It’s a military vessel. The bigger question to me is why don’t they turn off all the safety protocols around the transporters more often?
I think at least half of their problems could be solved if they used transporters to intentionally kill people or to disable other vessels. “Their shields are down? Beam their life support system and parts of the ship’s hull into space.”
The holodeck is also just a plot device. Instead of the TOS penchant for time travel and “oh no, we ended up on Earth in 18XX/19XX” plots, they could hit the Holodeck as the release valve. Lower stakes, lower contrivance barrier to get the crew into the situation.
You want real life? The safety protocols keep people from breaking the damn thing. It wouldn’t render half the dangerous stuff, like bullets flying too fast to bother rendering. The emitters wouldn’t be able to render objects inside a body, so bullets would only penetrate a few cm at best if they did render. Knives and sharp objects might not render sharp enough to cause real harm, and might not render into the would, either, so also low penetrative range. Chemical reactions are visual simulations, so acid doesn’t really burn. Poison isn’t real poison because it’s a hologram that feels real, not real chemicals. Blunt force trauma, crushing force, and maybe heat, might be the only guaranteed ways to do violence in the Holodeck with the protocols turned off.
I like the part about how the holodeck power was separate so they could fuckoff there when they were about to die instead of hooking that power supply up and getting life support back.
I mean, the holodeck probably theoretically requires at least most of the power available on the whole Earth right now. Wouldn’t want it to touch the ship’s other systems.
It’s basically just tractor beam forcefields, maybe not the whole Earth.
And I can see how an IRL explanation is that of someone is doing something crazy and flipping around, if everything disappears, they might get hurt falling even a meter at an awkward angle.
No it is not a military vessel. It is an exploration vessel. That is the core mission. Not sure how anyone who has actually watched StarTrek miss this key point.
Good point. Even if it’s science and exploration, wtf do they need a thousand people for? Unless they are trying to find some place to colonize, but it’s pretty clear from watching the show they are not. A lot of those people don’t wear uniforms, so they are not part of this rank hierarchy. What are all those people doing there?
I think that people who say that Starfleet is not a military organization must just have a different definition of “military” than I do.
In addition to all of the things you mentioned, when Earth is attacked, Starfleet frequently orders ships to return and fight.
So, they’re either a police or a military, and the fact that they may face court martial for disobeying orders to fight really decides it in the direction of military for me.
That’s by my own definition of military. I was looking at the Star Trek wiki and it seems that Roddenberry was very much against Starfleet being the military. He must just have a different criteria.
I can totally see them as not a military. They are to science and diplomacy what the East India Companies were to capitalism. Sure they have a military structure and a militia role, but if anything they’re more like general purpose UN vessels. They need to be capable of military force because they’re the government’s ships, and because even beyond dealing with aggressive governments, they’re also responsible for peacekeeping missions and they’re off in unexplored places.
I think Enterprise covered it fairly well. They definitely started it more towards the science/exploratory side but quickly ran into the “1000001 ways to die horribly in space” and started jerry-rigging stuff like phasers and photon torpedoes from what was formerly mining equipment etc. Even then they did still have a command structure similar to military, which just makes sense from a practical “who’s in charge of what” perspective. They also do have a mix of civilian and more military-style ranks.
Starfleet may have an overall scientific mission/objective, but it definitely developed along the the structure of a military protectorate or coalition, though again that was likely due to a certain amount of necessity. I’m pretty sure that exploratory or trading vessels in historic times tended towards that in some regard.
Its always been dumb that transporting opposing crews into space or directly into brig cells isn’t the main strategy for any culture with transporter tech.
Oh, their shields are down. Better poke tiny holes in their hull for an hour and hope they don’t kill us first.
For sure. Its just a thing we have to accept to keep the writers from having to spend all day working through this shit to the point where its just boring reality.
Like how “the ability to destroy a WHOLE planet” is treated as some kind of significant technological advantage in so many universes that also treat propelling a hundred thousands tons of spaceship well beyond the speed of light as a trivial every day thing. A star destroyer or galaxy class ship traveling at a multiple of C is a thousand times more devastating than any super-weapon that has ever threatened to upset the balance of power in a science fiction story.
The ship isn’t moving at C. Its warp drive is bending space around it, the ship is actually at rest. Therefore, we aren’t accelerating the ship’s mass to ridiculous speeds at all.
Theoretically a warp bubble would push all the small space debris in the bow automagically, I’m not sure of the specific function of the navigational deflector.
Eh, it’s a decent four episode arc. The protagonists try it, it works, they use it once very effectively, they try to use it again and the antagonists have pattern scramblers all over their ships. And then the antagonist uses it in a different, more devastating way, so now transport blocking becomes decoupled from shields in the plot.
They would just have to find a reason to disable it via plot devices before every battle.
Kinda like in action movies where the heroes come out shooting guns at each other but immediately get them batted away so that they can begin hand to hand fighting.
However, much like myself, they recognize that the place they’re in isn’t a peaceful utopia where everyone gets along, and nobody wants to push others around just for being there. So of course they’re armed and armored exploration vessels.
The ranks and protocol just make for standardized things across the fleet so people don’t need 500 different ways of doing things, and can integrate with each other more easily. Ranks make chain of command clear in stressful situations.
In very few instances is starfleet’s intent to end the life of anyone else. Why punch a hole through shields and beam a quantum torpedo into the enemy ship’s engineering section when you want them to stop fighting and talk things out? Hard to do when you’re dead.
Starfleet has similar patterns to militaries, but as a peaceful exploration focused group tries to use peaceful measures at every turn, even when their opponent has refused to listen every time.
Hell, even the romulans got help when they needed it despite centuries of constant threats, fleet action, intrusions into territory, subterfuge and sabotage, and outright hostility. The klingons are allies despite once being at war, and older generations still being distrusting of the federation.
The ranks and protocol just make for standardized things across the fleet so people don’t need 500 different ways of doing things, and can integrate with each other more easily. Ranks make chain of command clear in stressful situations.
It’s also just how real life ships have worked for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Ships are inherently dangerous, you can’t discuss everything to death or have two parts of the crew follow mutually exclusive plans when you’re supposed to respond to an emergency.
Then you’d have to worry about sourcing cinder blocks. How about, instead of cinder blocks, you beam another crew person in, or just their head? That way, you get two at once.
Or, just beam them over but mimic that time they turned Picard into a child. Then train the kid to be nicer and achieve diplomacy.
If that does not work, put them in the pattern buffer but put it on a drive that is prone to bit rot so they slowly start losing small pieces of their data/themselves until they surrender from the pain.
Here’s another question: In a world where you can remotely read the quantum state of every atom of someone’s body from (at minimum) thousands of miles away (as this is what would be required for beaming from the surface of a planet into orbit, a fairly ordinary task by Trek standards), how could informational security exist? A transporter sensor array ought to be able to read the screen on any computer on any ship without specific shielding, as that would be a comparatively macroscopic task, compared to transporting a living being.
It’s a military vessel. The bigger question to me is why don’t they turn off all the safety protocols around the transporters more often?
I think at least half of their problems could be solved if they used transporters to intentionally kill people or to disable other vessels. “Their shields are down? Beam their life support system and parts of the ship’s hull into space.”
Shhhhh… It’s a TV show and the transporters were always just a plot device anyway.
Yes, that’s why it was a response to the holodeck question, which has the same answer, only the holodeck is far less immediately powerful.
The holodeck is also just a plot device. Instead of the TOS penchant for time travel and “oh no, we ended up on Earth in 18XX/19XX” plots, they could hit the Holodeck as the release valve. Lower stakes, lower contrivance barrier to get the crew into the situation.
You want real life? The safety protocols keep people from breaking the damn thing. It wouldn’t render half the dangerous stuff, like bullets flying too fast to bother rendering. The emitters wouldn’t be able to render objects inside a body, so bullets would only penetrate a few cm at best if they did render. Knives and sharp objects might not render sharp enough to cause real harm, and might not render into the would, either, so also low penetrative range. Chemical reactions are visual simulations, so acid doesn’t really burn. Poison isn’t real poison because it’s a hologram that feels real, not real chemicals. Blunt force trauma, crushing force, and maybe heat, might be the only guaranteed ways to do violence in the Holodeck with the protocols turned off.
I like the part about how the holodeck power was separate so they could fuckoff there when they were about to die instead of hooking that power supply up and getting life support back.
… What? That was for real a thing? JFC
Mostly I think that was done (for plot reasons) so when it went haywire, they couldn’t just cut the power to fix it
Good thinking!
I mean, the holodeck probably theoretically requires at least most of the power available on the whole Earth right now. Wouldn’t want it to touch the ship’s other systems.
It’s basically just tractor beam forcefields, maybe not the whole Earth.
And I can see how an IRL explanation is that of someone is doing something crazy and flipping around, if everything disappears, they might get hurt falling even a meter at an awkward angle.
This isn’t Nam Donnie this is bowling, there are rules.
Transporters were a device to save money having to film scenes of moving from ship to planet.
No it is not a military vessel. It is an exploration vessel. That is the core mission. Not sure how anyone who has actually watched StarTrek miss this key point.
Whether or not Starfleet is a military force is a pretty debated topic, you really can’t brush it off like it’s a closed case.
They have command rank and structure similar to a military. They have ships. The ships have weapons - powerful ones. Sometimes they use the weapons.
We can argue “well they don’t want to use them,” but a lot of earth militaries don’t really want to be in combat either, until they have to be.
It depends what Star Trek you are watching as well.
Defiant is very definitely a military vessel. Next Gen Enterprise has like a thousand people on it or something so it’s less clear.
Good point. Even if it’s science and exploration, wtf do they need a thousand people for? Unless they are trying to find some place to colonize, but it’s pretty clear from watching the show they are not. A lot of those people don’t wear uniforms, so they are not part of this rank hierarchy. What are all those people doing there?
Enterprise D is a small space station with big engines.
Might as well link the plot exposition on that one.
So subtle even I couldn’t miss it
I think that people who say that Starfleet is not a military organization must just have a different definition of “military” than I do.
In addition to all of the things you mentioned, when Earth is attacked, Starfleet frequently orders ships to return and fight.
So, they’re either a police or a military, and the fact that they may face court martial for disobeying orders to fight really decides it in the direction of military for me.
That’s by my own definition of military. I was looking at the Star Trek wiki and it seems that Roddenberry was very much against Starfleet being the military. He must just have a different criteria.
I can totally see them as not a military. They are to science and diplomacy what the East India Companies were to capitalism. Sure they have a military structure and a militia role, but if anything they’re more like general purpose UN vessels. They need to be capable of military force because they’re the government’s ships, and because even beyond dealing with aggressive governments, they’re also responsible for peacekeeping missions and they’re off in unexplored places.
I think Enterprise covered it fairly well. They definitely started it more towards the science/exploratory side but quickly ran into the “1000001 ways to die horribly in space” and started jerry-rigging stuff like phasers and photon torpedoes from what was formerly mining equipment etc. Even then they did still have a command structure similar to military, which just makes sense from a practical “who’s in charge of what” perspective. They also do have a mix of civilian and more military-style ranks.
Starfleet may have an overall scientific mission/objective, but it definitely developed along the the structure of a military protectorate or coalition, though again that was likely due to a certain amount of necessity. I’m pretty sure that exploratory or trading vessels in historic times tended towards that in some regard.
The E was designed for combat right?
Isn’t that what the borg did?
They just kinda pulled off sections to analyze/wreck the ship like a tiny bug.
Its always been dumb that transporting opposing crews into space or directly into brig cells isn’t the main strategy for any culture with transporter tech.
Oh, their shields are down. Better poke tiny holes in their hull for an hour and hope they don’t kill us first.
In real life it would absolutely be this. There could be no weapon more powerful than a transporter.
But it would make for a very dull show and that is the reason they don’t (usually) do it.
You’d also see massive investments in transporter blocking, including passive blocking built into the hull.
Which is completely possible based on half a dozen episodes.
For sure. Its just a thing we have to accept to keep the writers from having to spend all day working through this shit to the point where its just boring reality.
Like how “the ability to destroy a WHOLE planet” is treated as some kind of significant technological advantage in so many universes that also treat propelling a hundred thousands tons of spaceship well beyond the speed of light as a trivial every day thing. A star destroyer or galaxy class ship traveling at a multiple of C is a thousand times more devastating than any super-weapon that has ever threatened to upset the balance of power in a science fiction story.
The ship isn’t moving at C. Its warp drive is bending space around it, the ship is actually at rest. Therefore, we aren’t accelerating the ship’s mass to ridiculous speeds at all.
Then what is the navigational deflector for?
Deflecting navigators
Theoretically a warp bubble would push all the small space debris in the bow automagically, I’m not sure of the specific function of the navigational deflector.
For moving at sunlight speeds.
Computer, teleport me down to earth’s surface, then drive the ship at warp 9 right through the center of Romulus.
Computer: I’m gonna have to push back on your plan a bit.
Eh, it’s a decent four episode arc. The protagonists try it, it works, they use it once very effectively, they try to use it again and the antagonists have pattern scramblers all over their ships. And then the antagonist uses it in a different, more devastating way, so now transport blocking becomes decoupled from shields in the plot.
I’d rather stick with poking holes
They would just have to find a reason to disable it via plot devices before every battle.
Kinda like in action movies where the heroes come out shooting guns at each other but immediately get them batted away so that they can begin hand to hand fighting.
Now I want to watch equilibrium again
I think the cannon response is that you’d have to lower your own shields to do it, which is risky. But yeah if both were down, then go to town.
Military? What military?
It’s an exploration fleet.
However, much like myself, they recognize that the place they’re in isn’t a peaceful utopia where everyone gets along, and nobody wants to push others around just for being there. So of course they’re armed and armored exploration vessels.
The ranks and protocol just make for standardized things across the fleet so people don’t need 500 different ways of doing things, and can integrate with each other more easily. Ranks make chain of command clear in stressful situations.
In very few instances is starfleet’s intent to end the life of anyone else. Why punch a hole through shields and beam a quantum torpedo into the enemy ship’s engineering section when you want them to stop fighting and talk things out? Hard to do when you’re dead.
Starfleet has similar patterns to militaries, but as a peaceful exploration focused group tries to use peaceful measures at every turn, even when their opponent has refused to listen every time.
Hell, even the romulans got help when they needed it despite centuries of constant threats, fleet action, intrusions into territory, subterfuge and sabotage, and outright hostility. The klingons are allies despite once being at war, and older generations still being distrusting of the federation.
It’s also just how real life ships have worked for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Ships are inherently dangerous, you can’t discuss everything to death or have two parts of the crew follow mutually exclusive plans when you’re supposed to respond to an emergency.
The Federation is a pseudomilitary thank you very much.
Beaming out their life support system seems pretty slow. Why not just beam a bunch of cinder blocks into their body cavities.
Then you’d have to worry about sourcing cinder blocks. How about, instead of cinder blocks, you beam another crew person in, or just their head? That way, you get two at once.
I assume you can re-use the cinder blacks. Though I imagine pretty much anything that will roughly fit into a body cavity or skull would do.
You know what you could do is to teleport all of their shoes onto the wrong feet.
The Three Stooges war tactics.
This is how Thrawn would have used teleporters
The damn transporters are cloning and immortality machines.
The transporters and replicators solve virtually every problem they have.
I mean Janeway did that once to the Borg
“I have done nothing but teleport bread for the last 3 days”
Dear God!
Mutually Assured Destruction
Or, just beam them over but mimic that time they turned Picard into a child. Then train the kid to be nicer and achieve diplomacy.
If that does not work, put them in the pattern buffer but put it on a drive that is prone to bit rot so they slowly start losing small pieces of their data/themselves until they surrender from the pain.
Here’s another question: In a world where you can remotely read the quantum state of every atom of someone’s body from (at minimum) thousands of miles away (as this is what would be required for beaming from the surface of a planet into orbit, a fairly ordinary task by Trek standards), how could informational security exist? A transporter sensor array ought to be able to read the screen on any computer on any ship without specific shielding, as that would be a comparatively macroscopic task, compared to transporting a living being.