Always first and, in umpteen hours of filmed material, no other body is ever mentioned.
Always first and, in umpteen hours of filmed material, no other body is ever mentioned.
Sure, he could well be a 'soldier' in the UESPA Starfleet branch similar to how NASA would take pilots from USAF, USN, or USMC.
TOS and TNG they're primarily exploration craft. It's possible when hostilities begin, they use what they have (Starfleet) and if it turned to war and set battles they would have called on the Andorians and Tellarites to bring their ships, to take objectives and repel invaders.
By DS9 that clearly changed though no real evidence of that before that. In TOS, Spock repeatedly refers to Enterprise as an "Earth Ship" and the status of the all Vulcan crewed Intrepid was somewhat different than Enterprise.
When you substitute your own head canon in place of whatever evidence there actually is, it certainly casts complaints about a lack of evidence in a so-called interesting light.
And through ability to make decisions that could plunge the government in to a war.
That's inherent with FTL with even a rudimentary application of Newtonian physics. F=ma and all that.
And counter intrusions by foreign military assets.
Well, that's inherent with high sublight speeds. Newtonian physics fails when you get to relativistic speeds, and warp drive isn't even technically movement, but a reshaping of spacetime topology governed by the equations of General Relativity.
But yes, even a shuttlecraft moving at high impulse speed could hit a planet with the kinetic energy of a dinosaur-killer asteroid. A warp field would be a distortion of spacetime on a par with a black hole, so a warp field colliding with a planet could cause massive damage from the tidal disruption. Also, if we go by Alcubierre warp theory, a ship at warp would accumulate interstellar gas and dust particles at the front of the bubble like bugs on the windshield, and when it came out of warp, those particles would be propelled forward at relativistic speed and basically be a devastatingly powerful particle beam firing at whatever was in its path.
It stands to reason that any starfaring civilization would have robust planetary defenses. Star Trek often ignores this, but it's been alluded to in TMP and ST '09, where V'Ger and Nero (respectively) needed to get the access codes to shut down Earth's defense grid before they could attack.
I did a few basic keyword searches on the transcripts. These weren't overly sophisticated searches; I didn't try to think of every possible synonym, cliché, or idiom, nor consider all the different parts of speech. But even this sample shows how dialog repeatedly reflected the military nature of Starfleet. This is recognized by characters both inside and outside the organization.
1x05 THE MAN TRAP
KIRK: [Where is] Mrs. Crater? I won't ask again.
CRATER: Possibly at the other diggings. We don't keep military logs--
1x23 A TASTE OF ARMAGEDDON
SPOCK: By now, Mister Ambassador, I'm sure you realize that normal diplomatic procedures are ineffective here.
FOX: I've never been a soldier, Mister Spock, but I learn very quickly.
1x27 ERRAND OF MERCY
AYELBORNE: It is our way of life, Captain.
KIRK: That's the first thing that would be lost! Excuse me, gentlemen. I'm a soldier, not a diplomat. I can only tell you the truth.
KIRK: We can be of immense help to you. In addition to military aid, we can send you specialists, technicians.
AYELBORNE (to Kirk and Kor): We have simply put an end to your war. All your military forces, wherever they are, are now completely paralyzed.
2x02 METAMORPHOSIS
KIRK: I'm in command, Bones. It makes it my fault. How do you fight a thing like that?
MCCOY: Maybe you're a soldier so often that you forget you're also trained to be a diplomat.
2x18 OBSESSION
KIRK (to Garrovick): I'm asking for your military appraisal of the techniques used against the creature.
2x24 THE ULTIMATE COMPUTER
WESLEY: War games. I'll be commanding the attack force against you.
3x04 THE ENTERPRISE INCIDENT
COMMANDER: You realize that very soon we will learn to penetrate the cloaking device you stole.
SPOCK: Obviously. Military secrets are the most fleeting of all.
3x11 THE DAY OF THE DOVE
MCCOY (to Kirk and Spock): How many more men must die before you two begin to act like military men instead of fools?
3x16 WHOM GODS DESTROY
GARTH: You, Captain, are second only to me as the finest military commander in the galaxy.
KIRK 2: Spock, you know the Cochrane deceleration's a classic battle maneuver. Every starship captain knows that.
1x14 COURT MARTIAL
1x15/16 THE MENAGERIE, PARTS 1/2
1x24 SPACE SEED
1x25 THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
3x24 TURNABOUT INTRUDER
These six episodes all refer to the court martial as standard practice in Starfleet. The context is unavoidably military, as is the very term itself. Merriam-Webster defines the adjective martial as meaning "of, relating to, or suited for war or a warrior; relating to an army or to military life."
Not to mention the fact that every season is teeming with obvious naval and other military references such as Red Alert, Yellow Alert, battle stations, battle force, General Quarters, Admiral, Commodore, quartermaster, galley, mess call, and even the word "Navy" a couple of times. Easily a third of the TOS shows, but I'll spare us all my tedious list of dialog references from over two dozen episodes; we all know they're plentiful.
Edit to add: This gets reinforced a few times in the films, as well. David Marcus twice calls Starfleet "the military"; during Kirk's ruse to get into Paradise City on Nimbus III he yells "Federation soldiers right behind us!"; and General Chang calls Kirk a "warrior" three times, I think.
(Yikes, I just cited the worst TOS film. Time for a shower.)
Many thanks to Chrissy's Transcripts Site.
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I’d say there is something important here about not only what you see yourself as, but what do others see you as.
Minor nit: he's referring to the Romulan secrets.
Agreed.
Well, it's also the Federation's secret now, especially in the context of the Commander boasting that the Romulans will soon crack the problem of detection. But in any case, Spock's comment is general and applies to all military secrets of all militaries; and the use of that word is applicable in this scene because the whole episode is a military operation conducted by, and against, military organizations.
I think that since the cloaking device is in Starfleet hands at the moment of their dialogue exchange, it qualifies as a Starfleet secret at that point.
Although that exchange underlines a logic flaw in the episode, namely, why haven't the Romulans already figured out how to penetrate the cloaking device they invented? You'd think that knowledge of how to make a ship invisible in the first place would imply knowledge of how to penetrate that invisibility. Of course, we could assume that Starfleet ordered it stolen so they could study it and figure out how to breach it, not so they could use it themselves. But the Enterprise's escape at the end relies on the Romulans not being able to see through their own magic trick, which doesn't make much sense. If nothing else, you'd think a fleet of cloaked ships would need to know how to locate one another so that they could coordinate their efforts.
Was it ever suggested that the Romulans had themselves acquired the technology somewhere else and were still studying it even as they employed it to their advantage?
It's their one claim to fame. Don't take it away from them.
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