/STG/ - Star Trek General

>Starfleet admirals are almost invariably murderous bastards and we only ever got 1 or 2 actually good ones.

I've been seeing similar sentiments to these in the comment sections of STD-related YouTube videos a lot lately and it seems pretty commonly accepted that the Starfleet brass is rotten to the core, so I resolved to put this to the test and see whether it held up. I had a suspicion that the perspective is being skewed because admirals seldom make for compelling viewing (and thus aren't very memorable) unless they're doing something spectacularly wrong, which tends to make the bad ones stick in the audience's minds.

But how could I prove this one way or the other? What I decided to do was look through the entries for each officer ranked from Commodore through to Fleet Admiral on Memory Alpha and rate them as either "good", "neutral", or "bad" depending on Memory Alpha's descriptions of each such character's actions. The results were VERY interesting, but before I get into them, here are the rules I followed while sorting the admirals:

1: The officer must have been at least mentioned in spoken dialogue. Admirals that only showed up in text do not count. This was mainly to ensure that such "characters" as Admiral Gene Roddenberry and Admiral Max Headroom wouldn't get onto the tally.
2: Main cast members who were prompted to flag officers (Kirk, Janeway, McCoy, etc.) do not count, as this would skew the tally to make the brass seem more "good" than it truly is.
3: Primary cannon only. No books or video games or anything of that nature. Should go without saying, really, but still. I DID include TAS though...
4: STD and JJ-Trek are quite different kettles of fish, and so their admirals are also not included in the tally.

(Cont.)

In any event, all-in-all I tallied 77 flag officers and found that of those 77, there were 14 I'd consider good, 51 neutral, and 12 bad. You can read my full tally and reasoning for each rating here:

pastebin.com/R30mdSR4

This means that about 15% of the admirals we've seen or heard about were bad eggs (or, in other words, for every corrupt, murderous, scheming menace to society there are four or five more who are just ordinary work-a-brass, and one more who's a genuinely good person). Of these, less than half (namely Jameson, Satie, Leyton, West, and Cartwright) did any "grandiose" villany. The rest mostly just did illegal or immoral shit while doing what they felt was best for the Federation, which happens in every military. This means that about one-in-twenty Starfleet admirals are outright villains. Make of that what you will.

Funnily enough, TOS of all things might actually have the highest proportion of "good guy" flag officers, given the high ratio of good-to-bad commodores. I might do a second breakdown by series later on.

In any event, feel free to interpret and discuss these findings however you'd prefer. Personally I would suggest that the situation with the Starfleet brass, whilst by no means acceptable, is a lot less invariably corrupt than people tend to think it is, and you could get away with weeding it rather than burning it to the ground and starting over. There's a REASONABLE chance the admiral who gave you your last set of mission orders isn't setting you up to get screwed over...

(Cont.)

Note that of these 77 ratings, there are five I'd consider "controversial" and worthy of further discussion with a view to perhaps altering their rating if you guys generally agree that it's warranted:

Decker: Poor Matt Decker. He lost his crew in one of the worst ways possible and thereby became a defacto antagonist. And yet, although perhaps you guys disagree, I find that hard to hold against him and feel inclined to say he was still a good man overall.

Dougherty: Definitely not good, but you could argue either way as to whether he was bad or merely neutral. I opted to give him the benefit of the doubt on the ground that he stayed within the bounds of what the Federation Council authorized him to do.

Toddman: You could argue his order to Eddington to sabotage the Defiant isn't bad enough to rate him as bad. I wasn't convinced.

West: A special case. Undeniably a villain, but do you think I should expunge him from the tally entirely on the grounds that he was referred to as "Colonel" all the time despite wearing an admiral's rank insignia?

Nechayev: I expect this one will generate the most discussion by far. She's very morally ambiguous and I genuinely did not know where best to put her, so I oped for neutral.

"Commodore" is less a rank and more a title for a Captain on another Captain's ship.

Nechayev was a hard-ass but that was really her worst trait. In terms of her actual actions and views she was more of a "work-a-brass" doing her job and looking after the Federation. She did anticipate Picard's moral objections to removing the natives and had already brought them up with the Federation Council, unsuccessfully, and she was optimistic about the Maquis listening to reason, which was naive but also showed she wasn't a total bitch.

As for Satie, while she was absolutely the bad guy of that episode, the whole point of that episode was how easy it is for otherwise respectable people to give in to paranoia and fear. While I'd still label her "bad", I wouldn't lump her in with people like Leyton or Cartwright, who went so far as to try to fight the Federation itself to impose their ideals.

Yeah, Nechayev belongs in the neutral category. She was all business all the time and didn't really like Picard, yet at the same time didn't go out of her way to put him down or insult him, and even put him in charge of a small fleet to chase down Borg (and this leads into another argument as to why Picard should have been promoted to Commodore or Fleet Captain but I digress) . Picard did try and get friendly with her using snacks and I don't remember how that turned out. She also briefly appeared on DS9, though seemed to have a better relationship with Sisko.

Dougherty was shit through and through. Federation Council or not, he was going against the Prime Directive and directly interfering with what he thought was a primitive species. Even if he successfully moved them to another planet, they'd have figured out something was up eventually when they advanced enough to realize they weren't related to anything on the planet. How the fuck do you come to terms with that? "Yeah we stole your homeworld because I wanted to live forever." However, the Baku turned out to be space hippies squatting on a planet that didn't belong to them anyways, but again, that's another argument.

I'd argue that Matt Decker was a good guy, everything he did was in the best interest of Starfleet and the nearby colonies,he HAD to stop that thing at ALL costs. He was fucked up enough from the first attempt that it got in the way, but he backed down eventually.

It's the lowest flag officer rank (replaced by Rear Admiral, lower half in the TNG era). Decker and Wesley commanded the Constellation and Lexington (respectively) outright and most of the rest commanded starbases or other installations.

That actually should've read "work-a-day brass". In any case, I guess you'd also conclude that Nechayev is neutral then?

Yeah, I'd label Nechayev as neutral. Bitchy, but not outright bad.

To be honest, I can even see an argument being made to rate her as good, as well as an argument for bad. Like I said, she's kind of ambiguous like that, so I put her as neutral pending further discussion.

While I see where you're going, Satie was about one jackboot short of a full inquisition, and I can't help but feel like Dolores Umbirdge was in part based on her character.

Questioning the Romulan kid, sure, that's an honest mistake coming from slight racism and natural antagonism against a horrible enemy.

Trying to put Picard on trial for having been assimilated by the Borg? "I've taken down bigger men than you Picard?" Yeah, no. You've gone full cartoon evil.

Well like I said, Satie was absolutely bad, but she was bad through paranoia over keeping the Federation safe. She didn't go so far as to go against the Federation itself like Leyton/West/Cartwright did.

I mean, that's only because she got stopped in time. The whole point of Picard's speech was that this was Step 1 of the full Inquisition. If Picard had been someone else she could rollover, she entirely would have done so.

She doesn't get bonus 'not evil' points just because she failed early.

Decker: He was a good man who broke in a bad situation. Making a mistake doesn't make you a bad person.

Dougherty: Difficult to say. I'd label him as neutral too given that he recanted towards the end. He clearly was doing what he felt was the best thing for the greater population, which may be misguided but comes from a good place.

Toddman: He didn't order sabotage, he ordered Eddington to stop the Defiant. That could have been with discussion or debate or sabotage, that was up to Eddington's discretion. Again, doing what he believed was right, even if misguided, doesn't make you an evil person.

West: Fuck that guy. Evil asf.

Nechayev: Neutral all the way. Being a bitch doesn't make you evil.

I'm a lawyer, so maybe that's why I see Satie as one of the worst of them.

The others wanted to save the Federation through violence. Satie would have destroyed everything that made it not the Romulan Star Empire.

I have more sympathy for Dougherty, who was trying to make everyone immortal. If that had actually been possible, he would have been entirely in the right.

Don't forget that Satie wasn't alone, she had her assistant interrogators and a mind rapist that were right behind her nodding to every word she said.

"West: Fuck that guy. Evil asf."

Of course. But like I said, my question is whether or not a "Colonel" belongs on a list of flag officers at all.

Well, no, it doesn't. Flag officers in the Federation are clearly understood as Admirals (and, when they used the rank, Commodores). Starfleet doesn't even use the rank of Colonel.

Also, to quote someone properly on Veeky Forums, highlight the text when you quote the post, that will auto-greentext it. Alternatively, manually do it with a >.

Well again, he wore an admiral's insignia, but was referred to as "Colonel", hence the ambiguity as to whether he should be on the list or not. You could certainly argue the dialogue takes precedent, I suppose, even if we have no idea what a "Starfleet Colonel" actually does.

Could be a specialist rank, like Director. (Sloan poses as a Director, wearing a Fleet Captain insignia in DS9). Seeing as he was one of the conspirators and was the one that presented the plan to invade Klingon space to save Kirk and McCoy, he might also be the head of a specialised sub-department of Starfleet Security. Some continuation of M.A.C.O. maybe?

IRL it was a swipe at Olly North and his involvement with the Contras

What would be a unique way that a species could communicate by? For example, the Opterans in the STA adventure book communicate via Tachyon emissions and light shows.

Via sensory link, na'vi style.

By a constant stream of phoenominally bad language, racial slurs and spitting that nobody can decipher apart from the Australian Chief of Security who can't see what the problem is.

>Sir, we've made first contact!
>Excellent. What are they like?
>They keep thrusting their ponytails at our heads. We had to stun one that jumped at Smithers.
>Is Smithers alright?
>No he's quite dead.
>Excellent. Commendations all around. Bring me the hottest looking alien as well.

Australia pls

Colonel is roughly the equivalent to a navy captain. So I’d say he’s not a flag officer, but a specialist officer in a separate branch.
>Deputy Director of Internal Affairs
>Captain of Engineering
>Chief of Starfleet Medical
>Colonel of ________

>>Captain of Engineering
>>Chief of Starfleet Medical
Note that these are both actually normal ranks in Starfleet. Non-command branches can have captain ranked officers (example: Admiral Toddman was Operations) and the head of Starfleet Medical is virtually always holds the rank of admiral (example: Admiral Leonard McCoy was head of Starfleet Medical).

We know nothing about Internal Affairs other than that they exist but I wouldn't be surprised if they held normal ranks as well with different position names (i.e. a deputy director would be a commander or captain or something).

tl;dr: rank and position are not the same thing and not mutually exclusive.

So some of my group started writing Officer’s Logs at the beginning and at the end of our games at times. Seeing as they are pretty good so far, would folks mind if I on occasion pushed them up here instead of recapping our games?

Well, Schlock Mercenary Addresses that pretty well!
Galstandard West: Standard Oxygen-breather vocal speech.

Galstandard Peroxide: Standard for water-breathers, complex mix of audible and gestural syntax. Celeschul "diplobrats" often learn it first, and carry over habits from it into GS West.
schlockmercenary.com/2010-02-28

Galstandard Brown is complex chemical emissions.
schlockmercenary.com/2018-03-04

East and Eight are the other known types, but not sure if they've been described yet.

Sounds fine to me. My GM usually has one of us write one to start a game off as a recap and to get us going with whatever we're doing that episode.

Neato. I’ll do that then.

"Chief" is a position, not a rank in that context. You can be Chief of Staff in a Brigade, Chief of Operations, etc. Or, for example, the Army Chief of Staff is a 4-star and answers to the President.

Naval enlisted ranks have, at E-7-E9, Chiefs as well. O'Brien is a Senior Chief Petty Officer, or E-8 equivalent, but by dint of the Engineering corps on DS9 being entirely Enlisted he was default given the normally senior officer position of Chief of Operations.

Why didn’t Dukat just have her get a nose job?

1: She didn't seem to want to hide who she was.
2: It wouldn't have hidden the fact that she was a bastard daughter and the result of cheating on his wife while away leading the occupation.

Because he prefers handjobs.

Also, reminder that all of her Cardassian features were muted.

Attached: latest[1].jpg (775x692, 35K)

Attached: strangebefellows_089.jpg (707x530, 81K)

Do we ever see what un-irradiated Malon look like?

>pastebin.com/R30mdSR4

Fascinating.

Seriously, this is a pretty interesting read and analysis. Good job.

Why is Starfleet so cucked by Cardassia during the early stage of DS-9?

Because the Cardies were taking advantage of the UFP's own softness.

and Damar murdered her.

Bajor is far from Federation space and very near to Cardassia. If the Cardassians decided to retake Bajor after the discovery of the Wormhole, then Starfleet could take weeks to send a suitable taskforce to try and retake the system. Sisko has to walk a fine line between letting the Cardassians away with murder and pissing them off enough to start another shooting war when he knows he doesn't have the firepower or the support to win that fight.

Attached: cardassian union.jpg (1246x810, 1.18M)

Because the Federation has more important threats to deal with than a bunch of arrogant idiots who get curbstomped by a fucking Nebula and get an entire fleet held hostage to one shuttle carrying mines.

That's all good as far as it goes, butI thought Cardassia itself doesn't have the frepower to win a standup/knock down fight with the Federation either and they know it. So surely Sisko knowing that should be able to to more spoonhead slapping than he actually does.

Was Niggsko actually a terrible choice for such a delicate position which required a much more assertive officer.

They don't communicate, they just assume anyone they would tell anything to knows the thing they need to say.

>he knows he doesn't have the firepower or the support to win that fight.
Starfleet easily has the firepower. Sisko merely lacks support from Starfleet Command. Once that comes in later in the show we see the Cardies get a lot quieter about provoking DS9.

>Cardassia itself doesn't have the frepower to win a standup/knock down fight with the Federation either and they know it
It's the same negotiating position Hitler used: "give me your piece of toast or I'll blow my brains out all over your nice suit." On one hand, they have much, much more to lose, on the other, a piece of toast is much cheaper than a dry cleaning bill, and dealing with the cops will be a pain in the ass. That the piece of toast is in fact a nugget of gold makes keeping it and not having the Cardies brainkakke all over you becomes a much finer balance.

I'm playing in a LUG-rules game and I think I accidentally made a That Guy character. The crew needed a security officer so I made a brawler type, but it's my first time playing in this system and I kinda neglected to put hardly any points into things like ship combat. Instead, I can soak all the damage and punch the hell outta things.

If I play the character as written, it doesn't fit into even like a general Star Trek vibe, and I don't want to derail the group. Any tips or people from the shows I can take rp inspiration from?

And I wouldn’t be surprised if there some cardssians that naturally have more delicate/ less pronounced features.

But regardless it’s nothing that some very easy to do cosmetic surgery couldn’t fix.
1) maybe when she got older, but not when she was first rescued. She would have done absolutely anything she was told.
2) the bigger part of his public disgrace was because she was half Bajoren. They pretty much emphasized that this was the reason his commission was stripped.

And if he really wanted to he could have had her stashed away somewhere without publicly acknowledging that she I his daughter.

Anyone one of these choices seem like the sort of prudent decision making a public official would do.

Sisko was chosen as Station Commander when it was going to be a shitty refurbished mining station orbiting Bajor, which was an impoverished backwater centuries away from ever joining the Federation, if it ever managed to advance that far in the first place. Further, I’m guessing that it was kind of going around that he was planning on retiring anyway as he repeatedly suggests in the pilot.

The wormhole screwed up everyone’s plans; the Cardassians wanted Bajor again but bad (remember after they left it they’d kind of strip-mined and devestated it’s infrastructure so it was useless to them then), the Federation wanted to make sure they couldn’t get it, and Bajor went from being a dead-end retirement posting to a galactic hot spot.
Likely they would have put an actual Captain in Sisko’s chair, but his position as a religious icon of some significance that the Federation didn’t really quite understand yet meant that removing him might destabilize an already volatile situation further, so after a year or so of dealing with vastly greater responsibilities quite admirably (the UFP would actually have ZERO claim on the Wormhole if he hadn’t thought and acted so quickly, and Bajor would have been a political failure story), they just gave him the fourth pip rather then risk fucking things up.

Needlessly antagonising people it took 40 years to make a (tenuous) peace treaty with is a bad idea. Especially when they think the wormhole might just be worth fighting for.
This is also only a year or 2 after Wolf 359, a serious ass-kicking for Starfleet. Without the Akiras, Defiants and Sabres of the anti-borg fleet fully developed yet, Starfleet is spread thin and opportunists like the Cardassians might feel that this is their best opportunity to strike at Starfleet in the last 4 decades.

In the Bajor system. Once an engagement begins, Bajor is crushed in short order while Starfleet engages Cardassia along the DMZ. Retaking Bajor is a serious pain in the ass because Cardassia can reinforce their forces in Bajor much quicker than Starfleet can.

So Sisko's realpolitik is that if Cardassia invades, he and all his crew are killed or routed long before a relieving force arrives.
Bear in mind I'm talking about the situation in the first 2 seasons of DS9. Once the Dominion and Klingons get involved (and once Starfleet starts arming up DS9 with proper defences and the Defiant) it's a whole different affair.

After Sisko beefs up the station’s defenses DS9 can tear apart half of a Cardassian invasion force before they even GET to Bajor, so even directly attacking it was a risk then ended up never taking again.

>the UFP would actually have ZERO claim on the Wormhole if he hadn’t thought and acted so quickly
Reminder that *Kira* was the one who moved the station to the Wormhole. Sisko was chatting up le Prophets at that point.

>prudent decision making
>from the guy that nearly got killed by his own civil protection program because Cardassian High Command knows he's a coward
>from the guy that took time out of his busy schedule of being on the run from both the Dominion and Federation to call up a Bajoran officer he fancied, just so he could say her mom fucked like a pornstar
>from the guy that's in this situation to begin with because he can't stop falling in love with Bajoran women

Correct, but it’s technically his command and she’s a liaison officer so Starfleet’s gonna see it as his win because they’re pretty far from the events as it happened.
Not that Sisko wouldn’t give Kira credit, I’m just thinking that the UFP would just say she’s an ex-freedom fighter (meaning not a professional soldier) serving an alarmingly unstable government which actually has the word “provisional” in it’s name, so they thought she kind of might not matter in the scheme of things. After a few seasons and her siding with Starfleet and serving admirably under Sisko as first officer, I can see them giving her a lot more respect since she likely exceeded their expectations by several times over.

DS9 before the wormhole got discovered seemed kind of like a shit posting for a Starfleet Officer; O’Brien probably just asked for any station posting so he could have the stability needed to raise his family and they have him the first available slot, Sisko was kind of openly on his way out and hadn’t been the same since Wolf 359, the first officer due to legal restrictions couldn’t even be trained up to Starfleet standards, the local security chief was a total unknown in almost every sense of the word, and only Bashir, a highly talented but wet-behind-the-eats idealist who wanted the posting because it was “the frontier” and he had an overomantized idea of what that would be like.

DS9’s crew weren’t Starfleet’s Best and Brightest like the Enterprise-D was, they were a burnt-out Commander and a bunch of guys who probably didn’t want to be there along with some randos from Bajor, but they actually managed to make that shit work out despite a task that they were CLEARLY not initially equipped or suited for.

>a Bajoran officer he fancied, just so he could say her mom fucked like a pornstar
Wait, what?

Cardassian’s def have earned that arrogance reputation (though honestly less so then the Romulans, who are so arrogant they don’t really feel the need to prove it in lengthy debates like the Cardies seem to), but Dukat was an egomaniac by even their standards according to pretty much everyone who worked with him.

He's referring to when Major Kira discovered that her mother was one of Dukat's comfort women on Empok Nor. Dukat was known to creep on Kira during the Dominion Occupation on DS9

I don't disagree, but that never got on the show.

Oh riiight. God what a dumbass.
Either the Cardassian Union has a really high tolerance for morons in it’s ranks or they just don’t have enough qualified people in the first place.

Sorry m8. Ducats ego aside it really just comes off as poor writing.

Dukat aided the Depta Council's coup on the Cardassian Central Command, so that got him in their good graces. Later on he had a backroom deal with the Dominion that installed him as the "El Presidente" of the Union. What surprised me is that he wasn't sent on a suicide mission by the Obsidian Order and/or Central Command given their disdain for him.

/pol/ gone fishing again. Any one got some better bait for him?

>What surprised me is that he wasn't sent on a suicide mission by the Obsidian Order and/or Central Command given their disdain for him.
He was. Sisko went and saved him. And right after they had pinned all of the True Way's activities on him, as well.

he really was the Tomalok of DS9

>tachyon surge four hundred meters to port forward quarter
>Romulan Warbird decloaks and buzzes the E-D
>hails as it passes, audio only
>"I fucked your mum m8"
>cloaks

Don't play him as a boxer. Let him be a martial artist. Go Zen, don't be a slavering berzerker. If he doesn't have good skills for the bridge, make him chief of security instead of the tac officer. He knows his weaknesses and delegates. A good officer can put his ego aside and let his subordinates do their jobs when he can't.

Or say fuck it, have him talk about restoring the MACO division, and beat the shit out of any filthy spoonhead or alt right Vulcan wannabe who looks at you crosswise. And when you're at tactical just hammer that button for torpedoes.

Wasn't he assigned to an unescorted freighter in the middle of the Klingon incursion?

That kind of backfired, because he was such a pathetic target that the Klingons were ignoring him.

>Let him be a martial artist
Was gonna post something very similar so, This.

Yeah, that was after it was discovered he had a bastard daughter. Cardassians place huge emphasis on family and it's one of the most important aspects of their society (after the state, of course). Dukat went and broke that family in a very public and embarrassing way. Te Detapa Council dropped him like hot shit after the fact.

Yep.

4 years after Wolf 359. And 6 by the time the spoonheads start putting the full court press on Niggsko.

You forgot the science officer whose symbiont's last host was Sisko's mentor, was responsible for the Khitomer Accords, and by all accounts was an outstanding (if a bit publicly strange in her private life) officer.

>they were a burnt-out Commander and a bunch of guys who probably didn’t want to be there
Miles O'Brien specifically requested a transfer to DS-9, which was approved because of his knowledge of Cardassian technology. As did Julian "Rapegang" Groomshir. And Groomshir is specifically stated as being the top of starfleet medical for his year at the acedemy and widely regarded as a prodigy. Jadzia Dax was also a top scientist, although she apparently asked to be posted there because of Curzon's friendship with Niggsko.

So by various means, DS9 actually had a better command staff than any starfleet ship barring the enterprise. Better than what was offically assigned to Voyager even.

Bitch pls. Niggsko has been Niggsko for nearly 10 years now on Veeky Forums.

Starfleet takes over DS9 in 2369, 2 years after Wolf-359

This is literally the first time I've ever seen the term, and a Google search turns up 0 results.

Fuck off, /pol/.

>Niggsko.
Oh fuck off already, shitbird.

, Maybe not feed the troll like the rest of this fucking cesspool of a board does with their trolls.

>Implying silence doesn't embolden Neo-Neo-Nazis

Not implying that, but AM implying attention feeds trolls. Besides which, you can’t do fuck-all to actually silence him unless you can both trace his posting location and own a gun.
You can just say mean things on the internet at him and call him names, which is precisely as useless as it sounds.

I made a bunch of legitimate points in a non-contentious manner in a friendly discussion. Why can't you address them rather than freaking out over my tongue in cheek references?
I don't see why calling Niggsko Niggsko is making you so angry.
Make a harmless joke and you get called /pol/ and probably reported and people attempt to ostracise you. Your guys hate is out of control.

For some reason I remembered Niggsko saying it had been 4 years since his wife died when he took over the station. I might be remembering a later episode though.

Fuck off, /pol/.

Did you include the admirals who were being mind controlled by the parasitic jews?

Attached: jew in his natural form.jpg (1440x1080, 774K)

Fuck off, /pol.

Leave me alone if you can't discuss star trek things good naturedly and politely.
The left's hate is seriously out of control.

Also, bear in mind the star trek writers were pretty /pol/-tier themselves. Ferengis were basically space jews, right down to the exaggerated facial features.

>The left's hate
Eat shit and die.

Fuck off, /pol/.

Just make him Vulcan. They’re crazy strong but they don’t bring it up unless you try to fight them.

It seemed to me though that the spoonheads overplayed their hand quite a lot, and that Niggsko could have called them much more often than he actually did. Also the concessions made to the spoonheads in the treaty were ridiculous. Starfleet hung their colonists out to dry, the treaty was the most humiliating cucking imaginable.
The maqui did literally nothing wrong.

Fuck off, /pol/.

Idiot.