[unlurking]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I wonder if this is something of a generational thing. Or maybe I'm dumb. I might just be dumb.

I never watched TOS because I'm an 80s kid. I was also fairly young and only gave passing glances to TNG.

So to me, Starfleet was pretty much the new, global Navy. Honestly, it never occurred to me that this wasn't the case until perhaps one of these threads. I always kinda figured that maybe these starships just weren't that impressive if the Enterprise was usually looked at as the big swinging dick among starships.

So I guess it....isn't? These guys aren't out there on the USS Constitution protecting anything, they're going out there doing Magellan shit and just looking around? And while the Enterprise may be the big fish in its own pond, there are probably dozens of ships that would pretty easily annihilate it (I guess that makes sense given how many times they blow the damn thing up).

I mean...I guess that's right there in their spiel, but like I said, I just never gave it much thought. Besides, that makes the concept of Starfleet seem really odd to me, especially given that whole "Fermi Paradox" thing and the fact that perhaps we should probably just not let the whole universe know where we are. Privately funded explorers back in ye olden times made since because frankly, they were funded by profiteers. But Starfleet would appear to be nothing more than a massive public works project whereby we empower people to take heavily armed ships to just go poking stuff with sticks to see what happens.

This whole post completely sums up Star Trek for many new fans. Completely misunderstanding what Star Trek is about. The people are the stories, surrounded by cool tech/space/aliens/etc. Star Trek was never about a "global navy". It's not "global", as the federations spans many alien cultures across many worlds. It's not a "navy", as the primary mission is the advancement of knowledge. Defense is secondary.

And what's with the usage of the derogatory term "profiteer". That's a pretty broad stroke to paint all merchants and traders. Not to mention that some of the most famous explorers in history were funded by governments. Magellan, Columbus, Lewis & Clark, Armstrong, etc.

I guess this is the new demographic for Star Trek. This is why we can't have nice things.
(nice things = good Star Trek)