Things that bug me about Star Trek

[Baffalo]

Ok, I'll be the first to admit that Star Trek has a few flaws. Most have been hashed out already in great detail, but there's a few more things that just bug me about the entire franchise. Most of these occur in TNG and later, so TOS is probably the best series overall.

The lack of characters from places other than Europe or America
This took a bit of search on Memory Alpha, but of all the major characters shown over the years, only one came from somewhere other than Europe or America (assuming they aren't aliens, of course). That character was Uhura, who was probably born in Africa due to her speaking Swahili. The rest? Even Chekov was born in Russia, which I consider part of Europe. Sulu? Born in San Fransisco. Benjamin Sisko? New Orleans.

What the hell?

Let's assume that it's merely because all the actors they tried to get were from the United States. That's fine. It's no doubt hard to get characters to film from other places in the world. There's work visas to consider, how they'd be portrayed, how they'd react to the show, etc. But we don't see many characters from Africa or Asia who come directly from these parts of the planet, even with names. There's the occasional token minority or something shown, but mostly it would seem that most of the planet has gotten a good whitewash over the centuries. Did WWIII conveniently pick off most of the minorities?

Lots of Chiefs, no Indians
I keep watching the show and realize that almost the entire main cast (with a few exceptions) focuses on the officers in command. We occasionally get a story revolving around a crewman, but it's all about the officers. And even then, there are a few cases where we hear of enlisted people going to Starfleet Academy to get training.

What the hell?

I get that the show needs to focus on the people calling the shots. That's fine. We're all used to being the average joe, and would love to see the guys in charge facing a situation. But we rarely see what happens to the people whose lives are dramatically changed by the events. Hell, one of the best scenes I think is when in Star Trek VI, it showed the crewmen standing in Engineering. They were sweating nervously, scared of what was about to be a fight, but going about their duty. We saw the tragedy as Commander Scott carried his nephew who would die from his wounds, yet that young sailor still believed in Admiral Kirk even until the end. When you look past the officers from time to time, it makes it easier to understand how they can confidently go about the universe. If you had a loyal crew that would fight and die for you, you'd want to be reminded of that from time to time.

Lone Horse Syndrome
How many times did this happen? The Enterprise is galloping around the universe when it encounters something headed for Earth. Despite being the center of the Federation, there are no ships around to protect the planet. None. Zero. Nada. The only thing saving the seat of power for the entire Federation is one ship and the captain's titanium balls.

What the hell?

I understand the need to build tension. We're facing insurmountable odds and there's a chance we might die. It's balls to the wall as we give it our all or die trying. And yet... somehow, knowing that ONLY the Enterprise is going in somehow makes it better. We never see the other ships flying around, trying to do their part to keep the Federation safe. It's like the entire Federation is protected by one ship because they spent the rest of the military budget on beer and orion slave girls. We don't even see a few hastily spliced together shots of the Enterprise just redone to look like many ships. It's just one ship. And space is huge, with lots and lots of ways for an enemy to slip in, undetected, and strike at the heart of your entire government. I'm sure a few photon torpedoes will decimate Paris and San Fransisco, leaving the snake's body with the head cut off. Even the defense of Earth against the Borg is a low priority, with the Admiral in command struggling to pull together a force to protect the planet against a threat that has only had that one target on its collective mind from the beginning. If this is our future, we're fucked. I'm moving to Vulcan.

[Molyneux]

The lack of characters from places other than Europe or America
This took a bit of search on Memory Alpha, but of all the major characters shown over the years, only one came from somewhere other than Europe or America (assuming they aren't aliens, of course). That character was Uhura, who was probably born in Africa due to her speaking Swahili. The rest? Even Chekov was born in Russia, which I consider part of Europe. Sulu? Born in San Fransisco. Benjamin Sisko? New Orleans.

What the hell?

Let's assume that it's merely because all the actors they tried to get were from the United States. That's fine. It's no doubt hard to get characters to film from other places in the world. There's work visas to consider, how they'd be portrayed, how they'd react to the show, etc. But we don't see many characters from Africa or Asia who come directly from these parts of the planet, even with names. There's the occasional token minority or something shown, but mostly it would seem that most of the planet has gotten a good whitewash over the centuries. Did WWIII conveniently pick off most of the minorities?

That's a good point...and it would be pretty disturbing, but possibly plausible, if WWIII was the cause. Maybe Australia wound up a glass sheet after the war...what was that figure Riker gave in First Contact? Four hundred million deaths?

Lots of Chiefs, no Indians
I keep watching the show and realize that almost the entire main cast (with a few exceptions) focuses on the officers in command. We occasionally get a story revolving around a crewman, but it's all about the officers. And even then, there are a few cases where we hear of enlisted people going to Starfleet Academy to get training.

What the hell?

I get that the show needs to focus on the people calling the shots. That's fine. We're all used to being the average joe, and would love to see the guys in charge facing a situation. But we rarely see what happens to the people whose lives are dramatically changed by the events. Hell, one of the best scenes I think is when in Star Trek VI, it showed the crewmen standing in Engineering. They were sweating nervously, scared of what was about to be a fight, but going about their duty. We saw the tragedy as Commander Scott carried his nephew who would die from his wounds, yet that young sailor still believed in Admiral Kirk even until the end. When you look past the officers from time to time, it makes it easier to understand how they can confidently go about the universe. If you had a loyal crew that would fight and die for you, you'd want to be reminded of that from time to time.

I do think that DS9 went a ways towards improving that - at least to an extent - but you're right, there's never nearly enough characterization for bit characters. Even a few thrown-in lines and recurring crewmen would go a long way towards humanizing the crew - look at SG-1 for an example of that.

Lone Horse Syndrome
How many times did this happen? The Enterprise is galloping around the universe when it encounters something headed for Earth. Despite being the center of the Federation, there are no ships around to protect the planet. None. Zero. Nada. The only thing saving the seat of power for the entire Federation is one ship and the captain's titanium balls.

What the hell?

I understand the need to build tension. We're facing insurmountable odds and there's a chance we might die. It's balls to the wall as we give it our all or die trying. And yet... somehow, knowing that ONLY the Enterprise is going in somehow makes it better. We never see the other ships flying around, trying to do their part to keep the Federation safe. It's like the entire Federation is protected by one ship because they spent the rest of the military budget on beer and orion slave girls. We don't even see a few hastily spliced together shots of the Enterprise just redone to look like many ships. It's just one ship. And space is huge, with lots and lots of ways for an enemy to slip in, undetected, and strike at the heart of your entire government. I'm sure a few photon torpedoes will decimate Paris and San Fransisco, leaving the snake's body with the head cut off. Even the defense of Earth against the Borg is a low priority, with the Admiral in command struggling to pull together a force to protect the planet against a threat that has only had that one target on its collective mind from the beginning. If this is our future, we're fucked. I'm moving to Vulcan.

Budget. It is still a headache, though, that's true.

[Eternal_Freedom]

what was that figure Riker gave in First Contact? Four hundred million deaths?

To be exact it was:

"Makes sense. Most of the major cities have been destroyed, very few governments left. Six hundred million dead."

Which, for a massive world war with nukes flying around seems a bit low to me, especially if the Chinese were involved. But that's by-the-by.

[TheHammer]

what was that figure Riker gave in First Contact? Four hundred million deaths?

To be exact it was:

"Makes sense. Most of the major cities have been destroyed, very few governments left. Six hundred million dead."

Which, for a massive world war with nukes flying around seems a bit low to me, especially if the Chinese were involved. But that's by-the-by.

Perhaps that was the result of successful missile defense shields being implemented. Essentially, "Star Wars" preventing the damage from being even worse than it was.

[Baffalo]

Lone Horse Syndrome
How many times did this happen?

Three or four... I think... if even that many. Out of hundreds of hours of movies and television.

Don't forget to factor in the number of times the Enterprise has been the only one able to respond to a nearby crisis and was the only one to show up. No back up, no support, just the Enterprise to save the day.

[RedImperator]

Wait wait wait...do you mean to tell me that a show about the crew of the starship Enterprise focused on events in which the starship Enterprise was involved? Holy fucking shit.

Three of the five Trek series focused on a starship Enterprise, and in all three of them, part of the theme was that the ship was out on its own in the frontier, and the crew will have to think or fight its way out of most situations without outside help. It's not some kind of error, then, if many episodes revolve around Enterprise being the only ship available to deal with a crisis.

Also, incidentally, for TOS and TNG, having another ship around means an expensive FX shot, which is another good reason not to have any help nearby.

If you want to argue that one series or another drifted away from this "alone on the frontier" theme, or that the writers dipped into the "only ship in the sector" well too many times, fine, fair point. But at the moment, you appear to be bitching about a fundamental theme of the show, which forces me to wonder why you're even bothering. I mean, I think vampires are annoying, but I don't write tl;dr screeds about it in True Blood forums.

[Batman]

Which is perfectly reasonable given the vastness of space vs the comparatively slow speed of Warp drive, unless you want to argue Starfleet has a ludicrous number of hulls in commission. We're talking about a stardrive that tops out in the low 10 thousands of c typically. That means that for a time frame of, say, 48 hours, and a peak sustainable Warp speed over those 48 hours of 25,000c, anything more than 137 lightyears away is out of the picture. It is actually not all that unusual for a ship that is out there (as opposed to the monthly Earth-Vulcan mail run or something like that) TO be the only ship on call in any reasonable time frame.
EDIT: In response to Baffalo

[Skylon]

The lack of characters from places other than Europe or America

Uhura was supposed to be from Africa. According to Memory Alpha so was Geordi. Hoshi Sato from ENT was supposed to be from Japan apparently. I always assumed Julian Bashier on DS9 was supposed to be from the Middle East.

On the unnamed end, TMP tried a bit to rectify this. Throwing in even Native Americans with some traditional garb (check out the recreation deck scene where the whole crew gets assembled).

[Bakustra]

The lack of characters from places other than Europe or America

Euro/Americentrism is something ordinarily worthy of noting, but it's so prevalent in media that only particularly blatant cases are really worth talking about. Star Trek is only noteworthy in trying to counter that, even if didn't always succeed ("Code of Honor", "Tattoo", and probably a couple others) by actually including characters from outside the bounds of what was considered ordinary, which was most obvious with TOS. Even though Uhura's only job was answering the phone and Chekov was annoyingly stereotypical in his first episode, at least the makers were willing to go farther than a lot of other people dared. Other people have addressed your other 'points' well enough, but this is particularly annoying.

Wait wait wait...do you mean to tell me that a show about the crew of the starship Enterprise focused on events in which the starship Enterprise was involved? Holy fucking shit.

Three of the five Trek series focused on a starship Enterprise, and in all three of them, part of the theme was that the ship was out on its own in the frontier, and the crew will have to think or fight its way out of most situations without outside help. It's not some kind of error, then, if many episodes revolve around Enterprise being the only ship available to deal with a crisis.

Also, incidentally, for TOS and TNG, having another ship around means an expensive FX shot, which is another good reason not to have any help nearby.

If you want to argue that one series or another drifted away from this "alone on the frontier" theme, or that the writers dipped into the "only ship in the sector" well too many times, fine, fair point. But at the moment, you appear to be bitching about a fundamental theme of the show, which forces me to wonder why you're even bothering. I mean, I think vampires are annoying, but I don't write tl;dr screeds about it in True Blood forums.

Good sir, you're forgetting that sci-fi should be as samey as possible- generally some sort of military sci-fi with the appropriate level of realism to prevent people from suddenly disbelieving in spaceships on their TVs.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Actually, the big E (or the Defiant) being the only one to be able to save the day is a bit odd when the planet being saved is Earth. I suppose they could actually be out in the unknown or the edges of Federation space and being able to tell by the trajectory that an object/ship is heading for Earth, it's just that whenever we get one of the Earth (or any major federation member) is in danger episodes they already seem to be in the vicinity. One would think that the major member worlds would tend to be more toward the center of federation territory with more recent and less established members to be more toward the periphery, and as a result there should be more military assets in range of the key member worlds by the nature of their value.

[RedImperator]

Good sir, you're forgetting that sci-fi should be as samey as possible- generally some sort of military sci-fi with the appropriate level of realism to prevent people from suddenly disbelieving in spaceships on their TVs.

You know what would make Star Trek better? If it was Star Wars.

Actually, the big E (or the Defiant) being the only one to be able to save the day is a bit odd when the planet being saved is Earth. I suppose they could actually be out in the unknown or the edges of Federation space and being able to tell by the trajectory that an object/ship is heading for Earth, it's just that whenever we get one of the Earth (or any major federation member) is in danger episodes they already seem to be in the vicinity. One would think that the major member worlds would tend to be more toward the center of federation territory with more recent and less established members to be more toward the periphery, and as a result there should be more military assets in range of the key member worlds by the nature of their value.

I don't think anybody is actually arguing against this--it would fall under "going to the 'only ship in the sector well' too many times", but how many times has it actually happened? It's not actually that many, and when Destructionator actually made that point to Baffalo, he moved the goalposts back to "well what about all those other planets huh?"

[Bakustra]

Good sir, you're forgetting that sci-fi should be as samey as possible- generally some sort of military sci-fi with the appropriate level of realism to prevent people from suddenly disbelieving in spaceships on their TVs.

You know what would make Star Trek better? If it was Star Wars.

Right on!

Actually, the big E (or the Defiant) being the only one to be able to save the day is a bit odd when the planet being saved is Earth. I suppose they could actually be out in the unknown or the edges of Federation space and being able to tell by the trajectory that an object/ship is heading for Earth, it's just that whenever we get one of the Earth (or any major federation member) is in danger episodes they already seem to be in the vicinity. One would think that the major member worlds would tend to be more toward the center of federation territory with more recent and less established members to be more toward the periphery, and as a result there should be more military assets in range of the key member worlds by the nature of their value.

I don't think anybody is actually arguing against this--it would fall under "going to the 'only ship in the sector well' too many times", but how many times has it actually happened? It's not actually that many, and when Destructionator actually made that point to Baffalo, he moved the goalposts back to "well what about all those other planets huh?"

There's also the matter that the shows take place over a period of years while covering nowhere near that time. Three or four incidents when the Enterprise was the closest ship to Earth for a crisis over three-five years for TOS and an unknown number for TNG isn't really all that bad.

[Stofsk]

Good sir, you're forgetting that sci-fi should be as samey as possible- generally some sort of military sci-fi with the appropriate level of realism to prevent people from suddenly disbelieving in spaceships on their TVs.

You know what would make Star Trek better? If it was Star Wars.

[General Zod]

Even Chekov was born in Russia, which I consider part of Europe.

I'm pretty sure most Russians would vehemently disagree with this.

[Baffalo]

Wait wait wait...do you mean to tell me that a show about the crew of the starship Enterprise focused on events in which the starship Enterprise was involved? Holy fucking shit.

Three of the five Trek series focused on a starship Enterprise, and in all three of them, part of the theme was that the ship was out on its own in the frontier, and the crew will have to think or fight its way out of most situations without outside help. It's not some kind of error, then, if many episodes revolve around Enterprise being the only ship available to deal with a crisis.

Also, incidentally, for TOS and TNG, having another ship around means an expensive FX shot, which is another good reason not to have any help nearby.

If you want to argue that one series or another drifted away from this "alone on the frontier" theme, or that the writers dipped into the "only ship in the sector" well too many times, fine, fair point. But at the moment, you appear to be bitching about a fundamental theme of the show, which forces me to wonder why you're even bothering. I mean, I think vampires are annoying, but I don't write tl;dr screeds about it in True Blood forums.

I understand this point, yes. I understand why budget would make the shots impractical. That's all well and good. The reason I raise it as an issue is that it seems to me that we don't hear a single peep about other ships except for one or two mentioned here and there. I know the Enterprise is the flagship, yes I know it's operating alone due to budget concerns, but the dialog seems to suggest that the Federation has a budget whose primary income is recycling aluminum cans and washing cars in a parking lot.

I don't think anybody is actually arguing against this--it would fall under "going to the 'only ship in the sector well' too many times", but how many times has it actually happened? It's not actually that many, and when Destructionator actually made that point to Baffalo, he moved the goalposts back to "well what about all those other planets huh?"

Only reason I moved the goalposts back is because it's the same basic concept. I know the show is focused on the Enterprise and all, but it just seems the entire frontier scout force is made up of one ship. We never hear about any other ships encountering similar problems that often. A good example would be the episode where the Enterprise is in dock for a routine sweep when the terrorists come aboard and try to steal something explosive (I forgot the episode or most of the names). Yet we never hear of anything coming back from this. No ships searching for more terrorists, no increased security precautions, no enhanced sensors to possibly detect their ship, nothing. It's almost as if the entire incident is ignored because if Picard dealt with it, it was over and done with.

Euro/Americentrism is something ordinarily worthy of noting, but it's so prevalent in media that only particularly blatant cases are really worth talking about. Star Trek is only noteworthy in trying to counter that, even if didn't always succeed ("Code of Honor", "Tattoo", and probably a couple others) by actually including characters from outside the bounds of what was considered ordinary, which was most obvious with TOS. Even though Uhura's only job was answering the phone and Chekov was annoyingly stereotypical in his first episode, at least the makers were willing to go farther than a lot of other people dared. Other people have addressed your other 'points' well enough, but this is particularly annoying.

Alright, I admit to not thinking of Geordi's background. That I'll grant because he seemed to act like most of the other crew. Chekov was there to show unity in the future, which is certainly fine and dandy, and as for anyone on ENTERPRISE... yeah, I don't really want to go into that show. My therapist says it's good to just pretend it never happened.

Even Chekov was born in Russia, which I consider part of Europe.

I'm pretty sure most Russians would vehemently disagree with this.

I'm sure but when your country joins the European Union, you kinda have to roll with it.

[Stofsk]

When did Russia join the EU?

[Baffalo]

When did Russia join the EU?

I thought that was on the news... oh. It was a rumor. I apologize. I heard it was joining once and figured they'd gone with it. Just chalk it up to my being ignorant. I'm sure someone has a running tally somewhere.

[RedImperator]

Wait wait wait...do you mean to tell me that a show about the crew of the starship Enterprise focused on events in which the starship Enterprise was involved? Holy fucking shit.

Three of the five Trek series focused on a starship Enterprise, and in all three of them, part of the theme was that the ship was out on its own in the frontier, and the crew will have to think or fight its way out of most situations without outside help. It's not some kind of error, then, if many episodes revolve around Enterprise being the only ship available to deal with a crisis.

Also, incidentally, for TOS and TNG, having another ship around means an expensive FX shot, which is another good reason not to have any help nearby.

If you want to argue that one series or another drifted away from this "alone on the frontier" theme, or that the writers dipped into the "only ship in the sector" well too many times, fine, fair point. But at the moment, you appear to be bitching about a fundamental theme of the show, which forces me to wonder why you're even bothering. I mean, I think vampires are annoying, but I don't write tl;dr screeds about it in True Blood forums.

I understand this point, yes. I understand why budget would make the shots impractical. That's all well and good. The reason I raise it as an issue is that it seems to me that we don't hear a single peep about other ships except for one or two mentioned here and there. I know the Enterprise is the flagship, yes I know it's operating alone due to budget concerns, but the dialog seems to suggest that the Federation has a budget whose primary income is recycling aluminum cans and washing cars in a parking lot.

You know, at this point, I really have to ask if you've ever actually watched more than a few episodes of Star Trek. Other Starfleet ships are seen and seen and spoken of all the time. Often in TNG, the other ship was only on-screen for a few minutes, usually dropping somebody off, but there was at least one episode where Enterprise was participating in a blockade fleet with...ten or so other Federation starships. TOS had an episode with four Connies in formation on screen--out of a total of twelve in all of Starfleet. DS9 showed fleets of dozens of starships. Enterprise eventually showed other Starfleet ships, and the premise of that series was that the titular ship was the first of her kind and operating well out of range of the rest of Starfleet.

Shit, even Voyager occasionally showed other Starfleet ships, especially in the later seasons when they were in contact with Earth again.

Only reason I moved the goalposts back is because it's the same basic concept. I know the show is focused on the Enterprise and all, but it just seems the entire frontier scout force is made up of one ship. We never hear about any other ships encountering similar problems that often. A good example would be the episode where the Enterprise is in dock for a routine sweep when the terrorists come aboard and try to steal something explosive (I forgot the episode or most of the names). Yet we never hear of anything coming back from this. No ships searching for more terrorists, no increased security precautions, no enhanced sensors to possibly detect their ship, nothing. It's almost as if the entire incident is ignored because if Picard dealt with it, it was over and done with.

I don't see what your example has to do with your argument, frankly. Why would Enterprise be detailed to counter-terrorism, just because it was the ship targeted for the theft? Presumably Picard and the other officers were debriefed, the ship was searched for evidence, and then they went off on their next mission while somebody else did the police work. I don't know if you're aware of this, but the title of the show wasn't SCIS.

And again, more broadly, you're wrong. TOS saw three of Enterprise's sister ships destroyed doing the exact same work Enterprise was doing. TNG had several episodes where Enterprise was investigating the loss of other starships doing scientific survey work, and others where it was following up on another ship's investigations. Voyager ran into another Starfleet ship in the Delta Quadrant which had been pulled out there by the Caretaker.

You don't exactly have to be some kind of sperglord Trekkie to know this shit, by the way. It's not buried in some forgotten reference source. I can't imagine how anyone who's actually seen more than a few episodes of the show would get the impression that Enterprise is literally the only ship out there. We only hear about the other ships in passing, or when something's gone wrong, but that might be because the fucking show is about Enterprise and her crew. If you were watching a show about Captain Cook, would you assume HMS Endeavour was the only ship in the Royal Navy that ever did anything interesting?

[Purple]

I think his complaint is that its all nice and well for the big E to be alone but not when Earth is at stake. I mean, how many times did we see it and it alone fly back to save earth on its own. Why is there no such thing as say a static Earth Defense Force? Hell, even Cardassians at least had that field of turrets.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I suppose the Voyager finale could count as Earth being attacked, but that was (I think) unintentional by the Borg and they had "18 ships in position, 9 more on the way) within about ten minutes, if that. And that included at least one Galaxy, the Big E herself and (I think) a Prometheus class.

[RedImperator]

I think his complaint is that its all nice and well for the big E to be alone but not when Earth is at stake. I mean, how many times did we see it and it alone fly back to save earth on its own. Why is there no such thing as say a static Earth Defense Force? Hell, even Cardassians at least had that field of turrets.

No, that was his original complaint. He moved the goalposts after D13 argued that it's only happened a handful of times in the franchise's history. You, in the meantime, do not appear to have read the thread before responding, or else you would have noticed I've already made almost this exact same post once before already.

[Molyneux]

Come to think of it, you know what really bugs me about the various Star Trek series?
I don't think I can recall a single specific human main character who doesn't originally come from Earth - and just in case I'm forgetting someone, "born on a ship" doesn't count.

First Contact took place in 2063. TOS is in the 2200s, and TNG starts out in the mid-2300s. In the hundreds of years since humans first had access to interstellar travel, no-one from an extraplanetary colony has ever joined Starfleet? No Martians attended Starfleet Academy?

I mean, sure, I can understand a strong Earth bias, but damn it, I'd like to see at least one human main character who hails from Vega or something like that.

[Eframepilot]

Come to think of it, you know what really bugs me about the various Star Trek series?
I don't think I can recall a single specific human main character who doesn't originally come from Earth - and just in case I'm forgetting someone, "born on a ship" doesn't count.

First Contact took place in 2063. TOS is in the 2200s, and TNG starts out in the mid-2300s. In the hundreds of years since humans first had access to interstellar travel, no-one from an extraplanetary colony has ever joined Starfleet? No Martians attended Starfleet Academy?

I mean, sure, I can understand a strong Earth bias, but damn it, I'd like to see at least one human main character who hails from Vega or something like that.

Tasha Yar. She came from the failed colony Turkana IV, IIRC.

Actually you can justify the relative lack of extraterrestrial humans in Starfleet if you consider that Earth has a population of billions while colonies should max out in the millions since transporting large numbers of humans through interstellar space is prohibitively expensive even in Star Trek. So the majority of the human population should still be on Earth, and the same should be true of most other species and their homeworlds.

[DaveJB]

Search for Spock: when they stole the Enterprise, only the Excelsior was sent to chase. Was there no one else around? Maybe. Or maybe they just didn't want to send the whole fleet after Kirk when the one ship should have been able to handle it. But, the Enterprise certainly wasn't alone, so I won't count it either.

I think there was a line that explained that the Excelsior was the only ship that had a fast enough warp drive to start from the Sol system and chase down the Enterprise. After that failed because of Scotty's sabotage, Starfleet switched to trying to get the Grissom to somehow deal with the Enterprise when it got to Genesis, not realising that the Klingons had gotten there first and blown the Grissom into its component atoms.

I don't think I can recall a single specific human main character who doesn't originally come from Earth - and just in case I'm forgetting someone, "born on a ship" doesn't count.

Travis Mayweather from Enterprise. While he was indeed born on a ship, he spent his childhood partially on a colony world and partially on a freighter; IIRC he didn't first visit Earth until he was in his teens.

[Molyneux]

Thanks to both of you, Dave and Eframe - I didn't know that about either character.
...though to be fair, I don't think I ever saw more than two or three episodes of ENT.