"Who Are You?" and "What Do You Want?": The BABYLON 5 / STAR TREK Comparison T (1 Viewer)

[Rex Bachmann]

Mike Broadman wrote:

karma[/I]]Quote:

There are believable differences, and there are unbelievable differences that are mere contrivances of the writers, who ill consider the implications of their imaginings. This is one of the latter, and it has much company among the creations of popular Hollywood "scifi". Beings that are otherwise so much like humans in behavior and appearance would not (plausibly) diverge in one aspect of so important a common interspecies characteristic. This is like having stories where humans meet aliens who look practically just like them and speak a language, as they do, but then have no word for 'water'. They're humanoid but don't have a word for 'water' (and, by inference, water, itself)? Naaaaaaaaaah!

 

[Mike Broadman]

I understand it, Hindus believe in re-incarnation, not resurrection.

That's what I meant, it was a flub.

Re: Minbari War, I'm pretty sure that the decision was agreed upon by the entire Council, including the three representing the Warrior Caste, but it was probably at the urging of the Religious. Assuming they make decisions by majority vote (which is a valid one given Delenn's re-assembling it the way she it later), the decisions to surrender would have been possible even without the Warrior Caste's consent. Either way, they didn't tell anybody, including Neroon.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Roberto Carlo wrote:

This whole issue was the subject of at least one feature article in, I believe, The Christian Science Monitor during the 3rd or 4th season of the original first-run syndication of the program. Mr. Straczynski was interviewed on the issue and said pretty much what you have said here. He also said, if I remember correctly, that science fiction is nowadays about the only medium in popular filmic form by which to explore and examine such themes and questions any longer.

 

[Roberto Carlo]

Rex, thanks for the lead and info on the CSM piece. I'll look for it on Nexis.

 

[CaptDS9E]

This thread is like a encylopedia

 

[Rex Bachmann]

.

It belatedly dawned on me that I had neglected to point out the glaring contradiction to this stricture. In The Undiscovered Country, the Chancellor's daughter, Azetbur, succeeds him as head of the High Council upon his death. This anamoly goes unexplained internally. (In reality, the Star Trek movie scripters and the Star Trek tv scripters were, literally, "on different pages" at the time.)

 

[Philip Verdieck]

Has anyone forwarded the URL of this thread to JMS?

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Things I should've said: Addenda and Corrigenda
[Most of this was written months ago, but has never before been posted. With the reäwakening of interest in Babylon 5 due to the DVD release of the show, I thought it would be of interest and relevance to finish off the previous conversation; not without "spoilers", though]
Mike Broadman wrote (post #13):
[QUOTE=

 

[Paul McElligott]

Earth Force and Starfleet
In B5, Earth Force is purely a military entity while performing some diplomatic functions when necessary.
Trek postulates Starfleet as the Federation's primary diplomatic/scientific arm. They also seem to have a secondary peacekeeping function, sort of like the UN's "KFOR" in Kosovo. Of course when the situation dictates, Starfleet is fully ready to open up a can of interstellar whoop-ass.
Earth Force has a clearly defined ground force (GROPOS) while Starfleet must have one but it is never really dwealt upon in that universe. Most references to the Starfleet "Marines" are fannish extensions from the pre-TNG era.
Earth Force has a combined Army/Navy command structure. Major Ryan and Commander Ivanova serve in the same chain of command. The B5 role playing game postulates that your rank depends on what branch of Earth Force you first joined. If you start in the GROPOS, you will always have "Army" ranks even if you transfer to the fleet. I have no idea if this is canonical but it begs a few questions. How do you differentiate between "Army" captains (equivilent of Navy lieutenants) and "Navy" captains (equivilent of Army colonels)?
Also all Staff-level Earth Force officers appear to be generals. I don't remember seeing any admirals. The fleet must not be the path to take for advancement.
Starfleet ranks appears to be entirely based on Naval tradition.
Earth Force has visible enlisted ranks and non-commissioned officers (GROPOS, Mr. Garibaldi)
Starfleet appears to have exactly one non-commissioned officer, Miles O'Brien.
Earth Force has only three distinct classes of capital ships through the entire series: Omega-class destroyers, Hyperion-class heavy cruisers and whatever class that was that looked like an Omega but didn't have the rotating gravity section.
TNG-era Star Trek seemed to introduce new classes or variations of existing classes whenever required by an episode.
Starfleet's variety is more in line with modern navies but Earth Force is probably a lot more realistic for a space-going navy. All that variety gets expensive. You would try to save money by re-using existing designs whenever possible.
Earth Force has a Joint Chiefs of Staff like the modern American military, which answer directly to the President of Earth Alliance.
Starfleet has a nebulous body known as Starfleet command, whose relationship to the civilian authority is not terribly clear, but when can probably assume it's similar to modern western militaries in the absence of any other evidence.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Paul McElligott wrote (post #49):


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In B5, Earth Force is purely a military entity while performing some diplomatic functions when necessary.

Trek postulates Starfleet as the Federation's primary diplomatic/scientific arm. . . . Of course when the situation dictates, Starfleet is fully ready to open up a can of interstellar whoop-ass.





Let me guess: you're military or ex-military? . . . . Anyway, . . . .

Roddenberry's denials and evasions notwithstanding, Starfleet, no matter what else it may do or be, is the military arm of the United Federation of Planets. Kirk and company were out on the frontier to protect the colonies and enforce Federation law every bit as much as, if not more than, to explore.

In both B5 and ST: DS9, the station head has the position of military governor, and, contradictorily, acts as Earth's diplomatic liaison in the everyday dealing with the non-Earth populations and their problems as well, in both administrative and diplomatic functions. These two roles may at times overlap, but they are really separate (and can be conflictual). Particularly, in the case of Babylon 5, which is supported by governments other than Earth's, why would those other governments want the Earth Alliance military to have a say over their citizens, whereas they themselves have all contributed only diplomatic representatives to the Babylon 5 Council? Seems like a mighty unequal relationship, to me. On DS 9, of course, the Bajorans have a military attaché, Major/Colonel Kira, to balance out matters and see to Bajoran interests.

Note that it has not always been so in ST. Space station K-7 of "The Trouble with Tribbles" is governed by what one must take to be a civilian administrator, one who has to deal with both the military (in the persons of Kirk and the Klingon captain, Koloth) and the government bureaucrat (Mr. Nils Barris).


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Earth Force has a clearly defined ground force (GROPOS) while Starfleet must have one but it is never really dwealt upon in that universe. Most references to the Starfleet "Marines" are fannish extensions from the pre-TNG era.





Must it? I always thought the whole Star Fleet military-scientific organization to be very poorly thought-out and hardly adequately developed. I don't remember any clear evidence of divisions of ground forces vs. shipboard forces being presented to us. In episodes such as "The Siege of AR-558" and "Nor the Battle to the Strong", it seems as though the same old personnel that man the ships are being sent to do the "grunt work", as well. (And they all wear those jumpsuits, no armor, nothing.) Maybe, I missed something.


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Starfleet ranks appears to be entirely based on Naval tradition.





Yeah, except the "Star Fleet Corps of Engineers", mentioned in The Wrath of Khan (and elsewhere?). All of Trek and most of many other space shows are stuck with the traditional language metaphors that equate outer space with the Earth's oceans, and travel through it with sea travel:

ship, vessel, navigate, fleet, astern, port, admiral, voyage, shore leave, etc., etc., etc.

This unfortunate mis-analogy lends the science of the fiction a sort of unrealistic sheen, especially in creating the impression of equivalence of the separate types of transport and of the distances involved. J. Michael Straczynski, B 5's creator, has just been a little more careful in his planning-out of the course of the story and elements, that's all.

And, as far as "naval" ranking goes, you will remember that TOS featured not only "admirals", but "commodores", as well (e.g., in "The Menagerie", "The Galileo Seven", "The Doomsday Machine", and "The Deadly Years"). So, yeah, they were really into it.

My question is, are there, or have there ever been, real (official) "commodores" in the U.S. Navy? And, if so, what role have they served (as opposed to "admirals")?

Both Benjamin Sisko and Jeffrey Sinclair, leaders of their respective space stations, start off, at least, as "commanders". (Coïncidence???) It seems that "commander" is below the rank of captain in Star Fleet, but above the rank of "lieutenant commander", judging from Sisko's "promotion" during the course of DS 9. (A captain gets his own ship; in this case, the Defiant.) I'm not clear where the Earth Force rankings would put it.



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Earth Force has visible enlisted ranks and non-commissioned officers (GROPOS, Mr. Garibaldi).

Starfleet appears to have exactly one non-commissioned officer, Miles O'Brien.






Not quite. Attend more closely, when you have a chance, to the DS 9 episodes that feature scenes with Miles O'Brien on duty during the Dominion War arc. According to Terry Erdmann's excellent Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, the show's writers tried to establish the fact that most of the engineers aboard the Defiant and DS 9 are, in fact, "non-coms", as you all say; a group that forms its own little "society" within the Star Fleet service. Note particularly in this regard, the recurring role of assistant engineer "Quique"(?) Muniz (played by F.J. Rio). The character is killed off in "The Ship" (#100), but also appears in "Starship Down" (#79) and "Hard Time" (#91), where his closeness to O'Brien is quite evident, and no accident.



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Earth Force has only three distinct classes of capital ships through the entire series: Omega-class destroyers, Hyperion-class heavy cruisers and whatever class that was that looked like an Omega but didn't have the rotating gravity section.





There used to be a "Hyperion" Webpage that listed all of the ships of the Babylon 5 universe. It seems now to be down or gone for good.



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TNG-era Star Trek seemed to introduce new classes or variations of existing classes whenever required by an episode.

Starfleet's variety is more in line with modern navies but Earth Force is probably a lot more realistic for a space-going navy. All that variety gets expensive. You would try to save money by re-using existing designs whenever possible.





You do understand that the original series showed less variety because the producers had a whole lot less money to spend on design and rendering of these things, don't you? In "Bread and Circuses", Captain Merik tells the psuedo-Roman proconsul, Claudius Marcus, that he, Merik, had failed to win the captaincy of a "starship" (Constellation class), but, instead, only got to captain a lesser type of spaceship. We never get to see such ships, but the implications are there every now and then that such do still exist in the fleet.

As far as "realism" is concerned, one has to ask oneself this: Do they have competing services and command structures, full of people demanding that their particular service branches each have their own custom-designed weaponry and vehicles, just as the U.S. military has today? Bureaucratic competition is all too realistic, I'm afraid. Except for the research and espionage divisions, to the best of my recollection it has always been implied that Star Fleet has a unitary command structure.



Quote:



Earth Force has a Joint Chiefs of Staff like the modern American military, which answer directly to the President of Earth Alliance.

Starfleet has a nebulous body known as Starfleet command, whose relationship to the civilian authority is not terribly clear, but when can probably assume it's similar to modern western militaries in the absence of any other evidence.





As far as I can see, Earthforce is just a wholesale mimic, structurally and otherwise, of the U.S. military. (Most blatantly, B5 capital ships (as well as the Babylon 5 station itself) come with fighter ships---small, swift, and maneuverable one-man vessels armed with weaponry (the EA versions are called star-fighters or star-furies, depending on their atmosphere-faring capabilities)---on the model of U.S. fighter jets and aircraft carriers.) This force reports to the president of Earth, instead of the president of the United States, but that's about it for differences. Star Fleet command is the central and hierarchical crest of the Federation military-exploratory force. Most often, its commands seem to come straight from the Federation Council, rather than from the president of the Federation (e.g., Jaresh-Inyo in DS 9 episodes "Home Front"/"Paradise Lost" or the unnamed president of ST VI: The Undiscovered Country), who seems to have much more limited power than, say, a President Clark (even before his coup).


In a "global" comparison of the two forces, one should keep in mind that the separate forces serve two different, but similar masters: one a rather loose interstellar (and multi-species) constitutional alliance with many competing constituencies to satisfy, and the other a "uni-special" (i.e., made up of one species) government, also constitutional (for much of the story), with (in theory) much more social and cultural cohesion behind it (but, see above post #27: "Is Earth united?"). Of course, by story's end, that government has itself partially given way to a multi-species alliance, where the integration of "Earth Force", if there is any, is not at all clear.

 

[JayV]

Starfleet appears to have exactly one non-commissioned officer, Miles O'Brien.

No, he was a commissioned officer. A LTJG or a LT, I believe. He was called Chief O'Brian because he was Chief of Transporter Ops or some such nonsense. But he was no more an NCO than the US Navy's CNO (Chief of Naval Operations).

But your statement is still correct -- there was an episode where some guy was on trial and stated his name and rank as "Crewman 1st Class" Grabasandwich or whatever.

Commodore: In the really old days, advancement in the RN -- once you made post captain -- was simply a matter of time. When someone retired or died, everyone moved up one in the List. This was the only way to get promoted once you were a post captain. Commodore is a temporary courtesy rank used to designate a captain in command of a squadron.

After toying with using commodore as a permanent rank for a while (filling the gap between Captain and Rear Admiral), the US Navy finally ditched it. That gap is filled by another Rear Admiral rank. Advancement now goes Captain --> Rear Admiral (Lower Half) --> Rear Admiral (Upper Half).

Where does the upper/lower half nonsense come from? It's a reference to the Navy List used by the RN in the old days -- upper half of the list and lower half of the list.

-j

 

[JayV]

As to "Commander," yes, the rank is above LTCDR and below Captain. But like "Chief," don't rely on how someone is addressed. A Commander in command of a vessel will be referred to as "Captain" while in command on the vessel -- a courtesy rank. And, naturally, someone might be referred as a commander who isn't a comander in rank (say, a Commander-In-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet).

As to realism and a unified force structure -- there are examples of both in real life, but there is a lot of evidence that a unified force structure can cripple your warfighting ability.

-j

 

[Tony Whalen]

After toying with using commodore as a permanent rank for a while (filling the gap between Captain and Rear Admiral), the US Navy finally ditched it.

True, but the Canadian Navy (which I used to serve in) still, to my knowledge, has Commodore as an active rank, and that rank is considered a flag officer. Ranks for (Canadian) Naval flag officers are:

• Admiral
• Vice-Admiral
• Rear-Admiral
• Commodore

It's interesting to note that while TOS used the Commodore rank fairly often, it was never used after that. Meantime, the US Navy used it, but then got rid of it. Coincidence? Probably not...
Edited to add: Almost forgot. Enterprise recently had a flashback with their resident Admiral, in which he appeared as a Commodore. Interesting... perhaps Starfleet, like the US, ditched the rank sometime between TOS and TNG?

 

[JayV]

His uniform in TNG did usually feature what appeared to be a Lt. ranking, but it has been established that he is a CPO on several occasions.

Tony, this rings a bell. I seem to remember someone saying that he started out as a JO, was referred to as Chief as a title, not a rank, and then later the show decided to make him a noncom.

Can you confirm or refute this?

Although, come to think of it, it really doesn't matter. Either way, I wonder who actually gets the work done in Starfleet (or how the onboard therapist got qual-ed as the OOD).

 

[Paul McElligott]

Rex Bachman wrote:

Let me guess: you're military or ex-military?

No, I just watch too much Mail Call on the History Channel.

 

[Tony Whalen]

Either way, I wonder who actually gets the work done in Starfleet (or how the onboard therapist got qual-ed as the OOD).

Well everyone knows that it's the grunts and noncoms who actually WORK for a living. (Can you tell I wasn't an officer? *chuckle*) As for the onboard therapist, that was actually addressed. I believe that there is a precident in place for medical staff to be granted ranks up to Lt. Commander, but beyond that they must get training of some sort. Troi took some form of "command training" to get the rank of Commander.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

(post #50):
[QUOTE=

 

[Paul McElligott]

That's was inadequately phrased by me. I was referring to Star Trek captains only. And, of course, I should have said that, since he gets his own ship, he is promoted to captain, not the other way around.

Actually, Sisko received command of the Defiant at the beginning of season three but wasn't promoted to Captain until the last episode of the season. Obviously, SF didn't have a problem with a "mere" Commander being in change of the ship and the station for a full year.

 

[Mike Broadman]

various members of the warrior caste---and I believe she speaks of the warrior-caste representatives in the Grey Council--- surrendered reluctantly, committed suicide, or rebelled, respectively.

No, the warrior caste rebellions were not in the Grey Council. One warrior leader, Sinoval, committed suicide, and he was not on the Council, nor was the commander of that renegade ship that appeared in one episode.

Re: clan and caste:
I always took "clan" to mean it the same way it is used in Scotland, or maybe like a tribe, where it is familial or communal thing. Caste is about lifestyle or "career"- warrior, worker, religious. However, it definitely seems like every clan is exclusive to a caste. Lennier's clan is the Third Fane of Chudomo (sp?), which is a religious clan, and the Star Riders, which you mentioned, is a warrior caste clan.

 

[David Williams]

Actually, Sisko received command of the Defiant at the beginning of season three but wasn't promoted to Captain until the last episode of the season. Obviously, SF didn't have a problem with a "mere" Commander being in change of the ship and the station for a full year.

It would appear so, as Starfleet had Lt. Piersall in command of the U.S.S. Prometheus in the episode "Second Sight" (DS9 S2).
I'm guessing Wolf 359 did a number on the availability of higher-ranking officers. I mean, Commander Sisko, was supposedly in charge of the Defiant project at Utopia Planitia. I would think an Admiral would normally be in charge of such an important concern (defense against another Borg incursion).