#The United Federation of Planets

[hasrock36]

Its interesting that DS9 continues the Federation being similar to the borg in multiple ways, sure you have Eddington directly making that comparison, but theres also stuff like the USS Odyssey being destroyed because Dominion polaron weapons bypassed the shields, the next time they face the dominion, the federation have figured out how to upgrade their shields to negate that, Weyoun comments on how quickly the Federation negates the dominions considerable technological advantage.

[biblioflyer]

More musings on utopia and the Federation as narrative device

The more I think about the streaming era of Star Trek, and Strange New Worlds kind of rubs our nose in the point, is that the point of the Federation was never to depict a perfect society. That would be narratively pointless.

What makes the Federation a great society is that it’s members are not perfectly ethical or aware of every salient fact at all times, but when they realize they’re wrong, they quickly pivot to the correct choice rather than go to their grave rationalizing why it’s okay to genocide a species it can’t directly perceive to improve the power and lifestyle of the Federation.

Critical decision makers in the Federation are capable of abdicating their moral duty to those in need out of fear or spite, but they are just as capable of swiftly moving to recognize the validity of very different life when given the correct information.

Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes online I suspect can recognize the magnitude of what it means simply to being open to changing one’s mind and admitting responsibility for allowing something heinous to happen. To not waste time making excuses and ensuring everyone knows you didn’t know any better rather than acting to solve the problem. To feel a responsibility for righting a situation you didn’t cause but did inherit and perhaps even benefit from.

If the average Starfleet officer has a superpower, it’s not that they’re super humanly more empathetic or have had the instinct for bigotry or selfishness purged entirely, it’s that their ego is just a smidge less aggressive. It’s not so overpowering that when confronted with irrefutable evidence of wrong doing, that they’ve failed to be the person Jean luc Picard knows they can be, that they can admit fault, and seek to right a wrong.

The Federation, for all the faults exposed by Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Picard, is not a place that would rewrite textbooks to say that American style chattel slavery was no big deal in order to avoid feeling bummed out or obliged to address second order consequences of a historical wrong. Rather than say the Synths are exaggerating or their sentience is a clever fake, over a decade of policy is overturned almost immediately in the face of proof the Federation was wrong.

A very good episode is a tour of Plato’s cave. Moving from ignorance to knowledge but crucially when the one who has seen the outside returns, they are not rejected by their peers. The others don’t choose the comfort of their shadow puppets.

[jonberry555]

New YouTube Shorts - Clips from latest Star Trek Video: How Does Federation Citizenship Works | Star Trek Theory

How does Federation Citizenship Actually Work in Universe? #startrek #startrektheory #shorts:

What we actually know about Federation Citizenship! #startrek #startrektheory #shorts:

[reginaldqueribundus]

the Federation itself as a concept is so funny because the founding members are

the Vulcans, who have been friends with humanity for years but don't seem to actually like them all that much, instead regarding them with a sort of perverse fascination usually reserved for virology labs

the Andorians, who were fighting the Vulcans for like a hundred years

the Tellarites, who don't like any of these people and whose cultural trait is arguing, and

humans, whom nobody knew existed until last century when they shot themselves into space on a heavily modified nuke, invented world peace and won a fight with the nearest imperial superpower

like imagine you're the Romulan Empire and these weird monkeys who've barely figured out interstellar travel show up on your doorstep in the equivalent of a shipping container with missiles strapped to it, kick your ass in front of everybody, and then start a friendship club with 3 of your neighbours who all hated each others' guts until like a year ago. now I understand why every Romulan on the show is so angry

[stra-tek]

Star Trek be like, let's draw a slightly different flag every time and see if anyone notices

[oldschoolfrp]

Battle at the Ziggurat -- David Menehan's cover for Prime Directive: The Star Fleet Universe Role-Playing Game, by Task Force Games, designed by Timothy D Olsen and Mark Costello (1993).

Prime Directive obviously is a Star Trek RPG, but one that does not mention "Star Trek" by name. It was published under the same license as Star Fleet Battles, granted to Stephen V Cole's Amarillo Design Bureau in the late 1970s by Franz Joseph, creator of the 1975 Star Fleet Technical Manual.

Like Star Fleet Battles, Prime Directive is focused on military actions. Player characters are members of a Federation Prime Team, an elite special forces unit assigned to the most dangerous missions.

Prime Directive describes a United Federation of Planets, phasers, and Vulcans, but you won't find Kirk or the Enterprise in this book, even in its detailed Star Fleet Universe Timeline. For that you need Star Trek: The Role Playing Game by FASA (1982-89), based directly on the original series, animated series, and first movie.

From Prime Directive:

[bourbonesneat]

On the one hand, Star Trek is a utopian future where you can do what you want for a living.

On the other hand, there’s something incredibly funny about Garak being a tailor despite there being no need for a tailor.

You can replicate clothes including their fit. You’re telling me a computer can’t get the exact measurements to a higher degree than a sentient being?

“I am but a simple tailor” oh honey there aren’t any of those

[geekysteven]

From a tweet by Mary Gillis

[loislaina]

Data says trans rights

[quasi-normalcy]

So the thing is: Deep Space Nine added a bunch of flaws to the Federation to make it more complicated, like Section 31 and the second-class citizen status of Augments. These things, on DS9, are framed as problems to be solved: the measure of a utopian society is how it can work to overcome its flaws.

BUT: now, bits of 90s canon are treated like holy relics; you can't tamper with them because they're canon! And so the Federation becomes frozen in amber; it can't work through its flaws because they're canon! They're holy! And so you can have, say, Una Chin-Riley or Dal-R'El get to be in Starfleet, but the general principle that people like them should be treated as second-class citizens can't be overturned. You can have Section 31 perform all manner of war crimes and crimes against sentience, but you can't show them getting abolished! They're canon! What if someone else wants to use them?

So instead of making the Federation out to be a dynamic society that needs to continually maintain its utopia, as was the original intention behind these flaws, the Federation becomes a completely static society with gaping flaws and hypocrisies that it can never do any meaningful work to overcome. They're just naturalized as part of the setting.

[cosmonautroger]

UNITED FEDERATION of PLANETS

[jonberry555]

How Does Federation Citizenship Works | Star Trek Theory

[flagwars]

Congratulations to the United Federation of Planets for winning the Star Trek Flag Wars!

It beat the flag of Denobula with 61 percent of the vote! Since people seemed to enjoy this tournament, I’ll make sure to do more fictional flag tournaments in the future. Let me know what fictional flag tournaments you would be interested in, and stay tuned for the Animal Crossing Flag Wars, which will begin within the next few weeks if I get enough submissions.

[kingoftheu]

The Defiant is great because it is so obviously a bunch of people who only vaguely understand the concept of a war building a warship.

Romulans and Klingons and the Dominion: If I don't perfect this project to improve our weapons after years of research I'll be killed.

Blissfully Ignorant Scientist on Mars: “Guns? Guns and it Goes Fast! Man this war stuff is really easy, who wants Pizza?”

[chernobog13]

A size comparison of some Federation starships of note.