trekmemes:

warp6:

lj-writes:

Just what level of “don’t ever fuck with us” is Starfleet? I mean I used to think Jem Hadar and Klingons being these fierce warrior races was something of an Informed Trait when they kept losing in face-to-face fights with mild-mannered Starfleet officers. But then I realized… it’s actually because Starfleet officers are just that tough.

Just how motivated and ambitious you have to be, as someone coming from a post-scarcity society, to sign up for such arduous training and potential danger? I have to wonder kind of people decide to go through years of rigorous education, constant work and travel, and the possibility of a nasty death when they are guaranteed lives without fear or want right on their home planets.

Could it be that Starfleet may, in fact, be a place for malcontents? Not the kind of small-time malcontent that turns to destruction and exploitation, but the kind of malcontent that is stifled on some level by the cushy existence of their home planet (even while being willing to die to protect it) and wants something more. Something out there and anywhere but here.

Such people are dangerous to the preexisting system unless they have an outlet for their energies. Just to name a few headliner captains, leave the James Kirks, the Jean-Luc Picards, the Kathryn Janeways, the Benjamin Siskos, the Philippa Georgious with nothing to do but enjoy life, and chances are they’d get restless. You can see their innate drive in the paths they didn’t take and in alternate universes: Picard has a brother who was perfectly content to run a vineyard at home, living a comfortable rural existence. Picard could have had that or any of a million other career paths, but he still chose the uncertainty of the stars. The 20th-century version of Benjamin Sisko had a burning ambition to write groundbreaking science fiction despite being struck down over and over again by racism. Georgiou was goddamned Emperor in the Mirror Universe, and Burnham and Lorcas wanted her throne. Clearly these are not people who can sit content and let the world be; they shift the very earth they stand on and reach for the stars any way they can.

So what do you do with world-shakers in paradise? You could choose to kill them or lock them up and “reeducate” them, but that goes against the Federation’s ideals. You could let them live free and potentially climb to the top, but they might make too many changes and disrupt the whole comfortable arrangement.

Or, you could give them a way out–infinite ways out, in fact, into space. Their boundless energy would be structured and channeled in morally acceptable directions by the strict rules and directives of Starfleet, and their ambition to be better than others and be judged by their abilities would find expression in rank and promotions.

These are, of course, the same individuals who would die to protect the Federation when it is threatened by a race of fierce warriors, a mechanical collective, or vast theocratic empire. The same people who would have felt stifled in civilian life and could have threatened the whole system become its fiercest defenders. It’s a brilliant system, really, that meets everyone’s interests and turns a society’s potential threats into its greatest assets.

I don’t think it’s any wonder, looking at these incredibly trained and driven people who can take down Klingons in single combat and engineer their way out of alternate timelines, that non-Federation worlds–and maybe more than a few Federation ones–hover somewhere between suspicious and outright terrified of the Federation’s intentions. Starfleet is one of the major reasons one can make a case for the Federation being a “soft” empire, and I can see why peoples ranging from the Ferengi to the Klingons are so suspicious of them. Because you do not ever fuck with Starfleet.

I love this! I feel like Starfleet is commonly seen in fandom as this awesome career everyone on Earth probably aspires to—after all, we all live with the constant potential for ugly death in our not-technologically-advanced-utopia world, and most of us would love the chance to do that but IN SPACE. But whenever I think about the actual reality of Trek!Earth, it’s like…if you live on Earth in the 22nd+ century you are literally guaranteed a long and healthy life. You are guaranteed to die only of (very) old age!!!

And there are probably plenty of safe skydiving/whitewater rafting/speed shuttle piloting/VR equivalent of all of the above and more outlets if you’re just an adrenaline junkie, and plenty of meaningful jobs that aren’t Starfleet, from creating art to doing research to civilian inventing/engineering to teaching…To have everything you could want as far as quality of life and safety and entertainment goes, and still choose Starfleet—to join the military-not-as-we-know-it-but-still-basically-the-peaceful-equivalent-of-a-military, to follow orders, to risk everything…yeah. It’s only certain people who are gonna want to do that.

Whenever I read a fic where Starfleet is referred to as “the service,” I think to myself, Exactly.

I love everything you pointed out about the kind of person who would do that. I think that the flip side, though, is that they also have to be (or become) the kind of person who is willing to follow orders, and give up a LOT of control over their lives, compared to the 22nd+ century general population, who (unlike us) never have to answer to a single boss if they don’t want to! I’m sure Starfleet is much more enlightened than, for instance, the modern US military when it comes to letting people leave Starfleet at will, rather than being in for a set number of years, but while you ARE in…you go where you’re assigned and do what you’re told.

And the conflict between that aspect of serving, and being, as you put it, a world-shaker, is fascinating. And something I think we do see on the show a lot. (What is the Prime Directive, after all, but Starfleet’s ultimate standing order?)

Starfleet is certainly a creation of pure brilliance.

It’s a home for the restless, the ambitious- the sort of people who are permanently dissatisfied with their lives no matter what they’re doing. In any society, you’re going to have people who aren’t content to settle down home on the farm, and who seek out the ‘big city’ instead. As Jim Kirk puts it, “Other people [have families], Bones, not us.”

Now what are you supposed to do with all that energy? Some might call it the adventurers’ instinct, but it presents itself mostly in troublemakers. They’re the people eternally unhappy with the status quo, who if left alone will find ways to destabilize entire regimes (or if less charismatic, make people feel miserable about their choice to ‘be ordinary’). But what are they to do once their society achieves paradise? Stay at home and stagnate? No, too dangerous- any one of them could become the next Khan Noonien Singh. It’s a ticking time bomb of internal conflict for a peaceful utopia.

So put them to work. There’s plenty of labor to be done in space: research, data collection, diplomacy, potential warfare. Let them be the arms and legs of the Federation, spreading the gospel of peace and prosperity with one hand, striking down its enemies with the other. Let them assimilate the entire quadrant into the Federation. (After all, assimilation IS what the Federation does, no less than the Borg, although this is one you’re more likely to survive with your personality and culture intact.)

Long story short: don’t fuck with Starfleet, home to nearly all the restless geniuses of 150 planets.