Star Trek The General Star Trek Thread - From TOS to Corporate Schenanigans

[stephen the barbarian]

My own take on the Abrams Trek movies is that they actually tend to come off like old porn movies, which is to say that while they all had a "plot" of some kind or other, basically everything that wasn't a sex scene is usually just an excuse to get the movie to the next sex scene, and act as a bridge to connect them together.

that's his entire career summed up in one paragraph.

 

[S'task]

Earth almost always seems to have a very light Starfleet presence in terms of big ship count (not counting small shuttles or civilian passenger liners). In TOS and TNG, whenever the Enterprise visits Earth, it is usually the only ship seen there. In the TOS movies you see a couple other ships in Spacedock and that's it. In Star Trek Generations, the Enterprise B launches from Earth and then begins heading towards Pluto when they receive a distress call and they are the only ship in the area to respond. In the finale of the first season of TNG, Picard becomes aware of a conspiracy within Starfleet Command, and the Enterprise along with three other ships begin making their way to Earth to confront Starfleet leadership, and apparently a gathering of this size is unusual. And so on. So the Enterprise and the Vengeance being the only big Starfleet ships around Earth can make sense (though if the battle lasted more than 20 or 30 minutes then other Starfleet vessels from nearby star systems probably should have shown up), though as you said they should be receiving hails inquiring as to what is going on.

This is one of the more absurd tropes of Star Trek, though, which is rightly criticized. It's continued used in the Abrams Trek movies is just that much more hilarious given that this is something that has been made fun of about the show for years. This is another aspect of the first Abrams Trek movie that doesn't make sense, too, because they had all those ships that supposedly needed crews, which was the entire rationale behind putting cadets on the ships. The Enterprise was the only new ship that theoretically would have needed a crew, though, so where were all those other ships' crews? Why would they pull from the Academy and not from all the bases planetside or in orbit? Very little thought was ever put into these movies. All they cared about when it came to the fight with Vengeance was how cool that action scene would look.

Is it though?

Let me use a real world example: how many big US naval vessels are present in operational condition at the DC Naval Yards to prevent sea attack on DC?

Wait, you've never heard of the DC Naval Yards? Of course not, they're mostly a bureaucratic complex for naval matters close to DC and don't have any active warships stationed there, any that show up there are likely on some sort of political tour. Meanwhile the largest actual naval installation that might have capable ships ready is Hampton Roads at the mouth of the Chesapeake... which in Trek is the equivalent of Utopia Planetia, but the primary thing done at both Hampton Roads and Utopia Planetia is construction and maintenance of ships... thus they are unlikely to be in any condition for even emergency deployment.

Meanwhile both DC proper (Earth) and Hampton Roads (Utopia Planetia) are deep within core US (Federation) territory where enemies are unlike to be able to penetrate without being engaged by fleets well away from coastal water (in Sol system space), and those enemies that DO get that deep in cause panics as either it means the enemy managed to sneak in OR has such overwhelming force that they are no longer a conventional threat.

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

Edit: Capital vs Capitol mistake

Earth is the capital of the Federation. Just in regular space traffic alone Earth should be swarmed.

The amount of small Starfleet ships analogous to harbor patrol and coast guard should be enormous. And they're very likely lightly armed if nothing else.

And I think comparing Earth the capital to a bureaucratic facility on a major landmass is the wrong tack. It's basically a space island in a little archipelago. Its surrounded by space-water. With all sorts of facilities all over the system, unless the teleporters can teleport that far, that means ships and boats just to get around.

The academy for Starfleet is on Earth, the shipyards are in system, the design institute, the Capitol Federal government buildings.

Earth is the capital of the Federation, I cannot stress that enough, with it's biggest shipyard. There should be Starfleet vessels of all sorts of sizes there for leave, repairs, upgrades, administrative work, inspections. Just one or two crewed ships in system is shenanigans. It should be a dozen or so. Minimum. Just from Starfleet. Not including Vulcan Science Council vessels, or Andorian warships.

I mean, they might not be on full war footing or anything like that. They might be skeleton crews. But yeah, there should be a double of handful of ships in system for all sorts of reasons.

Think more major naval base that happens to be the capital on an island than anything else. It's not just a place of bureaucracy, it's a major city, and the only way to get there is by boat.

It's like more like how Venice used to be when it was a major power. Not DC.

 

[Carrot of Truth]

I really didn't like the Abrams movies at all but the USS Vengeance is one of the coolest looking Starfleet ships of all time.

 

[Sailor.X]

I really didn't like the Abrams movies at all but the USS Vengeance is one of the coolest looking Starfleet ships of all time.

The Vengeance is what a Starfleet Dreadnought should be. The Big Capital ship that is the center of a Fleet of smaller ships. The dedicated Big Gun. Until the Odyssey class in the Prime and STO timelines Starfleet did not have such a ship.

 

[Sailor.X]

The Federation Dreadnoughts.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

The Federation really could do with some heavy battleship divisions for its fleet. The backbone of steel in the line of battle is essential.

 

[S'task]

The Federation really could do with some heavy battleship divisions for its fleet. The backbone of steel in the line of battle is essential.

I mean... they consistently have?

The Excelsior class, the Ambassador, the Galaxy, and the Sovereign all were, for their times and place in the fleet, effectively Battleships. The fact Starfleet didn't call them such, especially the TNG era ones, is more of a factor of the Federation pretending to not be a military than anything else.

 

[Carrot of Truth]

The Enterprise G Constitution III class is a massive downgrade from the Odyssey class. Also the aesthetics of it suck since its basically just a slightly modified Abrams verse Constitution. It would have been a lot cooler if they used modified USS Vengeance.

 

[Sailor.X]

The Enterprise G Constitution III class is a massive downgrade from the Odyssey class. Also the aesthetics of it suck since its basically just a slightly modified Abrams verse Constitution. It would have been a lot cooler if they used modified USS Vengeance.

Yeah in Picard season 3 they did the Enterprise F dirty. So in STO the game developers paid them back by gimping the Constitution 3 to hell and back. Payback is payback.

 

[Typhonis]

From the Star Trek technical manual. The Federation class.

 

[Agent23]

The Vengeance is what a Starfleet Dreadnought should be. The Big Capital ship that is the center of a Fleet of smaller ships. The dedicated Big Gun. Until the Odyssey class in the Prime and STO timelines Starfleet did not have such a ship.

What about Star Fleet Battles?

 

[Captain X]

Personally I don't care for any of the nuTrek ship designs.

 

[Agent23]

Personally I don't care for any of the nuTrek ship designs.

The NX class was nice!

 

[Carrot of Truth]

I really wish Enterprise got its final season so we could see this badass refit. The NX class was pretty cool aesthetically.

 

[bullethead]

I hated it back in the day.

I softened a lot on the design after learning that the execs wanted a straight up Akira as the hero ship on that show, because it was popular from First Contact onward.

That said, I would've tried to push it to look more different/more TOS-ish than it did, just to mitigate the Akiraprise critique.

 

[Carrot of Truth]

I hated it back in the day.

I softened a lot on the design after learning that the execs wanted a straight up Akira as the hero ship on that show, because it was popular from First Contact onward.

That said, I would've tried to push it to look more different/more TOS-ish than it did, just to mitigate the Akiraprise critique.

It's sort of a blend of the Akira class and the Constitution, Basically the Saucer section of the Akira bolted onto the Constitution

 

[Scottty]

Problem here is that it doesn't make sense for ships to be "cooler and sleeker" both in the post-TOS era and in pre-TOS.

Starships built before the TOS Enterprise should if anything be the opposite - even more clunky and blockish looking than the E-nil now looks by comparison with 24th-century ships.
Though it looked cool enough when TOS was the only standard of comparison.

 

[Carrot of Truth]

Problem here is that it doesn't make sense for ships to be "cooler and sleeker" both in the post-TOS era and in pre-TOS.

Starships built before the TOS Enterprise should if anything be the opposite - even more clunky and blockish looking than the E-nil now looks by comparison with 24th-century ships.
Though it looked cool enough when TOS was the only standard of comparison.

I have always viewed that as being the result of a design aesthetic choice personally. The TOS era ships were from period when Starfleet was more utilitarian and militaristic which sort of returned in DS9 with the Defiant.


EDIT:

This sort of returns to the TOS aesthetic to a degree

 

[Bassoe]

Problem here is that it doesn't make sense for ships to be "cooler and sleeker" both in the post-TOS era and in pre-TOS.

Starships built before the TOS Enterprise should if anything be the opposite - even more clunky and blockish looking than the E-nil now looks by comparison with 24th-century ships.
Though it looked cool enough when TOS was the only standard of comparison.

If we're offering design critique, The Paradise Makers did a great job of recreating the retrofuturistic TOS aesthetics.