Survival Bias
What all those comments and discussions gloss over is that the majority of all Star Trek adventures are probably only survivor stories.
No one would ever talk about the starship that went into Klingon territory to attempt some weird science experiment, tried to eject a warp core as a last Hail Mary save but instead met with three Klingon war ships and got blasted into oblivion never to be heard from again.
For every one amazing adventurous Star Trek story, there are probably 20 of star ship captains, entire ships or whole crews just either vapourized, blasted, frozen in space, exploded, imploded, teleported, phased, recombined, trapped in an alternate universe or just plain disappeared without explanation.
Alien species are probably in awe of us not because of how lucky we are but rather how persistent we are in the face of how unlucky we are. They would probably see us as gluttons for punishment.
They absolutely talk about the ships that just got totally owned by whatever science mystery they were working on. Like 30% of the Next Generation is: The crew of the Enterprise stumbles across an empty Star ship, or an abandoned outpost, and have to figure out what happened (and stop it from happening to them!)
We also gotta remember, Star Trek is almost always focuses on the big ships. Enterprise, Voyager, Cerritos, they are all important, but I highly doubt the federation needs to deal with a major galactic event every other Tuesday. I doubt the USS Luna had as much adventure as the TItan. Most are standard surveying ships, like a Steamrunner with a crew of 24.
If they did, the Federation does a shockingly good job.
Isn’t the entire concept behind Lower Decks is that the Cerritos isn’t a big, important ship? The California class only has 13 decks, which is the third smallest ship in the entire series–the only ships smaller than the Cerritos were the Defiant (which was an “escort ship” not intended for long missions) and the NX-01 Enterprise. It’s also slower than everything else in the 24th century–while most other ships can handle warp 9 without problems, the Cerritos flies itself apart if it goes above warp 8 for too long. It’s not all that strong either, practically every time it gets in a fight it gets its ass kicked.
So, basically this?
This is the real reason Star Fleet is mostly human. Only very exceptional members of other species can stand working with humans. They even talk about this in Enterprise. Before T’Pol, the longest a Vulcan had managed to serve aboard a Star Fleet ship was two weeks. In Lower Decks, Captain Vendome built a crew of entirely Bolians. It’s now my headcanon that this is because they just wanted a break from those damn humans. I believe there’s also an all Vulcan ship in DS9, which was absolutely because they couldn’t stand those humans.
I’ve always had the idea that ships that were focused on on species had certain accommodations that other species would find too annoying or dangerous to live on with service. Vulcan ships are probably warmer than humans would like, Andorrans would probably die.
I always forget the name of their species, but the people who require a breather to pump in fresh non-Oxygen rich, I assume that if they had any ships, their life support would be exclusively their air, with those neck devices to help pump when visiting other plants and ships.
It would make more sense why Vulcan, an original member of the Federation, still has seemingly dozens if not hundreds of ships with their own design. I assume Andorians and Tellarite do too, but Star Trek forgets about them often.
I always forget the name of their species, but the people who require a breather to pump in fresh non-Oxygen rich, I assume that if they had any ships, their life support would be exclusively their air, with those neck devices to help pump when visiting other plants and ships.
The Barzan! This is actually something in Discovery! They go to a small Star Fleet ship that was run by an all Barzan crew (just one family), and the atmosphere is modified for them, so the Barzan member of Discovery’s crew doesn’t need her breathing apparatus. I think you’re probably absolutely right that other Star Fleet ships are made with serious accomodations for other species. Maybe the Bolian ship has especially robust plumbing lol
This reminded me of a scene from Talledega Nights.
Lucius Washington : You’re not gonna live forever.
Ricky Bobby : No one lives forever, no one. But with advances in modern science and my high level income, it’s not crazy to think I can live to be 245, maybe 300. Heck, I just read in the newspaper that they put a pig heart in some guy from Russia. Do you know what that means?
Lucius Washington : No, I don’t know what that means. I guess longer life.
Ricky Bobby : No, he didn’t live. It’s just exciting that we’re trying things like that.
“So we were being chased by bad guys through a really explosive gas cloud nebula thing. Weapons were on the fritz and we couldn’t use shields because if the aforementioned nebula. So I ejected the warp core and blew it up, detonating the nebula and the bad guys while we just scraped out in the nick of time”
My god man, that’s actually impressive. How were you planning on getting back to literally anywhere else without a warp core?
“Ah well, I was only the acting captain at the time, so I figured that would be Picard’s problem when he got back…”
I’ve never seen an episode of any star trek… is this really what it’s like? Sounds like it may need to watch it if that’s the case.
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