STAR FLEET : Space navy or bad tempered boy scouts?

Flangepart · September 22, 2005, 11:51:23 AM

Am i the only one...who thinks The Star Trek franchise has a burr up its collective keester about the face that StarFleet is indeed, a space Navy?
Sure , they explore the vast reaches of the unfriendly galaxy, but lets be honest...they ain't civilians. Thats why they pack heat!

Soooo...

Has anyone else noticed the fact that, over all, Trek seems to be imbarrised about the military nature of StarFleet?
In MY opinion, NCC stands for Naval Construction Contract, and i don't care what the Trek bosses think.

Post Edited (09-22-05 11:52)

ulthar · September 22, 2005, 01:36:56 PM

Who's up-in-arms about this? I've never had any doubt; the command structure (admiral, captain, commander, Lt., etc) ALL point to a basis in the Navy.

trekgeezer · September 22, 2005, 04:07:45 PM

Okay, TOS made it pretty clear that Starfleet was a military organization, but that their primary mission was exploration.

The only person who got up in arms about this was Gene Roddenberry. When they made Star Trek II without his input he started b***hing about the way Nicholas Meyer had turned them into the military. Duh??

He really wouldn't have liked the whole Dominion War arc on DS9, had he lived to see it.

Flangepart · September 23, 2005, 10:56:52 AM

ulthar wrote:

> Who's up-in-arms about this? I've never had any doubt; the
> command structure (admiral, captain, commander, Lt., etc) ALL
> point to a basis in the Navy.
>

I woulden't say "Up in arms", realy. Just the idea that some trekkers are , i don't know,.. too P.C. on the issue.
Roddenberry was trying to use the action T.V. format to expound his worldview. No biggie, except that some aspects of the two don't quite mix.

AndyC · September 23, 2005, 11:04:26 AM

Nick Meyer's depiction of Starfleet is still just about the best in all of Trekdom. He's another underrated contributor to the franchise.

Roddenberry never could have created something so enduring without the help of people who brought more adventure into it, whether that be Gene Coon in the 60s or Nick Meyer in the 80s.

And like too many of the big SF names of his age, Roddenberry began to take his work too seriously, and he got more and more caught up in making it an accurate vision of the future as he saw it. And he got further into environmentalism and social justice and new age crap. He went from telling great adventure stories to creating vehicles for a message. Not that he didn't do that before, but at least it wasn't all he did.

It's like comparing Asimov's early work to what he wrote in the 80s. He goes from the Foundation wheeling and dealing across their corner of the galaxy, defeating various threats in their quest for a new empire, to sequels about the planet Gaia and how ideally all must live in oneness with each other and the planet, foregoing individual interests. Same storyline, but written three decades later. Easy to see that he and Roddenberry were pals.

Post Edited (09-23-05 22:33)

Mr. Hockstatter · September 23, 2005, 11:43:54 AM

QuoteAnd like too many of the big SF names of his age, Roddenberry began to take his work too seriously, and he got more and more caught up in making it an accurate vision of the future as he saw it. And he got further into environmentalism and social justice and new age crap. He went from telling great adventure stories to creating vehicles for a message. Not that he didn't do that before, but at least it wasn't all he did.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts on the subject as well. Roddenberry used to complain about censorship in the '60s, but what he actually meant was that he was prevented from pounding people over the head with his politics, and was forced to employ some small measure of subtlety. In the spin-offs, he was under no such constraints and the "stories" became nothing but vehicles for messages. Then Rick Berman and Brannon Braga took over and reduced it to a third grade level.

AndyC · September 23, 2005, 10:28:14 PM

True, we always heard how Roddenberry succeeded in spite of network interference. When you compare what he did when constrained to what he did when he had carte blanche, you can see that Star Trek succeeded BECAUSE of the interference. Somewhere between Roddenberry's vision and what the network wanted, there was a damn good show.

Just Plain Horse · September 24, 2005, 11:13:57 AM

To be honest, I always thought of the Enterprise as a floating colony of slightly mentally unbalanced individuals in need of psychological treatment. Spock represses emotions, Kirk has a god complex, Bones needs anger management, and U'hura hears voices in her head telling her to do bad things... Scottie thinks he's some sort of Scotch-Irish hybrid, and Sulu obviously has issues with his sexuality...

Honestly, some television shows will try to make us root for anyone...

Fearless Freep · September 24, 2005, 12:01:52 PM

It's like comparing Asimov's early work to what he wrote in the 80s.

I got the impression that he knew he was running out of time in life and wanted to wrap everything up into one big galactic future history, but some of it felt a bit forced

AndyC · September 25, 2005, 06:38:59 AM

I didn't mind Asimov trying to tie up the Foundation story, and it was kind of cool the way he unified it with his Robot series. I was just put off by the whole shift from empire building to Gaia/Galaxia being what's good for the galaxy, among other things. Mind you, if he wanted to wrap it up in a hurry, he might not have spent two whole novels on one story line. I much preferred the earlier magazine stories that carried the story forward generation by generation and crisis by crisis, as we watched the Foundation take shape and and history was built from the earlier stories. Mind you, Asimov had already started lingering at one point in history when the Mule came along. But that's getting away from the point.

I don't know if it's due to years of thinking along certain lines, or just that these guys went from trying to write saleable stories for pulp magazines to being considered visionaries and having money waved in front of them to entice them to write novels, but quite a few golden-age SF writers tended to get a little too preachy in their later careers. Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series is another one that, over a couple of decades, went from a great adventure to being overloaded with his views on society, the environment, war, politics, death, God, etc. Still a great series, but too heavy on the message. SF always had those themes, but they were secondary to the story, or at least presented in such a way that they were not so obviously intended to make you think. Again, I think it might be a result of going from a struggling writer of escapist fluff in the public eye to being a literary giant.

Roddenberry went the same way. Of course, since he wasn't nearly the storyteller that Asimov or Clarke were, quite a lot more of the entertainment was lost in favour of adding a lot more preachiness.

Post Edited (09-26-05 09:41)