What do you think the Typhon Pact represents?

[Christopher]

Perhaps if the TP were to expand it's membership and add some new races to the mix then maybe they might be considered something other than "an evil empire".

But we've already seen a great deal of diversity in the races that already belong to it. We've seen Kamemor's Romulan government portrayed sympathetically, we've seen the Kinshaya enter a new era of reform, and we already know from prior works such as The Gorn Crisis and Articles of the Federation that the Gorn have been mostly friendly toward the UFP in the past.

Shallow and boring as that may be Christopher but as I seem to be the only one pointing this out...the very first act we see perpetrated by the Typhon pact is an invasion of sovereign Federation territory by a cloaked Romulan vessel...the theft of valuable Starfleet technology and the murder of Federation personnel.

You're the only one pointing it out because it's dead wrong. You seem to have forgotten that the Typhon Pact was introduced in A Singular Destiny, which was published a year and nine months before the book you're referring to and set nearly a year before it. And the Pact's first official act on the galactic stage was to stop the Kinshaya attacks on Klingon worlds and formally apologize for them.

Keith R. A. DeCandido created the Typhon Pact along with Marco Palmieri, and he made a point of introducing them as a multifaceted, ambivalent power, one that had multiple conflicting factions and potentials within it rather than being monolithically villainous. Keith made it clear in ASD that while it did have members with hostile designs, the Pact as a whole acted as a stabilizing force that kept them in check. And the subsequent writings about the Pact have borne that out, showing both the positive and negative forces competing with each other for dominance within the Pact. And as things stand as of the end of The Struggle Within, the moderate factions within the Pact outweigh the militant ones.

 

[Jarvisimo]

Perhaps if the TP were to expand it's membership and add some new races to the mix then maybe they might be considered something other than "an evil empire".
Shallow and boring as that may be Christopher but as I seem to be the only one pointing this out...the very first act we see perpetrated by the Typhon pact is an invasion of sovereign Federation territory by a cloaked Romulan vessel...the theft of valuable Starfleet technology and the murder of Federation personnel.
I hope that the authors will not let the Federation sleepwalk in to yet another war.

I must say that I get worried with every newly announced book's synopsis that suggests a threat of war, but the new DRG book synopses suggest that war is not desired by either side's dominant leaderships.

 

[flandry84]

Gosh,well that's all right then.

 

[Sjaddix]

And the TP's existence, being a reflection of the Federation, but so far a much more successful depiction of a geographically diverse federated culture(s), suggest that there should be more diversity in the Federation?

If the Federation is genuinely made up not simply of Humans, but several space-faring civilisations that are older and more historically important (Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, etc), as well as younger, virile species, should they not have as important a representation as the traditional human core? Should we not see more diversity, more cultural richness, more differentiated structures, names, philosophies, economies and beliefs.

One of the wonders of 'modern' treklit is the abundance of Federation aliens (rather than the token inclusions of past), not simply in Titan, but in Vanguard, DS9R, and several other books. But still their depiction, and the depiction of wider Federation culture, is very humanocentric - and perhaps mostly North American (and occasionally more widely Anglo-Saxon)?

By this I mean, that the aliens and humans exist in a roughly north american/anglophone human culture, rather than within more diverse ethnologies.

Exactly, everyone knows the real powers in the Federation are the Humans and to a lesser extent the Vulcans. Main players in the Khitomer Alliance are the Humans, Vulcans and Klingons.

Andorians might be founding members but they are simply not relevant when compare to the Humans and Vulcans.

Look eventually we have to have a war no point in having two great alliances and not getting a war out of it. Although down the line Bajor may have potential to become a problem.

 

[Christopher]

I must say that I get worried with every newly announced book's synopsis that suggests a threat of war, but the new DRG book synopses suggest that war is not desired by either side's dominant leaderships.

Well, of course book synopses are designed to play up the dangers and make things sound as dramatic as possible. Certainly there's risk inherent in the Typhon Pact's turbulent internal political/social dynamic, but what's interesting about the Pact is that tension within it between the aggressive and moderate forces jockeying for advantage.

Of course, war sometimes happens even if nobody involved wants it to. For instance, neither the US nor China wanted the Korean War to happen -- especially China, which was recovering from a long, brutal period of Japanese invasion and civil war and needed to focus on rebuilding its own society and economy (which is very analogous to the situation both the Khitomer Alliance and the Typhon Pact are in after the Borg invasion). And yet their treaty obligations forced them to get reluctantly involved when their respective Korean allies went to war with each other.

 

[JD]

I think it's also worth mentioning that those same descriptions also talk about a joint Federation/Romulan exploration mission, so obviously things aren't bad between the Federation and every TP member.
As for what the Pact means, I definitely think they are a threat, and are dangerous, but at the same time I don't see them as the "evil empire". I think of it more as simply being that the Federation has something that's more of an equal to them, but is not on their side. And I think they are the perfect way to show just how the Borg invasion changed the status quo for the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

 

[Christopher]

As for what the Pact means, I definitely think they are a threat, and are dangerous, but at the same time I don't see them as the "evil empire". I think of it more as simply being that the Federation has something that's more of an equal to them, but is not on their side.

Yup. As Zero Sum Game showed, you could equally well say that the Federation is a threat to the Pact. Neither side is evil or uniformly bent on conquest, but they have conflicting goals and priorities and thus there's the potential for clashes to occur.

And of course the most important thing to remember about the Pact is that it's not one "they." It's six nations and various subfactions that all have different, conflicting agendas. Some of them are threats, like the Tholians, the Breen government, and the Tzenkethi if provoked. The Gorn warrior caste was potentially a threat, but are probably too weakened to be one in practice. The old Kinshaya regime was a threat to the Klingons but not the Federation, and the new one is unlikely to be a threat to either. And the Kamemor government doesn't seem very threatening, particularly in light of that joint UFP/RSE mission you mention.

That gets back to the core question of what the Pact represents. In terms of Keith & Marco's intentions (as I understand them), it represented an opportunity to take several underdeveloped alien cultures and explore each of them in more depth. Subsuming them within a monolithic, one-dimensional enemy aggressor would work against that intention of developing each culture individually. The Pact isn't meant to be a singular thing; it's meant to be a narrative vehicle for fleshing out multiple distinct cultures and launching multiple different storylines.

 

[JD]

Yeah, and I don't know about anybody else, but I am alot more interested in the continued development of the different pact governments/races, and their relationships to each other, than I am to any potential conflict with the Federation. Honestly, based off of what we got in the TP books so far, I would not be at all upset if we got books with just the TP appearing and no Federation appearances at all.

 

[Sjaddix]

As for what the Pact means, I definitely think they are a threat, and are dangerous, but at the same time I don't see them as the "evil empire". I think of it more as simply being that the Federation has something that's more of an equal to them, but is not on their side.

Yup. As Zero Sum Game showed, you could equally well say that the Federation is a threat to the Pact. Neither side is evil or uniformly bent on conquest, but they have conflicting goals and priorities and thus there's the potential for clashes to occur.

And of course the most important thing to remember about the Pact is that it's not one "they." It's six nations and various subfactions that all have different, conflicting agendas. Some of them are threats, like the Tholians, the Breen government, and the Tzenkethi if provoked. The Gorn warrior caste was potentially a threat, but are probably too weakened to be one in practice. The old Kinshaya regime was a threat to the Klingons but not the Federation, and the new one is unlikely to be a threat to either. And the Kamemor government doesn't seem very threatening, particularly in light of that joint UFP/RSE mission you mention.

That gets back to the core question of what the Pact represents. In terms of Keith & Marco's intentions (as I understand them), it represented an opportunity to take several underdeveloped alien cultures and explore each of them in more depth. Subsuming them within a monolithic, one-dimensional enemy aggressor would work against that intention of developing each culture individually. The Pact isn't meant to be a singular thing; it's meant to be a narrative vehicle for fleshing out multiple distinct cultures and launching multiple different storylines.

The Federation owes the Breen Payback for their assault on Earth and the Sol System. But I think the Breen have clearly established their bonifides as a threat. Although I think right now the Federation and the Klingons have the advantage. Especially in war since they have got a proven record of working together and some trust built up.

 

[Sci]

Exactly, everyone knows the real powers in the Federation are the Humans and to a lesser extent the Vulcans.

Oh? Which Humans -- Earth Humans? Martian Humans? Denevan Humans? Alpha Centauran Humans? Cestan Humans? Humans seem to make up a large percentage of the Federation, sure, but there's no indication of unity amongst the different mostly-Human-populated Federation worlds; indeed, there seems to be some alienation between Earth Humans and Alpha Centauran Humans and between Earth Humans and Martian Humans, if Losing the Peace and Section 31: Rogue are anything to go by.

So I would submit that it's meaningless to talk about "Humans" as a political power within the Federation. There is no "Human" faction; there are multiple factions within the Federation, some of them alienated or even occasionally hostile to one-another, who happen to be predominantly Human.

And meanwhile, every Federation Member, not species, gets a single representative on the Federation Council -- so no Federation Member has a numerical advantage over other Federation worlds on the Council. And since representation is based on Member, not species, that presumably means that, amongst other things, Earth could be represented on the Federation Council by a non-Human, if that non-Human is a United Earth citizen -- say, a Tellarite born and raised in Mogadishu, or a Sulamid from Buenos Aires. Or that Deneva or Mars or Alpha Centauri could be represented by non-Humans, too.

The most unequal thing about the Federation Council is that the Federation Councillors from the five founding Members automatically get seats on the Federation Security Council (the full Council's national security committee) rather than needing the President to nominate them and then secure a vote from the majority of the full Council. Which I think is something that ought to be abolished, but it doesn't give Humans a position of dominance -- Earth and Alpha Centauri do not have matching agendas or interests within the Federation; they are as different from each other in terms of power politics as Vulcan and Tellar.

And meanwhile, the novels haven't established a single Federation President from Earth since Hiram Roth (the President in Star Trek IV: Save the Whales), and no Human Federation Presidents in the 24th Century save Gan Laikan in the 2310s and Bacco in the 2380s. Two Presidents in 70 years doesn't strike me as being true inner Federation dominance.

It's reasonable to say that Humans seem like they may make up a large plurality of Starfleet, and that Earth conventions seem to have been chosen by the Federation early on for technocratic purposes (e.g., the use of English or an English-derived language as Federation Standard) because of Earth's status as the "honest broker" that the other founding Federation worlds trusted. But I don't see Humans dominating the Federation Council, I don't see Humans dominating the Presidency, and I don't see Humans dominating Federation government, culture, economics, or society as a whole.

Look eventually we have to have a war no point in having two great alliances and not getting a war out of it.

Oh? I mean, the Typhon Pact/Khitomer Alliance dynamic was in part inspired by the Warsaw Pact/NATO cold war. And while the Cold War certainly led to a lot of proxy wars, it never led to a war between the Soviet bloc and NATO powers.

Seems to me that between the Dominion War on DS9 and the Borg Invasion in Destiny, the novel line is all warred out. I'm way more interested in a story about how the Federation copes in a Cold War-esque situation before eventually overcoming its own instincts for militarism and belligerence and then overcoming its differences with the Pact and bringing peace to local space.

Although down the line Bajor may have potential to become a problem.

... in what possible way is that?

 

[Jarvisimo]

And meanwhile, every Federation Member, not species, gets a single representative on the Federation Council -- so no Federation Member has a numerical advantage over other Federation worlds on the Council. And since representation is based on Member, not species, that presumably means that, amongst other things, Earth could be represented on the Federation Council by a non-Human, if that non-Human is a United Earth citizen -- say, a Tellarite born and raised in Mogadishu, or a Sulamid from Buenos Aires. Or that Deneva or Mars or Alpha Centauri could be represented by non-Humans, too.

One of my favourite elements of Destiny, and the diversification of the anglo-human world of Trek, was the suggestion that Deneva was not a human-only colony, but multi-special. That Tuvok's son was a police man suggested a much more cosmopolitan world, which would suit the idea of a Federation colony world, rather than a human member-world's colony. I was a bit sad that in writing Losing the Peace Leisner failed to follow up on this suggestion of species variety and cultural integration by depicting a seemingly all-human colony. However he did have a good few other non-human characters.

-

I firmly wish to believe that the Federation is truly cosmopolitan, even multicultural - that what we always saw on TV was in some sense a sham or pastiche rather than actuality of a much more complex and diverse society. I hope that Gorkon's coterie in The Undiscovered Country were not right about a human (and indeed western, Anglo-American) - partly because it was seemed, as an echo of the various regulars' understandable xenophobia, to suggest the deep-sown, conflict-caused propaganda that had divided these nations for x number of years (then 90ish, now 150ish); and partly because it stank of too much truth about the Federation depicted, and Trek generally avoids the issue of the validity of the culturally conservative imperialism it depicts.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

The intent may have been to depict the Typhon Pact as a multifaceted and not evil alliance, but this intent was not materialised into the books - the Typhon Pact WAS depicted as an evil empire (alliance of empires would be more correct); it's just that it's a multifaceted one:

The tholians were established as utterly hating the federation in 'A singular destiny'.

In ZSG, the breen and the romulans enter federation territory/highly sensitive military facility, kill federation citizens and destroy federation property, streal highly sensitive federation technology. All this, without provocation.
BTW, this is an act of war against the federation.

How did RBoE depict the Tzenkethi? As utterly nasty, having no qualms about killing their own close allies, consistently despizing the federation. The fact that they're pretty - and some not yet overused sociological characteristics - doesn't change their intrigue/murdering hobby.

The gorn were shown as having no problem with killing the population of an entire world in 'Seize the fire'.

The tholians again show their aggressivity toward the federation, intentionally - with glee - dealing it a devastating blow in 'Paths of disharmony'.

And the blurbs for the new books regarding the Typhon Pact are not encouraging - they make the aggresive moves made by the Typhon Pact against the federation in the previous books seem tame - and they imply new losses for the federation that dwarf Andor's secession.


The only writer who seems interested in depicting the Typhon Pact as not so utterly aggressive - generally, in depicting a 24th century alpha/beta quadrant trek lit verse that's not, essentially, a battlestar galactica-lite verse - is Christopher Bennett in his recent books.
His efforts in this area rather remind me of Don Quixote against the windmills.

 

[flandry84]

Thank you for putting this down so succinctly/\.I was rather pressed for time yesterday and couldn't respond in the way I wanted to.
If the intention behind the Typhon pact project was to present a rival (but not necessarily hostile) element to the Federation,then the races picked to comprise that element certainly seem to follow a certain trend,i.e. previous conflict with the UFP.

 

[Christopher]

If the intention behind the Typhon pact project was to present a rival (but not necessarily hostile) element to the Federation,then the races picked to comprise that element certainly seem to follow a certain trend,i.e. previous conflict with the UFP.

As I've pointed out before, that's not entirely true. The Gorn have usually been portrayed in tie-in fiction as having either neutral or guardedly amiable relations with the Federation. The only conflicts have been in "Arena" itself in 2267 and in The Gorn Crisis in 2374 -- and in the latter, the aggressors were a militant caste who overthrew the rightful government, a government that was then restored by Picard and Data and had every reason to be friendly toward the UFP. In other Gorn fiction we've had:

• Star Trek Unlimited #1: "Dying of the Light": A Federation scientist desecrates a Gorn funeral world, but Kirk manages to make amends and convinces the Gorn to pursue friendlier relations.
• Requiem: Picard convinces the Gorn to end decades of isolationism and enter into friendly relations with the Federation.
• Alien Spotlight: Gorn: A Gorn crew seeks to rescue a crashed Reliant shuttle in order to repay Starfleet for Kirk's act of mercy in "Arena."

So really, it's not true at all that the Gorn have been portrayed as a power in conflict with the Federation.

It's also false where the Kinshaya are concerned. While they were mortal enemies of the Klingons, they had no history of any significant interaction with the Federation.

And yes, the majority of the Pact members have a history of hostility, but it doesn't follow that there's going to be a war. Star Trek has usually not been about open warfare. While the Federation has had multiple enemies, the stories involving them have traditionally had more of a Cold War flavor or have been about preventing war rather than waging it. I think some fans have forgotten that the Dominion War represented an exception to the rule for Star Trek. Of course the intent behind the Typhon Pact was to give the Federation a new adversary to test and challenge it. But that doesn't have to mean going to war, and in Star Trek it usually doesn't.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The tholians were established as utterly hating the federation in 'A singular destiny'.

Quite. The Tholian ambassador's line to Bacco about "it is YOU who are surrounded by a heavily armed hostile power" (or something like that) definitely seemed like a threat.

 

[flandry84]

Please don't misunderstand,I'm not advocating yet another war.I think the poor Federation has suffered quite enough in recent years.
No,if cold conflict is to be the order of the day then all I'm asking for is that Starfleet security/intelligence get afairer shake from the authors than heretofore.I don't think that anyone can say that they have been overly impressed with the security forces showing in Treklit(apart from Elias Vaughn).
Actually in ZSG,following the espionage/sabotage incident mentioed before,at one point somebody(presumably seriously)mentions that SI don't know whether the name given by the saboteur was his name,his races name oe the system that he came from.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Of course the Tholians were making ominous noises. They've spent a century and a half holding a grudge against the Federation and now they get to posture and put the UFP in its place. Making it clear that they have big guns now doesn't necessarily mean they're eager to fire them; it just means they're eager to score points psychologically and politically by making noise about them. They see the Federation as Mr. Big Shot, and now they get to stand there smugly and say "better watch out - you're not top dog anymore!"

In Zero Sum Game K'mtok mentioned that the Gorn and Kinshaya had been acting up and challenging Klingon claims to disputed systems; the impression I got was that they were overexcited about their new status and were "mobbing the bully". It wasn't a formal aggression, but a posturing move that emphasized how things had changed. The Klingons were formerly the undisputed heavyweight in the region, but now they're weakened and the Hegemony and the Holy Order were making it clear that they're not going to be intimidated anymore. K'mtok himself even expressed it in terms close to "they're getting uppity on us". Whatever policies the Pact members settle into (or have settled in to, in some cases), it was probably inevitable that they'd make a show of their new power, to make it clear that there's a new status quo.

Okay, the Tholians are undoubtedly hostile - they and the Breen have been portrayed as the voice of aggression in the Pact, so there's more going on with them than just posturing - but I don't think that making ominous comments about arms and power necessarily mean they intend a full-out attack.

And while the Tholians are the clearest villains of the piece at present, the Vanguard series does help us understand their hostility, as warped as their perception is. The Federation did awaken their mortal enemy/ancient oppressors, as a consequence of its eagerness to unlock the secrets of the Taurus Reach. The Federation was after power and knowledge and the Tholians wound up getting psychic seizures from it. It's all well and good to point out that the Federation's intentions were peaceable and it intended to use that power benevolently (barring the usual pragmatism regarding the Klingons, which the series has of course explored), but the Tholians don't care about that. It's still, from their view, arrogant and dangerous of the Federation, and they've been nursing one hell of a grudge. In the aftermath of Destiny, they get to posture and say "now you're the ones who better watch out, lest we meddle and interfere and you wind up paying the consequences!" Andor was just the continuation of that petty game - the Tholians are showing that they can meddle and the Federation will get sand kicked in its face and there's nothing the Federation can do. "The wheel turns, does it not?!" It's definitely hostile and blatantly aggressive, but it doesn't necessarily mean the Tholians want actual war.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, the Tholians are undoubtedly hostile - they and the Breen have been portrayed as the voice of aggression in the Pact, so there's more going on with them than just posturing - but I don't think that making ominous comments about arms and power necessarily mean they intend a full-out attack.

Or that the other Pact members would let them. We've already seen an instance, in A Singular Destiny, of the Pact putting a halt to unilateral military action by one of its members.

And while the Tholians are the clearest villains of the piece at present, the Vanguard series does help us understand their hostility, as warped as their perception is. The Federation did awaken their mortal enemy/ancient oppressors, as a consequence of its eagerness to unlock the secrets of the Taurus Reach. The Federation was after power and knowledge and the Tholians wound up getting psychic seizures from it.

That's true, but I don't think it's rational to hold a grudge for that long. Sometimes people can have a legitimate reason to feel wronged yet still react in an unhealthy and disproportionate way.

Andor was just the continuation of that petty game - the Tholians are showing that they can meddle and the Federation will get sand kicked in its face and there's nothing the Federation can do. "The wheel turns, does it not?!" It's definitely hostile and blatantly aggressive, but it doesn't necessarily mean the Tholians want actual war.

Sure. Why would they need to go to war when they can get such potent results far more economically with political manipulation?

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Okay, the Tholians are undoubtedly hostile - they and the Breen have been portrayed as the voice of aggression in the Pact, so there's more going on with them than just posturing - but I don't think that making ominous comments about arms and power necessarily mean they intend a full-out attack.

Or that the other Pact members would let them. We've already seen an instance, in A Singular Destiny, of the Pact putting a halt to unilateral military action by one of its members.

And while the Tholians are the clearest villains of the piece at present, the Vanguard series does help us understand their hostility, as warped as their perception is. The Federation did awaken their mortal enemy/ancient oppressors, as a consequence of its eagerness to unlock the secrets of the Taurus Reach. The Federation was after power and knowledge and the Tholians wound up getting psychic seizures from it.

That's true, but I don't think it's rational to hold a grudge for that long. Sometimes people can have a legitimate reason to feel wronged yet still react in an unhealthy and disproportionate way.

Given those points, I wonder if the Tholians' blatant hostility will be addressed soon by the other members. I don't want to assume too strongly, but it seems from the blurbs that the next two Typhon Pact books will focus mostly on the Romulans and the Tzenkethi (which makes sense given the author, and his history with fleshing out those races), so the Tholians might not be in the forefront for a while. (Though, again, they might surprise me there). I really liked Paths of Disharmony and thought its decision to limit the Tholians to mostly "offscreen" plotting was interesting - but it did mean we've had little of the Tholians' viewpoint compared to the other Pact members. I wonder if the rest of the Pact is going to have to confront these problems in the near future - "are you guys in this for any reason other than to thumb your nose at the Federation, because this agitating is starting to interfere with our other business". The Tholians have always been a bit unclear on whether they accepted membership for the same reasons as the others, or so it seems to me. And given Tezrene's role as ambassador, I'm interested to see what her agenda is - how much of what she says is the Pact consensus, the Tholians in particular, or just her own unprofessional grudges? I'm wondering if her initial appointment was another "early posturing" move to reinforce that things have changed, and if retaining her actually serves the Pact's interests after the initial point is made.

 

[Sjaddix]

Exactly, everyone knows the real powers in the Federation are the Humans and to a lesser extent the Vulcans.

Oh? Which Humans -- Earth Humans? Martian Humans? Denevan Humans? Alpha Centauran Humans? Cestan Humans? Humans seem to make up a large percentage of the Federation, sure, but there's no indication of unity amongst the different mostly-Human-populated Federation worlds; indeed, there seems to be some alienation between Earth Humans and Alpha Centauran Humans and between Earth Humans and Martian Humans, if Losing the Peace and Section 31: Rogue are anything to go by.

So I would submit that it's meaningless to talk about "Humans" as a political power within the Federation. There is no "Human" faction; there are multiple factions within the Federation, some of them alienated or even occasionally hostile to one-another, who happen to be predominantly Human.

And meanwhile, every Federation Member, not species, gets a single representative on the Federation Council -- so no Federation Member has a numerical advantage over other Federation worlds on the Council. And since representation is based on Member, not species, that presumably means that, amongst other things, Earth could be represented on the Federation Council by a non-Human, if that non-Human is a United Earth citizen -- say, a Tellarite born and raised in Mogadishu, or a Sulamid from Buenos Aires. Or that Deneva or Mars or Alpha Centauri could be represented by non-Humans, too.

The most unequal thing about the Federation Council is that the Federation Councillors from the five founding Members automatically get seats on the Federation Security Council (the full Council's national security committee) rather than needing the President to nominate them and then secure a vote from the majority of the full Council. Which I think is something that ought to be abolished, but it doesn't give Humans a position of dominance -- Earth and Alpha Centauri do not have matching agendas or interests within the Federation; they are as different from each other in terms of power politics as Vulcan and Tellar.

And meanwhile, the novels haven't established a single Federation President from Earth since Hiram Roth (the President in Star Trek IV: Save the Whales), and no Human Federation Presidents in the 24th Century save Gan Laikan in the 2310s and Bacco in the 2380s. Two Presidents in 70 years doesn't strike me as being true inner Federation dominance.

It's reasonable to say that Humans seem like they may make up a large plurality of Starfleet, and that Earth conventions seem to have been chosen by the Federation early on for technocratic purposes (e.g., the use of English or an English-derived language as Federation Standard) because of Earth's status as the "honest broker" that the other founding Federation worlds trusted. But I don't see Humans dominating the Federation Council, I don't see Humans dominating the Presidency, and I don't see Humans dominating Federation government, culture, economics, or society as a whole.

Look eventually we have to have a war no point in having two great alliances and not getting a war out of it.

Oh? I mean, the Typhon Pact/Khitomer Alliance dynamic was in part inspired by the Warsaw Pact/NATO cold war. And while the Cold War certainly led to a lot of proxy wars, it never led to a war between the Soviet bloc and NATO powers.

Seems to me that between the Dominion War on DS9 and the Borg Invasion in Destiny, the novel line is all warred out. I'm way more interested in a story about how the Federation copes in a Cold War-esque situation before eventually overcoming its own instincts for militarism and belligerence and then overcoming its differences with the Pact and bringing peace to local space.

Although down the line Bajor may have potential to become a problem.

... in what possible way is that?

Yes beautiful if u assume humans are no longer racist in the trek verse at all which given our history with it against each other I seriously doubt. Now of course Earth Humans will look down on Colony Humans but when push comes to shove most in their subconscious at the very least will put Humans above Aliens. Humans also have a clear population advantage if u give every planet a vote by itself that is a clear advantage.


Yeah Proxies are all fine and dandy but wars are more entertaining. Besides Soviet Union vs America and Friends is a bad analogy. Unless u think its totally great storytelling for the Typhoon Pact to collapse like the Soviet Union leaving the Federation to win without firing a single real shot. I don't find that satisfying in my Science Fiction. And that would in my book make this whole thing pointless.


Well Bajor is set to dominate a major trade route. Most probably want to pay the now crippled Cardassians back but of course not much to worry about unless the Prophets start telling Sisko how to build some of their tech. I think that would be an interesting story direction.