Well, since the Enterprise was the only ship in the entire quadrant to respond to the V'Ger threat I'm assuming that the firepower referred to was either in orbit or on the planet.
Starfleet: Sci-fi's Weakest Military.
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Well, since the Enterprise was the only ship in the entire quadrant to respond to the V'Ger threat I'm assuming that the firepower referred to was either in orbit or on the planet.
Withers
Captain
Starfleet represents humanity at its finest hour. They are prepared for the worst by having weapons and defensive capabilities on star ships but they hope for the best and further that philosophy by training their officers to be upstanding and diplomatic (rather than xenophobic and paranoid.) "Problems" aren't ever solved with weapons. Disputes are just ended that way.
I'd also add that, after First Contact, Starfleet started to recognize just how potentially hostile the Universe could get. That's why we saw the Akira and Defiant classes put into mass production (just in time for the Dominion War.)
The only thing "naive" about Starfleet, in my eyes, is that they ever thought it was a good idea to put families on board starships. The Galaxy class (specifically Enterprise D) struck as a little silly in this respect. Other than though, just because Starfleet wasn't CTU in Space, doesn't make them weak. They always won just like every other "good guy" in sci-fi- so what's the difference?
-Withers-
That was a type-o on my part. What I meant to say was "Come on dude" Besides, Roddenberry is part of the Science Fiction holy Trinity.
I dunno; it doesn't bother me too much, if starships are indeed the equivalent of SSBNs (and they are seen, several times, doing to an entire planet what a nuclear bomb would do a city, except perhaps even more thoroughly--nukes don't expose the mantle, for one thing).
I mean, Washington D.C., my capital, is not defended in any realistic fashion whatsoever from a ballistic missile (nor is the city I live in), and I'm fine with that. The defense of the capital is indirectly acheived--any nuclear power that attacks Washington understands that a response in kind is the most likely result of their aggression.
The big problem with taking out the nerve center, discerned relatively early in the history of the Cold War, is that if even if you had not already committed to a full-scale exchange, you certainly had once you destroyed the capital (and killed the other side's central decisionmakers). The reason being that, in the absence of a universally-recognized authority with whom you can talk, what you have instead are innumerable actors who have access to WMDs whom you can't even contact, let alone negotiate with. Hence most American nuclear war plans, even ones that involved heavy countervalue/economic recovery/your-preferred-euphemism-for-city-killing targeting still withheld an attack on Moscow, despite its position as the most populous, most heavily industrialized, and hence most valuable target in the USSR.
Nevertheless, still doesn't explain why the Dominion would care. Threatening to destroy Cardassian planets is like threatening to gasoline some anthills. Maybe even less dire, since ants make major contributions to the ecosystem.
Huh, maybe it's less like nuclear war than its World War II precursor of area bombing, so that starships are less SSBNs (one = entire ruined country) and more like heavy bombers (one thousand = seriously damaged city). Actually, this is probably a much better analogy to what is actually seen in DS9, since to get anything done you seem to (depending on plot requirements, I guess) need a fleet to hammer through enemy defenses, and would usually wind up losing much of it even if you were successful.
This might even be overapt. Starfleet can't operate in three-dimensional space because the bomber stream has to stay at a steady altitude (one million km above sea level) to ensure accuracy.
Of course, this still doesn't really seem like it would apply to cloaked ships, though.
I believe I'd agree--as long as Earth is a setting, as it is so rarely, instead of a plot device, as it is so frequently.
Not sure what the point of this is...but Starfleet has one of the most powerful militaries in visual SF...they literally have the power generation and weapon yields to wipe out the surface of whole planets (as stated in TOS) on individual starships...and they have thousands of them!
RAMA
I have to admit..
In Paradise Lost, when the Defiant encounters the Lakota, it fires and hits them with a powerful hit..
O'brien responds that someone must have been upgrading the Lakota's weapons, it had a lot of firepower for that type of ship...
My intitial response was "Duhh", lol.
I would have thought that Starfleet would have done that anyway, to every Excelsior in the fleet, to be prepared for an attack by the Dominion at any moment..
At this point, Dominion weapons may or may not had the ability to easily penetrate Starfleet shields...
It was almost as if, despite the Dominion threat, Starfleet decided to just keep using the same ships as before, without any upgrades...
I think they redeemed themselves in the end scene from Call to Arms, though...
But in way, by making Starfleet somewhat more militarily weaker than the Dominion, it made for great suspense..
Seeing Starfleet losing the war in the beginning, and having to struggle to regain balance and go on to win, has made for great debates in sci fi forums to this day...
In Paradise Lost, when the Defiant encounters the Lakota, it fires and hits them with a powerful hit..
O'brien responds that someone must have been upgrading the Lakota's weapons, it had a lot of firepower for that type of ship...
My intitial response was "Duhh", lol.
I would have thought that Starfleet would have done that anyway, to every Excelsior in the fleet, to be prepared for an attack by the Dominion at any moment..
At this point, Dominion weapons may or may not had the ability to easily penetrate Starfleet shields...
It was almost as if, despite the Dominion threat, Starfleet decided to just keep using the same ships as before, without any upgrades...
I think they redeemed themselves in the end scene from Call to Arms, though...
But in way, by making Starfleet somewhat more militarily weaker than the Dominion, it made for great suspense..
Seeing Starfleet losing the war in the beginning, and having to struggle to regain balance and go on to win, has made for great debates in sci fi forums to this day...
Yes, Starfleet was weaker than the Dominion. Then again, Starfleet and the Klingon military combined were weaker than the Dominion. And I guess that even with the Romulans on their side they still would have been at a disdvantage hadn't it been for the fact that the Dominion was cut off from receiving Gamma Quadrant reinforcements.
More than anything else, this just shows how superior the Dominion was.
More than anything else, this just shows how superior the Dominion was.
I remember in the episode "best of both worlds" when the borg cube enters the system someone says that the cube made it past the "mars defence lines" or something like that. Never showed on screen, but then niether was the battle of wolf 359.
And its hard to say much about tactics in star trek when all the other races use the same generic tactics as well. The tactics used are very different from real life. Star wars for example basicly uses 17th century naval tactics, broadsiding enemy ships. They have large carrier ships and really rely on fighter support to win the day. Star Trek is very different. No carrier ships, almost no fighters and the ones that are shown are more like small gun boats than fighter planes, and the ships themselves employ fighter like manuvers. This is something that almost no starships in Star Wars can do.
The thing that really bothers me though is the fact that all of the alien races in star trek use the same tactics. I mean, how is it that NO other races decided to fight more like star wars? I think there would be at least ONE race that uses a whole shit load of fighters and huge support ships. (wouldn't do any good agianst the enterprise when it can shoot down severl small ships at the same time and up to 4 torpedoes at once and obliterate a whole squadron at once)
No Way!!!, Starfleet was and is a strong Military.
I believe that within the context of the Star Trek universe, this concern was beginning to become addressed near the end of the TNG/DS9/VOY timeline. The Borg and the Dominion had essentially made Starfleet more militarily minded, and we got more focused ships like the Defiant. Even the flagship, the Enterprise-E, had more firepower than the E-D, but less room; presumably on the E-D that room would have been used for more science stations and diplomatic encounters. The Prometheus was also a ship that sought more autonomy and remote ability with its firepower, a trend not unlike a modern 21st century approach (ie, the drones currently in Afghanistan).
As such, if one takes Star Trek Online as canon (and I won't debate this one way or another, it's all up to you), then you'd probably be relieved to know that the fleet IS divided up amongst those three overall categories: science/escort/cruiser (the latter being more of a hybrid of the first two).
But if one believes that Starfleet vessels are weak, I sort of blame the development of new SFX technology on this one. It's ironic in a sense that better effects means weaker feats. Part of this is that we could see two ships doing battle on screen, something that was very rarely done in TOS. In TOS, the dialogue would indicate that ships were quite far apart, several hundreds or sometimes hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart, while fighting. Because a show like TNG had the budget and effects to show two vessels fighting on screen, but because of the limits itself of a TV screen, ships would fight pretty much face to face and not very far apart -- it almost seemed like weapons ranges had actually regressed. And this itself would cause another discrepancy: the dialogue would say the ships were fighting thousands of kilometers apart, but on screen the ships would be like 2 or 3 miles apart. Unfortunately, this aesthetic trend continued on to DS9/VOY/ENT; "Tears of the Prophets," for example, is very visually impressive to this day but has some seriously flawed tactics by our heroes (to echo T'Girl's earlier post).
To wit, I can forgive TWOK for having ships up close and personal, as there were actual plot reasons for that (1st battle: Khan being sneaky as hell; 2nd battle: the Mutara Nebula blinded both ships and neither could aim properly). I can also forgive Sacrifice of Angels as that battle was purposely confusing (again, plot reasons -- jammed communications, Dominion confidence, etc) and the entire battle itself was essentially one big suicide gamble.
Now... with all that said
on a narrative level, i like the fact that Starfleet is relatively weak compared to other powers in Trek and yet is still someway the galaxy's bastion of hope. It's just a lot more exciting that way than if Starfleet dominated every opponent that came its way. Being the underdog works wonders for the viewer, and it makes triumph that much sweeter.It's not just the ships, their war tactics, hand-to-hand weapons, and hand-to-hand combat skills of a Starfleet officer is less than stellar. There are those in Starfleet that have fighting skills, but that is because they took it as a hobby. Also, Starfleet has no way to fight with an enemy that is on the ground, considering their ships aren't atmospheric. So they should at least have some ground forces for that kind of situations. Starfleet is basically the space equivilant of the navy, so why not have an army or marine division whose sole purpose is combat. If they had that, there would be a lot less redshirts(or goldshirts in the TNG era) dying on away missions.
Well, I replied specifically about ships because that's what your post that I quoted was about. But moving on...
I believe Enterprise's MACOs were the writers/producers' response to this concern (odd, seeing as how ENT is a prequel). And all things considered within a TV-PG show (as opposed to TV-MA like "24"), they were fairly effective in their job (at least more effective than Worf's security detail), greatly reducing the amount of redshirt deaths when it came to personnel combat. I would have liked to have seen a show after the TNG/DS9/VOY timeline, to see if something like the MACOs had in fact existed later on. The MACOs were by no means perfect, but they were a definitely a step up IMO.
However, for planet-side combat, we've no proof of planet-side combat vehicles, but we've also no proof that they weren't around, either, simply because the vast majority of fighting we saw was in space. I've no doubt that a shuttle could easily be turned into a bomber, for example. We also have ships like the Intrepid that were indeed capable of atmospheric flight, so it can't be that much of a stretch to say they exist. Though, to say that they could exist but weren't used properly is also a very legit concern/complaint, I believe.
One point that supports the Trek has the weakest military idea; With the Siege of Ar558- they had ground troops with No armor, no heavy gunnery, just phaser rifles to defend an the entrance into the cave.
O f course, the Jem Hadar stream in too quickly and with just single beam phaser rifles, they couldn't hit enough of them in time to stop it.
They eventually did defeat the Jem Hadar, but mainly because they were able to take out a portion of them by using those 'subspace mines' earlier in the episode.
If they didn't have access to those mines, it may have turned out differently.
Ironic, but old fashioned bullet rifles, machine guns, could have been much more effective.
Another thing, it has been stated, (not necessarily proved) that Starfleet had a policy of setting weapons to stun in even in dangerous situations like this.
They attempted to do this in "To the Death".
In a way it's very practical, and ethical..but is it smart?
O f course, the Jem Hadar stream in too quickly and with just single beam phaser rifles, they couldn't hit enough of them in time to stop it.
They eventually did defeat the Jem Hadar, but mainly because they were able to take out a portion of them by using those 'subspace mines' earlier in the episode.
If they didn't have access to those mines, it may have turned out differently.
Ironic, but old fashioned bullet rifles, machine guns, could have been much more effective.
Another thing, it has been stated, (not necessarily proved) that Starfleet had a policy of setting weapons to stun in even in dangerous situations like this.
They attempted to do this in "To the Death".
In a way it's very practical, and ethical..but is it smart?
To be fair, I *believe* the episode points out that neither side knew of the station's strategic importance until they got into heavy fighting (I could be wrong here, so feel free to catch me on this), so they might have been better armed had that been the case. Also, both sides were fighting for months and could have rapidly run out of heavy supplies early on. Of course, a few TOS-style photon grenades would've been really handy in this episode, too.
Or the simplest explanation is that, of course, Starfleet really is a weak military
I don't think the policy is proven, and it seems that setting phasers to kill is at the commanding officer's discretion. We've seen Kirk and Sisko order this setting from the get-go, after all.
I think the whole "weak SF military" is very writer-specific. You have TOS episodes like "A Taste of Armageddon" which infers that a single starship can take out the population of a planet with phasers and "The Omega Glory" where a few SF guys with hand phasers kills *thousands* of charging "barbarians". But I also think it has alot to do with the will of the writers to use the weapons correctly.
Star Trek's "military weakness" has more to do with the structure of storytelling than any real world analogy. The Villain always begins as more powerful than the Hero. This is to heighten tension and further endanger "that which is at stake", and keeps viewers parked in front of the TV and their fingers away from the channel button. The Hero has to overcome some personal weakness that allows him/her to beat the Villain. A Villain that is too easy to beat. . .well, that isn't much of a story is it?
If a Borg cube was as easy to destroy as a Klingon ship, then the Borg wouldn't be that much of a threat at all. But the Borg were an almost unbeatable foe, so when they are defeated, Starfleet, or as it happens to be, the Enterprise, has really done something remarkable.
If the Dominion was as a powerful as the Romulans, then so what? The Rommies have been held in check for quite a long time, so if that were the case the Dominion would have been just another annoying superpower that Starfleet would share a border skirmish with every now and then. But the Dominion proved to be quite powerful, forcing the Federation to ally with former enemies (overcoming a weakness) in order to beat them back.
If Starfleet was the most powerful military force and could handle all threats with relative ease, then what kind of shows would that leave?
Movies, television programs, and books aren't meant to reflect real world situations. There is a format that is followed for telling stories, and that format exists because it keeps people interested in the story being told. We love conflict. Every story is about how we approach solving our conflicts.
If a Borg cube was as easy to destroy as a Klingon ship, then the Borg wouldn't be that much of a threat at all. But the Borg were an almost unbeatable foe, so when they are defeated, Starfleet, or as it happens to be, the Enterprise, has really done something remarkable.
If the Dominion was as a powerful as the Romulans, then so what? The Rommies have been held in check for quite a long time, so if that were the case the Dominion would have been just another annoying superpower that Starfleet would share a border skirmish with every now and then. But the Dominion proved to be quite powerful, forcing the Federation to ally with former enemies (overcoming a weakness) in order to beat them back.
If Starfleet was the most powerful military force and could handle all threats with relative ease, then what kind of shows would that leave?
Movies, television programs, and books aren't meant to reflect real world situations. There is a format that is followed for telling stories, and that format exists because it keeps people interested in the story being told. We love conflict. Every story is about how we approach solving our conflicts.
