Scotty and his military comment

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

They are completely different organizations. The one in ENT is the Earth Starfleet; in TOS and further on, it's the Federation Starfleet. They are not the same organization. They have completely different jurisdictions, responsibilities, and organizing charters.

The Earth Starfleet is indeed not a military grouping. The Federation Starfleet is. (The UFP Starfleet is military, it's just not militarISTIC. That's the difference.)

Starfleet is Starfleet. Not to say it didn't evolve and change over time, but this business about the SF from ENT being a different one from the one in the rest of Trek is bunk, merely a spurious fandom conceit that began as some eager beaver's way of "reconciling" the "error" of SF being around as early as the 2150s back when the "Broken Bow" script first leaked. It was neither intended by writers to be, nor portrayed as being, a different organization.

 

[LobsterAfternoon]

I double checked, after the fighting is over, you see some folks working on the array, but they would seem to be from The Defiant. Worf tells Sisko that the USS Veracruz is sending troops and engineers. I suppose it's possible that the troops are some other form of Federation soldier being transported by a Starfleet vessel, but given that the initial troops that were assigned to hold the array were Starfleet, I'd wager the new guys are as well.

 

[LobsterAfternoon]

Earth Starfleet and Federation Starfleet are not one and the same. Certainly they served a similar purpose and have a similar name, but that's like saying that the Iraqi Army that served Saddam Hussein is the same as the Iraqi Army that now exists.

 

[Belz...]

I'll let you try to reconcile that, Eddie. They fight all of the Federation's battles in space but they are not military. Sure.

Sure. What's so strange about that?

It's not strange. It's nonsensical. Every military operation ever seen in the Trek universe that involved the Federation was exclusively performed by Starfleet. This alone is evidence against your theory that there's another navy out there (and if it's no navy, you have no argument from me), and makes Starfleet the military (navy) forces of the Federation.

"The civilians picked up weapons and did the fighting" would be "an engagement in which Starfleet wasn't involved." So yes.

It's obviously counter factual that ONLY Starfleet can fight on the Federation's behalf.

The civilians didn't fight on the Federation's behalf but in self-defense. You just defeated your own argument.

 

[BillJ]

The civilians didn't fight on the Federation's behalf but in self-defense. You just defeated your own argument.

And who showed up when Delta Rana sent a distress call? Starfleet!

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I see no major difference between ENT's Starfleet and that of other shows.

Neither do I.

Which is why I wasn't surprised in "Home" when Captain Hernandez tells Archer "I'm not sure how I would feel about a military officer on the bridge."

They are completely different organizations. The one in ENT is the Earth Starfleet; in TOS and further on, it's the Federation Starfleet. They are not the same organization. They have completely different jurisdictions, responsibilities, and organizing charters.

I don't know about their organizing charters, but their responsibilities and jurisdictions are not all that different.

As to the broader point, the extent to which Earth Starfleet and the Federation Starfleet are separate organizations is very much up for debate. Suffice to say, the Federation Starfleet has much more in common with Earth Starfleet than it does with any real-world naval force.

The Earth Starfleet is indeed not a military grouping. The Federation Starfleet is.

The thing is, Earth Starfleet does absolutely everything that its 23rd century counterpart does. The only reason to believe the Federation fleet is a military force is the examination of its mission roles by comparison with 21st century organizations; however, by the 22nd century that comparison has been rendered invalid anyway, as non-military organizations are shown to be capable of fulfilling those roles. After that, what reason is there to assume Starfleet IS a military when it never needed to be one in the first place?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'll let you try to reconcile that, Eddie. They fight all of the Federation's battles in space but they are not military. Sure.

Sure. What's so strange about that?

It's not strange. It's nonsensical. Every military operation ever seen in the Trek universe that involved the Federation was exclusively performed by Starfleet.

Didn't we just cover that? We know of at least one that wasn't.

More to the point, we already know that nonmilitary organizations can and do perform military missions as of the 22nd century. You have no basis to claim this would have changed by the 23rd (strictly speaking, this is ALREADY the case in the 21st, to the point that traditional notions of what constitutes a military threat has been in considerable flux since 9/11).

This alone is evidence against your theory that there's another navy out there

It's not a theory. The "Federation Naval Patrol" is canon. And Starfleet, which does not operate in the oceans, isn't a navy.

So between the MACO and the FNP, that's at two military organizations that exist apart from Starfleet. And again, since the overwhelming majority of wars in and around Federation space involve heavy ground combat, there's virtually zero reason for any of those organizations to have their own starships.

OTOH, they may have their own fighter squadrons, which would explain why we never saw them before "Sacrifice of Angels" and never again afterwards.

The civilians didn't fight on the Federation's behalf but in self-defense.

Fighting on behalf of Federation citizens is NOT fighting no behalf of the Federation?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

this business about the SF from ENT being a different one from the one in the rest of Trek is bunk

It's not bunk. It's simply the way it is.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

this business about the SF from ENT being a different one from the one in the rest of Trek is bunk

It's not bunk. It's simply the way it is.

[citation needed]

 

[Belz...]

I'd like some evidence as well. It's my understanding that it's a continuation of the same organisation, but since I've seen ENT only once so far, I'm willing to be proven wrong.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Here's what happened:

Before ENT ever even aired, a summary of the first episode's script was posted online, mentioning among other points that the heroes were Starfleet and they'd make first contact with the Klingons. At the time, many people were using the Okudas' Chronology for reference, and it said that Starfleet was established in 2161 with the UFP and that first contact with the Klingons took place only 50 years before TOS. Cue a bunch of people crying "continuity error" and then trying to come up with explanations for these "inconsistencies."

But they never were inconsistencies to begin with, since the timeline of these events had never actually been pinned down in canon and the authors of the Chronology had merely conjectured based on the little specific information available. People simply hadn't yet adjusted their thinking to accommodate the new data presented in the new series, leading to this fandom notion (never espoused on the show or by anyone directly involved with it) of two Starfleets.

Don't believe me that this is how the whole idea came about? The record is out there on the internet, probably on this very board and certainly on others. It's pure "fanon."

It was natural to presume that Starfleet was founded at the same time as the Federation before we were shown otherwise because up until then we'd always seen SF as part of the UFP, and the Starfleet Academy logo originally seen in "The First Duty" (TNG) had MMCLXI (2161) on it. But in retrospect, that really need only be seen as indicating that the San Francisco campus of Starfleet Academy was founded in 2161.

 

[The Wormhole]

That's more a reflection of ignorant writers than it is any canonical fact.

What's ignorant about it? The writers CONSCIOUSLY chose to depict Starfleet as being something other than a military organization. There are alot of reasons for this, the main one being an attempt to start a conversation about the nature and scope of militarism in civilized society (a conversation that Americans are uniquely uncomfortable having).

OTOH, your position is that it is inconceivable that any organization could participate in combat WITHOUT being a military; it is a possibility of which you are choosing to remain ignorant.

Except that Starfleet is very clearly military. It was depicted as one in TOS. In the other shows it still does everything that militaries of today do. Okay, during TNG Roddenberry was on some utopian hippy high and felt militaries weren't civilized or some such nonsense and therefore declared that Starfleet isn't a military. It doesn't make sense, and totally flies in the face of everything established about Starfleet in TOS. And unfortunately, everyone who has been in power over Trek since, Berman, Braga, and now Abrams have clung to this idea. Ironic, really, since so many of Roddenberry's other ideas were considered disposable, yet Starfleet not being a military seems to be some sort of sacred cow which no one will ever sacrifice.

 

[throwback]

There was a Starfleet in the Earth-Romulan Wars. This was established in the episode "Balance of Terror".

There was a Captain Stiles in the space service then.

 

[LobsterAfternoon]

Btw, rewatched the episode of DS9 where Section 31 is testing Bashir. The Weyoun hologram (programmed by Section 31) tries to convince Bashir that he was a traitor, and that he came around to their side because he realized that there was no way that STARFLEET could defeat the Dominion. Not "The Federation Military", not MACOs nor any other armed service.

 

[I am not Spock]

I was always under the impression that Earth Starfleet and Federation Starfleet were the same thing.

They just changed the name when the UFP was founded in 2161. Just like the Coalition of Planets seen in the last few episodes of ENT was the predecessor to the UFP (like the League of Nations and the United Nations, in real life history)

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Except that Starfleet is very clearly military. It was depicted as one in TOS.

And not in any other production since, as every later TV series has explicitly described Starfleet as a non-military organization for whom combat is an important but secondary role.

Okay, during TNG Roddenberry was on some utopian hippy high and felt militaries weren't civilized or some such nonsense and therefore declared that Starfleet isn't a military. It doesn't make sense, and totally flies in the face of everything established about Starfleet in TOS.

There's a dizzying number of things that contradict what was established in TOS. The nature of Starfleet is only the most subtle, especially since that depiction could easily go either way.

As for Rodenberry's "hippy high" that sort of illustrates my point. TNG was written and produced in the 1980s, when psychological and political scars of Vietnam were still fresh in everyone's mind; DS9, on the other hand, came out in the aftermath of the Gulf War when "Yay for the military!" was again a popular sentiment, only to have that transform into "Yay for... soldiers" during Iraq and Afghanistan where Americans were less supportive of the military than they were of individual soldiers in it.

And unfortunately, everyone who has been in power over Trek since, Berman, Braga, and now Abrams have clung to this idea.

There's nothing unfortunate about it. We as a country have had put up with a lot of stupid bullshit due to of influence of our military-industrial complex. We are living proof that a government that HAS a powerful military will have a tendency to misuse that power at the expense of both the citizens and members of said military.

It's a theme that has been repeated in Star Trek over and over and over again: EVERY time Starfleet has been compared to "the military" it has been in the context of Starfleet doing something it isn't supposed to be doing.

 

[Belz...]

And not in any other production since

And yet nothing's changed between TOS and TNG-era. Haven't we had this discussion, now ?

There's nothing unfortunate about it. We as a country have had put up with a lot of stupid bullshit due to of influence of our military-industrial complex.

Please don't bring US politics into this.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And not in any other production since

And yet nothing's changed between TOS and TNG-era.

Really?

The man who claims that "Starfleet is not a military organization" is the Captain of a spacecraft whose crew includes several hundred civilians, many of them children. This does not appear to be a feature unique to galaxy-class starships, since several years later we see this is also true of the USS Saratoga.

Are you suggesting the original Enterprise had children and families on board during TOS? (Other than, say, Charlie X or those Children of the Space Corn?)

There's nothing unfortunate about it. We as a country have had put up with a lot of stupid bullshit due to of influence of our military-industrial complex.

Please don't bring US politics into this.

The non-military nature of Starfleet is a REACTION to U.S. politics. The topic is unavoidable.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

There was a Starfleet in the Earth-Romulan Wars. This was established in the episode "Balance of Terror".

There was a Captain Stiles in the space service then.

The term "space service" could mean anything. It doesn't imply a specific name being used. It's totally generic. Remember, 'Starfleet' hadn't yet been chosen as a name when that episode aired (that's why the early TOS eps had a wide assortment of often comical pulp-ish names like "Space Command" and "Star Service" and all that).

In any case, it seems obvious that the two Starfleets must be different, for at least two reasons:

- Military organization. The original Earth Starfleet isn't military, but the Federation Starfleet is.

- Jurisdiction. A Starfleet that is reponsible for Earth alone cannot possibly be the same one that holds sway over hundreds of Federation member worlds. We have no idea why the Federation chose the name 'Starfleet' for its military, they must have thought it sounded good or something.

As for why (out of universe) the writers of ENT chose the name Starfleet? I don't know the answer to that either. They may have been ordered to do so by the network (same reason why transporters exist in that show - they didn't want to have them, the network made them do it).

 

[Belz...]

The man who claims that "Starfleet is not a military organization" is the Captain of a spacecraft whose crew includes several hundred civilians, many of them children. This does not appear to be a feature unique to galaxy-class starships, since several years later we see this is also true of the USS Saratoga.

This is like saying that military bases adjacent to a neighborhood built specifically for the soldiers and their families isn't really military because of that fact, or is somehow fundamentally different from a base without said neighborhood.

Are you suggesting the original Enterprise had children and families on board during TOS?

Why don't you question what I said rather than your straw construct of my argument ?

The non-military nature of Starfleet is a REACTION to U.S. politics.

Prove it.