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Who designed this? (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago by [M] to c/tenforward@lemmy.world
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[–] 21 points 22 hours ago* (6 children)

Whether or not Starfleet is a military force is a pretty debated topic, you really can't brush it off like it's a closed case.

They have command rank and structure similar to a military. They have ships. The ships have weapons - powerful ones. Sometimes they use the weapons.

We can argue "well they don't want to use them," but a lot of earth militaries don't really want to be in combat either, until they have to be.

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  • [–] 7 points 18 hours ago

    I think that people who say that Starfleet is not a military organization must just have a different definition of "military" than I do.

    In addition to all of the things you mentioned, when Earth is attacked, Starfleet frequently orders ships to return and fight.

    So, they're either a police or a military, and the fact that they may face court martial for disobeying orders to fight really decides it in the direction of military for me.

    That's by my own definition of military. I was looking at the Star Trek wiki and it seems that Roddenberry was very much against Starfleet being the military. He must just have a different criteria.

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  • [–] 13 points 21 hours ago (4 children)

    It depends what Star Trek you are watching as well.

    Defiant is very definitely a military vessel. Next Gen Enterprise has like a thousand people on it or something so it's less clear.

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  • [–] 5 points 18 hours ago

    Good point. Even if it’s science and exploration, wtf do they need a thousand people for? Unless they are trying to find some place to colonize, but it’s pretty clear from watching the show they are not. A lot of those people don’t wear uniforms, so they are not part of this rank hierarchy. What are all those people doing there?

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