Star Trek: stuff that grinds my gears...

No sense letting a good thread die, so...
I have lots I could agree with and add to the pet-peeves, but my biggest one:
JJ Blew Up Vulcan! I see no good reason for that.
 
With Next Generation, everyone (okay, maybe not Barclay) was such a type-A workaholic, ladder-climbing type that I simply didn't buy into it from the perspective of a former military officer (I was an Army Captain when I got out).
Could you imagine the annual evaluation process to make rank in an organization like that? If you hadn't saved at least a dozen planets, you'd never get promoted! With peers like that, any infraction (or even perception of such from your rating chain) of any kind, no matter how slight, would end your career right there.
the old Trek showed what I always felt was a far more realistic military body, where people were... people. In STNG, I simply didn't see that at all.

I think that the more unrealistic thing is that almost nobody ever leaves the Enterprise. Picard is a senior captain and probably should have gotten his star a few seasons into TNG but he never gets promoted, he may have actually refused promotion to flag rank. Riker, we know, is offered promotion to Captain several times throughout the series but turns it down each and every time hoping that Picard eventually takes a promotion or is otherwise transferred off the Enterprise so that he can take command. Then when it came to getting a new Chief Engineer and head of security, instead of promoting a second in command of those departments from another ship they promoted Geordi and Worf respectively, neither of which, if their uniform colors were any indication, had any real training in those areas beyond what they may have gotten in Command School or the Academy.

If the Enterprise is indicative of the way Starfleet works then it's gotta be really hard to move up in Starfleet because nobody moves around, at all. You have to wonder how many prospective future XOs of the Enterprise Riker screwed over by not taking the repeated promotions offered him? How many senior, but junior ranking, officers never get their shot at heading a department because of constant promotions from within a ship? This would certainly produce officers who are very knowledgeable about their ships, since they almost never rotate off to other ships, but at the same time it really doesn't promote a healthy exchange of knowledge and experience which rotational assignments help to promote. It's a good thing that the Federation is a utopia too since this kind of practice also promotes cults of personalities where the crew might end up more loyal to their captains than to Starfleet or even the Federation.
 
Well that has happened. Star Trek Insurrection was about disobeying a direct order. Honestly they have done that several times


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I read somewhere a theory that in the NG era of Trek, humanity has stagnated and there's nothing really shoot for anymore. You can re-create any place in a holodeck, any item with a replicator, so what motivates people anymore? Think WALLE without the floaty chairs and morbidly obese people.
The theory was space is simply something to occupy people who have nothing else in their lives to strive for.
You have to admit, it's not an insane theory, is it?
 
I think that the more unrealistic thing is that almost nobody ever leaves the Enterprise. Picard is a senior captain and probably should have gotten his star a few seasons into TNG but he never gets promoted, he may have actually refused promotion to flag rank. Riker, we know, is offered promotion to Captain several times throughout the series but turns it down each and every time hoping that Picard eventually takes a promotion or is otherwise transferred off the Enterprise so that he can take command. Then when it came to getting a new Chief Engineer and head of security, instead of promoting a second in command of those departments from another ship they promoted Geordi and Worf respectively, neither of which, if their uniform colors were any indication, had any real training in those areas beyond what they may have gotten in Command School or the Academy.

Didn't Picard say that he was offered promotions and turned them down because he wanted to be on a ship, not behind a desk? Janeway became an admiral, but I can see her POV since she was stranded for years. She was probably happy to be off a ship!


I read somewhere a theory that in the NG era of Trek, humanity has stagnated and there's nothing really shoot for anymore. You can re-create any place in a holodeck, any item with a replicator, so what motivates people anymore? Think WALLE without the floaty chairs and morbidly obese people.
The theory was space is simply something to occupy people who have nothing else in their lives to strive for.
You have to admit, it's not an insane theory, is it?

Picard says they strive to improve themselves as people.
 
Didn't Picard say that he was offered promotions and turned them down because he wanted to be on a ship, not behind a desk? Janeway became an admiral, but I can see her POV since she was stranded for years. She was probably happy to be off a ship!

Even without the real life military concept of up and out the whole notion of refusing promotions and staying at your current posting for as long as you want wouldn't work because it would gum up the system. Let's take the Enterprise for instance, by refusing promotion to Admiral Picard keeps Riker from taking a promotion to Captain and getting a command of his own because he wants the Enterprise, this in turn keeps some other Lt. or full Commander from getting promoted to XO of the Enterprise, which in turn keeps some other officer from taking his/her position, and so on down. So now Starfleet has a whole bunch of officers who can't/don't get promoted because one officer refuses to move on, hence gumming up the works. With a system like that promotions must come real slowly in Starfleet as you wait for people to either finally get the posting of their dream, get tired of the whole thing and leave Starfleet, or just get tired of the waiting game and take an assignment that's not their ideal just to finally get promoted.
 
I read somewhere a theory that in the NG era of Trek, humanity has stagnated and there's nothing really shoot for anymore. You can re-create any place in a holodeck, any item with a replicator, so what motivates people anymore? Think WALLE without the floaty chairs and morbidly obese people.
The theory was space is simply something to occupy people who have nothing else in their lives to strive for.
You have to admit, it's not an insane theory, is it?

First Contact touched upon this, when Picard mentions to Lily that money doesn't exist in the 24th century and having a different driving force :)

 
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Yep, I remember that. But it never made sense as there were plenty of other species that did have money as a driving force.
Humans weren't that far removed us, as the very same movie had Picard happy to be able to touch the Phoenix (in its silo) as he never could in the Smithsonian when he was younger. That would strongly support that material things still motivated people, even then.
So now Starfleet has a whole bunch of officers who can't/don't get promoted because one officer refuses to move on, hence gumming up the works. With a system like that promotions must come real slowly in Starfleet as you wait for people to either finally get the posting of their dream, get tired of the whole thing and leave Starfleet, or just get tired of the waiting game and take an assignment that's not their ideal just to finally get promoted.
Go back through history and you'll see plenty of examples of that very thing. Think Royal Navy any time prior to 1900 and especially in the age of sail (where captains could be well past retirement age), or the US Cavalry on the plains. You could go 20 years without being promoted once and not be considered a failure, career-wise. Starfleet, to me, always seemed to be a merit-based organization. You could skip a few rungs on the ladder if you were in the right place and time.
For example, Picard went directly from Helmsman to Captain. You'd never see that in any modern Navy.
 
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That's basically the whole premise of JJ Trek
Kirk just happened to be in the right place at the time time and got appointed cpt


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That's basically the whole premise of JJ Trek
Kirk just happened to be in the right place at the time time and got appointed cpt


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But nobody in their right mind would have kept him on as captain after the events of the first movie. You congratulate him on a job well done, give him a medal or two, write some nice stuff in his records, maybe graduate him a bit early from the Academy, but after that it's the same assignments you'd give any fresh from the Academy Ensign. No matter how talented and lucky Kirk may have been, he's still too young to hand the command of a ship, esp. one as large as the Enterprise. In addition to all sorts of protocol and traditions that he'd be expected to know, he's also very inexperienced and one successful engagement is not nearly enough to teach anybody all they need to know about being a Starship captain, don't mention a good and successful Starship captain.
 
Go back through history and you'll see plenty of examples of that very thing. Think Royal Navy any time prior to 1900 and especially in the age of sail (where captains could be well past retirement age), or the US Cavalry on the plains. You could go 20 years without being promoted once and not be considered a failure, career-wise. Starfleet, to me, always seemed to be a merit-based organization. You could skip a few rungs on the ladder if you were in the right place and time.
For example, Picard went directly from Helmsman to Captain. You'd never see that in any modern Navy.

But your examples are of much smaller forces, nothing near as large as Starfleet is, in an organization as large as Starfleet appears to be there should be plenty of room for promotion but not when there's no vacancies because nobody takes any promotions. It's one thing for an organization to promote slowly because of its small size and/or culture, but it's something entirely different when people don't or can't get promoted because nobody is taking offered promotions. Sure, in Starfleet somebody could skip being an XO and move directly to the Captain's chair but this can only happen if the Captain is willing to vacate his chair when he's supposed to. And that's my problem with the way they depict Starfleet during TNG as working, promotions are abnormally slow for a such a large organization because people can and do refuse to move on thereby creating no openings for other people to move into. You see what I mean?
 
First of all, we don't have to wait for it. We saw it about 17 years ago.

Second, that statement is not true.

Third, don't be mad at the show, be mad at Terry Farrel. She is the one who left the show to work on the Ted Danson series Becker.

Actually what did bug me about all of that was that once Terry Farrel was off the show... she was *off* the show...

In the last episode of DS9, despite the fact that Jadzia Dax was a main character on it for 5 out of the 7 seasons, there wasn't any mention of the character at all... not a blip. Nothing in the flashbacks, nadda...

Regardless of whether or not the actor's departure from the show was amicable or not, I thought that it was a pretty big disservice to all of the fans of the show that the character and its history wasn't at least acknowledged...
 
When you show someone in a flashback, you have to pay them.

...which is why the "previously on" opens on Supernatural always surprise me, because they rarely hesitate to show someone who hasn't been seen in years, and I always think "hey, paycheck for Jewel Staite!"
 
But your examples are of much smaller forces, nothing near as large as Starfleet is, in an organization as large as Starfleet appears to be there should be plenty of room for promotion but not when there's no vacancies because nobody takes any promotions. It's one thing for an organization to promote slowly because of its small size and/or culture, but it's something entirely different when people don't or can't get promoted because nobody is taking offered promotions. Sure, in Starfleet somebody could skip being an XO and move directly to the Captain's chair but this can only happen if the Captain is willing to vacate his chair when he's supposed to. And that's my problem with the way they depict Starfleet during TNG as working, promotions are abnormally slow for a such a large organization because people can and do refuse to move on thereby creating no openings for other people to move into. You see what I mean?
Well, in the case of the Royal Navy throughout the age of sail, that was exactly what happened. Men became a captain and it wasn't unusual for them to stay there for life.
The Royal navy was a small force? Tell that to everyone who encountered them throughout the 18th and 19th centuries!
Besides, how big is Starfleet, really? How many times were the same ships sent because nobody else was around? Sure, they hinted at a large organization but numbers were never mentioned as far as I know. And when they fought the Borg in their drive to Earth (a fight where you'd have expected every available Federation vessel to have taken part, representational of a large portion of the overall force), I don't recall a mass of busted spacecraft anywhere near the number of vessels that King George III had at his disposal during the wars with France!
 
Well, in the case of the Royal Navy throughout the age of sail, that was exactly what happened. Men became a captain and it wasn't unusual for them to stay there for life.
The Royal navy was a small force? Tell that to everyone who encountered them throughout the 18th and 19th centuries!
Besides, how big is Starfleet, really? How many times were the same ships sent because nobody else was around? Sure, they hinted at a large organization but numbers were never mentioned as far as I know. And when they fought the Borg in their drive to Earth (a fight where you'd have expected every available Federation vessel to have taken part, representational of a large portion of the overall force), I don't recall a mass of busted spacecraft anywhere near the number of vessels that King George III had at his disposal during the wars with France!

Given that Starfleet represents multiple planets it stands to reason that it's much than any Earth bound navy ever was, including the Royal Navy. Just because we never see what should be the entirety of Starfleet on screen doesn't mean it's not massive. As far as the only ship in the area thing, you do realize that that's just simply a plot device to explain why our heroes have to be in a given area. Besides, given that the Federation encompasses at least one full quadrant of the Milky Way that's a lot of space and makes it easy for only one ship to be available at the time. This is especially true if you assume that Starfleet follows current navy practices and doesn't have every single ship in its fleet out on patrol all of the time. At any given time you're going to have ships travelling to and from their home ports and patrol areas or other assignments. Then you're going to have ships under going refits, both minor and major, so at any given time you're likely to have only half of your actual fleet available at any time; during a major crises you could probably bump it up to maybe 3/4 as you turn ships heading home or have just gotten back home back out to deal with whatever the emergency is.

As far as promotions go, it's still messed up because it's not just the captains staying on longer than they should but it's also their XOs and presumably every other officer in other billets as well. And in your Royal Navy example, I'm pretty sure that most, if not all, of these captains who were staying for the remainder of their careers were not doing so by turning promotions to other ships or to the Admiralty but because the RN only had need for so many Admirals, Since they clearly had not yet adopted an up or out policy yet what else are you going to do with these ship's captains but continue to allow them to command their ships?

Like I said, if the examples set by Riker and Picard are the norm for Starfleet and presumably the norm for all ranks and billets and nobody moves on until they get their dream billet offered to them then there's no movement in the ranks because everybody is waiting for someone in the job they want to eventually take a promotion and move on and this doesn't happen until that person's dream billet becomes open. Let me put this in a way you might understand, say the US Army worked like Starfleet seems to, you start your career as a 2nd Lt and command a platoon, you continue to do so as a 1st Lt, then it comes time for you to pick up Captain and get command of a Company, except that there are no Company Commander billets open because none of the current Company Commanders have taken a promotion yet because they're all either happy being a Company Commander and don't want to give up command of their Company, or they're waiting for an XO or CO billet of a specific Battalion to open up. But the XOs & COs of said Battalion haven't moved on yet because they're waiting for the same reasons as their juniors, and so on up the food chain.
 
A few things... We know there are at least ten "fleets", which term seems to be more a matter of "ships operating under the operational authority of such-and-so Admiral out of Starbase yadda-yadda for XYZ chunk of Federation space" than "bunch of ships all going to this place and doing that thing at once". Except in time of war when the nominal fleets muster to converge on the hot spot. I use "Court Marital" as a good example. The ships on the chart in Stone's office were all operating out of Starbase 11, but on their own individual missions rather than in a single massed flotilla. A good analogy would be the US Pacific Fleet and Atlantic Fleet. There are individual ships and battle groups and task forces within each, and it'd take something major to mass the whole fleet in one place.

We know that, at least as of the Dominion War, there were a minimum of ten fleets in Starfleet. The Second Fleet was the one that covered the region including the Bajor Sector, and many Starfleet assets were retasked to it during the late buildup and early stages of the actual war. Elements of the Fifth and Ninth Fleets were added to it for the retaking of Deep Space 9, with the station becoming the new HQ for the Ninth Fleet for the remainder of the war. The Fifth was retasked from defending Bolian space, and the Sixth Fleet redeployed to compensate. The Third Fleet went to bolster the defense of Sector 001 after the Breen attack (probably reinforcing the First Fleet), the Seventh Fleet was the primary roadblock to core systems like Betazed and Vulcan, and got repeatedly mauled by the Cardassian-Dominion forces. The Tenth Fleet was behind them, defending Betazed. The Fourth and Eighth Fleets aren't mentioned and were likely on the far side of Federation space, being deployed to cover the coreward parts of Alpha and Beta Quadrants (Ferengi space, the First Federation, the Romulans...). We consistently see majority portions of those fleets in the couple-hundred-ship range -- many of them ships we normally see serving as behind-the-lines science or transport vessels. And the combined portion of the Second and Fifth Fleets going to retake DS9 (the Ninth was a day behind) numbered roughly 600.

So it's easy for me to extrapolate that out to about 5,000 or so active vessels in Starfleet circa 2375, including non-combatants and those being repaired. Out of those, there are nine Galaxy class starships, and only the best of the best get there. This also doesn't include non-Starfleet "civilian" ships flagged to one or another member system. I imagine there are all levels of aspiration and ambition amongst 24th-century folks (human and non), and many are content hauling cargo, many are content getting whatever billet will let them study nebulae or pulsars or what have you. Comparatively few might even be interested in trying to get onto a deep-space Explorer that can, should the mission dictate, head out away from known space for a good fifteen years at a stretch.

Picard did something between the loss of the Stargazer and when we first meet him in "Encounter at Farpoint" to give him a lot of clout, enough to get the new Enterprise and handpick his command crew. They offered him a promotion to the Admiralty and the position of Commandant of Starfleet Academy that same year. Riker had been offered his first command when he was still a Lieutenant Commander (probably the rank Picard was when he had to take the bridge of the Stargazer, by the way), and he'd only been a full Commander and on the Enterprise for about a year and a half when they made their second offer. It was only when they made their third offer another year and a half after that that he was in someone's way on the Enterprise for the first time. And Shelby's ambition was out of the ordinary, as Hanson commented on it and both Riker and Picard were rocked back by it. I get the feeling for those top-of-the-line ships, you have to really want it to get there.

As for the other command crew oddities... Given how many Chief Engineers they went through in the first season, I wouldn't be surprised if Picard had tapped Geordie for the position, but he had to finish out one more year as Lt., j.g., before he could be given the position. It was also odd that Yar was both Security Chief (Operations Division) and Tactical Officer (Command Division). Worf was basically Deputy Tactical Officer, and took over as both when she died (even though he didn't get promoted to full Lieutenant until season three). Not sure why the Operations color would take precedence in that sort of doubled position. Similarly, why was Spock in Sciences blue when he was also the First Officer (Command Division)?

Anyway, data to ponder...

--Jonah
 
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