling me that in the next 700+ years, they only added another 200 or so? I would have expected the number to be at least twice that, if not more.

I'd expect some Delta Quadrant members, some Gamma Quadrant, and plenty more from the Alpha and Beta as they were more fully explored. Former Romulan client races? Other old enemies turned allies? Yeah, those can be among the 200 new ones, but that number just seems *so* small.

Am I the only one bugged by this?

 

[Weyoun 251]

I took member to mean that conglomerates would be classed as 1 member rather than be each individual race.

 

[NCC-73515]

A lot could've happened. Entire sectors wiped out by the Borg, systems destroyed by Klingon attacks... many pre-warp planets who weren't ready yet...

 

[Agony_Boothb]

If this is what bugged me most in season three, overall, it's a success. But nonetheless, this made me go "huh?" more than anything else...

Vance says that at its peak, pre-Burn Federation membership reached 350 members. Assuming that's full member worlds, it's only 200 more members than the UFP had in 2373, according to Picard. That's... absurd, to me.

In roughly 210 years, then Federation went from 4 or 5 member states to 150. You're telling me that in the next 700+ years, they only added another 200 or so? I would have expected the number to be at least twice that, if not more.

I'd expect some Delta Quadrant members, some Gamma Quadrant, and plenty more from the Alpha and Beta as they were more fully explored. Former Romulan client races? Other old enemies turned allies? Yeah, those can be among the 200 new ones, but that number just seems *so* small.

Am I the only one bugged by this?

I actually think its very realistic that the Federation would only have 350 member worlds. By 2373 The Federation stretched 8,000 ly with 150 worlds. Those 350 worlds might have spread across 20,000 light years of space in addition to thousands of colonies.

I imagine Federation was probably hemmed in by other political entities which limited its growth. And in regards to other quadrants, the Federation were signatories to the jankata accords which forbid or limited territorial expansion into other quadrants.

There is also the real possibility that a lot of cultures just didn't want to join but were happy maintaining an alliance.

 

[The Wormhole]

If anything, the franchise's prior attitude that everyone would eventually join the Federation Just Because was unbelievably silly. I remember the novel Federation ended with the epilogue set in the 33rd century in which every spacefaring race in the Milky Way had joined the Federation.

Not everyone's going to want to join the Federation. Some will be perfectly content to go it on their own, or join up with another interstellar alliance. So, an additional 200 members eight hundred years after the TNG days is a fine enough number for me.

 

[dupersuper]

I remember the novel Federation ended with the epilogue set in the 33rd century in which every spacefaring race in the Milky Way had joined the Federation.

Did they specify the century? I haven't read it in a while, but I remember it as just a vague distant future.

 

[Lord Garth]

In roughly 210 years, then Federation went from 4 or 5 member states to 150. You're telling me that in the next 700+ years, they only added another 200 or so? I would have expected the number to be at least twice that, if not more.

The Federation would gain more members in its earlier days, when people are finding out about it, than later. If they haven't joined after a certain point, then they're probably not interested. Especially once Starfleet can travel to all four quadrants and who or what the Federation is would no longer be a mystery to anyone.

Also, you can only expand so much before you hit someone else's boundaries. That puts a cap on the Federation's expansion and how far it spreads out.

America conquered and annexed land in the 19th Century in order to spread "from sea to shining sea". The Federation, as it's always been depicted, wouldn't do that. People mistake the Federation's expansion with America's, but that's looking at it the wrong way.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

We can all blame the Nyberrite Alliance for taking the galaxy's best & brightest. Expansionism is not the sole indicator of peace and prosperity in the universe, so 350 sounds fine.

And supposedly there was the "Jankata Accord" that was briefly mentioned in "The Voyager Conspiracy" episode which proclaimed "No species shall enter another quadrant for the purpose of territorial expansion." That was Chakotay's way of shooting down Seven's idea that Voyager had come to the Delta Quadrant to expand the Federation, basically saying it was impossible by treaty.

 

[The Wormhole]

Did they specify the century? I haven't read it in a while, but I remember it as just a vague distant future.

IIRC, they say "a thousand years later."

 

[F. King Daniel]

We don't know what the Federation was like, post-Picard and pre-Burn. Maybe worlds had good reason not to want to join. Maybe there were better Federations out there.

 

[Tuskin38]

We don't know what the Federation was like, post-Picard and pre-Burn. Maybe worlds had good reason not to want to join. Maybe there were better Federations out there.

Obviously producer comments aren’t Canon, but Kurtzman said that prior to the burn, the Federation was the best it had ever been.

That could be ignored or followed up in Season 4.

 

[The Wormhole]

I suspect eventually the rest of the galaxy gradually learned Eddington was right when he said the Federation were like the Borg and that soured the recruitment pitch for joining.

#eddingtonwasright

 

[Deks]

Considering there are over 10 000 species in the Milky Way (at least according to the Borg in late 24th century)... we don't know how many of those are part of interstellar organizations.

It is also possible a large portion of those species are actually concentrated around the Delta Quadrant.

For example, the Klingon Empire (and even the Romulan Empire) had various 'minor' species which helped expand their respective territories.

Its possible that both Klingons and Romulans eventually joined the Federation (and it seems like this happened), in which case it would have meant both Empire's territories would have been absorbed into the Federation along with the minor species (and they wouldn't necessarily had to have had a lot of them).
Similar with the Dominion.
If the Founders joined the Federation, then all of Dominion space would merge with the Federation, including the minor species.
So, lets say the Klingons, Romulans and Dominion each had about 60 'minor' species which helped expand their territories (actually, I'd dare say the Romulans and Klingons may have subjugated less than 60 minor species each... perhaps 20 or 30 - maybe 40, with the rest mainly being part of the Dominion).

So, yeah, you could still end up having a pretty large Federation spanning majority of the Milky Way (and maybe having some 'patches' in the Delta Quadrant) with just 350 member planets.

It also depends on how many 'minor' species that were subjugated considered themselves Klingon, Romulan or even Dominion with little or no cultural identity of their own beyond what their conquerors told them (but I fairly doubt the Federation would leave things like that... in all probability, before joining the Federation each of the main powers would need to agree to release their subjugated species and help them reclaim individual cultural identities).


As it was mentioned, Chakotay did mention Jankata Accords... but to be fair, those accords wouldn't necessarily limit expansion of the Federation or other organizations in other quadrants of the Milky way unless the said species wanted to join those organizations themselves.
And who knows, those Accords might not have lasted much longer after the 24th century. Its possible the accords were adjusted if the larger Empires (and previous enemies) decided they wanted to join the Federation instead.

 

[Timo]

"Member planets" doesn't sound at all likely - Kirk already had "us" at "a thousand planets and expanding", back before the first references to 150 members. Was that humans at a thousand planets, or Feds? No matter, member=!=planet...

Would member=species be a true statement? Probably not. If the Xindi ever joined, say, they could well insist on being one member (esp. if votes get dished out per capita rather than per member). OTOH, a species might be divided, and Romulans could have joined before merging into the Ni'Var for all we know.

Possibly member=political party is possible at least in addition, so hundreds of species, locations or organizations could gather under a single banner and then carry that to the Council Chambers.

We do have a minimum estimate for the span of the pre-Burn UFP spatially: when Michael B arrives in the future, she does so some 51,000 ly from Earth (indicated by the positioning of her final Red Sign, and by the fact that she's within easy comms distance of Terralysium even when distant calls are nigh-impossible), and finds a Federation outpost there... If the UFP used to be a thing 50k ly to one direction from Earth, it's pretty difficult to postulate less than galactic coverage overall. But OTOH plausible to postulate a UFP that has a presence everywhere but does not hog all the space and allows for other types of political entity everywhere as well.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RAMA]

Keep in mind they could have met 5,000 but not everyone wants to join.

If this is what bugged me most in season three, overall, it's a success. But nonetheless, this made me go "huh?" more than anything else...

Vance says that at its peak, pre-Burn Federation membership reached 350 members. Assuming that's full member worlds, it's only 200 more members than the UFP had in 2373, according to Picard. That's... absurd, to me.

In roughly 210 years, then Federation went from 4 or 5 member states to 150. You're telling me that in the next 700+ years, they only added another 200 or so? I would have expected the number to be at least twice that, if not more.

I'd expect some Delta Quadrant members, some Gamma Quadrant, and plenty more from the Alpha and Beta as they were more fully explored. Former Romulan client races? Other old enemies turned allies? Yeah, those can be among the 200 new ones, but that number just seems *so* small.

Am I the only one bugged by this?

 

[dupersuper]

And supposedly there was the "Jankata Accord" that was briefly mentioned in "The Voyager Conspiracy" episode which proclaimed "No species shall enter another quadrant for the purpose of territorial expansion." That was Chakotay's way of shooting down Seven's idea that Voyager had come to the Delta Quadrant to expand the Federation, basically saying it was impossible by treaty.

But the Federation (and the Klingon and Romulan empires in some maps) are in both the alpha and beta quadrants. Were they there before the Jankata Accord and grandfathered in? Does Voyager say when it was signed?

IIRC, they say "a thousand years later."

That could be 1,000 years after the TNG section, or the first epilogue after Generations, putting it in the late 34th century. 200 years seems like a reasonable Burn recovery time.

Maybe there were better Federations out there.

First.

 

[Timo]

But the Federation (and the Klingon and Romulan empires in some maps) are in both the alpha and beta quadrants. Were they there before the Jankata Accord and grandfathered in? Does Voyager say when it was signed?

Nope, but the time window is narrow. There's no point in having the treaty before the stable wormhole at Bajor is discovered in "Emissary", and the ink has to dry before the ship leaves DS9 in "Caretaker".

No doubt the treaty is specifically about the Smiths preventing the Joneses from going to Gamma Quadrant through the Bajoran wormhole for purposes of expansion and advantage-gaining. The Feds control the wormhole, so they'd tell Cardassians (but more importantly, powerful folks like Klingons) not to covet what they don't have - and they themselves would abstain so as to placate the Cardassians (but again, Klingons) and alleviate their concerns that the Federation will grow thanks to exploiting Gamma. If not for the treaty, old enemies might gang up with new ones to wrestle the wormhole off UFP hands.

Secondarily, the treaty could be about having a piece of paper the Alphans can wave in front of the Dominion to prove there is no threat from Alpha and thus no legitimacy for the Dominion to preemptively conquer it. I doubt anybody would assume the Dominion to actually buy into that, though - and while this might not matter to the UFP, the time window for when the Cardassians would agree to signing such a piece of toilet paper is narrower still. Essentially, there isn't one - Cardassia simply won't be reeling from the shock of the revelation of the Dominion threat yet when Janeway sails out in "Caretaker".

Whether the wording would be vague enough to also cover exploiting of Delta is unknown; it need not be for Chakotay to quote the thing as a matter of principle, because principles matter to Janeway. Certainly the treaty would make concessions to the status quo at the Alpha/Beta border, even if none are mentioned.

Timo Saloniemi