Size of the Federation and Starfleet

[Crazy Eddie]

Why not?

Because getting all HUMANS to agree on a particular way of doing things took hundreds of years and a nuclear holocaust that resulted in quite a number of them being entirely marginalized (on a world with a billion and a half Chinese humans I can think of maybe five Starfleet officers of Asian let alone Chinese ancestry).

If there are 1000s of other races that they have met, 150 sounds reasonable enough when it comes to "compatibility" with human ideas.

Compatibility is enough to cooperate without fighting a war, and under proper conditions is enough to trade, to meet and negotiate, to make mutual decisions about jurisdiction, science, technology and galactic politics; in other words, it's enough to debate things in the Federation Council. It is NOT enough to completely whitewash the entire cultural history of those races if they ever want to do anything meaningful in space. This tells me that many of the 150 Federation member races probably DO have their own Starfleets that, while under Federation control like "our" Starfleet, doesn't have an academy or a headquarters in San Francisco and doesn't give its ships names like "Enterprise" and "Crazy Horse" in big English letters with Arab numerals as identifiers.

Actually I think something like this was hinted at in Unification where the Vulcans seem to have their own ship designs and, possibly, their own fleet. This would make sense in light of the condition in ENT, where the Vulcans have their own starships that are already technologically superior to anything Earth has ever built. It's very likely the Vulcans and even the Andorians BOTH continued to operate their own fleets and their own ship designs well into the 24th century.

I doubt Klingons will ever be members, or Sheliak, or Tholians, etc..

Why not? Everyone else tollerated the Tellarites, the Vulcans, even the Andorians (who in a number of ways are as bad as the Klingons). Apparently the Horta eventually joined the Federation too. I really don't see the Federation as the "Homo sapiens only club" lampooned by Azetbur; if it is a multi-cultural organization, then the diversity of its members really would be a major obstacle in its cohesion--as we saw, famously, in TOS "Babel"--which is part of what necessitates the need of the Federation in the first place, for the sake of galactic peace and cooperation.

But again, cooperation is not acculturation. Starfleet exhibits alot of behaviors that reflect distinctly Earth attitudes and Earth cultures, including similar rank schemes, organization, tradition, technology and protocols and so on. Which is fine, I have no problem with this; what I have a problem with is expecting that 150 totally alien worlds would submit to the cultural and technological domination of the entire quadrant by ONE of its members. "Your culture will adapt to service us" is supposed to be the catch phrase of the bad guys, remember?

 

[kitsune]

(on a world with a billion and a half Chinese humans I can think of maybe five Starfleet officers of Asian let alone Chinese ancestry).

Japanese names:

Adm. Heihachiro Nogura (TMP)
Hoshi Sato (Ent)
Hikaru Sulu (TOS)
Demora Sulu (Generations)
Alyssa Ogawa (TNG)
Adm. Mitsuya (DS9: Paradise)

Adm. Gupta (Indian? DS9: Whispers)

I vaguely recall a Japanese admiral in one episode of TNG. Any ideas?

Adm. Ngomo (Nagumo is a Japanese name, but Ngomo might be Kenyan. DS9: Past Tense, Part I)
Keiko, Molly, Kirayoshi O'Brien (TNG, DS9) (not really Starfleet though)

 

[Timo]

Of course, "Sulu" specifically isn't a Japanese name... Philippino, perhaps. Or from some completely non-Asian culture which featured on the paternal side of Hikaru's family at some point?

There was a Singh or two in TNG - indeed, Assistant Chief Engineer Singh from "Lonely Among Us" was the first recorded fatality in TNG. TNG also opened up with an Asian engineer getting drunk and apparently, with assistance from Wes Crusher, completely fucking up the ship's warp engines. Just goes to show that whenever you go pro-ethnic, you risk looking anti-ethnic at the same time.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

I vaguely recall a Japanese admiral in one episode of TNG. Any ideas?

Admiral Nakamura, first seen in 'Measure of a Man.' He was also in 'Phantasms' and 'All Good Things.'

 

[kitsune]

I vaguely recall a Japanese admiral in one episode of TNG. Any ideas?

Admiral Nakamura, first seen in 'Measure of a Man.' He was also in 'Phantasms' and 'All Good Things.'

Wow, I didn't realize he was in three episodes. Someone's on the ball this morning.

 

[Praetor]

I vaguely recall a Japanese admiral in one episode of TNG. Any ideas?

Admiral Nakamura, first seen in 'Measure of a Man.' He was also in 'Phantasms' and 'All Good Things.'

Wow, I didn't realize he was in three episodes. Someone's on the ball this morning.

Heh. I always liked the name - the way 'Nakamura' is pronounced is quite pretty to me. When I read your post, I knew exactly who you meant.

 

[kitsune]

Heh. I always liked the name - the way 'Nakamura' is pronounced is quite pretty to me. When I read your post, I knew exactly who you meant.

Hey, maybe Nakamura is another tie-in to Heroes.

 

[Captain_Amasov]

Though they'd never specify on screen for obvious reasons Ron Moore did reply to one question here: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/6952/ron65.txt

How many ships does Starfleet have? I know you don't like giving any specific numbers but it seems like they would have many. The earliest NCC we have seen on a ship that is still in use is around NCC 42000 something, the Lakota, or the Hood, I'm not sure. So if Voyager is 76656 then does that mean every ship from 42000 to (probably 80000 since Voyager is 4 years old) is still around? That would be about 38,000 ships, but if you minus 8000 or so for whatever reasons, shouldn't Starfleet still have 30,000 or so ships around?

I think your reasoning is pretty sound and I wouldn't be surprised if Starfleet had 30,000 ships or so, but again -- we're not going to nail down this figure on the series.

 

[Deks]

Having several dozens of thousands of ships sounds plausible to me. Anything below 10 000 and you lose the ability to effectively patrol your territory.

 

[Timo]

Yet again, it must be noted that Starfleet does NOT efficiently patrol its territory.

Star Trek hinges on the concept that at most one starship can respond to the crisis of the week, and only at the nick of time. Even the modern incarnations agree that it takes quite a bit of preplanning to make multiple starships available for a mission, and that ships used at A are ships absent from B.

It's a somewhat separate question why this is so, in in-universe terms. Are starships too expensive/difficult to build that Starfleet could ever have enough of them? Or are they too expensive to operate in the required quantity? Is there some other reason for the insufficient number of ships, such as shortage of crews, or fuel, or an interstellar treaty that limits the numbers? Or an internal treaty that, like in any good democracy, always keeps the police starved of resources so that there won't be a police state?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Patrickivan]

Yet again, it must be noted that Starfleet does NOT efficiently patrol its territory.

Star Trek hinges on the concept that at most one starship can respond to the crisis of the week, and only at the nick of time. Even the modern incarnations agree that it takes quite a bit of preplanning to make multiple starships available for a mission, and that ships used at A are ships absent from B.

Well- we know that's obviously for dramatic purposes. But I always suspected that for the most part, space was uneventful- in the action packed adventure of the week sense...

It's a somewhat separate question why this is so, in in-universe terms. Are starships too expensive/difficult to build that Starfleet could ever have enough of them? Or are they too expensive to operate in the required quantity? Is there some other reason for the insufficient number of ships, such as shortage of crews, or fuel, or an interstellar treaty that limits the numbers? Or an internal treaty that, like in any good democracy, always keeps the police starved of resources so that there won't be a police state?

Timo Saloniemi

That kind of leads back to my suspicion that member planets would have their own fleets out side of their Starfleet commitments. Like a police and or coast guard type fleets, where they're responsible soley for their home territories. That cuts down on the expense of ships needed for Starfleet, and the shortage of ships are backed up by those other police, coast guard, merchant ships from member states- as needed of course.

 

[USS KG5]

Star Trek hinges on the concept that at most one starship can respond to the crisis of the week, and only at the nick of time. Even the modern incarnations agree that it takes quite a bit of preplanning to make multiple starships available for a mission, and that ships used at A are ships absent from B.

I don't see this as incompatible with a 30,000 ship Starfleet. Space is after all extremely big.

Starfleet could have a million ships and if it's responsibilities keep them more than a day or so from each other we would never see more than one in the average episode.

 

[kitsune]

That kind of leads back to my suspicion that member planets would have their own fleets out side of their Starfleet commitments. Like a police and or coast guard type fleets, where they're responsible soley for their home territories.

Federation member planets with the notable exception of Earth, which is nearly always completely defenseless with only the Enterprise in range...

 

[Praetor]

That kind of leads back to my suspicion that member planets would have their own fleets out side of their Starfleet commitments. Like a police and or coast guard type fleets, where they're responsible soley for their home territories.

Federation member planets with the notable exception of Earth, which is nearly always completely defenseless with only the Enterprise in range...

Earth is the Washington, D.C. of the Federation.

 

[Patrickivan]

That kind of leads back to my suspicion that member planets would have their own fleets out side of their Starfleet commitments. Like a police and or coast guard type fleets, where they're responsible soley for their home territories.

Federation member planets with the notable exception of Earth, which is nearly always completely defenseless with only the Enterprise in range...

Not true! Remember in TNG when the borg came to Earth for the first time? They had those 3 little <snicker> defense drones! THREE!

 

[Captain_Amasov]

That kind of leads back to my suspicion that member planets would have their own fleets out side of their Starfleet commitments. Like a police and or coast guard type fleets, where they're responsible soley for their home territories.

Federation member planets with the notable exception of Earth, which is nearly always completely defenseless with only the Enterprise in range...

Not true! Remember in TNG when the borg came to Earth for the first time? They had those 3 little <snicker> defense drones! THREE!

The Mars Defense Perimeter.

 

[kitsune]

They had those 3 little <snicker> defense drones! THREE!

I always thought those things were warheads.

 

[JNG]

^ The MDP drones were unmanned flying bombs carrying probably *tons* of matter/antimatter reactants--a sort of self-propelled sublight super-torpedo. I think anyone but the Borg would have found them pretty worrisome, and the cube did bother to make sure they didn't connect. Mr. Sternbach posted here about them once and commented that if they had landed, they'd have done some major damage (as seems reasonable; there must be some upper limit to the cube's defenses).

I think the three we saw were intended to suggest the Borg were passing the last of the defenses they were going to encounter before Earth, and not that this was the entire defensive effort. VFX had run out of money for that episode by then and the art department folks built them out of commercially available submarine kits just to get *something* in there.

 

[Patrickivan]

It wasn't that they looked bad (I thought it was neat to see something new), it was that it looked pathetic because they only used 3, and they in reallity, did less then anything else we've seen thrown at the borg. In every single fight scene with the borg, they get hit by whatever is being thrown at them, and they take it well. In this case, they may as well have been 3 cadets flying for the first time.

To me, it truly suggested the futility of resistence, and only furthered the joke of Earth never having any sort of defence fleet.

But like you said- budget is a key factor in these things, and if the show had the money, I'm sure we'd have seen more of a fight.

 

[cwl]

the klingons overexaggerated. as good warriors they are - being outnumbered 20 to 1 would be suicide. especially when a lot of the klingon fleet consists of BoPs