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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Briefvoice said:
I think maintaining operational readiness to the point where they have a crew and can respond to distress calls is a bridge too far.
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Not quite that operationally ready. Just that they have a crew of reservists ready to be shipped in who already know how to run the vessel. Distress Call Response would propably only happen on an occasional training cruise, if that.
 
Gnarker said:
Not quite that operationally ready. Just that they have a crew of reservists ready to be shipped in who already know how to run the vessel. Distress Call Response would propably only happen on an occasional training cruise, if that.
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Still too much. Would need to be inoperable. If you think threat is too great for that then raise threat level.
 
Even if we could build reserves that we could draw up, we can spend the same resources to build fewer, more well rounded ships that will be operational the moment we need them.

If we want a ship that is extra fleet power, a high L, high evasion ship would help draw fire from our heavy capital explorers, and if we give it decent D, we could use them as fast courier ships.
 
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Vebyast said:
Mipek for EC! Mipek for EC captains panel!

Mipek for Explorer!

Literally an Explorer, the entire thing, just hook him up to an Excelsior-A and he can save us an entire crew-cost that we can immediately move to an Amby, I'm serious about this.
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Leslie:

"Don't get me wrong, I love the little more-than-duotronic bastard, but... too soon. No slaving a whole ship to one computer brain. And before you ask, no slaving a whole ship to one squishy gray oatmeal brain like mine, either. It's not prejudice, but man's got to know his limitations. Even if he's a robot."
 
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Yeah, no need to bring up the old fears of the M5 program again. But still, it would be a good idea to try and get Mipek to sign up for Starfleet Academy or into some prominent civilian role.

The earlier we can start setting the precedent for AI rights and personhood, the less stupidity will come up in the future with people trying to take apart Data/Lal or enslaving the Mk I EMHs.
 
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So, uh...

I thought turning Star Trek into The Culture was for after TNG/DS9/VOY-era? Isn't that kind of a late-timeline thing, after computers and AI and artificial people get much much better?
 
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Hey, we've got a robot buddy fifty years early, we don't have to wait for Data, do we?

Heck, let's make a Federation that deserves to have Data in it, instead of one that screws him over and loudly fantasizes about dismantling him and traumatizes his (robot) child into melting down and where the CMO of an Explorer Corps flagship can prattle to him about how his not being 'human' puts him at a disadvantage and makes him inferior.

[I'm thinking of Pulaski, not Crusher]
 
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Goddamnit, why can't this have waited until this weekend. I know exactly what to write, I'm just completely fried and now someone's going to beat me to it.
 
Yeah, Academy. Explorer is at least a Captain-equivalent rank, which means he needs to be a commissioned officer, which means he needs to graduate from the Academy. Accelerated schedule, he's more than finished the STEM requirements and will be focusing on the general ed, leadership, and military theory portions.
 
We do seem to have a number of officers who did not enter starfleet from the academy, mostly from affiliated races and new members who had senior people in service. I think ancient AI qualifies for the same accelerated entry if it requests it.
 
Yes, but we didn't give any of those other officers captaincies without extended apprenticeships in command-track officer positions and special training courses. Mipek (or, hypothetically, Data) is no exception to this rule.
 
Gnarker said:
I've had a somewhat similar but potentially more honest idea; Namely any outright militarized designs, and eventually any ships that exceed our combat cap, are by default placed in a reserve fleet. Normally, those ships are not allowed to actually do anything besides maintaining operational readiness and responding to distress calls, and we, as the Commander of Starfleet, only get to actually give these reserve ships any orders if and for as long as the Council gives us explicit permission to do so.
So if we can make a valid case to the Council that yes, we currently do need warships, we get to have them. As soon as we don't anymore, back into storage they go. It's kinda similar to keeping warship designs to crashbuild in case of emergency and scrap again afterwards, except without the months-long delays, and without forcing us into building suboptimal designs like the Miranda because we're in a hurry.
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Who's going to pay for a reserve fleet? And how is the reserve fleet different from the member fleets functionally? This could be seen as an attempt by starfleet to horn in on the member fleets' turf.

Also, the sorts of warships we are discussing are fairly balanced designs - the vanguard science escort, while optimized to operate as a military scout is actually a fairly well rounded design (at least compared to Klingon and Romulan designs). Outside of a war, such a ship would find plenty of work. I suspect that the council would give such a design a pass if starfleet presented it in an honest way and if building such ships didn't hurt the peaceful missions of starfleet. Most "battleship" and "pocket explorer" designs that get presented every so often are, similarly, comparatively well rounded - science and presence are good to have on a ship, fairly cheap and having them at a basic level of competency makes any ship a better return on investment.

I think people are excessively worried about militancy.

fasquardon
 
fasquardon said:
Who's going to pay for a reserve fleet? And how is the reserve fleet different from the member fleets functionally? This could be seen as an attempt by starfleet to horn in on the member fleets' turf.
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Starfleet would, obviously, as they're Starfleet ships. As I said, this is for ships so militarized that the Council wouldn't normally let us build them, and ships in excess of our combat cap.
 
Derek58 said:
From what I vaugely remember of the SFDebris eps with Pulaski, the show runners wanted something like the relationship between Bones and Spock between her and Data.

They obviously failed miserably.
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You could tell that with Pulaski they were trying to recapture it, like Diana Muldaur was doing her best to play McCoy. She wasn't actually that bad at it, in my opinion, even if she didn't *nail* the role.

The biggest flaws in the concept, I think, were twofold.

(1) Data Can't Fight Back.

While Pulaski was at least kinda sorta an approximation of McCoy, Data is about as unlike Spock as it's possible to get for two "left-brained" personalities. Spock was more or less content with his identity. Sure, he felt some conflicts between his Vulcan and human aspects, and just having a Vulcan aspect generates some internal conflict. But for all that, Spock didn't feel inferior to humans, didn't consider being Vulcan to be somehow inadequate or lesser than being human. And he had a solidly developed, mature, confident personality. As a result, he was comfortable trading shots with people who made fun of him. So McCoy could twit Spock about being too gosh-darn left-brained, and Spock would twit right back about how 'illogical' and foolish McCoy was sometimes.

But Data doesn't retaliate in situations like this, because Data has a Pinocchio complex. He thinks he's a fake simulacrum and wants to be human, in a way Spock never did. On some level Data seems to have internalized that to be a robot is lower to being a human, that his uniqueness is lesser and inferior than that of the humans around him. When Pulaski basically straight up says to Data "I'm sorry, but you can never be as good as us human beings because you're a soulless dead automaton..." Data, on some level, just sighs internally and agrees. He doesn't try to retaliate. He seldom or never twits Pulaski (or anyone else) for oversimplifying things, neglecting the importance of calculation and planning, et cetera. He can't, because he's got no sense of humor! Plus he's so generally kind to people (insofar as he knows how to be) that he wouldn't make fun of people even if he knew how to do it.

As a result, the Pulaski-Data interaction, unlike the McCoy-Spock interaction, doesn't come across as "right-brained" doctor and "left-brained" science officer poking fun at each other's foibles and limitations. It comes across as Pulaski bullying Data for being a nerd, and Data being too nice and not having enough self-esteem to push back.

(2) Strawman Syndrome

It's pretty clear that the TOS writers wanted it to be possible to sympathize with both sides in the McCoy-Spock feud. Spock genuinely makes mistakes and overlooks things because of his emotionless logical approach to life, and he's not always sympathetic. McCoy, while often wrong, is almost always sympathetically wrong. "Dammit Jim, you can't [insert thing that they have to do for the greater good here]! It's wrong!" is a somewhat compelling stance for a man to take, after all.

Enough of Spock's zingers back to McCoy are gratuitously insulting or seem... flawed... that while you can very much respect Spock's great intellect and measured approach to life, it's obvious he doesn't know everything and isn't right about everything in his relationship with McCoy. When McCoy gets in the last word, you feel like laughing. Conversely, the McCoy-Spock debates aren't obviously an attempt by the writers to talk up the importance of dry formal logic by creating a strawman parody CMO whose asinine denunciations of logic make you think logic is the best thing ever.

By contrast, the position of the TNG writers was always very obviously, and justly, that Data is a real person just like anyone else. Because they seem to have pretty well internalized this, even if they'd occasionally talk up how Data 'has no feelings' or something, they seem to have had a lot of trouble creating a sympathetic and realistic portrayal of the other point of view. It reminds me of a well-known passage from G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, describing an anarchist who tries to impersonate highly placed people in conservative society, but only knows how to do so by mouthing the strawman parody arguments in the anarchists' own propaganda.

G. K. Chesterton said:
"The answer is simple," he said. "I told you I was a serious anarchist, and you did not believe me. Nor do they believe me. Unless I took them into this infernal room they would not believe me."

Syme smoked thoughtfully, and looked at him with interest. Gregory went on.

"The history of the thing might amuse you," he said. "When first I became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and Priests of Prey. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, 'Down! down! presumptuous human reason!' they found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire violence—the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is the Law.' Well, well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair..."
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Basically, it really shows that the TNG writers think Pulaski is wrong. They give her terrible-sounding arguments, make her say gratuitously nasty things to Data (see (1)), and basically never give her any way to substantiate her fixed belief that Data, as a robot, is an inferior form of being. She's a strawman on this issue, and it cripples her character.

I mean, Diana Muldaur is a good actress. It would have been well within her powers to make sure that Pulaski was lastingly remembered as the "cool old lady CMO" in contrast to Crusher's equally memorable "briskly professional middle-aged CMO."

But instead, most people who think of Pulaski at all think of her as "that horrible old woman who kept bullying Data for no damn reason."
 
[takes a deep breath]

Trying to do the last ride of the Enterprise-B justice is tough, but I'm glad to say that the fifth chapter- and the epilogue- of Ship of Aeons are taking shape nicely.
 
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