Master of Ossus wrote:
Are you seriously suggesting that they wrote "Chain of Command" with no intention of paralleling 1984?
No obviously they did but it was a slight tip of the hat in one episode, the 8472 PK'er mirrors the DS SL but that doesn't mean I am about t start drawing parallels between the Federations form of governance and the Empire.
Not really. All of them are warships, too. The Ent-Nil was described by the Klingons as a battlecruiser.
Ah but the Ent-nil was a battle cruiser but back them Starfleet was a military and everybody knew it, it is often referred to as the military, sure its duel purpose but nobody thinks of it as a virtually 100% pacifist organisation as they do in early TNG.
The E-E is a warship, as are all ships of the Defiant class, Sabre class, and presumably the Akira class (though that also retains some exploratory features).
As I said changing times, nobody makes any bones about the Defiant no being a warship, Sisko is rather upfront about it.
Allegedly peaceful ship classes were thrown into the war against the Dominion, armed with photon and quantum torpedoes as well as new types of phasers designed to combat the Borg.
No body says the ships can't be used for defence just that their are primarily ships of exploration and diplomacy, which they are compare and contrast the Ent-E and Defiant against the Ent-D and Voyager - there is a clear distinction in function, it is rather obvious to everybody in Vs debates that the early TNG ships are designed for things other than combat, you know this by now MOO.
These ships are armed with considerable weaponry, and particularly after the First Borg Incursion Star Fleet increased its production of warships and intensified its R&D into new, more powerful weapons designed to defeat the Borg.
Well considerable weapons depends upon your point of view, comparing the Ent-D and Ent-E shows a marked improvement in ability and load out and indicates that Starfleet has become more militant than it once was this however doesn't indicate
double-think simply that Starfleet has changed with the times.
Sure it does. Look at Admiral Leyton's actions in "Paradise Lost." Star Fleet sacrificed its ideals in order to fight the war, but throughout the war we heard SF officers talking about how theirs was a peaceful side, in spite of themselves.
Leyton wanted to protect Earth by bringing in harsher measures, thats not double think thats just assuming the ends justify the means or that security is more valuable than freedom.
As for the Dominion war - come on MOO everybody in war thinks of themselves as just and that the enemy is wrong/inferior, the Federation actually has every right to feel that way because they aren't the aggressors and didn't want a war.
It was hardly abandoned, and while it may have been a departure from SF ethos it was no worse than the Peregrine class fighters whose ONLY purpose is combat.
A ship we never see being used by the Federation until they are at war, surely if Starfleet was the military in denial as you paint them they would have had no objections to carrying them around constantly and using them because
doublethink wouldn't allow them to come to the conclusion that they were outfiited more for war (although even ig they did carry them around it wouldn't supercede their primary mission as diplomatic ferries).
That's exactly what happened to Doctor Bashir's parents, when they handed themselves in for tampering with their son's genetics.
Or JAG agreed not to press charges against Bashir if his father handed himself over for prosecution, I know the argument is that JAG shouldn't have been involved but since it did deal with a military matter and only somebody in Starfleet could agree to allow Bashir to escape the consequences of his genetic heritage, JAG could then cut a deal with the civilian authorities.
The incident can easily be viewed differently than the take you have on it and even if Starfleet did run the judiciary this doesn't indicate some innate part of "IngSoc" being copied.
runs the press,
Well the Federation does not Starfleet.
True.
What private ships? All of them appear to belong to members of other races, and various ship designs is not solely indicative of private shipping.
Non human races but not non Federation races, we have heard " Species X's ship is docked at upper pylon 3" etc before and the species in question has been a Federation member (Andorians come to mind at the moment but I will search for more if necessary), besides which you said Starfleet controls all shipping which it clearly does not, and there are shipping companies with humans in them hat don't have to observe the prime directive, only Starfleet controlled organisation would have this surely.
Aside from the Bajorans, yes.
And Chakotay belief in the great spirit or whatever, not to mention an entire colony of "Native Americans" with such beliefs?
Vulcan logic is hardly a pseudo-religion. If anything it's a philosophy.
not logic, the entire bit about Vulcan mystics etc.
Terms like "God" have become quaint terms, there have been no observed Buddhists in SF, there have been no Christians, and while the original Enterprise had a chapel (seen in "Balance of Terror"), no similar features have been observed since. There are no chaplains, there are no priests, there are no rabbis or caliphs or Popes. There is no prayer. Keiko and Miles O'Brien were married according to Irish and Japanese traditions, instead of religious rites, in TEN FORWARD LOUNGE, by Captain Picard. Religion is gone.
And yet people still believe in an after life and some form of soul, the Federation isn't atheist it is agnostic and that is mainly just from observation of humans.
Research has taken its place. All that was necessary was something to use excess production, and to keep people from living better lives. That's about what we see in ST.
Rubbish, the purpose of the war was to use up excess production in order to prevent the quality of life and thus education level increasing, the education in trek seems rather good to me and maybe you would like to backup the statement that research consumes all of the Federation excess resources so much so that people can't find the 24th century equivalent of a shoe lace?
the harsh class divisions are not in existence,
What do you mean? Uniformed officers form a judiciary.
You mean form the office of Judge Advocate General.
Star Fleet officers are revered.
First - prove it.
Second - Show why this is more reverance than the rich and famuos currently get.
Third - Show the link to 1984 where the proles were largely unconcerned with the party member and wren't in reverance of them in anyway.
Star Fleet is in all ways analogous to the Party.
Sorry MOO but I prefer to have evidence and then work towards a conclusion not just have a statement thrown at me without any proof shown, if you show some proof then I will look at it but until then your saying its so don't make it so.
No. There's Section 31 (a secret violation of SF ethos).
Who disapear huge numbers of people, are known about in the public at large, hold torture sessions in preparing people for trial, patrol the streets, have a HQ... oh no wait they don't have any of those things and are simply a stock secret organisation and bare little resemblance to the thought police.
(I was prepared for that one, could you tell?)
Communications are easily monitored by everyone.
Which can be done today, it doesn't equate to having a camera in my face 24/7 here and it doesn't in trek, please try again.
no active effort to rewrite the past and make the Federation council seem all knowing,
True.
And you don't think that hurts your case since the constant shifting of history was another key facet of IngSoc in order to prevent comparison with the past (along with comparison with other nations which also exists for the Federation).
Except on DS9, where THERE WAS NO SCHOOL until Keiko O'Brien decided to build one. She then taught people from diverse ages in ONE CLASSROOM, with one teacher, and with no apparent lesson plan.
Come now MOO, first the children (federation at least) we being home schooled using the computer, second it was unique situation and you fail to mention that the Enterprise had a school as does Earth and then you construe this slight deficiency as being analogous to the widespread attempt by the party to keep people stupid and try to eradicate thought.
Not that it maters but as for Keiko's lesson plan, your proof of this is?
What are you talking about? SF denies its citizens more than it admits. Michael Eddington throught so--that's part of why the Maquis broke away from the UFP.
Silly me I thought it had to do with that entire Cardassians brutalising them thing.
Come on MOO you obviously haven't thought this comparison through very far, you could at least back up your statement with evidence instead of vague allusion that fall through when given close attention.
Eddington complained about replicated food not being as good as real food however the federation doesn't deny real food to its citizens, Siskos father, Picards Vinyard, O'Briens mother and so on, the choice is there but people don't seem to mind replicated food so most don't go to the trouble.
You see the provision of unlimited variety of food slightly inferior to the real thing as a restriction, you have read 1984 right? where they have a ration on everything enough that people are kept just above starvation? because frankly there just isn't any comparison.
It more or less does. The Romulan Empire was actually a Republic, as seen in ST:Nemesis, but you'd never have known it by listening to SF officers. Moreover, the governments of all of their near neighbors are pretty similar, with the military running the government and even with secret police forces such as the Obsidian Order.
Starfleet doesn't run the government nor does it have a secret police thats just blantant falsehood.
The Romulan empire has a supreme leader and refers to ITSELF as the The Romulan Star Empire thus the Federation hardly slanders them by calling them such.
The Ferengi allow commerce often, the various one planet worlds are open to Federation visitation, Cardassia, the Klingon empire, the Tholians and probably a great deal more, also it wasn't just about comparison to other ways of life (since the other powers lived somewhat similarly) but comparison to the people of the other side who were always portrayed as savages, this isn't denied to Federation citizens.
Like what? They build ships with the capacity to wage war, as opposed to mercantile vessels.
Sigh, history is not rewritten, desire not suppressed, personal freedoms not curtailed, the populace isn't sharply divided into categories, people don't disappear without a trace only to never have existed by the next day, there are no thought police, the population isn't kept ignorant, the population is kept at subsistence level existence and so on, everything that makes IngSoc unique is missing from the federation your comparison is flawed.
Debateable, but that's not really the point. The individual life of a citizen in SF is not much better off than it was in Kirk's time.
And you judge this how?
Starfleet officers now have better quarters at least
The state monitors everything that you have replicated (remember the officer who was arrested for accessing replicator files on the TR-116)?
The replicatiors has logs sure but those logs can probably only be searched due to a crime etc, after all the person in question wasn't caught until the murder sent up red flags if constant monitoring was going on it would have been noticed the moment he replicated the weapon.
Even people with children? Even people who would presumably have large incomes, due to their status as officers?
Compare that to what navy personnel have onboard their ships and let us not forget that Picard had a huge estate, Harries apartment on Earth was well outfitted etc, you can't use the not so spare living quarters as an example of what civilian life is like on Federation worlds.
Among other things, the abolition of poverty in a visible form. I have personal experience with homeless and jobless people in San Francisco, and I can tell you that the San Francisco in Star Trek has no similarity with the San Francisco of reality, where government offices are frequently lobbied by the impoverished.
Just because poverty has been abolished doesn't mean they are forced to work, however your evidence that in the 3 seconds or so we have seen of San fran outside of ST HQ we didn't see protestors hardly counts for much.
Additionally, the fact that EVERYONE still works, including people like Ben Sisko's father and Picard's family, even though both of them are beyond retirement age, the gardner for Star Fleet Academy (I've forgotten his name--Janeway's friend) is MUCH too old to be working in a current society.
Sisko tells his Dad to retire but his dad will have none of it, I imagine the same goes for Boothby and from what we know of Picard’s brother that probably goes the same.
Remember in our world if you retire at 70 you have about 10 years on average in their world you have about 30-50, the federation probably doesn't force people to retire at a certain age but only when job performance is affect and since Sisko's dad and Picards brother run their own businesses the Federation can't force them to retire.
Retirement, to my knowledge, has never been mentioned (though people have talked about resigning their commissions for various reasons, they've never talked about taking the rest of their lives off), I think that the picture is pretty clear.
SISKO
Twelve hecapates. I'm going to
start building as soon as the
war's over.
(smiling at the
picture)
I'll retire here someday... and
watch the sun set over the
mountains every night.
ODO/CURZON
Later I realized that I'd robbed you
of something you'd wanted all your
life... I felt so guilty I nearly
retired from the Symbiosis
Commission...
There is nothing pointing to mandatory employment in the evidence you have presented thus far.
Picard's family's attitude towards him.
His sister in law treats him like family and his brother hates him and the nephew wants to join Starfleet although his father isn't impressed with the idea.
Tell you what I will help you out.
What about the town making a fuss over him? they wanted to give him the key to the city.
true enough but this was man involved in saving the entire planet a few days ago and he commands the Federation's flagship it is no wonder he gets some recognition, people have been keys to cities for far less.
Winston goes to a prole bar and purchases drinks there. I hardly see how the situation is dissimilar.
Victory Gin is supposedly better than the beer the proles have (Proles attempt to gain access to Victory gin) so for you analogy to hold out civilians must be denied Synthohol but they are not, few choice to drink is permitted to all (except with the possible exception of Starfleet not liking people on its ships to get drunk).
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