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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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Nervos Belli said:
Cultural Genocide is preferable to actual Genocide. And really the Federation isn't all that different from the Shanpurr. With the Lamarck, we've had a few events where our captains have very deliberately tried to push them towards a world-government, because that's what we thinks works best. We are better about keeping traditions alive, but still not great. I'm pretty sure English is every human's first language by now, if we accept the bit about French being nearly extinct to be true.
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I actually like to imagine that with the Advent of the UT, bilingualism is pretty much dead and most languages are fine, and that if it the UT ever failed most of the humans on Starfleet ship wouldn't be able to understand each other at all.
 
Random Member said:
Implying it's an either/or situation.
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Unless the species in question is as naturally pacifistic as the Shanpurr, Risan or Gretarian, it kind of is. Primitive cultures simply are too violent and have to compete over resources. There's a reason many of the peoples who form the federation have some cataclysm or another in their past.

The fact that uplift also protects against plagues and natural disasters is a bonus.
 
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AKuz said:
I actually like to imagine that with the Advent of the UT, bilingualism is pretty much dead and most languages are fine, and that if it the UT ever failed most of the humans on Starfleet ship wouldn't be able to understand each other at all.
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Starfleet academy would not accept that, so its first year would probably feature a heavy English class to insure communication in case of equipment failure.
 
pbluekan said:
Just curious, why did we get militarization and not threat rating?
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Events are written to the results, not the other way around, so technically it's due to the roll of the dice.

AKuz said:
I actually like to imagine that with the Advent of the UT, bilingualism is pretty much dead and most languages are fine, and that if it the UT ever failed most of the humans on Starfleet ship wouldn't be able to understand each other at all.
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That'd work in a more comic setting, but here there's almost certainly a Federation common tongue, perhaps in a similar manner to how Hindi is (I understand) legislated to be an official language in India, but there are plenty of regional languages from several language groups.
 
Gravitas Hunt said:
Events are written to the results, not the other way around, so technically it's due to the roll of the dice.


That'd work in a more comic setting, but here there's almost certainly a Federation common tongue, perhaps in a similar manner to how Hindi is (I understand) legislated to be an official language in India, but there are plenty of regional languages from several language groups.
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It's probably actually Vulcan or something, we'd probably need to know the most widely spoken language in the Federation as of ~2150.
 
AKuz said:
It's probably actually Vulcan or something, we'd probably need to know the most widely spoken language in the Federation as of ~2150.
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As with so many other things human that ended up part of the Federation (units, lettering etc.) I like to think it's because neither the Vulcans nor the Andorians would accept anything from the other, and no-one wanted to use anything from the Tellarites (Best insult ever! They get passed over for everything!), so things ended up being mostly human when all this stuff was codified at the Founding of the Federation.

Edit: I mean, they use the Cochrane for subspace... something, and he was the last person to develop warp travel among the founding species!
 
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Nervos Belli said:
Cultural Genocide is preferable to actual Genocide. And really the Federation isn't all that different from the Shanpurr. With the Lamarck, we've had a few events where our captains have very deliberately tried to push them towards a world-government, because that's what we thinks works best. We are better about keeping traditions alive, but still not great. I'm pretty sure English is every human's first language by now, if we accept the bit about French being nearly extinct to be true.

Edit: Basically I don't see this as an ideological difference so much as a degree and pragmatic difference.
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ethics is not simple, a big enough difference in scope can and usually does result in differences in kind. Giving advice to a species who barely has warp and letting post warp cultures merge or stay involute as they will is fundamentally different than replacing a culture with your own.
 
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Why did it take so long for Kearsage's captain to think "Romulan spy"? That's the FIRST thing he should have thought of! They're the best there is when it comes to impersonating Vulcans, because they ARE Vulcans, and they're the ones with the most to gain by doing so!
 
Iron Wolf said:
I never thought I'd see unironic colonialism in a Star Trek thread. Make sure to ban the potlatch, we wouldn't want any primitive gift giving to disrupt our glorious technoutopia.
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It's hardly colonialism. The Shanpurr get exactly nothing from the uplifting they do, since they don't charge taxes or extract natural resources that should belong to the locals, which was the hallmark of colonialism. Along side with killing the locals and bringing your own people over to exploit, who still ended up resenting you.

The Shanpurr do it out of the goodness in their hearts.
 
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Finagle007 said:
Why did it take so long for Kearsage's captain to think "Romulan spy"? That's the FIRST thing he should have thought of! They're the best there is when it comes to impersonating Vulcans, because they ARE Vulcans, and they're the ones with the most to gain by doing so!
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Could have just been a Vulcan who went crazy for some reason. Like that one Vulcan serial killer in DS9 who suffered from PTSD. Atleast, I think it was PTSD.
 
AKuz said:
It's on me, I didn't highlight enough that Korrem had gone off the reservation with his response.

I intended to and on reread it doesnt come out well.
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Hm, maybe something like tossing a bunch of suspects into the Kearsage brig despite protests of the Vulcan government, or mentioning that his own XO logged a protest over enforcing curfew on the city?

Also, shouldn't there have been a higher ranking officer in charge of Starbase 2 who should have taken over the investigation once it affected a whole city? Maybe something about disobeying/ignoring orders and going over his remit would also give us a good understanding of why we got docked on a militarization point.
 
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Yeah, the Commodore who runs the Starbase is probably super pissed. Ultimately he has authority over system security rather than the captain of a random starship. The Rear Admiral of the Vulcan Sector is also likely based there too, and would likely attend such a conference.

e: Here's the updated log:
AKuz said:
I've used my authority to enforce a curfew in Shikar and have ordered my security department to beam down armed teams to defend key locations across the city. I have also called for reinforcements from Starbase 2, I'll blanket this city with uniforms if I have to.
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Finagle007 said:
Why did it take so long for Kearsage's captain to think "Romulan spy"? That's the FIRST thing he should have thought of! They're the best there is when it comes to impersonating Vulcans, because they ARE Vulcans, and they're the ones with the most to gain by doing so!
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Well, even at the end, it doesn't sound like the kind of MO that a spy would be doing. I mean, a spy is supposed to maintain secrecy as much as possible and this guy is all but shouting at the top of his lungs "I am suspicious!"

As for the most to gain... We're currently at fairly good relations with the Romulans right now, and the last thing they need while they're fighting the Klingons is for us to get mad at them. I doubt they had an available cloaked ship to infiltrate Fed space and take advantage of the ShiKahr outtage, so what would be the point?

Honestly, I wouldn't have put Romulan spy at the top of my list either. I'd think of Lecarre or even Goa'uld parasite expy before that. (My first thought was actually some kinda pon farr thing gone wrong ala magic space rock...)
 
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Hmm maybe something along the lines of putting the city under Martial Law should have been worked into the log entry. That would probably have been sufficient to earn a militarisation point as oposed to merely posting guards at key infrastructure points and assisting the local enforcement in pursuit of a dangerous criminal.
 
I'm not too chuffed about the militarization point because frankly we've probably deserved more than one for all the, you know, military action over the past in-game decade. So on the "we were guilty of something" principle I accept it.
 
I think it's interesting that our relationship with the Romulans is good enough that they're willing to slip us internal secrets under the table. You would think the fact that their mental conditioning can "just snap" would be too much to let out of the bag.

Unless that itself is a coverup. I wouldn't be surprised if sometimes mental conditioning could "just snap", but I would be even less surprised if one of their new diplomatic agencies (the ones who likely have a great deal of influence in the Romulan Consulate on Vulcan, you know, the guy who just leaked that secret) pulled one over on a Tal Shiar deep cover agent and caused him to "just snap" as part of inter-faction warfare.
 
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By the way, we had this language discussion about nine months ago. See my post quoted below that started it.

Briefvoice said:
I figure everyone in Starfleet speaks English.

No, I'm not even joking. Given all the other things that even your average crew member is expected to master, given future educational techniques, learning a common language so that you don't have to depend on the Universal Translator is just a given. It probably takes them no more than a few weeks to pick it up with educational hypno-tapes and such. Why English? Because it was the most common Earth language when Starfleet started up and because Earth was making the biggest push and contributions to make Starfleet work, and it's been that way ever since. Native English speakers no doubt pick up some other useful language using the time they don't have to spend learning English.

Although maybe it's even funnier, and "Starfleet English" is like Church Latin, frozen in time and formalized because most people learn it as a second language. So all the characters really are speaking in something very reminiscent of 21st century english because that's the version that "Starfleet's common tongue" got frozen in, even as most human "English speakers" have language that is two centuries evolved past that.
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I got pushback and arguments and there was some back-and-forth about how it was actually probably more of a heavily bastardized, lots of alien loan words, form of English.
 
charysa said:
Well, even at the end, it doesn't sound like the kind of MO that a spy would be doing. I mean, a spy is supposed to maintain secrecy as much as possible and this guy is all but shouting at the top of his lungs "I am suspicious!"

As for the most to gain... We're currently at fairly good relations with the Romulans right now, and the last thing they need while they're fighting the Klingons is for us to get mad at them. I doubt they had an available cloaked ship to infiltrate Fed space and take advantage of the ShiKahr outtage, so what would be the point?

Honestly, I wouldn't have put Romulan spy at the top of my list either. I'd think of Lecarre or even Goa'uld parasite expy before that. (My first thought was actually some kinda pon farr thing gone wrong ala magic space rock...)
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Yeah, it's more a case of the guy who had a psychotic break and went on a shooting spree turned out to be a spy. Notice how he didn't even bother to destroy his hidden communications equipment, he was not thinking things through.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
What do the Padani know about uplifting?

They're a single species polity with only hostile first contacts to their name. The only peoples they'd have uplifted would be peoples they've crushed in defensive wars. That means that their primary goal in every single one of their interventions was to replace the target culture so they weren't a war threat anymore. e: Which, to add, wouldn't be covered by PD anyway as those cultures would be warp capable, so don't take this as me objecting. I'm just pointing out that the Padani have literally zero experience at pre-warp uplifts.
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Padani stance on positive uplifting is "we soooo wish somebody did it to us before shit started". Their first negative contact is pre-warp IIRC. "Preservation of culture" don't save you when somebody decides to play invader on your ass, warp-capable warships do.
 
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SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Yeah, the Commodore who runs the Starbase is probably super pissed. Ultimately he has authority over system security rather than the captain of a random starship. The Rear Admiral of the Vulcan Sector is also likely based there too, and would likely attend such a conference.
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They're probably Vulcans, so technically not "pissed".

Maybe Korrem pulled out some obscure regulation and tossed them into the brig as suspects? Heh.

Though if Captain Korrem had ignored orders from them, I can see a court martial in the upcoming Q4 Rat Race post.
 
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