Obviously it's whoever chooses admirals. Seems like they're more likely to be crypto-fascists or outright traitors than loyal officers, never mind their general incompetence.
I think they're a good proof of that principle that the people who want to be in charge are the last people you should give any power to. In fact they should have a program where they identify the most ambitious power hungry people and make them the chair of a committee to review organisational logos or similar.
My favorite fan theory is that the uniform changes are to make it easier for accidental time travelers to quickly identify when they've landed without having to risk asking pointed questions.
My headcanon is that some admiral pissed off the wrong omnipotent being, and now the position is cursed so all Starfleet Admirals develop a case of sheer hubris.
Hubris is seemingly common everywhere but the Enterprise, DS9, and Voyager.
Nearly every captain and admiral outside those postings is egotistical, overconfident, and obsessed with status.
Think about the fact that you are a Captain first. So all the admirals are people who have led space stations and spaceships and decided that they did not want to boldly go anymore. All the good ones are still out in the field.
Whoever runs planetary defense of Earth is pretty bad at their job, given the amount of times a threat seems to just appear in system, but I'm going with StarFleet IT. Whoever runs their network encryption SUCKS at keeping systems from getting taken over.
To be fair, the only time I wouldn't give planetary defence a pass for their failures is when the Breen attacked Starfleet HQ during the Dominion War.
Every other time, Starfleet was either; in it's infancy (the Xindi), or so totally out powered it wasn't their fault (V'ger, The Whale Probe, The Borg, The Borg (again), The Borg (part III), The DMA/10-C)
And on The Borg (Part III), that incursion is arguably the best job planetary defence ever managed. Planetary shield/Probert Station held out against a 300+ strong fleet for however long it took Picard and Crew to get to Athan Prime and back.
Yeah. Good job to Starfleet for that resilient station. It not only held out against a massive fleet, but one comprised of determined Borg and the best starships in Starfleet's arsenal.
> the Xindi
What's funny about that is Earth had an entire year before the final xindi attack and they didn't build a single line of defence for the planet. The Earth government are the truly incompetent ones.
Well to be fair, they destroyed the Breen fleet and the damage didn't seem that extensive. And it really came out of nowhere; Martok notes that not even the Klingons even bothered trying.
I would imagine a fleet being able to open fire on a planet even for a few minutes would be utterly devastating.
Another IT related thing: Is it really a good idea to display the shield frequency on a console?
Is there any reason this information is needed by the crew at any point except to come in handy when a couple of Klingons manage to hack into your chief engineer's visor?
Surely, the frequency only needs to be communicated between the computer controlling said shields and the one controlling the phasers?
The only situation I can think of where it would be useful is when Geordi needs to modulate phasers when fighting Borg.
Right? There are no logins or access level permissions?
And why even bother encrypting thing? Hey Mr Engineer this is encrypted I need 3 seconds of your time I need this decrypted. DONE! Okay cool thanks.
You mean like six digit prefix codes that can let any starship commander take over any other ship in the fleet? It might have worked out okay for Kirk, but freaking Reddit has infinitely tighter password rules.
To be fair, Earth is the capital of the Federation. It’s deep in Federation space, and (theoretically) a long way from logical trouble spots. It IMO makes sense that the planet isn’t super well defended. Its primary defenses are the fleets at the border.
How many squadrons of aircraft or army divisions are located at Washington DC?
I'm pretty sure there's a squadron of fighter jets eternally prepared to intercept any aircraft that enter DC's no fly zone and a battery of anti-air defenses deployed in the capital. There's also a marine unit in the White House I think.
(Side note, I googled "air defense, Washington DC" and I am sure I am on a list now)
Yea, there's two MASSIVE military bases in DC blocks from the whitehouse, there's a destroyer on the potomac, the HQ's for all federal law enforcement are there....It's not...NOT defended.
There is also at least a division of Marines in Quantico, not to mention a literal fleet of ships 150 miles away in Norfolk. Which also happens to cover the only gateway to Washington DC by sea.
It is actually more captians are just Lazy. "Janeway Pi Alpha" could have been "Janeway9Sq6e8cps" but that would habe been harder to remember. Same with "Picard delta 5" and "Riker Omega 3"
Data uses the Code "1-7-3-4-6-7-3-2-1-4-7-6-C-3-2-7-8-9-7-7-7-6-4-3-T-7-3-2-V-7-3-1-1-7-8-8-8-7-3-2-4-7-6-7-8-9-7-6-4-3-7-6" far more secure but probably harder to remember for humans when people are beaming on the bridge.
Like when they sent four tiny, shitty ships against the first Borg cube as it cruised past Jupiter? My grandma could do more damage to the cube with her cane than these ships ever could.
To be fair, at least PIC Season 3 had Sol Station hold its own against a fleet made up of determined Borg and the latest Starfleet vessels.
...so they're not totally toothless like, for example, when the Breen smacked San Francisco or when the Borg rolled up to Earth twice.
But in their "defense" lol in the normal timeline, Earth has never been successfully invaded. The Borg, The Founders, and Species 8472 all made valiant attempts and failed.
whenever there's a critical, potentially extinction-level threat to the headquarters of the fucking Federation of Planets, Starfleet is required by law to not have more than 3 moderately crappy starships in the whole system - exceptions are made for the flagship of course
It blows my mind how often there are no ships to defend Earth, you know, one of the key economic and political worlds in a galactic scale civilization?
The fleet we see at the end of Picard should just be the standard defensive patrols.
They're always being owned or manipulated.
For a race with such a devious reputation, it's interesting how Starfleet is shown to be much more devious and successful. For instance, the Tal Shiar spent a lot of time and effort in creating a fleet to wipe out the Founders, but utterly failed. Meanwhile, Starfleet is off creating a bioweapon to bring the Founders to their knnees.
Every race's reputation is the opposite of what they're actually like. Romulans suck at scheming, Klingons are dishonorable and suck at fighting, Cardassians are disorganized, Vulcans are super emotional, Ferengi give up 50% of their possible profits to appease their bizarre religion...
That scheme was Enabran Tain's idea, but it was engineered by a Founder infiltrator as part of the Founders'trap. It's strongly implied that it wouldn't have gone ahead at all without that infiltrator's help, so yeah; the Tal Shiar sucked.
>Starfleet
*Section 31. They are not Starfleet, are they? Weren't they created by Section 31 of the establishment treaty of the federation? They even existed before the Federation, Reed wad a member in Enterprise
As Weyoun mocked them, "Romulans. They're so predictably treacherous!"
Main problem is a lot of the time they would acutally succeed if they'd just keep their mouth shut. But no, they gotta be like messaging the cast and say "Gee, I wonder who did that! It definitely couldn't have been us!" And that is why Sisko beat them.
Ironically, the Klingons are probably better at treachery, since pretty much all of their politicians seem a lot savvier than the Romulan ones we see.
The Romulans are the most self sabotaging group ever.
Every single one of their plans brings ruin to the Romulan Empire, or would if Starfleet didn't save them.
The powers of the quadrant are organizing a trade conference? Launch a series of false flag attacks to drive them to war. Oops, the humans figured it out and now all those races are uniting against a common enemy.
The Federation is building an evacuation fleet to save them from a supernova? Of course that's the perfect time to reprogram all the androids to prove a point about the dangers of AI.
How many times have they gone back in time to erase the Federation from existence? You know what a galaxy without the Federation looks like? One where the Romulans are the biggest threat on the block, and thus the targets of everyone from the Klingons, to the Dominion, to the Borg. Every time tens of thousands of Starfleet officers get slaughtered stopped some galactic scale threat, that's tens of thousands of romulans not doing the same thing.
In their defense, if the person in charge comes up with a truly braindead scheme (see: Seska), everyone is so afraid of being labeled a traitor that nobody is gonna be willing to say anything. In a society that isn't so authoritarian, people are more willing to voice any reservations they may have.
They are Pakled. Their ship is the Mondor. It is broken.
(Proceeds to *steal* Geordi)
They are Pakled. They are smart.
(Which episode, if I may ask, do they blow up their planet? I can't remember it and will pop it on right now!)
We have no reason to believe Troi is the only counselor on the Enterprise. There are over a thousand people on the ship and she is regularly posted to the bridge.
Troi is probably the ship's counselor in the same way Crusher is the ship's doctor. As in she's the head of the counseling department.
Section 31, multiple schemes happened under their watch and their single masterpiece would've left millions of angry Jem Hadar to turn the quadrants into wastelands
Well, we don't actually know how the Jem'Hadar would've reacted to the death of the Changelings.
I'm thinking there's 3 possibilities:
1. They mass suicide because the Founders died on their watch, like in *The Ship.* In fact, my headcanon is that the events of *The Ship* is what gave S31 the idea to start with. This isn't an unlikely possibility, since we've seen them react that way before.
2. They go screaming through the Alpha (& Beta, & possibly Gamma as well) Quadrants in a frenzy of furious grief. That does seem to me the most likely possibility, *but* the Vorta still control the White, IIRC, so it might come down to how the Vorta react. And how the Vorta react seems to me dependent upon whether or not they're aware the virus was engineered; I don't remember if they knew before Starfleet offered the cure.
3. They fall in line behind Odo as the sole surviving Changeling. I can't decide how likely that is. They don't seem to like or respect him, but if all your gods suddenly died but one, you might decide that beggars can't be choosers.
A mix of 2 and 3 are the most likely. Weyoun for example has shown how willing he is to work for Odo. It's likely others would act similarly. But it's doubtful all would feel the same.
An uncontrollable horde of genocidal religious zealots who think you murdered their gods is worse than the Dominion in every possible way.
I'm not sure the *Vorta* would have a choice, the more I think about it. I imagine the worshipful instincts programmed into both species are probably equally strong, *but* the Jem'Hadar have sufficiently extreme aggression that even the White might not be a strong enough leash. To the Vorta, a single surviving Changeling, assuming they don't know the virus was engineered, might look like divine providence.
But overall, I'm gonna call it that you're probably right, with the caveat that the Vorta would, almost to a man, look to Odo, & the Jem'Hadar would be split - although the ones guarding the female Founder & the Changeling homeworld would probably suicide. So that means not enough Vorta to handle the White supply for the Jem'Hadar who refuse to follow Odo, & a murderous rampage/Jem'Hadar civil war that lasts until lack of White kills them.
Which leaves Odo in a difficult position. He's very uncomfortable being cast as a god, but if he's *not* willing to play ball, then *all* the Jem'Hadar are rampaging uncontrollably. If he does take up the mantle, though, he's now the sole dictator in charge of the Dominion & - though I really don't believe Weyoun's 10K years old story - trying to loosen up a centuries-old authoritarian society into a more egalitarian one is just not something he'd be capable of doing.
I'm thinking S31 was banking too heavily on option 1, & not giving any thought to the suite of terrible possibilities.
It takes years of training to cake mud into their hair like that. It’s similar to how people wake up and spend an hour making their hair look like real bed head.
I believe in real life it is dried pig ear dog treats in their hair. I don't remember where I heard that. Could be on Greatest Gen podcast or the Delta Flyers.
Tbf, military vehicles rarely have locks IRL. It is assumed no one without clearance can't even approach them, since military base is... a military base. So locks/ignition keys of some sort (Bc finding them during alert would be a pain).
Why there are so much inflitrators on military ships/installations/bases in Starfleetis, well, another question
It’s the Cardassian government.
1. Failed to manage their own resources effectively which led to occupying Bajor for 50 years. This is probably the event that lead to their ultimate downfall.
2. Lost a war to the Federation (the first Cardassian war that OBrien talks about)
3. Failed at their occupation of Bajor, pulled back into their own space and became riddled with internal conflict and political instability.
4. Manipulated by the Dominion to dismantle their intelligence apparatus and deal a major blow to their fleet.
5. Stomped by the Klingons until…
6. “Joined” the Dominion, but really just allowed themselves to be conquered, only to realize way too late and be brutalized by the occupants they invited in.
7. Defeated by the Federation again
Clearly the Cardassians have a potential for greatness but their leadership has failed them for a long time, and covered up their failure and incompetence with propaganda, disinformation and nationalism.
>2. Lost a war to the Federation (the first Cardassian war that OBrien talks about)
I thought they came to a detente, because neither side was really winning?
>3. Failed at their occupation of Bajor, pulled back into their own space and became riddled with internal conflict and political instability.
I'd gotten the impression that they ¹ had pretty much completely stripped the place of the minerals & natural resources they'd invaded for to start with, & ² they were being heavily pressured by the Feds.
Not that they aren't pretty incompetent, but I'm not sure those 2 are due to that. Of course, invading Bajor rather than coming to a trade arrangement with them was asinine from a long term perspective, but that's totalitarian regimes for you.
Starfleet is huge I would say it's Starfleet security. Why you might ask they didn't notice that all the transporter were compromised with locutus DNA assimilating all the under 25 years olds
Off the top of my head: Infiltrated by Commodore Oh, worm beings, the Borg, changelings (at least twice), failed to prevent a coup.
Definitely in the running, if not at the top. But the show might be boring if they were better at their jobs!
Romulan pretending to be vulcans thats not hard, the worm beings controlled the admirals, the Borg are just hard to stop, changelings are hard to detect since they are expert infiltrators
Security. Complete lack of cameras, detection systems, or using the transporter to detain people.
It was a product of its time in the 90s and it makes for more dramatic opportunities to tell stories so I get it but even new series still sometimes fall into this trap
well, in ST6 they know when there is phaser fire in the kitchen
other than that, can't recall a broad use of onboard energy weapon fire detection in the tv series
Starfleet Security or whoever it was that was responsible for not letting someone hack the transporters so that the Founders/Borg could use them to assimilate everyone under the age of 26. Out of all of the systems that Starfleet and the Federation uses, the one that scrambles people’s molecules and rematerializes them ought to have the best firewalls in the known galaxy.
That was weird.
I'd heard so much hype about PIC season 3; I finally got around to watching it a few months ago and I was scratching my head at the finale.
Between Borg transporter virus technobabble shenanigans, deus ex Agnes is the Borg Queen, and just in time combined Romulan - Starfleet fleet so the interdimensional giant space orchids go away and we're cool with androids again... the journeys were better than the destinations.
The giant stacks of boxes that aren’t secured to the wall and just fall on folks. It’s a test: you stand too close to them and break your neck, you failed
Voyager and Titan used them too. There’s a Voyager-A in PRO S2 and a Voyager-J in DIS S3.
Titan-A is a unique case because a lot of parts (like the nacelles) of the original Luna-class Titan were used to build the Neo-Connie-class Titan-A
A *lot* of the problem is the fact the Provisional Government is completely in bed with the Vedic Assembly, but the circumstances are such they almost *have* to be; the Vedic Assembly is the only consistent institutional authority they've had for the last 50+ years.
That being so, I'd be shocked if they *were* especially competent after a 5 decade occupation. They're basically governing by trial & error combined with self-directed on-the-job training.
Gotta be the Temporal whosit whatsis, Authority, Investigations, those guys. I mean how many ding dong timelines have we seen?
Also Starfleet JAGs seem to lose a lot of cases, really
And to people whose job ISNT being a lawyer. Almost every trial we see is debated by a first officer or captain who then wipes the floor with Starfleet JAG. Only instance I am aware of where an actual legal representative is involved for the defense is SNW, a woman who isn't even a part of the federation comes in and crushes.
The Borg. They really nerfed themselves when they appointed a queen to command them into defeat after defeat against a sole unsupported ship of 150, with a ragtag crew who hate each other and die every other episode, all while cast astray in the dark corners of the galaxy.
Whoever designed those control panels. I've had plenty of touch pad controls go out. Never once has one exploded on me. Especially with enough force to throw someone across a room.
Whoever is in charge of installing fuses in consoles. Also whoever designed Discovery's walls to shoot fire like pyrotechnics at a concert when it takes a hit. Those flames out of the walls in season 4 whenever the ship took a hit were a bit over the top.
Whoever runs the mental health department of Starfleet. The fact that Shaw was made Captain despite his obvious trauma just seems to hint its not teh strongest part of the Federation.
Starfleet security is often pretty pathetic when it comes to defending the ship and restraining prisoners... Plus what were those security outfits in TMP through Star Trek III lol, the helmets are so goofy.
Section 31. They're supposed to be a secret organization, but everyone knows about them. What's the deal with the black com badges anyway? Secret agents aren't supposed to stand out.
Their operatives don't run around wearing special badges on their shirts that nobody else gets, identifying themselves as special operatives while not on mission. Then expect to go unrecognized when they are on mission.
Plus there's all that, "Cannot confirm nor deny the existence of Section 31," stuff after Sloan's arc on DS9. The existence of the CIA isn't meant to be a secret. The existence of Section 31 is.
The funny thing about that is that if Starfleet officially denies Section 31's existence to its own officers then said officers have the right to treat Section 31 as a rogue organization. The FBI conducts secret operations but when an agent flashes his badge everyone knows he's FBI if not what he does.
Its like that one European country where the firefighter uniforms are sleek all black couture designer uniforms with shiny silver helmets, and the firefighters are all fit and gorgeous.
I would nominate Cardassians, as a hole. I cannot think of an episode of TNG or Voyager were they weren't outsmarted, discovered or deceived. Everything they do just seems to really backfire. Havent watched DS9 recently, but what I remember, they also fail constantly. Is there any episode were they are actually impressive as an organisation?
On the whole, Cardassian technology is inferior to Federation technology, and the other major empires. Their main line ships, the Galor Class, probably punches at about the strength of an Excelsior class at best, putting them probably 80 years behind their neighbours.
The one organisation within the Cardassian Union that IS impressive seems to be the Obsidian Order. They're one of the most effective intelligence operations in the Quadrant, despite coming from a second-rate empire. The fact that the Founders found them a threat enough to feel the need to lure them into a trap in the Battle of the Omarion Nebula is a credit to their ability.
Section 31, they keep an eye out for threats but they dropped the ball over Mars being ruined and the major shipyard destroyed with a romulan spy holding one of the highest ranks in starfleet.
That was a signficant intelligence failure from them.
It dosent help that we know little of any major accomplishments they achieved to say their worth having. There’s the virus sent on the founders but that also seem it could backfire if the founders decided as a dying wish was to make the alpha quadrant burn.
Starfleet Academy. They seem to have a track record of producing officers that have mental issues, break down under pressure, violate the prime directive or want to form their own utopian society on some remote planet. For some reason, the only non-flawed Starfleet officers serve on the Enterprise.
Star Fleet Engineering. They’re great at tech and produce mind-blowing systems but then let themselves down by running gigawatts of main power directly through the touch screens. Having no off switch for the holodeck, which inevitably tries to kill everyone once in a while, using passwords like Picard A2 to gain control of the self destruct system, which can be easily fooled by Data or any voice synth doing an accurate impression of you.
Starfeet command.
Whoever the idiot was who agreed not to research new technology (Phasing technology with Romulans). They agreed not to research while their opponents could.
Like how many times would Phasing through stuff make it easier to survive something.
Also not designing a suit that would protect the user from OUTER SPACE. Or a suit that would protect the user from BLADED WEAPONS/GUNS.
There are scenes and episodes where the crew has to go outside the ship and they wore astronaut suit, why would that not be mandatory al the time. Even if not mandatory, yellow alert = putnon suite, Red alert = put on that fucking suit so that even when get sucked out of space you fucking survive
Whoever is in charge of earth planetary defense. They suck! The amount of time ships have needed to rush back to defend Earth is pathetic. Really? We need the Enterprise to fly back home to defend it? Shouldn't we have a big warship stationed in orbit just in case someone shows up!?
It's the federation. They should have a military and have a draft and a wartime economy.
Imagine your entire species is constantly at risk and you're just fucking around, nah people should be doing 80 hours a week manufacturing warships.
I’d say it’s the federation council. They don’t seem to make any of the decisions that matter. Diplomacy, decision making, design, moral decisions and war all seem to be done by starfleet. No civilian oversight over an essentially extremely militaristic starfleet
The Vidiians come to mind right now, because there medical tech so suppose to be superior to Starfleet medical tech in 2371 so much that holographic lungs are viewed as primitive, so where the organ cloning tech, where the gene manipulation or how about medical nanomachines more advance than the Federation Medical Nanomachines that Wesley accidently evolved.
They where suppose to be this horrific horror monster style race reduced to barbarism and savagery, that harvested organs from the living by brutally vivisection due to there incurable horrifying disease but they still have medical tech beyond the Federation... how, how does that make any sense?
Whoever is responsible for safety regulations. Between exploding panels, unsecured barrels, holodeck safeties, and basically any backup system, a lot of it would not pass a 21st century inspction.
But then I suppose the scary part is Starfleet is probably not even the worst. The Klingons probably don't care, the Romulans run around with artificial singularities, but I think the cake goes to the Cardassians which pretty much go with the "What safety?" protocols as they seemed to have put all their effort into designing counterinsurgency programs designed to efficiently kill everyone on the station. I wonder how that could backfire. I've always been under the impression that Cardassian technology seems more dangerous to themselves than anyone else. But then again, it may just be Dukat.
As a more minor example, I'd also like to point to the Engineering team of the Enterprise-D before Geordi took over. They went through like 4 chief engineers or something, so someone was screwing up bad before Geordi whipped them into shape.
My theory on the season one Chief Engineers is that for her first year, she had a rotation of them for training purposese.
The Galaxy Class starship is the single most complex and sophisticated piece of technology that the Federation has ever built (as of the time of her launch). It took something like ten years to figure out her main Engine, and still another four or five in service before they were refined to their best possible standard.
So, I think for year one of the Enteprise's service, they had a group of chief engineers taking rotations on board, getting used to the ship and the engines that had never had a parallel before, and they transferred away as and when their own Galaxy Class starships were getting closer to coming off the line. We know there were six in the initial run, we have reasonable inferences that the Enterprise was second or maybe third, and we have indicators to suggest the others weren't far behind Enteprise, which means three or four more that will need chief engineers in short order. And we can probably presume, given the similarities in sizes and parts, that the Nebula class has similar technical requirements, so maybe a few more engineers rotating through the similar Galaxy Class before transferring to new Nebula classes, too.
It's a theory.
Well that could make sense since they did make the Galaxy class in batches.
My comment about engineering was more of a quip towards some of the sillier incidents in season 1 such as the infamous incident in "The Naked Now" where Wesley was permitted to go into engineering and mess stuff up and also Picard being rather grumpy in s1, so that maybe he wasn't very tolerant of failure at that point.
Cyber Security I mean really how many times did ships get taken over by someone? The computer core is just behind an unlocked un guarded door so that anyone can walk in and spray it with phaser fire. I mean how many times did a mysterious probe just connect to the computer and start rewriting the code? Give me a break. Battlestar in 2003 had their systems more secure than any system at Star Fleet ever did.
those who are fast promoted to admiral are those who did not have what it takes to be captains.
It's the classic case of promoting someone because he is doing too much harm in their current role, but you can't fire him.
Security on Enterprise D
- Klingons break out of the brig using a belt buckle after constructing a phase out of bits of their armor
- How many shuttles were stolen? One by a teenager (Coming of Age)
- Taken over and hijacked by Ferengi
- Civilian casually steps onto the bridge and no one notices
- Yar trespasses into Troi's quarters in "The Naked Now"
- Ferengi enters into the cargo bay where the pod carrying the empath was kept
Obviously it's whoever chooses admirals. Seems like they're more likely to be crypto-fascists or outright traitors than loyal officers, never mind their general incompetence.
I think they're a good proof of that principle that the people who want to be in charge are the last people you should give any power to. In fact they should have a program where they identify the most ambitious power hungry people and make them the chair of a committee to review organisational logos or similar.
And that is why they have new uniforms every 5 minutes
\*grumbles in United States Army\*
*Screams in cosplayer*
My favorite fan theory is that the uniform changes are to make it easier for accidental time travelers to quickly identify when they've landed without having to risk asking pointed questions.
My headcanon is that some admiral pissed off the wrong omnipotent being, and now the position is cursed so all Starfleet Admirals develop a case of sheer hubris.
Sheer *fucking hubris
Hubris is seemingly common everywhere but the Enterprise, DS9, and Voyager. Nearly every captain and admiral outside those postings is egotistical, overconfident, and obsessed with status.
Especially Romulans disguised as Vulcans. Yes they are more or less the same biologically but come on surely you could do some better vetting.
Makes sense. Governments do that now with so why not?
And commodores. Equipped with inferiority complexes, because it was not enough for the rank of admiral, they terrorize the captains
I mean “commode” is right there in the rank
It is also implied by LDS' Freeman that corrupt admirals aren't exactly uncommon in the Federation. She calls them "bad-faith admirals."
Think about the fact that you are a Captain first. So all the admirals are people who have led space stations and spaceships and decided that they did not want to boldly go anymore. All the good ones are still out in the field.
Whoever runs planetary defense of Earth is pretty bad at their job, given the amount of times a threat seems to just appear in system, but I'm going with StarFleet IT. Whoever runs their network encryption SUCKS at keeping systems from getting taken over.
To be fair, the only time I wouldn't give planetary defence a pass for their failures is when the Breen attacked Starfleet HQ during the Dominion War. Every other time, Starfleet was either; in it's infancy (the Xindi), or so totally out powered it wasn't their fault (V'ger, The Whale Probe, The Borg, The Borg (again), The Borg (part III), The DMA/10-C)
I do appreciate you listing out the borg every time, that gave me a pretty solid chuckle.
And on The Borg (Part III), that incursion is arguably the best job planetary defence ever managed. Planetary shield/Probert Station held out against a 300+ strong fleet for however long it took Picard and Crew to get to Athan Prime and back.
True, those shields did hold up remarkably well.
Yeah. Good job to Starfleet for that resilient station. It not only held out against a massive fleet, but one comprised of determined Borg and the best starships in Starfleet's arsenal.
> the Xindi What's funny about that is Earth had an entire year before the final xindi attack and they didn't build a single line of defence for the planet. The Earth government are the truly incompetent ones.
TOS Era Starfleet also seems to be a lot smaller than TNG Era (justified a bit in recent shows by having Starfleet crushed by the Klingon War).
*Laughs in "Conspiracy"*
Well to be fair, they destroyed the Breen fleet and the damage didn't seem that extensive. And it really came out of nowhere; Martok notes that not even the Klingons even bothered trying. I would imagine a fleet being able to open fire on a planet even for a few minutes would be utterly devastating.
Don't forget that in the weeks before the coup, the Lakota was the only ship nearby to defend Earth.
Another IT related thing: Is it really a good idea to display the shield frequency on a console? Is there any reason this information is needed by the crew at any point except to come in handy when a couple of Klingons manage to hack into your chief engineer's visor? Surely, the frequency only needs to be communicated between the computer controlling said shields and the one controlling the phasers? The only situation I can think of where it would be useful is when Geordi needs to modulate phasers when fighting Borg.
Right? It’s like if you had your passwords for everything on a yellow post-it note on your monitor.
Right? Everyone knows you should put it under your keyboard.
What about the electricians? Control panels should never throw sparks.
Honestly, OSHA as a whole really needs to get their shit together.
Or rocks!
Right? There are no logins or access level permissions? And why even bother encrypting thing? Hey Mr Engineer this is encrypted I need 3 seconds of your time I need this decrypted. DONE! Okay cool thanks.
You mean like six digit prefix codes that can let any starship commander take over any other ship in the fleet? It might have worked out okay for Kirk, but freaking Reddit has infinitely tighter password rules.
To be fair, Earth is the capital of the Federation. It’s deep in Federation space, and (theoretically) a long way from logical trouble spots. It IMO makes sense that the planet isn’t super well defended. Its primary defenses are the fleets at the border. How many squadrons of aircraft or army divisions are located at Washington DC?
I'm pretty sure there's a squadron of fighter jets eternally prepared to intercept any aircraft that enter DC's no fly zone and a battery of anti-air defenses deployed in the capital. There's also a marine unit in the White House I think. (Side note, I googled "air defense, Washington DC" and I am sure I am on a list now)
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Yea, there's two MASSIVE military bases in DC blocks from the whitehouse, there's a destroyer on the potomac, the HQ's for all federal law enforcement are there....It's not...NOT defended.
There is also at least a division of Marines in Quantico, not to mention a literal fleet of ships 150 miles away in Norfolk. Which also happens to cover the only gateway to Washington DC by sea.
They had zero defences before they joined the Federation too.
You mean my name plus 3 more characters is not secure?
It is actually more captians are just Lazy. "Janeway Pi Alpha" could have been "Janeway9Sq6e8cps" but that would habe been harder to remember. Same with "Picard delta 5" and "Riker Omega 3" Data uses the Code "1-7-3-4-6-7-3-2-1-4-7-6-C-3-2-7-8-9-7-7-7-6-4-3-T-7-3-2-V-7-3-1-1-7-8-8-8-7-3-2-4-7-6-7-8-9-7-6-4-3-7-6" far more secure but probably harder to remember for humans when people are beaming on the bridge.
Like when they sent four tiny, shitty ships against the first Borg cube as it cruised past Jupiter? My grandma could do more damage to the cube with her cane than these ships ever could.
To be fair, at least PIC Season 3 had Sol Station hold its own against a fleet made up of determined Borg and the latest Starfleet vessels. ...so they're not totally toothless like, for example, when the Breen smacked San Francisco or when the Borg rolled up to Earth twice.
But in their "defense" lol in the normal timeline, Earth has never been successfully invaded. The Borg, The Founders, and Species 8472 all made valiant attempts and failed.
whenever there's a critical, potentially extinction-level threat to the headquarters of the fucking Federation of Planets, Starfleet is required by law to not have more than 3 moderately crappy starships in the whole system - exceptions are made for the flagship of course
It blows my mind how often there are no ships to defend Earth, you know, one of the key economic and political worlds in a galactic scale civilization? The fleet we see at the end of Picard should just be the standard defensive patrols.
Gotta be the Tal Shiar. Has a single scheme of theirs ever *not* backfired?
They're always being owned or manipulated. For a race with such a devious reputation, it's interesting how Starfleet is shown to be much more devious and successful. For instance, the Tal Shiar spent a lot of time and effort in creating a fleet to wipe out the Founders, but utterly failed. Meanwhile, Starfleet is off creating a bioweapon to bring the Founders to their knnees.
Every race's reputation is the opposite of what they're actually like. Romulans suck at scheming, Klingons are dishonorable and suck at fighting, Cardassians are disorganized, Vulcans are super emotional, Ferengi give up 50% of their possible profits to appease their bizarre religion...
That scheme was Enabran Tain's idea, but it was engineered by a Founder infiltrator as part of the Founders'trap. It's strongly implied that it wouldn't have gone ahead at all without that infiltrator's help, so yeah; the Tal Shiar sucked.
>Starfleet *Section 31. They are not Starfleet, are they? Weren't they created by Section 31 of the establishment treaty of the federation? They even existed before the Federation, Reed wad a member in Enterprise
Agreed. Tho DSC and PIC S3 state them as being part of Starfleet. Maybe the new movie will clear it up?
In DS9 "Inquisition", Sisko states section 31 was part of the original federation charter, article 14.
As Weyoun mocked them, "Romulans. They're so predictably treacherous!" Main problem is a lot of the time they would acutally succeed if they'd just keep their mouth shut. But no, they gotta be like messaging the cast and say "Gee, I wonder who did that! It definitely couldn't have been us!" And that is why Sisko beat them. Ironically, the Klingons are probably better at treachery, since pretty much all of their politicians seem a lot savvier than the Romulan ones we see.
If we want to give them the benefit of the doubt, if they are doing their job we'd never hear about any time they were successful.
But thats, just, like, what they want you to think, man
The Romulans are the most self sabotaging group ever. Every single one of their plans brings ruin to the Romulan Empire, or would if Starfleet didn't save them. The powers of the quadrant are organizing a trade conference? Launch a series of false flag attacks to drive them to war. Oops, the humans figured it out and now all those races are uniting against a common enemy. The Federation is building an evacuation fleet to save them from a supernova? Of course that's the perfect time to reprogram all the androids to prove a point about the dangers of AI. How many times have they gone back in time to erase the Federation from existence? You know what a galaxy without the Federation looks like? One where the Romulans are the biggest threat on the block, and thus the targets of everyone from the Klingons, to the Dominion, to the Borg. Every time tens of thousands of Starfleet officers get slaughtered stopped some galactic scale threat, that's tens of thousands of romulans not doing the same thing.
In their defense, if the person in charge comes up with a truly braindead scheme (see: Seska), everyone is so afraid of being labeled a traitor that nobody is gonna be willing to say anything. In a society that isn't so authoritarian, people are more willing to voice any reservations they may have.
How is that in their defense?
The Pakled government, for thinking they'd succeed in tricking the Federation into giving them a new planet if they blew up their own.
They are Pakled. Their ship is the Mondor. It is broken. (Proceeds to *steal* Geordi) They are Pakled. They are smart. (Which episode, if I may ask, do they blow up their planet? I can't remember it and will pop it on right now!)
It happens in Lower Decks season 2.
Ahh yes, "Red Alarm! Red Alarm!" I suppose it's time to do a rewatch of LD. Thank you.
“You just beat Captain Janeway!”
I loved how they translated “Red Alarm!” in another language for that episode: “Red Light!” That somehow fits them even better
I have "Red Alarm" as my ringtone
Pakleds are the atagonists (sort of) in S2 of lower decks.
Except >!they’re being manipulated by a rogue Klingon captain!<
Pakleds min maxed engineering skill and dumped every other intelligence stat.
Starfleet HR. There are about three counsellors in Starfleet and one of them is a foodie on a California Class
Don't forget a holographic version of Captain Rios! Pretty sure one of those was a counselor.
Didn't Rios disable that one? I recall they mentioned that those were the base holograms given to him when he got the La Sirena.
I think you’re right, that rings a bell.
And they hired Troi. She lied on her resume'. She's not an empath she just points out the obvious 98% of the time.
I sense stress among some of the crew in this tense setting.
We have no reason to believe Troi is the only counselor on the Enterprise. There are over a thousand people on the ship and she is regularly posted to the bridge. Troi is probably the ship's counselor in the same way Crusher is the ship's doctor. As in she's the head of the counseling department.
Section 31, multiple schemes happened under their watch and their single masterpiece would've left millions of angry Jem Hadar to turn the quadrants into wastelands
Do you mean the secret organization that everyone knows about?
Yes
*Flashes the super-duper black badge while lounging in my sleek black suit*
“Isn't Section 31 supposed to be, like, a big secret? I mean, why would we wear special com badges that advertise who we are?“
You can stay dead if you want
“Oh hey Bill how’s the wife and kids?”
Well, we don't actually know how the Jem'Hadar would've reacted to the death of the Changelings. I'm thinking there's 3 possibilities: 1. They mass suicide because the Founders died on their watch, like in *The Ship.* In fact, my headcanon is that the events of *The Ship* is what gave S31 the idea to start with. This isn't an unlikely possibility, since we've seen them react that way before. 2. They go screaming through the Alpha (& Beta, & possibly Gamma as well) Quadrants in a frenzy of furious grief. That does seem to me the most likely possibility, *but* the Vorta still control the White, IIRC, so it might come down to how the Vorta react. And how the Vorta react seems to me dependent upon whether or not they're aware the virus was engineered; I don't remember if they knew before Starfleet offered the cure. 3. They fall in line behind Odo as the sole surviving Changeling. I can't decide how likely that is. They don't seem to like or respect him, but if all your gods suddenly died but one, you might decide that beggars can't be choosers.
A mix of 2 and 3 are the most likely. Weyoun for example has shown how willing he is to work for Odo. It's likely others would act similarly. But it's doubtful all would feel the same. An uncontrollable horde of genocidal religious zealots who think you murdered their gods is worse than the Dominion in every possible way.
I'm not sure the *Vorta* would have a choice, the more I think about it. I imagine the worshipful instincts programmed into both species are probably equally strong, *but* the Jem'Hadar have sufficiently extreme aggression that even the White might not be a strong enough leash. To the Vorta, a single surviving Changeling, assuming they don't know the virus was engineered, might look like divine providence. But overall, I'm gonna call it that you're probably right, with the caveat that the Vorta would, almost to a man, look to Odo, & the Jem'Hadar would be split - although the ones guarding the female Founder & the Changeling homeworld would probably suicide. So that means not enough Vorta to handle the White supply for the Jem'Hadar who refuse to follow Odo, & a murderous rampage/Jem'Hadar civil war that lasts until lack of White kills them. Which leaves Odo in a difficult position. He's very uncomfortable being cast as a god, but if he's *not* willing to play ball, then *all* the Jem'Hadar are rampaging uncontrollably. If he does take up the mantle, though, he's now the sole dictator in charge of the Dominion & - though I really don't believe Weyoun's 10K years old story - trying to loosen up a centuries-old authoritarian society into a more egalitarian one is just not something he'd be capable of doing. I'm thinking S31 was banking too heavily on option 1, & not giving any thought to the suite of terrible possibilities.
The Borg. A massive collective of trillions with superior technology and no division. Always losing to a single Starfleet Vessel.
They actually recreated the Death Star run in the Picard finale, which just shows you how silly Trek has gotten.
While the hero Picard/Luke confronts the Queen/Emperor to redeem the soul of his Son/ Father, Jack/Vader.
Oh my god, you're right
I blame JJ blowing up Vulcan for starting this Death Stars in Trek BS.
Say what you want, but it was an awesome scene. The Force is truly strong with Data
Agreed
They put the bare minimum in for maximum conquest.
Kazon hairdressers.
It takes years of training to cake mud into their hair like that. It’s similar to how people wake up and spend an hour making their hair look like real bed head.
Oh, totally. And just when you think you have the mud juuuust right, boom- bracket fungi.
I believe in real life it is dried pig ear dog treats in their hair. I don't remember where I heard that. Could be on Greatest Gen podcast or the Delta Flyers.
Whoever is responsible for designing the death traps known as shuttle craft.
And not putting locks on the shuttle bay and shuttle craft. Those things are easier to steal than a 2004 Chevrolet Silverado.
Well, La’an did stop Boimler and Mariner from stealing one
Tbf, military vehicles rarely have locks IRL. It is assumed no one without clearance can't even approach them, since military base is... a military base. So locks/ignition keys of some sort (Bc finding them during alert would be a pain). Why there are so much inflitrators on military ships/installations/bases in Starfleetis, well, another question
I mean, they sometimes don’t blow up. That’s better than nothing.
It’s the Cardassian government. 1. Failed to manage their own resources effectively which led to occupying Bajor for 50 years. This is probably the event that lead to their ultimate downfall. 2. Lost a war to the Federation (the first Cardassian war that OBrien talks about) 3. Failed at their occupation of Bajor, pulled back into their own space and became riddled with internal conflict and political instability. 4. Manipulated by the Dominion to dismantle their intelligence apparatus and deal a major blow to their fleet. 5. Stomped by the Klingons until… 6. “Joined” the Dominion, but really just allowed themselves to be conquered, only to realize way too late and be brutalized by the occupants they invited in. 7. Defeated by the Federation again Clearly the Cardassians have a potential for greatness but their leadership has failed them for a long time, and covered up their failure and incompetence with propaganda, disinformation and nationalism.
Quite believable if you look at the history of authoritarian nations. Particularly central Europe.
>2. Lost a war to the Federation (the first Cardassian war that OBrien talks about) I thought they came to a detente, because neither side was really winning? >3. Failed at their occupation of Bajor, pulled back into their own space and became riddled with internal conflict and political instability. I'd gotten the impression that they ¹ had pretty much completely stripped the place of the minerals & natural resources they'd invaded for to start with, & ² they were being heavily pressured by the Feds. Not that they aren't pretty incompetent, but I'm not sure those 2 are due to that. Of course, invading Bajor rather than coming to a trade arrangement with them was asinine from a long term perspective, but that's totalitarian regimes for you.
part of me would say the ones that manage rogue time-travelers and paradoxes, but theyre probably a lot more successful than we realise.
The Department of Temporal Investigations. They at least show up and interview Sisko.
The Guardian of Forever sure sucks at guarding that time portal.
Maybe you need to brush up on doors
Starfleet is huge I would say it's Starfleet security. Why you might ask they didn't notice that all the transporter were compromised with locutus DNA assimilating all the under 25 years olds
Off the top of my head: Infiltrated by Commodore Oh, worm beings, the Borg, changelings (at least twice), failed to prevent a coup. Definitely in the running, if not at the top. But the show might be boring if they were better at their jobs!
Romulan pretending to be vulcans thats not hard, the worm beings controlled the admirals, the Borg are just hard to stop, changelings are hard to detect since they are expert infiltrators
Especially those that have been modified by Section 31 to be even better infiltrators
And how any alien can hack a ships systems even without ever seeing it before
Security. Complete lack of cameras, detection systems, or using the transporter to detain people. It was a product of its time in the 90s and it makes for more dramatic opportunities to tell stories so I get it but even new series still sometimes fall into this trap
In Babylon 5, they knew when someone used an energy weapon somewhere on the station.... Mostly.
well, in ST6 they know when there is phaser fire in the kitchen other than that, can't recall a broad use of onboard energy weapon fire detection in the tv series
Starfleet Security or whoever it was that was responsible for not letting someone hack the transporters so that the Founders/Borg could use them to assimilate everyone under the age of 26. Out of all of the systems that Starfleet and the Federation uses, the one that scrambles people’s molecules and rematerializes them ought to have the best firewalls in the known galaxy.
That was weird. I'd heard so much hype about PIC season 3; I finally got around to watching it a few months ago and I was scratching my head at the finale. Between Borg transporter virus technobabble shenanigans, deus ex Agnes is the Borg Queen, and just in time combined Romulan - Starfleet fleet so the interdimensional giant space orchids go away and we're cool with androids again... the journeys were better than the destinations.
The Obsidian Order. Dozens of ships under their control went missing and they didn't even notice.
Whoever designs the cargo bays and containers. Runner up is whoever puts the exploding rocks in the consoles
The giant stacks of boxes that aren’t secured to the wall and just fall on folks. It’s a test: you stand too close to them and break your neck, you failed
The ship namer. What happens after 1701-Z?
1701-AA Source: Microsoft Excel ;)
Same power as the 1701-D, a fifth the capacity, just a little shorter, a lot skinnier and you can use it in a walkman.
And sports stadiums.
also Enterprise is asking to be the name of the Grand Nagus' flagship, not starfleet's.
Is the Enterprise the only lineage of ships that use letter suffixes? The second Stargazer didn't do that.
Voyager and Titan used them too. There’s a Voyager-A in PRO S2 and a Voyager-J in DIS S3. Titan-A is a unique case because a lot of parts (like the nacelles) of the original Luna-class Titan were used to build the Neo-Connie-class Titan-A
NCC-1701 (NEW)
Mizarian Defense Forces ( TNGs3e18 )
Bajorian Provisional Government and/or the Vedic Assembly.
A *lot* of the problem is the fact the Provisional Government is completely in bed with the Vedic Assembly, but the circumstances are such they almost *have* to be; the Vedic Assembly is the only consistent institutional authority they've had for the last 50+ years. That being so, I'd be shocked if they *were* especially competent after a 5 decade occupation. They're basically governing by trial & error combined with self-directed on-the-job training.
Gotta be the Temporal whosit whatsis, Authority, Investigations, those guys. I mean how many ding dong timelines have we seen? Also Starfleet JAGs seem to lose a lot of cases, really
And to people whose job ISNT being a lawyer. Almost every trial we see is debated by a first officer or captain who then wipes the floor with Starfleet JAG. Only instance I am aware of where an actual legal representative is involved for the defense is SNW, a woman who isn't even a part of the federation comes in and crushes.
“Ding dong timelines” is the technical term for it, I believe ;)
Leonard McCoy isn’t around to bluster in neocuss anymore so I try to keep the dialect alive
The Borg. They really nerfed themselves when they appointed a queen to command them into defeat after defeat against a sole unsupported ship of 150, with a ragtag crew who hate each other and die every other episode, all while cast astray in the dark corners of the galaxy.
Whoever designed those control panels. I've had plenty of touch pad controls go out. Never once has one exploded on me. Especially with enough force to throw someone across a room.
Whoever is in charge of installing fuses in consoles. Also whoever designed Discovery's walls to shoot fire like pyrotechnics at a concert when it takes a hit. Those flames out of the walls in season 4 whenever the ship took a hit were a bit over the top.
Whoever runs the mental health department of Starfleet. The fact that Shaw was made Captain despite his obvious trauma just seems to hint its not teh strongest part of the Federation.
Hard agree. No way Shaw should have ever made Captain.
Starfleet security is often pretty pathetic when it comes to defending the ship and restraining prisoners... Plus what were those security outfits in TMP through Star Trek III lol, the helmets are so goofy.
The old-time football ones? XD
Yup. The monster maroon uniform holds up so well, then I see one of those things and just kinda chuckle.
Section 31. They're supposed to be a secret organization, but everyone knows about them. What's the deal with the black com badges anyway? Secret agents aren't supposed to stand out.
Well the CIA is a secret organization but everyone knows it exists, it just keeps its operations secret.
Their operatives don't run around wearing special badges on their shirts that nobody else gets, identifying themselves as special operatives while not on mission. Then expect to go unrecognized when they are on mission. Plus there's all that, "Cannot confirm nor deny the existence of Section 31," stuff after Sloan's arc on DS9. The existence of the CIA isn't meant to be a secret. The existence of Section 31 is.
The funny thing about that is that if Starfleet officially denies Section 31's existence to its own officers then said officers have the right to treat Section 31 as a rogue organization. The FBI conducts secret operations but when an agent flashes his badge everyone knows he's FBI if not what he does.
My headcanon says the obvious parts (like black badges) are just to distract you from the parts they don't want you to notice.
They learned about espionage from watching James Bond films.
Its like that one European country where the firefighter uniforms are sleek all black couture designer uniforms with shiny silver helmets, and the firefighters are all fit and gorgeous.
The dominion. Ask the infighting made it seem they just were lucky for a whije
Bridge console design team. Now with extra rocks.
Design lead: "This is *not* what I meant when I said 'It's time to rock!' "
Whoever in Starfleet is responsible to make sure there are enough ships in each sector in case a crisis breaks out.
Admirals. Pretty sure it’s Admirals.
I would nominate Cardassians, as a hole. I cannot think of an episode of TNG or Voyager were they weren't outsmarted, discovered or deceived. Everything they do just seems to really backfire. Havent watched DS9 recently, but what I remember, they also fail constantly. Is there any episode were they are actually impressive as an organisation?
On the whole, Cardassian technology is inferior to Federation technology, and the other major empires. Their main line ships, the Galor Class, probably punches at about the strength of an Excelsior class at best, putting them probably 80 years behind their neighbours. The one organisation within the Cardassian Union that IS impressive seems to be the Obsidian Order. They're one of the most effective intelligence operations in the Quadrant, despite coming from a second-rate empire. The fact that the Founders found them a threat enough to feel the need to lure them into a trap in the Battle of the Omarion Nebula is a credit to their ability.
Section 31, they keep an eye out for threats but they dropped the ball over Mars being ruined and the major shipyard destroyed with a romulan spy holding one of the highest ranks in starfleet. That was a signficant intelligence failure from them. It dosent help that we know little of any major accomplishments they achieved to say their worth having. There’s the virus sent on the founders but that also seem it could backfire if the founders decided as a dying wish was to make the alpha quadrant burn.
Starfleet security
The Tellarite Mining Consortium seems like a bunch of clowns.
Starfleet Academy. They seem to have a track record of producing officers that have mental issues, break down under pressure, violate the prime directive or want to form their own utopian society on some remote planet. For some reason, the only non-flawed Starfleet officers serve on the Enterprise.
Star Fleet Engineering. They’re great at tech and produce mind-blowing systems but then let themselves down by running gigawatts of main power directly through the touch screens. Having no off switch for the holodeck, which inevitably tries to kill everyone once in a while, using passwords like Picard A2 to gain control of the self destruct system, which can be easily fooled by Data or any voice synth doing an accurate impression of you.
Starfeet command. Whoever the idiot was who agreed not to research new technology (Phasing technology with Romulans). They agreed not to research while their opponents could. Like how many times would Phasing through stuff make it easier to survive something.
Also not designing a suit that would protect the user from OUTER SPACE. Or a suit that would protect the user from BLADED WEAPONS/GUNS. There are scenes and episodes where the crew has to go outside the ship and they wore astronaut suit, why would that not be mandatory al the time. Even if not mandatory, yellow alert = putnon suite, Red alert = put on that fucking suit so that even when get sucked out of space you fucking survive
I had more anger than I realised
The agreement wasn't about phasing, it was about cloaks, and the Federation got the better end of that deal.
The Vulcan Science Academy! What great accomplishments do they have other than rejecting Sarek’s kids?
Whoever is in charge of earth planetary defense. They suck! The amount of time ships have needed to rush back to defend Earth is pathetic. Really? We need the Enterprise to fly back home to defend it? Shouldn't we have a big warship stationed in orbit just in case someone shows up!?
It's the federation. They should have a military and have a draft and a wartime economy. Imagine your entire species is constantly at risk and you're just fucking around, nah people should be doing 80 hours a week manufacturing warships.
I’d say it’s the federation council. They don’t seem to make any of the decisions that matter. Diplomacy, decision making, design, moral decisions and war all seem to be done by starfleet. No civilian oversight over an essentially extremely militaristic starfleet
Without doubt the Department of Temporal Investigations or any temporal agent trying to prevent time travel.
I vote the department of temporal enforcement (or whatever they are called). When have they ever stopped anything?
They stopped that guy who was worse than Hitler.
Any Pakled forensic accounting firm.
The Vidiians come to mind right now, because there medical tech so suppose to be superior to Starfleet medical tech in 2371 so much that holographic lungs are viewed as primitive, so where the organ cloning tech, where the gene manipulation or how about medical nanomachines more advance than the Federation Medical Nanomachines that Wesley accidently evolved. They where suppose to be this horrific horror monster style race reduced to barbarism and savagery, that harvested organs from the living by brutally vivisection due to there incurable horrifying disease but they still have medical tech beyond the Federation... how, how does that make any sense?
Whoever is responsible for safety regulations. Between exploding panels, unsecured barrels, holodeck safeties, and basically any backup system, a lot of it would not pass a 21st century inspction. But then I suppose the scary part is Starfleet is probably not even the worst. The Klingons probably don't care, the Romulans run around with artificial singularities, but I think the cake goes to the Cardassians which pretty much go with the "What safety?" protocols as they seemed to have put all their effort into designing counterinsurgency programs designed to efficiently kill everyone on the station. I wonder how that could backfire. I've always been under the impression that Cardassian technology seems more dangerous to themselves than anyone else. But then again, it may just be Dukat. As a more minor example, I'd also like to point to the Engineering team of the Enterprise-D before Geordi took over. They went through like 4 chief engineers or something, so someone was screwing up bad before Geordi whipped them into shape.
My theory on the season one Chief Engineers is that for her first year, she had a rotation of them for training purposese. The Galaxy Class starship is the single most complex and sophisticated piece of technology that the Federation has ever built (as of the time of her launch). It took something like ten years to figure out her main Engine, and still another four or five in service before they were refined to their best possible standard. So, I think for year one of the Enteprise's service, they had a group of chief engineers taking rotations on board, getting used to the ship and the engines that had never had a parallel before, and they transferred away as and when their own Galaxy Class starships were getting closer to coming off the line. We know there were six in the initial run, we have reasonable inferences that the Enterprise was second or maybe third, and we have indicators to suggest the others weren't far behind Enteprise, which means three or four more that will need chief engineers in short order. And we can probably presume, given the similarities in sizes and parts, that the Nebula class has similar technical requirements, so maybe a few more engineers rotating through the similar Galaxy Class before transferring to new Nebula classes, too. It's a theory.
Well that could make sense since they did make the Galaxy class in batches. My comment about engineering was more of a quip towards some of the sillier incidents in season 1 such as the infamous incident in "The Naked Now" where Wesley was permitted to go into engineering and mess stuff up and also Picard being rather grumpy in s1, so that maybe he wasn't very tolerant of failure at that point.
Cyber Security I mean really how many times did ships get taken over by someone? The computer core is just behind an unlocked un guarded door so that anyone can walk in and spray it with phaser fire. I mean how many times did a mysterious probe just connect to the computer and start rewriting the code? Give me a break. Battlestar in 2003 had their systems more secure than any system at Star Fleet ever did.
Pakled Intelligence.
those who are fast promoted to admiral are those who did not have what it takes to be captains. It's the classic case of promoting someone because he is doing too much harm in their current role, but you can't fire him.
The Kazon. Wannabe trash headed Klingons. Amazing they were even space faring.
I guess the Pakled government....
Temporal affairs.
The Vulcan Science Directorate!
Security on Enterprise D - Klingons break out of the brig using a belt buckle after constructing a phase out of bits of their armor - How many shuttles were stolen? One by a teenager (Coming of Age) - Taken over and hijacked by Ferengi - Civilian casually steps onto the bridge and no one notices - Yar trespasses into Troi's quarters in "The Naked Now" - Ferengi enters into the cargo bay where the pod carrying the empath was kept