The status of the Federation in 2399

[Charles Phipps]

One of the things that I enjoyed about Picard is that if you wipe away the main plot, it actually does present a very interesting Post-Dominion War view of the Federation and the galaxy as a whole. I might prefer Star Trek Online a bit (albeit the number of wars there makes it closer to Warhammer 40K than Roddenberry's Utopia) but there's a genuinely interesting status quo set up in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

* The Federation feels very post-DS9 and is a lot less idealistic in its politics but I don't think it was badly shown either. The "14 world's withdrawl" is a helluva argument as is the fact that they only decided not to help the Romulans after all of their attempts to help the Romulans were destroyed. They fully intended to evacuate 900 million people, it's just the fleet blew up.

+ Mars is uninhabitable and that feels like a big boon if you assumed that it had been made habitable by the 24th century ala The Expanse. We never met any Martian or Luna colonists in Star Trek on the show but I always assumed they existed.

+ The Romulan Empire is replaced by the Romulan Free State but given the Tal Shiar, I wonder how much of that is "The Russian Federation" vs. "Soviet Union." Different name same great service.

+ There are Romulan refugees in Federation space and they number enough that its not weird to find them working for someone like Picard.

+ The Neutral Zone is apparently the new Wild West of the setting and something like the Terminus Systems of Mass Effect. There's no law save a bunch of vigilantes and yet there's also a bunch of really important colonies. Is Freecloud in the neutral zone? I wonder because Space Vegas implies these aren't some struggling Marquis.

 

[NCC-73515]

We never met any Martian or Luna colonists in Star Trek on the show but I always assumed they existed.

Beverly was born on the Moon, and the Orpheus miners lived there. Tycho City, New Berlin, and Lake Armstrong are visible from Earth. Daystrom has facilities on Mars, Leah Brahms worked there, and many people work at Utopia Planitia.

 

[publiusr]

I guess FASA’s Triangle got worse

 

[Mage]

Mars is uninhabitable and that feels like a big boon if you assumed that it had been made habitable by the 24th century ala The Expanse. We never met any Martian or Luna colonists in Star Trek on the show but I always assumed they existed.

If there is one thing I never really understood about TNG/DS9/VOY, is that all humans are from Earth. With so many colonies out there, but also so many members in the UFP, it's obvious that many humans were never born on Earth. The novels worked with that so much better than the shows ever did, with humans that were born on colonies or other Federation member worlds.

 

[Charles Phipps]

If there is one thing I never really understood about TNG/DS9/VOY, is that all humans are from Earth. With so many colonies out there, but also so many members in the UFP, it's obvious that many humans were never born on Earth. The novels worked with that so much better than the shows ever did, with humans that were born on colonies or other Federation member worlds.

Ironically, the biggest aversion seemed to be James Tiberius Kirk in that in the show, at least, he spent a substantial portion of his childhood on a colony.

 

[Ronald Held]

Humans born and raised may think of themselves as not Humans from Earth?

 

[Markonian]

The novels presented Mars as the first world to join the Federation after its founding. Whereas in Picard it’s an important colony but not even has a million people on it?

 

[Charles Phipps]

The novels presented Mars as the first world to join the Federation after its founding. Whereas in Picard it’s an important colony but not even has a million people on it?

There's a TV trope called, "Scifi Writers hace no sense of scale."

 

[Mage]

Humans born and raised may think of themselves as not Humans from Earth?

I never said they weren't human. I said they're always from Earth. Difference being.....well, light years.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

The everyone is from Earth thing kinda bugged me and how up until DIS the humans all felt too American

 

[Tenacity]

If there is one thing I never really understood about TNG/DS9/VOY, is that all humans are from Earth.

TOS showed more people definately from off Earth, and people where it wasn't establish that they were from Earth. Miranda Jones had never been to Earth, Mudd's Woman were all from colonies, Kirk's nephews (one or three) were maybe from off world.

 

[Markonian]

The everyone is from Earth thing kinda bugged me and how up until DIS the humans all felt too American

Aboard the Cerritos, seems like all Humans are US-American again.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Aboard the Cerritos, seems like all Humans are US-American again.

Ya noticed that too. Although I'm willing to let lower decks away with stuff I wouldn't with the others

 

[Charles Phipps]

Ya noticed that too. Although I'm willing to let lower decks away with stuff I wouldn't with the others

Well, we know one human is from Modesto, California and that may well be a dig at George Lucas.

 

[CorporalClegg]

The novels presented Mars as the first world to join the Federation after its founding. Whereas in Picard it’s an important colony but not even has a million people on it?

The few times they've shown Mars on screen, it's look pretty uninhabited. The fleet yards are in orbit and most people live there. Maybe they wanted to keep The Red Planet red and not subject it to intense terraforming? And so they limited settlements in small atmospheric bubbles or whatever to a few thousand.

 

[Charles Phipps]

The few times they've shown Mars on screen, it's look pretty uninhabited. The fleet yards are in orbit and most people live there. Maybe they wanted to keep The Red Planet red and not subject it to intense terraforming? And so they limited settlements in small atmospheric bubbles or whatever to a few thousand.

It could also be inhabitable but not necessarily excessively so. One enormous Arizona.

 

[Sci]

The novels presented Mars as the first world to join the Federation after its founding. Whereas in Picard it’s an important colony but not even has a million people on it?

We don't know that, actually. All we can say definitively is that the 2385 Mars Attack is by 2399 only known to have directly killed 92,143 people. But that doesn't mean that there were less than a million people on Mars! ENT "Terra Prime" established that by 2155, Mars had multiple domed cities; it is possible that the domes were still in place in 2385 and that those domes may have protected the cities inside them from the atmospheric ignition. Also, as author Kim Stanley Robinson depicts in his Mars trilogy, any serious attempt at Martian colonization by Humans will almost certainly result in settlements being built underground and/or into the sides of Martian canyons, mountains, and other rock formations. Nothing in ST like that has ever been established canonically, but nothing in ST precludes that either; it is entirely plausible that between the domed cities and subterranean settlements, Mars has a population in the hundreds of millions.

(It is also possible that the atmospheric ignition remains a major, major safety hazard that the surviving settlements are constantly having to deal with.)

The few times they've shown Mars on screen, it's look pretty uninhabited.

We've barely ever seen the contemporary Martian surface. ENT "Terra Prime," Short Treks "Children of Mars," and PIC "Maps and Legends" are the only ones I can remember that do.

The fleet yards are in orbit and most people live there.

It has never been established that most people live in the orbital fleet yards.

Maybe they wanted to keep The Red Planet red and not subject it to intense terraforming? And so they limited settlements in small atmospheric bubbles or whatever to a few thousand.

But ENT "Terra Prime" established that they already had domed cities by 2155 and that they were undertaking a long-term terraforming project.

 

[fireproof78]

TOS showed more people definately from off Earth, and people where it wasn't establish that they were from Earth. Miranda Jones had never been to Earth, Mudd's Woman were all from colonies, Kirk's nephews (one or three) were maybe from off world.

Kirk also lived for a time on a colony. Though, I'm rather curious as to what difference it would make to have a human from Earth, a human from Mars and one from Alpha Centauri?

 

[Charles Phipps]

Kirk also lived for a time on a colony. Though, I'm rather curious as to what difference it would make to have a human from Earth, a human from Mars and one from Alpha Centauri?

I suppose it's mostly making the galaxy seem less small. A lot of people assumed Romulans would be extinct despite being an empire when Hobus happened because almost no effort was shown illustrating their colonies and subject worlds.

 

[fireproof78]

I suppose it's mostly making the galaxy seem less small. A lot of people assumed Romulans would be extinct despite being an empire when Hobus happened because almost no effort was shown illustrating their colonies and subject worlds.

True..I guess I would hope that such a surface level assumption would be rather easily realized to be thin, at best.