Star Trek Reboot Universe: Brainstorm/Ideas

[evilchumlee]

I've been playing with my own take on Star Trek for awhile now, and I figured it could be fun to discuss some things if anyone was interested. My general rule is to try to keep all the names, places, events and such intact although circumstances can be different. Dates are also generally to be used, although exactly what they are can be fudged (for example, my idea for the Eugenics Wars has Kahn "from" 1996... he rose to power in 1992, the height of his power was 96, and the war ended around 2000).

I'm trying to keep the spirit of Trek intact, and this reboot is intended to "very close" but not quite. I want to flesh out some things, especially focusing on how the Federation and Starfleet works. The biggest change overall is that the there is a meta-story that connects everything from the 22nd century on about the Borg. They are THE Big Bad of the universe and begin to come into contact in the 22nd century. The Dominion is also tweaked quite a bit to be a bit more of an explicit "Anti-Federation".

One of my current things on my mind is Starfleet and the existence of other fleets/militaries. I definitely want Federation member worlds to still operate their own defense fleets and have a good amount of sovereignty, with the Federation being more akin the European Union.

I'm torn between keeping Starfleet as the monolithic organization in charge of everything, or potentially creating two differing organizations. In that circumstance, Starfleet would be closer the UN forces, fully integrated with Federation members and tasked largely with peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. The (name can be tweaked) Federation Defense Council would be Space NATO, there to organize the member worlds forces in mutual defense. I'm leaning towards the latter.

I definitely ALSO want Starfleet Marines, but i'm wavering on how they work. Either of my ideas here are somewhat similar, but they're either a full fledged sub-branch of Starfleet with their own command structure and all that, OR going with "monolith Starfleet", they're basically just a division within Starfleet proper. There's pros and cons to both.

I'm leaning towards Starfleet Marines as a sub-branch and the two organization system. My background for that is that at the formation of the Federation, EVERYTHING was a compromise and there was a fairly even split between the desire to have a strong, central government and more of a loose alliance. They get somewhere in the middle, and this extends to the question of a Federation military. The compromise is that member worlds can keep their own forces, but the Federation would ALSO have forces directly under the control of the Federation Council/President. Those forces would focus more on peacekeeping, humanitarian issues, exploration, etc. while the Defense Council focused on straight defense.

Earth was the most vocal in support of a stronger central government, and once the decision was made for the two organizations, Earth basically offered up Starfleet wholesale given that it was already performing very similar duties. The Andorians and Tellarites were happy to let Earth shoulder that burden, preferring to focus on their own fleets. The Vulcans supported both. After both the Xindi and Romulan Wars though, it was clear that even if there was to be separate military forces, Starfleet still needed a ground combat component and the Marines were born.

The early Federation Starfleet, being directly bolted on from Earth Starfleet, was still largely human led. To build up the Starfleet Marines sub-branch from scratch, they looked to their closest comparison in the United Earth Military Administration and Command Organization, recruit many of the earliest Marines directly from the MACO's (the rest staying in defense of Earth and integrated into the Defense Council). Given nearly all the earliest soldiers were MACO's, they imported the rank structure and much of the traditions along with them.

The Starfleet Marines wear essentially the same uniform as Starfleet, just with their own division coloring (with a few divisions within the Corps), rank insignia and badge. They also tend to carry on Earth military tradition with unit patches, usually on the left upper arm. While Starfleet eventually moved away from them, the Marines kept service ribbons and medals as part of their dress uniform.


Aside from the Marines, one divergent thing is the ENT-era. NX-01 exists as is, but Enterprise XCV-330 is in operation at the same time. NX-01 is Earth Starfleet, XCV-330 is US Space Force. United Earth is barely hanging on to authority at the time and there's differing opinions on how space should be handled. The Americans have the strongest national space assets and push hard to simply take over space operations for United Earth. Obviously, not everyone is happy about that. When Klaang crash lands on Earth, it becomes the do or die moment... the Vulcans suggest that, if Earth is going to go ahead and do this, it should be a united effort and suggest NX-01 Enterprise take the mission. The Captain of XCV-330 Enterprise makes a plea to the Vulcans, and they concede that a military ship might prove useful. Both ships go on the mission. NX-01 is faster and takes point, but XCV-330 is usually not far behind. ENT becomes "A Tale of Two Enterprises".

 

[Red_Tornado]

Kirk started as pikes first officer would be my idea in a reboot.

 

[hyperspacewizard]

One thing I want expanded on in Star Trek is the civilian sector like how do new colonies get made and how much access do normal everyday people have to holodecks and replicators? is there theme parks or maybe entire planets devoted to giant larp events? Can colonies decide on there own governments etc

say me and my buddies wanted to design and make our own spaceships but we weren’t part of starfleet how hard would that be?

stuff of that nature never really get explored very well in Star Trek

also what access do civilians have to weapons


With the marines would they have their own separate starships or would they be attached to starfleet vessels for transport if attached would they perform security on the vessel? I guess you could mimic how the us marines and navy interact?

 

[evilchumlee]

One thing I want expanded on in Star Trek is the civilian sector like how do new colonies get made and how much access do normal everyday people have to holodecks and replicators? is there theme parks or maybe entire planets devoted to giant larp events? Can colonies decide on there own governments etc

say me and my buddies wanted to design and make our own spaceships but we weren’t part of starfleet how hard would that be?

stuff of that nature never really get explored very well in Star Trek

That's definitely part of what I want to do here is really flesh things out.

So my general idea for how the Federation as a whole works is to look at how the European Union works. I think the Federation would be a very similar organization. A collection of mostly sovereign states that are bound by a set of common laws.

Colonies I think would mostly be a matter of member worlds. They colonize worlds as they would like, although certainly there would be some kind of Federation oversight. Earth may choose to make a colony, or Earth may be fairly laissez faire with colonies and allow its citizens to basically declare colonies on their own. There is a part of one of the Picard novels that deals with some colonies that aren't part of the Federation... I like that. I don't think that a member world colony is automatically a Federation member. They still have to go through the process, although with a member world's backing it should be streamlined. A colony might decide... they don't want to be in the Federation. Also acceptable.

So the answer to colonies is... it's complicated.

Holodecks and Replicators? I suppose it depends on era but I think we tend to largely talk about the TNG+ era. I would say that replicators are commonplace. By say, the 2340's, replicators are a common household appliance. Everyone has them. Holodecks I think are a bit more rare and regulated. They certainly have the capability to put them anywhere, but there are a ton of potential issues that might make them not suitable to have in ones home. Addiction, danger, etc. I'm thinking that holodecks are generally in a facility away from home. They're easily accessible. Of course there are theme parks!

Personal ships is an interesting one. In wanting to keep it as close to Prime Trek as possible while still being different and more fleshed out, I still want the generally socialistic vibe. There IS absolutely "money", but it probably more takes the form of a not-dystopian "social credit" system. You get more stuff based around your contributions to society. It's less hard money and more of a social currency. But functionally... it's almost indistinguishable from a capitalist society, except there is no "money makes money" type thing. You won't gain currency by having alot of currency and moving it around pushing papers. You won't gain through some kind of stock market. You gain currency by... contributing.

So as long as you have the "credit" to get the components or just wholesale buy a ship, that's cool. You can absolutely have your own ship.

also what access do civilians have to weapons

Limited, depending on context.

A civilian isn't going to be able to build a warship within the Federation. Most civilians probably won't have phasers laying around, but it depends. If you're living on Earth, no you will probably never hold a phaser. If you're on a frontier colony? Yes, you have access to more weapons due to need.

I do think that alot of this, however, would be up to the member worlds. Earth would be much more controlling of weaponry, while Andor may be more willing to let you have whatever you want. The Federation would probably have some sort of regulation overall, but I think alot of it depends on context.

If you're say, a human civilian and you want a ton of weapons and to build a warship... you can, but you're going to have to get away from Earth to do it.

With the marines would they have their own separate starships or would they be attached to starfleet vessels for transport if attached would they perform security on the vessel? I guess you could mimic how the us marines and navy interact?

I figured the Marines would be attached to Starfleet vessels.

They would have vehicles and small craft of their own, but limited access to full fledged starships. The entire point of the Marines existing is to give Starfleet expanded ground combat capabilities. The idea is that Starfleet looked back on the Xindi and Romulan Wars and noted how the lack of dedicated combat personnel but them at a disadvantage. Sure they could call in troops from a separate organization but that caused issues in its own right.

I could see the Marines having shorter range transport vessels, akin to Runabouts. If you have Marines deployed on a Starbase, they can respond to nearby systems well enough on their own without an entire starship, but they'll have limited range.

By and large, Marines would be stationed on Starbases or planetary bases when not actively deployed. Starfleet vessels would transport them when necessary.

The Marines exist to augment Starfleet ground forces, so sure they would perform security duty and all that when on a starship. They would be a fairly rare sight in peacetime on a Starfleet ship, only called up when there's some kind of emergency situation. I wouldn't necessarily take the "Marines" name 100% as it used in modern military terms. They... are that, but they're also similar to say, National Guard units. "Marines" in this case are more "General Purpose Soldiers", getting the name "Marines" more so out of tradition, since they're attached to the "Navy". Marines are just as likely to be pulled for manpower in a natural disaster situation as they are to storm a beach.

Just to tie in some stuff, Special Operations is part of the Marines, and their premier group is the "Hazard Team".

Now on the flip, the "Federation Defense Council" is NATO. Member worlds have their own forces, so the Andorian Imperial Guard is still very much a thing. Earth MACO's still exist. Vulcan Commandos. All sorts of fun stuff. They operate starships as well, although I think as time goes on and the Federation matures, Starfleet balloons in size and for the most part, the Defense Council is largely about organizing the various ground forces, essentially becoming the "Federation Army". Member worlds for the most part hold their relatively small fleets for home defense and by the 24th century/Dominion War, starships contributed by member worlds will just end up augmenting Starfleet.

I actually have a Dominion War story in mind, where the war is going bad and Starfleet needs more vessels. The Andorians have the largest non-Starfleet fleet, but have been holding back their resources claiming to be unhappy with the way Starfleet has been handling the war. They make the case that they need to condense their forces in defense of Andor, because the Federation can't defend it. At the same time, the Dominion sees the Andorian build up and commits forces to break it up. Andor is tied up over the homeworld, while its colonies suffer. Sisko leads a battlegroup and saves the colonies, pulling forces from Earth. Together they push the Dominion out of Andor, and the Andorians fully commit to the war.

 

[evilchumlee]

I've been focusing alot on like, post-WW2 through the ENT-era and fleshing out that backstory. I have a general background and an idea on how most things play out, without ALL the specifics.

Genetic engineering and eugenics become a big thing immediately after WWII, with a cabal of international scientists swooping and in and salvaging whatever they could from Nazi experiments and moving forward. For awhile, they're a loose coalition of people intending to improve upon and use this knowledge specifically the avoid another world war. They want to create better people to lead and ensure this doesn't happen (spoiler: it does).

In this world, Asia burns in war for most of the 20th century. "The Brush Wars" end up encompassing damn near every nation in Asia. One big change is that China remains in civil war for a very long time, the communists don't take over entirely and there's a few factions vying for China, which end up being supplied by the US and Soviets. In the 70's, China still isn't a united nation but hostilities cease with the aid of Nixon, and the various Chinese factions form an alliance, which eventually balloons into the Eastern Coalition.

The first generation Augments are born in the late 60's, and they start their rise to power through the 80's. Not all of them go the conqueror route, and not all of them are successful. They do well in Asia, and an Augment is responsible for the fall of the USSR, creating a New Russian Empire. Most of the augments in Europe fail, while the middle east, Africa and South America end up with small augment empires. US and Canada augments go a bit more modern, and rather than try to take over the world through military might, turn their sights on businesses and creating corporate empires.

Technology flows differently. There's a huge push for nuclear weapons satellites in the 60's, but the American rocket explosion in '68 sees that quiet down. Cryonic technology begins to rapidly develop through the 60's and 70's. The Soviets start the "DY" program alongside their Buran idea, ultimately the Buran goes nowhere as the DY craft prove to be much more successful. By the 1980's, DY-50's are equipped with cryonic chambers, creating long range sleeper ships. When the USSR falls, the DY craft fall into the hands of the augments.

Computer technology is a bit different too. Chronowerx purchases Microsoft in the 80's, but in 1996 when Starling disappears the company goes under, purchased by Dr. Nichols' megacorp. This goes hand in hand with an authoritarian bent especially in the US but across most of the world post-Eugenics Wars. The internet has a heyday in the early 2000's but by the 2010's, it has become much more regulated in the US, with essentially zero "net neutrality" and works much along the lines of broadcast TV. "The Net" becomes the way people connect, and it's tightly regulated by the government.

 

[evilchumlee]

United Earth is still fairly young and barely holding on by the start of ENT. NX-01 is heading out to bring Klaang back to Qo'nos, but Archer requests the ship to be armed. Starfleet is absolutely not military, and has little access. The US denies them, as they actively want Starfleet to fail. The UK steps in and offers to fit NX-01 with ordnance (no "phase cannons", they're getting nukes, lasers and rail guns). To oversee all this on-loan ordnance is Royal Navy officer Malcolm Reed. Reed is less... awkward here, he's more just a no-nonsense military man.

While i'm on ENT, Phlox is... weird. I want to riff on Denobula being super overpopulated and Denobulans having little inhibitions. Phlox doesn't quite understand human society. He's naked, like, all the time. Not in a particularly creepy way, just "privacy" isn't a thing on Denobula and it's not something he naturally considers. He just often... isn't wearing clothes. He's touchy and a close talker. He eats weird shit. He comes off as incredibly rude and crass as a side effect of him just having so little concept of privacy or personal space.

Mayweather gets more to do. His experience in space is actually utilized. He's the one on the crew who ISN'T all plucky and stuff. It's all old to him. He's seen it. He knows how it is out there.

Trip I gave what I think is an interesting backstory. Trip came from a long line of military men and from basically being a small child knew he wanted to be in space, and as a patriotic American, he was going to join the US Space Force. His entire early life was dedicated to that. As he grew up and United Earth became a thing, he was against the idea. He though the US should go its own way and shouldn't have to answer to the world. In college, as he was preparing to join the Space Force, the Martian Rebellion broke out. The Martian Colonies attempted to secede from Earth control, and it was the first real test of United Earth. It was a fairly quick war and the United Earth forces, largely led by the US Space Force, put down the rebellion brutally.

It made Trip reconsider his life. He was against United Earth, because he thought nations should be free. Now, the very organization he dreamed of joining was directly involved with preventing a nation from being free. It didn't sit well with him. When Starfleet formed, Trip thought long and hard and decided it might be a better option. He still didn't like United Earth, but Starfleet wasn't a military and was just set up to explore space. Trip was fine with that. As time went on and Starfleet did take up more military type missions, especially in the Xindi War, Trip gets thrown all kinds of out of wack.

T'Pol IS straight up a Vulcan spy. But they the crew does come around to her and she eventually does see humans as not so bad.

Hoshi is an absolute hot fucking mess who has no business being in space. She's only there for her linguistic skills. She's an absolute basket case afraid of literally everything. She's a liability, but they bring her along anyway because there's just not really anyone else who can do the job.

Aesthetically, NX-01 looks basically the same on the outside. Color palette is closer to TOS. The interior is much more like a submarine and cramped. The ENT-era uniforms are largely the same but with even alittle bit more NASA-style flair. I'd like the addition of a United Earth patch, a Starfleet patch, their ship patch, etc.

 

[nemo1986]

When it comes to money, I think it would be more akin to a UBI. Everyone gets a simple studio apartment, a replicator that provides for their food needs and health care from a doctor and probably something like an EBT card for certain needs. You want anything more you got to work and earn more credits. Property does exist and people can buy larger homes and own it and can give it to their decedents, Picard and the vineyard and Kirk's hometown farm for example.

 

[evilchumlee]

When it comes to money, I think it would be more akin to a UBI. Everyone gets a simple studio apartment, a replicator that provides for their food needs and health care from a doctor and probably something like an EBT card for certain needs. You want anything more you got to work and earn more credits. Property does exist and people can buy larger homes and own it and can give it to their decedents, Picard and the vineyard and Kirk's hometown farm for example.

My idea for how the economy works is pretty similar to that, and it will naturally slide a bit through the eras.

There is a distinction between member world economies and the Federation economy. Member worlds can have differing economic systems, and for this purpose we're talking about Earth.

I'm going with the general spirit of Trek, where Earth is... pretty socialist. It's the pie-in-the-sky idea that shouldn't work, but because "humanity evolved", it does. There is also an undercurrent to my reboot Trek that I haven't touched on that i'll note here before going into the economy... things aren't quite as utopia rainbows and unicorns as appearances might suggest. That's something of an enforced facade. It's riffing off the quote from Quark about taking away our creature comforts and humans become terrible. We do... and we are. The Powers That Be on Earth know this, and the rest of the Federation knows this. Alot is done to keep humans distracted and happy, because humans are consistently One Bad Day away from going full on Terran Empire. So there are deliberate factors at work to keep humans going, and getting the right humans into the right places, and getting the wrong humans elsewhere. It's not done through force, it's just a metric shit ton of social engineering to make it all happen.

Anyway, there is essentially a UBI on Earth although they don't measure it in currency. One could do literally nothing all day and contribute zero to society, and have a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, etc. Just stay out of trouble, and you can be a total bum and nobody really cares. But you are only going to get whatever the government gives you.

If you want anything more... better housing, luxury goods, etc. you need to... do something. It's not capitalist, you don't need to worry about a market and ensure that your product or service provides direct monetary value. You just have to... contribute, and there is some bureaucratic apparatus that decides worth of contribution. Such a system might actually promote menial labor over some other tasks... labor jobs suck, but also are critically important, so you would actually make a pretty good amount of "credit" for doing them. There is still something of a market... "credits" so to speak can be transferred or traded for goods or services. If you go to Sisko's restaurant to eat, he's not using real ingredients, preparing and serving the food for you just because. You transfer him some credits.

HOWEVER, in the spirit of Trek, hoarding wealth is AT BEST frowned upon by society, and worst it might be nearly impossible. Since this is a completely fiat, digital currency system there may be a point where the government just says "No" and you no longer have said credits. They want you to be rewarded for contributing, but they don't want anyone getting too wealthy. It's also part of the control for society... if someone IS wired to be greedy or otherwise drawn to accumulating wealth, you CAN... just not on Earth. There's plenty of opportunity to amass wealth in either other Federation worlds or outside of the Federation.

There absolutely is personal property. Once you "purchase" something with your credit, it's yours. You own it. It can be passed down through generations. It's a system that shouldn't work, and has vast potential to be abused... it just... DOES work and there's enough checks in place that it doesn't go end up, and a good portion of that is the behind-the-scenes work that is ongoing to make sure humans stay comfortable.

The whole fear of humans comes from the Vulcans. They are MUCH more involved with Earth in this timeline, having observed Earth for a very long time. They know exactly what humans are capable of and it terrifies them. They began the social engineering to make humans as they become, and they play a big part in keeping it going.

 

[DarthOne]

When it comes to money, I think it would be more akin to a UBI. Everyone gets a simple studio apartment, a replicator that provides for their food needs and health care from a doctor and probably something like an EBT card for certain needs. You want anything more you got to work and earn more credits. Property does exist and people can buy larger homes and own it and can give it to their decedents, Picard and the vineyard and Kirk's hometown farm for example.

How about no. Let’s get Star Trek away from that socialist crap.

 

[evilchumlee]

How about no. Let’s get Star Trek away from that socialist crap.

I'm going to stick with it with mine. Like it or not, it's very much a part of Star Trek. This reboot isn't an attempt to create Republican Star Trek, it's more an attempt to make "Slightly Modified and More Fleshed Out Star Trek". Not trying to entirely reinvent the wheel, just tweaking it. I'm really not interested in real-world politics at all in this context.

I have some Dominion alterations.

The core is still mostly the same, the Founders rule over everything, Vorta, Jem Hadar, all that. It is organized a bit differently, using what happened with Cardassia as a baseline for the whole thing. The main goal is to create a true "Anti-Federation", a similar type organization with different goals.

The Dominion is an Empire in the truest definition. The Dominion will roll into a world, possibly invited, possibly not and colonize it into a Dominion world. The world gains the benefit of Dominion protection and supplies, with a duty to pay taxes and support the Dominion military. Depending on the world any its existing forces, they may at first integrate the existing forces into the military, but ultimately the Dominion prefers to use Jem Hadar forces and will work to slowly retool military production facilities and resources to produce Jem Hadar and Dominion technology.

Dominion colonized worlds are largely left to their own devices, often times only leaving some Vorta full-time to oversee the existing government. In real terms, the Vorta/Dominion have full and absolute authority, but in practice they don't bother to exercise such unless absolutely necessary. While experiences can vary... MOST Dominion worlds range anywhere from actually loyal and happy to fairly neutral and cooperating. There are some that feel oppressed and under the thumb of the Dominion, but by and large Dominion worlds are prosperous, happy and semi-autonomous. There is no pressed military service... the Dominion doesn't WANT your troops. They just want you to provide resources to grow Jem Hadar and build weapons, and otherwise do what the world is good at it. The Dominion will step in and allocate resources between worlds, not always in the most "fair" way but it's at least generally for, what they consider to be, the greater good. By and large, it is.

The Founders have a bit different mindset in this timeline. They are still suspicious of solids and see them as a threat. They created the Dominion to defend themselves from solids, that remains. But they aren't quite as... evil? Maybe is the word i'm looking for. The Dominion exists partially to bring order, but also to make sure that the solids under their banner are taken care of and able to live happy, fulfilling lives courtesy of their Founder rulers. The Dominion takes a more "hearts and minds" approach while still ALSO being authoritarian and willing to do essentially anything.

I want an undercurrent of the Dominion's more questionable activities to be larger due to the Vorta, not necessarily the Founders. The Founders are largely hands off and created the Vorta for the express purpose of running the Dominion. The Vorta take their duties deadly seriously, and have little regard for anything that stands in their way, much like the Jem Hadar. The Vorta don't always act as the Founders may prefer, but the Founders simply aren't around all the time to oversee what the Vorta are doing.

The Dominion War really is much more the Federation's fault. I'm putting the terminus of the wormhole squarely in Dominion-claimed space. Once the Federation starts exploring the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion is actually fairly reasonable about it... they mostly just ignore the vessels violating their territory because they aren't doing any harm. No big deal. Once they start building things, trying to settle a colony, etc., the Dominion sends them a very clear message of "Stop doing what you're doing, this is our space". The Federation continues on, sending some representatives and such to try to negotiate with the Dominion about doing things on the other side of the wormhole, but the Dominion has no interest. Eventually, the Dominion starts treating them as hostile.

My Federation is a mixed bag. They're still "the good guys" overall, but they definitely get up to some questionable stuff too. The UFP here tends to be on the arrogant side and smug. They THINK they can talk their way out of anything, even when they are clearly in the wrong. Alot of times, it works because the Federation is just an incredibly powerful entity and they toss that weight around. While the government of the UFP here is similar to the European Union, their general attitude is Cold War US. They're generally good, but will absolutely do some not great things in the name of protecting or expanding their interests.

 

[evilchumlee]

Voyager gets one of the bigger changes to how it went down in the Prime Timeline, but I think it's a fairly common sense change. Voyager basically becomes "Year of Hell: The Series".

There's no reset button. Voyager is in a bad situation and it only get worse. The Maquis crew remains an issue the entire time, and they're way worse than in the Prime Timeline. There's some generally good people who were just there fighting for a good cause. There's also a bunch who are just absolute scumbag scoundrels. They never just, fully integrate and everything is fine. It's a constant issue.

Supplies are an actual issue. Voyager is also scrounging for more, running out, having to make deals to get things. The ship gets beaten up, patched, beaten up more, and eventually becomes a hodgepodge of whatever the hell tech they can find out there.

Neelix gets a bit of a change here, with some more depth. Neelix is an absolute piece of shit. He's a criminal and just all around bad guy. But at the same time, he does actually genuinely care for Kes and it's not some kind of weird predatory relationship. When Voyager picks up Neelix, he puts on the "wacky alien good guy act" to fit in with them and keep a good thing going. As it their journey continues, he starts to have some real struggles... he actually LIKES the Federation people and he actually wants to genuinely change to be like them, but he's also still just a general piece of shit. He's terrified every waking moment that he will be discovered for what he is. He's a bit more like Garak with being helpful beyond just doing shit around the ship, Neelix has contacts all over the place and calls in favors to help the ship out... but he's also worried that will expose him, as well. By the end, Neelix really has changed and closes the book on his old life. There's a twist there that Janeway absolutely figured him out early on, kept an eye on him, but tolerated him because he actually was helpful and on some occasions actually tried to manipulate the situation into him using some of his underworld experience to help the ship out without letting on.

Seven changes alot. It goes against her REAL purpose for existing... being a hot chick... but in this timeline, she never actually goes "full human". Seven is Borg. The entire time, at least that's how she considers herself. They do "rescue" her from the Collective and they remove some of her implants, although she has way more intact than she did in Prime. Seven never considers herself human, she always considers herself Borg. She becomes a bit more like a Hugh situation though... she's Borg, she just doesn't want to be connected anymore, and she wants to fight the Collective just as much as anyone else to free her people. She was assimilated at such a young age she simply doesn't identify as human. She doesn't care to explore her humanity, but rather, her individuality.

 

[evilchumlee]

I'm kind of using this thread as a "throw ideas out there" thing and if anyone is interested, by all means read and/or comment/add your own ideas.

I have a small change of not actually liking the name "Starfleet Marine Corps". I think "Corps" sounds alittle too modern military for my tastes and in relation to Star Trek. I think i'm just going to shorten it down to "Starfleet Marines". Small change but I like it better. I also think I want to expand out its division, and not have the marines be "General Purpose Combat Troops". Make something like a "Tactical Combat Operations" Division of Starfleet, with the Marines being a department within that. It's still not going to be overboard... this division exists to fill "peacekeeping" duty.

On a completely unrelated note and just a minor bit of lore building, I occasionally see conversations about transporters and how they kill people and all that. That's... just... such a ridiculous claim to make for such a widespread technology. "It kills people, but we use it anyway". I get that it SEEMS like it does, but this reboot is going to hammer home that... no, it does not.

The Vulcans already had transporter tech by the time of first contact, and while they did not simply gift transporter tech to Earth, they were entirely open and willing to help human scientists develop it. Emory Erickson took up the offer and worked with the Vulcans to create human-built transporters. The greatest revelation of transporter tech came courtesy of the Vulcans... they were willing to openly share their understanding of consciousness with Earth. Along with warp drive, it was considered to be one of the greatest developments in human history. Humans now understood consciousness, "the soul" to some, and they understood how it could be transferred along with the body. The Vulcans were capable of extracting and storing a soul... a katra... without even a physical form, but their methods were unique to Vulcan brain physiology and could not be replicated in most other races.

It doesn't fucking kill people. What consciousness is has just become understood. Deal with it.

To expand on transporters and get some more consistency out of them, some points in no particular order

- They don't make a copy. They move things. We can still have the weird transporter things happen, like a Thomas Riker. It's excplitelly a "that was impossible but happened" situation. Nobody has any idea even remotely how it could have happened, there is no explanation, it was physically impossible to happen and yet it did.

- They can't "fix" things, because they don't copy or create anything, they move them. If you have a broken leg, you will still have a broken leg when you go through the transporter. The transporter CAN remove things, or more specifically, just not rematerialize things. Something like a biofilter can still exist, but they are of somewhat minimal use. Having the transporter not rematerialize something is extremely dangerous. If the computer controlling the process can identify a known pathogen and remove it through a series of redundancies, it will. But given the amount of safety checks it goes through, biofilters are really of limited use.

- There's no such thing as like, a formerly stored pattern. The transporter can't take an old scan and "rebuild" that. Doesn't work that way. It doesn't build anything. It moves it, or doesn't. It's closer to being moved through a wormhole, atom-by-atom.

- A transporter pad is necessary for the operation on one end. Something like a "sight to sight" transporter is technically possible, but all the transporter is doing is cycling you through the pad... so if you from a planet "directly to sickbay", you're actually transporting to the transporter room, transferred to the pads buffer, and then transferred to the next destination. It doesn't need to actively materialize anything, it's just a link in the chain. (explains why, despite being able to just transport from anywhere to anywhere, there are still transporter rooms).

- Transporters are much, almost exponentially safer when a pad used on both ends. Most planetary or planet-to-orbit transport will be Pad-to-Pad. Good old fashioned shuttles or other ground transportation is still used... on a planet, transporter pads will be in a central hub and usually along some established line for ease of operation. You won't necessarily get into a public transporter in San Francisco and tell it where you want to go... you'll go to the transporter hub and get into the correct transporter line. If I wanted to go to Paramus, NJ for reason, i'd catch the San Fran to NYC transporter line, and then hop on a local transport to Paramus.


On that mildly related note, personal planetary transport exists but is generally uncommon, depending on the era. It's seen alot more in the 22nd century and starts to decline from there. By the 24th century, most personal "transport" is recreational and the public transport lines are used by the vast majority for actual transportation. On Earth, it's generally not worth the hassle to have a personal shuttle or some such given the massively regulated airspace of Earth. By the time you got the approvals to move around, you could have just used the public transport.

Expanding from there, The Federation... but ESPECIALLY Earth, is heavily bureaucratic. You can do or have damn near anything, but you're going to navigate a labyrinth of bureaucracy to get there depending on what you want. There's a reason that Earth has no hunger, no poverty, no crime. It has regulations regulating the regulations and regulate the regulations while the people who regulate the regulations are regulated by more regulations. It didn't happen by accident, it's by design. It encourages those on Earth to... not do alot of things, just because its a pain in the ass to do them and they are easier options. It ALSO encourage those want to do certain things to... go somewhere else and do them, spurring colonial activity and what not.

Earth is either an absolute paradise, or a regulated hell, depending on ones perspective. The good thing is, there are options. It's part of the "humans are dangerous" controls. Alot of work is put into keeping a good majority of humans happy and generally unambitious. The Federation wants a good majority of humans to sit around playing the saxophone all day and being super fulfilled by it. Overly ambitious humans are dangerous, and uncomfortable humans are dangerous, in large quantities. SOME ambitious humans are a good thing.

 

[evilchumlee]

I had a breakthrough on my general history of the Marines. I've been really on this Starfleet Marines thing. I'm going to have my cake and eat it too.

Starfleet's ground forces go through a major change after the Khitomer Accords. From 2161 to 2293, the Starfleet Marine Corps served as the combat-focused arm of Starfleet.

After the Khitomer Accords are signed, the Federation, Romulans and Klingons agree to a massive reduction in their military capacity, largely disarming and reorganizing into smaller defense forces. The Accords gave a 30 year timeline for the force reduction and reorganization, giving the powers some time to adapt and retool their forces.

The Starfleet Marine Corps has become a fairly organization in and of itself by this point and suffered heavily in the reorganization. Over the three decades of disarmament, the Starfleet Marine Corps began to phase out and reorganize into Starfleet Tactical Operations. By 2318, the Starfleet Marine Corps ceased to be a branch of Starfleet entirely. Tactical Operations was organized as a division under the Starfleet Security Department. The legacy of Marine Corps would not die entirely in 2318, as a sub-division within Tac Ops became simply, "Starfleet Marines". While far fewer in number than the Marine Corps of times passed and more limited in scope, Starfleet Marines carried on many of the traditions of the now defunct Marine Corps, keeping their signature forest green color while adopting the Starfleet rank structure and uniforms.

Just a random note, this is something i've had in my head forever and I wanted to just put it out there. The Post-Khitomer Starfleet "slogan" used for recruitment:

WHAT WE DO. HOW WE DO IT. WHY WE DO IT.