[metadat]

Apparently, in the future people don't need or want to rest their arms.

By itself, this is uncharacteristically dystopian for Star Trek because it suggests people will relax so much less that arm rests are unnecessary. Strange because Star Trek usually presents a more optimistic picture of the future.

That futuristic look is more important.

[mostlylurks]

Not having arm rests is hardly dystopian. The chair I've used for approximately a decade now came with arm rests, but I chose not to install them, because they just get in the way and provide only negligible benefits. There are many other ways to rest your arms: on the table, on your legs, by crossing your arms, etc.

[philwelch]

Starfleet is supposed to be filled with the most intrinsically motivated, hard-working, determined, smartest people in the Federation. For every Starfleet officer there are probably 100 people on Earth taking it easy and enjoying their post-scarcity utopia, but some people are just not wired that way.

I mean, there's an entire TNG episode about how Picard begrudgingly takes a vacation on the tropical "pleasure planet" of Risa and is completely miserable until he gets caught up in a wacky Indiana Jones type adventure. And an entire DS9 episode where Worf goes to Risa and decides he'd rather help some nutjobs sabotage the weather control system. These are not people who like to relax!

[standardly]

> it suggests people will relax so much less that arm rests are unnecessary

Or they relax SO often, that they don't need arm rests (because their arms are never tired, because they aren't working much)

[hef19898]

I guess it is only a design choice. Not so sure about the positive outlook so. The federation is militaristic to the point of the military, Starfleet, running diplomacy. And the objectively bad stuff starfleet does, the prime directive for examole can amount to genocide by negligence, is done in the name of moral superiority. Throw in some hero worshipping and personality cult, after all rules only apply to certain people, never the heros... The Klingons are welcome allies, despite all the shit they did during the various wars with the federation, while the Romulans are the evil, honorless villains... Reading between the lines, there is a lot of cold war stuff in the universe going on.

[dragonwriter]

> The federation is militaristic to the point of the military, Starfleet, running diplomacy.

Starfleet, despite the ranks, authority structure, style of discipline, use of “courts-martial”, and the fact it fights wars, is not, as Starfleet personnel are eager to point out, a military force. Also, usually, Starfleet doesn't run diplomacy, they provide transport for diplomats.

They do sometimes fill in when the transported diplomats become unavailable, when an emergent needs happens without time to dispatch a diplomat, or when an individual Starfleet officer is requested by tbe parties to a dispute (where the Federation is a neutral mediator) or the other party (where the Federation is a party), but all of those are implicitly exceptional events that disproportionately happen to the particular officers on whom the franchise focuses.

[hef19898]

If quacks like a duck, it is a duck. Starfleet is a navy, one that has a way to high share of officers, nowhere near enough NCOs and enlisted men and a worrying tendency of carrying dependents and civilians into combat, but a navy still.

Regarding diplomacy:

- Kithomer Accords, re-established between Cpt. Sisko and Chancellor Gowron, the first accords were Picard's job (could be wrong about that)

- everything Bajor related, despite the planet being the most strategic important one in the Alpha Quadrant there was never an official embassy mentioned, everything was run by Sisko

- the Alliance with the Romulans during the Dominion war, again by Sisko and this Admiral

- the ultimate peace treaty between the Dominion and the Federation

- every first contact mission (understandable, Starfleet is the exploration arm of the Federation with a clear charter here) but also every follow-up mission (see Lower Decks)

Just from top of my head, all major diplomatic treaties have been negotiated by Starfleet personell. In a sensey Starfleet is a state-within-a-state, running crucial functions of the larger state with little to no oversight.

Everything not shown on screen, or explained / hinted at, is not necessarily canon.

[crooked-v]

The "not a military" lines in early TNG are, while intended to reflect Gene's somewhat out there vision of an evolved Federation, so obviously wrong in the context of later material that the only coherent way to handle them is to either chuck them from canon, or to treat them as a bit of in-universe exaggeration and semantics wrangling that gets proven completely wrong by the time of Wolf 359.

[hef19898]

Ah, the battle of Wolf 359! Were somehow Starfleet failed to evacuate civilians from the exploration ships they sent into battle! Completely reasonable, if you ask me.

[dragonwriter]

> If quacks like a dick, it is a duck.

I assume there is a misspelling one place or another there, but, yes, much of that introductory paragraph was pointing out that fairly canonically Starfleet (or, extracanonically, Star Trek's creators) are in deep denial about the nature of Starfleet.

> Kithomer Accords, re-established between Cpt. Sisko and Chancellor Gowron, the first accords were Picard's job (could be wrong about that)

The First Khitomer Accords were negotiated between the civilian leadership of the Federation and the Klingon Empire in the wake of the disaster created by the explosion of Praxis; there was a conspiracy involving the highest levels of both Starfleet (led by Admiral Cartwright, the CinC Starfleet) and the Klingon military (led by General Chang [0]) to sabotage the negotiations, foiled by (among others) the crew of the about-to-be-decommissioned USS Enterprise-A under Captain Kirk, after he was rescued by his crew from his imprisonment on Rura Penthe, having been framed by the conspirators for the murder of the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon, who the Enterprise was to be escorting to the negotiations originally planned to be on Earth, which were secretly rescheduled and moved to Khitomer after Gorkon's assassination. (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)

> everything Bajor related, despite the planet being the most strategic important one in the Alpha Quadrant there was never an official embassy mentioned, everything was run by Sisko

Sisko's adoption by the Bajoran religion as the Emissary of the Prophets was frequently referred to as an issue with forced Starfleet and the Federation more broadly to deal with Bajor other than the way they would prefer to.

> - the ultimate peace treaty between the Dominion and the Federation

The Treaty of Bajor was very much setup (while the substantive content was not at all similar) to be an analog of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, signed for the US by Gen. MacArthur. (To the point of Admiral Ross directly quoting MacArthur.)

> Just from top of my head, all major diplomatic treaties have been negotiated by Starfleet personell.

Clearly not, aside from the Khitomer accords, just a couple examples of many: In "Journey to Babel" (TOS), the Enterprise is transporting ambassadors from several Federation worlds to a conference on the admission of Coridian to the federation; the Treaty of Alliance between the Klingons and the Federation had Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan as the lead Federation diplomat, referenced in "Sarek" (TNG), etc.

[0] A clearly senior military officer described by Chancellor Gorkon as "my chief of staff", but I don't think its clear whether he was the Chancellor's CoS in a sense analogous to the White House Chief of Staff to a US President or whether his role was as a military CoS, or whether the distinction between the roles is foreign to the Klingon system of the time.

[hef19898]

I fixed the typo in my forst sentence... Seriously, who put the "I" so close to the "U" on a keyboard?

Ah, I never watched TOS much, I had some vague, and obviousoy wrong, memory aeound Picard's and Woef's involvement leading to a treaty between the Federation and the Klingons.

Agree on the denial part, especially the authors. It shows in little stuff, like episodes in which Starfleet would extradite one of their officers to a nation they are at war with, no thought about any other function than officers...

I still love it, especially DS9. But there are some aspects that just rubb me the wrong way now that didn't bother me back the day.

[dragonwriter]

> Ah, I never watched TOS much, I had some vague, and obviousoy wrong, memory aeound Picard's and Woef's involvement leading to a treaty between the Federation and the Klingons.

IIRC, and I'd have to research the details, but the existing Treaty of Alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire (something much later than the Khitomer Accords, back-figured from other references to be ca. 10-20 years pre-TNG, IIRC) and the need to save it was used as leverage to get Picard involved as Arbiter of the Succession, and so tied into that whole Picard/Worf storyline.

[mr_toad]

The Federation (like many protagonists in US SF) has a very “American” approach to diplomacy and problem solving.