Why No Space Pirates?
- Thread starter Cyke101
- Start date
Technically:
- Pirates are privately owned vessels maurading ships for their own benefit, without sanction from any formal authority.
- Privateers are privately owned vessels marauding enemy ships at a time of war, with the sanction of a government
- The Navy/Military are government owned vessels marauding enemy ships at a time of war, protecting commercial interests, etc.
- The merchant marine is the fleet of merchant ships (public or private) owned by a specific government.
The Ferngi are so commerce oriented most of their ships fall into the merchant marine category, at least relative to their own laws. IIRC they have a military focused on protecting their commercial interests. From the Federation viewpoint the Ferengi probably fall into the category of privateers.
IIRC Klaa went rogue in TFF. His ship is still a member of the military and (presumably, since I'm not an expert in Klingon military law) subject to sanction for acting without orders. Same goes for Chang in TUC (except that his "sanction" was that his ship got blown up).
Kruge in TSFS was acting within the scope of military orders.
The Narada and Nero in STXI were technically pirates although not characterised as such.
If you are one of the ships being marauded, it probably doesn't matter if they are pirates, privateers, or military.
They were called the Orion Syndicate e.g. a group engaged in organized crime. I guess a syndicate could be considered pirates if they are operating at sea or in space. I don't recall them being characterized a such; more like a group of scumbags.
Mudd was certainly characterized as a pirate. I vaguely recall Mudd being referred to as a pirate in Mudd's Women. Maybe I'll rewatch the ep to confirm this weekend.
Kirk and Spock informed Cyrano Jones he was was "transporting a species harmful to human life" (or something close to that). I don't think anybody was aware of the harmful nature of tribbles prior to "The Trouble With Tribbles", so I don't think this makes him a pirate. He wasn't characterized as one. I'd put him into the shady businessman caregory.
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Yeah, I always kind of considered the Ferengi to be a slightly more sophisticated version of pirates.
Harry Mudd was kind of a pirate, but I guess that would be stretching it.
You have a point there. And if i remember correctly, (at least) Harry Mudd was sort of dressed like one as well.
Pirate tech sucks, just look at the outrageous Okona or the Pakleds.
That is why Gambit is not a good story. A bunch of mercenaries somehow have a competetive ship that can go against a top of the line Galaxy glass, a vessel many years in the making and the result of millions of manhours of work?
What is upkeep on their vessel? Do they keep engineers and spacedock workers on retainer? How much does that cost? A crew of barely a dozen constantly on the edge of mutany doesn't seem capable of running a large ship let alone a runabout.
What if Gambit was set 10 years in the future? The Enterprise-E would have phasered that ship in two with one shot. As a Merc how do you balance personal greed against necessary reinvestment in R&D?
That is why Gambit is not a good story. A bunch of mercenaries somehow have a competetive ship that can go against a top of the line Galaxy glass, a vessel many years in the making and the result of millions of manhours of work?
What is upkeep on their vessel? Do they keep engineers and spacedock workers on retainer? How much does that cost? A crew of barely a dozen constantly on the edge of mutany doesn't seem capable of running a large ship let alone a runabout.
What if Gambit was set 10 years in the future? The Enterprise-E would have phasered that ship in two with one shot. As a Merc how do you balance personal greed against necessary reinvestment in R&D?
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hellsgate
Commodore
Blaxxer: The Freighter is the Pandora-Class, designed by Suricata & Kaden of "Star Trek: The Breen War" RPG. The bridge is from "Designing The U.S.S. Voyager", by Paramount-Viacom's FX/Set Design Artists respectively. The Xenon-Class is originally a concept art "Phase 2" design by Jim Martin but the specific art displayed is from Bravo Fleet.
I would have brought up Cyrano Jones, except I had him confused with Harry Mudd. Yes, I'm a bad Trekkie...
Real life pirate tech sucks, that's why they always pick on civilians or take hostages. Defense of civilians is where a nation's navy (or Starfleet, for that matter) step in. Pirate ships almost never ever go for a direct confrontation with authorities if they can avoid it.
Actually, it wasn't competitive. In fact, Data had to make it look like the Enterprise was damaged against the pirates and unable to pursue, when that was what Data deduced was Riker's plan all along.
Pirates rarely work in such terms, though. "Reinvestment in R&D" for pirates usually means out and out theft of more advanced technology.
Many pirates live the life they do in the face of and in protest of the social system they're in (ie Somali fishermen resorting to piracy when large corporations fish the oceans dry). Other pirates do it because they can't abide by the law anyway (like Harry Mudd) and others do it because it's pretty much the last avenue they can think of due to displacement or debt.
It also assumes that Starfleet is near the top end of the galaxy's tech line, which is far from the truth when you go beyond the Alpha Quadrant. Voyager could just have easily come across pirates from a civilization much more advanced than Starfleet (for the sake of argument).
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Coincidentally, I've been working on one that features Tom Riker and Sito Jaxa as the heads of a pirate/mercenary outfit. I conceived it as an attempt to explore the "wild" side of space and take a look at what space looks like to people who aren't in Starfleet.
It would easier just to pirate electronically by altering freighter orders and hire legit cargo carriers to move the goods from the port (or whatever) to an intermediate drop off point where you (or your conspirators) then take it away.
A variation is simply to alter transport orders after the cargo has arrived at its intended port. Change the planetary cargo shuttle's orders and that sort of thing.
Why go to the cargo and its freighter somewhere in space when you can, essentially, make it meet you more than half way?
A variation is simply to alter transport orders after the cargo has arrived at its intended port. Change the planetary cargo shuttle's orders and that sort of thing.
Why go to the cargo and its freighter somewhere in space when you can, essentially, make it meet you more than half way?
I'd consider the Kazon pirates in a way. Federation space is too stable for pirates. Klingons, Cardassian and Romulans would never allow piracy in their territory. Klingons may act like pirates, but they aren't really into piracy except for the occasional rogue Klingon. I don't see Ferengi acting like Pirates since it goes against their nature, being a saleman or a con man to make a profit...
Heh... what was the upkeep on Voyager? Seven years in the Delta Quadrant without a space dock or an engineering support team? The fact that Voyager had a crew of 150 balances out nicely with the fact that civilian space docks can and do service non-Starfleet vessels.
Technically, so would the Enterprise-D. If you recall, the only reason it didn't was because Data figured there was something fishy going on and didn't blow it out of the sky outright. Baran's ship was no match for the Enterprise even on the best of days.
OTOH, you could say the reason we so rarely see pirates going after Starfleet ships is because the pirates aren't stupid enough to try it, and because Starfleet rarely carries valuables (latinum, dilithium, ketracel white, felecium) that would make a dent in their probably substantial maintenance bills. Piracy is an expensive proposition, so you don't waste time harassing patrol boats when treasure galleons are afoot.
Black market.
That's just theft and/or larceny. Pirates can and do go after more diverse cargo that is either better protected or going to a port they won't otherwise have access to. Really, it's the difference between a carjacker and a car thief; the thief can use finesse and skill to boost your car while you're asleep, while the carjacker specializes in stealing your car at gunpoint. Depending on the kind of car you want to steal, the latter might be more feasible.
Especially if the thing you're trying to steal is something the owners will definitely miss. That's why I figured future pirates would probably be ex-Maquis. The theft of industrial replicators from DS9 is arguably an act of piracy.
Yeah, that's a good point, though I'm not sure about how tribalism would factor into the pirate life (they were almost like Mad Max baddies in space). Still, even right down to the rag-tag clothes, they're probably the closest to a consistent portrayal of pirates that Trek has had. Then again, the Kazon themselves were a post-Roddenberry invention.
If Trek could reinvent the assassin, then going down a less-direct, less-confrontational path for piracy would be neat to see.
That's a good point. Do we really have any evidence that there is not piracy in Federation space anywhere? Everytime we're around, we're seeing a ship like the Enteprise, the Defiant, Voyager, etc. Ships that would make quick work of any civilian pirate ship. And ships that are generally also not carrying alot of cargo. Do we really know what kind of things the smaller, lesser armed cargo ships or other civilian ships run into?
There may be lots of piracy going on, but the pirates are just smart enough to avoid really beefy Starfleet ships. After all, you don't see modern day pirates trying to take on an aircraft carrier, do you?
He also said no Vulcans in major roles, at least for the first batch of eps, just to distance the new show from TOS.
Orion "traders" date back all the way to "The Cage", Harry Mudd was essentially a pirate (and appeared in two eps plus a TAS ep), and TAS had an episode called "The Pirates of Orion". Maybe the freelancers pitched a lot of pirate scripts for TNG and GR was sick of them?
Oh, I don't want to get into the whole TAS thing. It's a whole other can of worms, and Roddenberry himself had mixed feelings about it. As such, Pirates of Orion were mentioned above.
As for the Orions and Harry Mudd, there's power in outright names, too. If they looked, acted, and dealt like pirates, why weren't they called pirates? Truth in labelling. This is only a guess, but by not calling them as such, it further distanced Trek from piracy under Roddenberry. (also, Syndicate =/= Pirate, unless, hey, someone wants to address the point)
hellsgate
Commodore
That's the beauty of fics. You can do anything you want within Trek as long as it remains consistant with the plots of the larger canon TV/Movies/Graphic Novels/Trek Lit, etc. between ENT and DS9 Relaunch. The bigger beauty in fic is what you can do once canon trek itself has been exausted (except for the relaunch novels,) & there's the later 24th Century and beyond, to do what you like.
Just a guess, but I think "Space Pirates" were something of a cliche in the pulpy sci-fi of the '40s and '50s (Tom Corbett - Space Cadet!, Buck Rodgers, etc) and thus didn't seem to fit in with Roddenberry's idea of doing serious science fiction.
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