Earth Federation

[prometheus 0]

What I dont get is how Earth will lead other races to the formation of The Federation but Star Fleet, an essentially Human organisation, will be the military force behind that. And Federation Star Ships will look like Human vessels. What about the advanced technologies of the Vulcans and the Andorians? I mean, look at the mighty Andorian ships. If Andoria is part of the new Federation along with Humans and Vulcans then how come we dont see hybrid ships emerge? Why do they end up looking like more advanced Enterprise designs?

 

Where are the Andorians during TNG/DS9/VOY? I mean, if there really was an advanced Federation alliance we only seem to see one or two here and there over the decades, with hundreds of Humans and several Vulcans popping up? I feel that Andoria hs been left out of the whole Star Trek equation too much, and the Earth centric attitude of the universe is very non reflective of this galaxial society that is trying to come across.

 

Even during the movie era we see 'Vulcan' ships, which are opposed to Star Fleet ships (ie, Human ships). Spock was the first Vulcan in Star Fleet but still i dont understand why if this is the military wing of the Federation which includes Vulcan, why there arent more Vulcans in a more technologically integrated fleet of vessels. For all intense and purposes we are left with the Humans running the military for this new Federation and i dont believe that this would be allowed to happen after having seen the pride and sense of distrust evident in the mighty Vulcan and Andorian fleets.

[Ace 0]

I've wondered about the Andorian issue for a while myself...

 

Well, we know that the Vulcans advance very slowly. I can't remember Soval's exact quote, but it took the Vulcans 10-100 times as long to reach the level of technology that Earth is at in ENT. Granted, the Vulcans likely didn't have help, but the level of care and deliberation they put into everything would still put them behind the learning curve. I assume that Earth passed Vulcan's level of technology rather quickly, as in, soon after ENT.

 

Vulcan's obviously have far less advanced ships in TNG times, but they probably put more effort into helping the joint Federation to grow rather than focusing on their own tech. We do know that Vulcans became very, very common in Starfleet, as an entire Nebula class ship was manned by a Vulcan crew (name?). If the Vulcan's focused their military efforts on helping the human-led Fed to grow, they could focus their own advancements on more peaceful, more "new-T'Pau-led-Vulcan" endeavors. I.E. science and research. For all we know, there could be a Federation shipyard at Vulcan with Vulcan's building stock-looking Fed ships.

 

Also, the Enterprise herself and most Earth technology at the time was indeed "hybridized" w/ Vulcan tech, as the Vulcan's provided much of it. As for the outer design, we at least know that the S.S. Enterprise was heavily influenced as it had the ring nacelle.

 

Andorians......

 

I have no idea. I just tell myself that maybe there was some disaster in the Andorian system that reduced their numbers, or maybe they lost much of their fleet in some conflict. Any explanation that would make them far less influential between the times of Archer, Kirk, and Picard.

[Kor37 9]

Don't forget Denoblians. No mention at all of them in any of the series.

[MrPsychic 1]

The Tellerites really fell off the table too... Basically, it seems like the producers took the cheap way out and didn't expand on all the different species. However, there could be crews of Andorians and Tellerites on Federation starships, like Vulcans did in Immunity Syndrome with the USS Intrepid.

[ussacclaim 0]

Just for the record, and sorry to nitpick, and doubly-sorry if I have taken this out of context, but Starfleet is not a military organization, (I think Picard said that somewhere, possibly in "Peak Performance") but is responsible for many different things in service to the Federation.

 

I'm guessing that maybe the look of Federation vessels was determined to be an optimum design structure. Possibly, everyone agreed on the look of Federation vessels, and there was collaboration with the other members of the Federation on technology, like Vulcan star charts, Andorian defensive systems, Tellarite...umm, whatever they had to offer.

 

But I too was dissappointed with the ignoring of the founding races of the Federation. Andorians were seen somewhat in TNG, but they were all green and short. Tellarites got shortchanged the most because I hardly remember seeing them anywhere else. I mean, we've seen more Bolians than these other guys! But, that was one great aspect I gleaned from Enterprise, the additional focus on these races, and I througly enjoyed seeing them again.