619
Who designed this?
(lemmy.nz)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
619 points (99.7% liked)
TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
7456 readers
1435 users here now
/c/TenForward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags.
Use spoiler tags in comments, and NSFW checkbox for posts.
This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ 8. No Political Upheaval. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
No it is not a military vessel. It is an exploration vessel. That is the core mission. Not sure how anyone who has actually watched StarTrek miss this key point.
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.
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.
Enterprise D is a small space station with big engines.
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?
Might as well link the plot exposition on that one.
So subtle even I couldn't miss it
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.
I can totally see them as not a military. They are to science and diplomacy what the East India Companies were to capitalism. Sure they have a military structure and a militia role, but if anything they're more like general purpose UN vessels. They need to be capable of military force because they're the government's ships, and because even beyond dealing with aggressive governments, they're also responsible for peacekeeping missions and they're off in unexplored places.
I think Enterprise covered it fairly well. They definitely started it more towards the science/exploratory side but quickly ran into the "1000001 ways to die horribly in space" and started jerry-rigging stuff like phasers and photon torpedoes from what was formerly mining equipment etc. Even then they did still have a command structure similar to military, which just makes sense from a practical "who's in charge of what" perspective. They also do have a mix of civilian and more military-style ranks.
Starfleet may have an overall scientific mission/objective, but it definitely developed along the the structure of a military protectorate or coalition, though again that was likely due to a certain amount of necessity. I'm pretty sure that exploratory or trading vessels in historic times tended towards that in some regard.
The E was designed for combat right?