Caltrops - Rants





	[quote name="Commander Tansin A. Darcos"][quote name="Last"]I recently went back and watched all the original Star Trek movies and they are largely shit by today's standards. Wrath of Khan was pretty good[/quote] <i>Wrath of Khan</i> is a strong enough story to stand not just as good Science Fiction, but as good fiction. Very hard for a Sci-Fi story to do; most of them use the sci-fi elements as a crutch. I mean, the famous Sci-Fi story <i>The Cold Equations</i> works as a great story where someone makes a tragic mistake that means they have to die. But, like with <i>Wrath of Khan</i>, you could redo <i>Cold Equations</i> as a different story in which it involves ships at sea or planes in air, rather than spaceships in vacuum. [quote]but the rest were just fucking godawful boring TV-movie-of-the-week stupid boring bullshit. Okay, I should clarify "stupid". The stories involved characters figuring out more shit than in the Abrams Treks, but they were still pretty pathetic examples a future paramilitary organization.[/quote] Someone once pointed out something that Carol Marcus lampshaded in <i>Khan</i>, and that is that <i>Star Fleet is not a Military Organization</i>. If you put <i>Star Trek</i>'s Federation up against <i>Star Wars</i>' Galactic Empire, the Empire will <i>not</i> strike back, the Empire will <i>kick the shit</i> out of the Federation! A true military has various classes of small to intermediate to advanced weapons. Star Fleet has small, and very big weaponry. The U.S. Military has small, to medium, to intermediate, to advanced weaponry, hell, they even had suitcase-sized nuclear weapons! The Galactic Empire has all sorts of small to medium to large weapons and shock troops. The Federation doesn't have these things. It's not a good example of a professional-class military. Hell, the SWAT team for any medium sized city in America is probably better equipped than your typical landing party on any Star Trek episode of any of the series. A group of four - including the ship's captain, typically a nono - go down to check on the non-response at Regula I and Saavik has to remind the captain that you can't send a flag officer down into a hostile area without armed escort. When Chief Gates of the LAPD went to make a (symbolic) arrest of one of the rioters after the Rodney King riots, you can bet the cops that were with him had more than mere sidearms, they certainly had rifles, possibly automatics, kevlar vests, and riot gear. What did the Star Fleet team have for the Regula I incident where something suspicious had happened? Hand lasers and parkas! [/quote]