What Did Picard Mean?

[T'Girl]

Lily: "How many planets are in this Federation?"

Picard: "Over one hundred and fifty, spread across eight thousand light years"

The 150+ planets figure isn't exact, but it not overly vague either. Lily didn't ask about members, but she wouldn't have known too. What planets would Picard have been including in the number he stated?

Just 150+ planets total. That's it. The combination of all Federation members and colonies and any other worlds that are a part of the Federation.

150+ Federation members. And then in addition to that number, colonies and any other worlds that are a part of the Federation.

150+ Species homeworlds. And then there would be more Federation members that aren't homeworlds (former colonies, members from other sources, etc.). Mars is a Federation member, but it isn't a species homeworld and wouldn't have been included in Picard's number. And then in addition to that, colonies and any other worlds that are a part of the Federation.

Or Picard meant something else by his statement.

From my reading of posts here through the years, most people seem to believe that the number is the total amount of Federation members, and so the number of species homeworlds would be less. Perhaps only a few dozen.

I like the possibility that the number is just species homeworlds, with there being even more members beyond that. The total count of members could be many hundreds.

Captain Kirk referred to the Federation in the twenty-third century as being "vast."

 

[HIjol]

My take is, that he meant, for example, that if he were talking about Earth, and we theoretically "inhabited" Mars, Earth was the main and "official" planet of our system, so Sol would count as one, not two...

 

[The Wormhole]

I figure he meant 150+ Federation members.

 

[bbjeg]

That's a good question. If you gave an 'Undecided/Open to interpretation' option, that would be my choice.

 

[BillJ]

If you gave an 'Undecided/Open to interpretation' option, that would be my choice.

+1

I think it's vague enough to be open to interpretation, plus I don't believe anything else nails it down. Closest I can think of is the Kirk line from "Metamorphosis":

We're on a thousand planets and spreading out. We cross fantastic distances and everything's alive, Cochrane.

 

[T'Girl]

That's a good question. If you gave an 'Undecided/Open to interpretation' option, that would be my choice.

I kind'a did, that would be option four on the poll.

the Kirk line from "Metamorphosis":

I've alway took that to be Humanity, and not the Federation.

 

[TheSubCommander]

Lily: "How many planets are in this Federation?"

Picard: "Over one hundred and fifty, spread across eight thousand light years"

The 150+ planets figure isn't exact, but it not overly vague either. Lily didn't ask about members, but she wouldn't have known too. What planets would Picard have been including in the number he stated?

Just 150+ planets total. That's it. The combination of all Federation members and colonies and any other worlds that are a part of the Federation.

150+ Federation members. And then in addition to that number, colonies and any other worlds that are a part of the Federation.

150+ Species homeworlds. And then there would be more Federation members that aren't homeworlds (former colonies, members from other sources, etc.). Mars is a Federation member, but it isn't a species homeworld and wouldn't have been included in Picard's number. And then in addition to that, colonies and any other worlds that are a part of the Federation.

Or Picard meant something else by his statement.

From my reading of posts here through the years, most people seem to believe that the number is the total amount of Federation members, and so the number of species homeworlds would be less. Perhaps only a few dozen.

I like the possibility that the number is just species homeworlds, with there being even more members beyond that. The total count of members could be many hundreds.

Captain Kirk referred to the Federation in the twenty-third century as being "vast."

If you take it literally, Lilly is asking how many planets there are, and Picard answers the question directly, and gives her a number. Humans alone have a number of colony worlds, as do the Vulcans, Andorians, and I am sure pretty much every founding member had at least a colony world, even if in their own star system. After all, the prerequisite is to be Warp capable, and many warp capable civilizations are going to be exploring even before they encounter the Feds. It's not as though the feds find a world, watch secretly for decades until that world develops a rudimentary warp drive so the technicality is met, reveal themselves, and say "Hey wanna join our club?"

I think that 150 planet figure could also include planets claimed by the federation, but not necessarily Class M. Remember the Regula 1, for example, was a rock in space, they hollowed out for testing Genesis. But it was in Federation space. So, it could very well be that while there might be 150+ planets in the federation, that doesn't necessarily mean there are 150 species.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I assumed 150 member polities. I'm not sure if that include colonies or not; in the case of Alpha Centauri, yes, in the case of Starname Latin-number IV, no.

 

[Enterprise1701]

I think that he was talking about total member states although his wording was somewhat inaccurate. Think about it. If most solar systems are somewhat like the Sol System, having 8 planets each, then the Federation would only have to have 19 member solar systems for at least 150 total planets. I suppose there isn't anything that definitely makes that impossible, but only 19 members in 2373? That would be a letdown.

Star Trek usually refers to capital planets of the Federation as Federation members. It bugs me so much.

 

[Push The Button]

The dialogue in the scene seems to suggest that there are 150 planets that are Federation members.

 

[MacLeod]

I took it too mean 150+ members.

 

[Last Redshirt]

I took it as Federation members, and it was either a vague statement or a slip-up of words on Picard's part.

 

[bbjeg]

That's a good question. If you gave an 'Undecided/Open to interpretation' option, that would be my choice.

I kind'a did, that would be option four on the poll.

Then four it is. I was hesitant to choose it because any of the others could be right.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I like to believe its 150+ species homeworlds, once they enter the UFP their colonies are also included--unless a colonial government opts to remain independent.

 

[Ethros]

I assumed it to be members too. "in this Federation" I always took to sort of say "how diverse is the Federation"

 

[Timo]

Taken alone, the number answers a question that is unambiguous enough, in 1990s terms anyway. (In 2000s terms, nobody knows any longer what the heck "planet" is supposed to mean, and things will probably only get worse by the real 2063 or the 24th century.)

In the context of Star Trek, though, 150+ must be a tiny subset of the total number of planets in the Federation. And since Picard thus is telling Lily something he thinks Lily needs to know, rather than what Lily actually is asking, I'll assume that he means member species, i.e. diversity - as that's what he would want to emphasize to Lily at that point. So it's the number of "member species homeworlds", which is more or less the same as either "member species" or "homeworlds" (homeless members like alternate Vulcans are bound to be a minority, and multi-homeworld species are no doubt special cases as well).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

I'm curious as to how the number 150 was arrived at. It seems just specific enough for some amount of thought to have gone into it, but based on what? If it means 150 planetary members, then a new world joining the Federation would indeed be a somewhat rare and special thing. I'm not too knowledgeable about chronologies and stuff, but even if you figure the Federation were 150 years old, well...that's be a new member world added a year.

In Metamorphosis, Kirk said "We're on a thousand planets and spreading out.", which I took to mean that that's how many worlds have been explored. I'm sure it's a general number Kirk used, not literally a thousand, but much as you or I might say a bookstore has "a thousand books on World War 2".

Picard's 150 sounds more specific, but taken into context with Kirk's words, "a thousand planets" would certainly have expanded by Picard's time. Considering how (relatively) few starships ships seemed to be around in Kirk's time, "thousands" of worlds is quite an amazing achievement. By Picard's era, there are so many more ships, that it seems that statistically, the batting average is getting lower all the time!

All told, "150 member worlds" to me is just a unnecessary bit of continuity baggage, the last thing Star Trek needed at this point. And why tie down future writers like that? Sometimes, vague is good!

But what do I know?

 

[Green Shirt]

There could be a number of in universe reasons Kirk's and Picard's numbers don't match. Kirk could have been exaggerating the number to get Cochran interested in leaving (exaggeration would certainly fit into Kirk's character).

Its possible the Federation lost members between Kirk's and Picard's time due to a number of reasons. Any number of systems could have been lost due to war or annexation by enemy powers. There could have also been a mass exodus of members due to some beef they could have had with the Federation itself. Many of them could have formed their own alliances.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

There could be a number of in universe reasons Kirk's and Picard's numbers don't match. Kirk could have been exaggerating the number to get Cochran interested in leaving (exaggeration would certainly fit into Kirk's character).

Its possible the Federation lost members between Kirk's and Picard's time due to a number of reasons. Any number of systems could have been lost due to war or annexation by enemy powers. There could have also been a mass exodus of members due to some beef they could have had with the Federation itself. Many of them could have formed their own alliances.

One interesting thing that kept popping up in the original series was a sense of urgency in getting new worlds to "join the bandwagon". How many episodes were they under orders to establish contact with such-and-such world "at all costs"?

I figure that the vast percentage of worlds were too "primitive" to be considered for any kind of "membership" in anything, so the relatively low number of member worlds isn't too surprising. In fact, that may in itself fuel the urgency for new members.

 

[iguana_tonante]

In context, the meaning seems to be "150 members". This seems the general consensus, and I can understand why. In the case of Humans, Earth will counts as one, Mars maybe (has been ever established if it's voting member?), and Alpha Centauri as another. If the case of Humans is typical, this would imply between 50 and 100 species. But you know, drawing conclusions from one data point is not a good idea in general.

Personally, I prefer to think that he meant 150 planets total, including colonies with a significant population and a degree of autonomy (but not necessarily full membership in the Federation). This would bring the number of species probably under 50, and probably much less. I prefer this figure because it would explain how the Federation can be kept in check by single-species political entities like the Klingon or the Romulan Empire. (Even if we imagine that it takes multiple single-species empire to keep in check the Federation, it's really hard to imagine that less than 10 species can be a threat to a huge federation of 150 species.) On the other hand, just like in real life, some species can be vastly more numerous and have vastly more resources than others, so the sheer number of members can be a meaningless metric.