While watching an episode of Star Trek: The next Gereration, a question came to me. I’m sure this question was answered long ago but I apparently missed it. Do all ships in the Federation go through the same ordeals?
I think it’s the flagship of the Federation so it probably gets picked for the most unusual missions.
No, they all go through different ordeals. The stories of the other ships are just too depressing to show.
I believe that the Enterprise under Kirk was the only Constitution-class vessel to complete her five-year mission in one piece.
The other ships are the ones on which the entire crew catches some weird space disease and the doctor doesn’t find a cure. Then the Enterprise finds the ship full of dead people drifting in space and Dr. McCoy finds a cure just in the nick of time… 
The other ships are never around when something is cooking.
I think I’ll stick to the navy.
I recall a line in one of the New Frontier books by Jellico that went something like “Any time you heard wild laughter roaring down the halls at Starfleet Command you’d know Kirk had turned in another one of his whoppers. A giant space amoeba? Aliens stole his first officer’s brain? I mean, come on.”
That is, the line was delivered by Jellico, not the books. The books were by Peter David. :smack:
Apologist’s reason : I remember that line. I love the New Frontier series. Peter David also wrote another book, I believe it was* Q Squared*, wherein he explained why Kirk and Picard’s Enterprises were always getting the more … interesting missions. Apparently, at some point they had gotten the attention of Trelane and a lot of their more unbelievable happenings aboardship were his doing simply because he found them amusing, much like Q did later with Picard and crew.
I may be remembering the book wrong, but the basic gist of what I just posted is one fan’s perception of why all the cool stuff happened to ships named Enterprise. Among other reasons, it’s things like that that explain why Peter David is the god of literature in my own personal pantheon.
Real Reason : It’s television. Why do the same exact things happen to so many totally unrelated TV shows? There are only so many plots you can have and execute in a set amount of time and after fifty years of broadcasting, originality is a bit thin on the ground.
Then there’s the fact that whenever the Enterprise had solved the puzzle, the Captain’s Log was shared around.
“Oh, When Picard hung around in a Nebula with these kinds of readings, everyone suddenly had murderous thoughts and tried to eat each other. Hmm. Let’s go around it.”
I just have to say that Peter David makes me happy.
Are all his books as good as Q Squared and I, Q?
Those are the only two I’ve read. (I’m about to borrow Imzadi)
**Hijack ** : The entire *New Frontier * series is superb, as are most of his books. He does have a few that aren’t that great or memorable though. Those I’d recommend you to avoid are Vendetta, Doomsday World, The Captain’s Daughter and Imzadi II. The ones I can’t really remember much about are The Disinherited, Wrath of the Prophets and Double Helix: Double or Nothing.
Everything else is pretty much gold.
Then again, having read the “Captain’s Table” series I’m starting to think that they want us to envision the whole of the Federation being wild ‘n’ woolly, despite how hard the shows have tried to paint it as a (fairly bland) utopia.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I went from Earth to the Klingon homeworld? I just said ‘Computer, plot a course to the Klingon homeworld, Warp 5, engage,’ and off we went. I spent three days doing nothing and caught up on my reading. What an adventure.”
You’re not a *DS9 * fan, are you?
Well, bland aside from the political intrigue and the odd war here and there. 
And the covert ops and the attempted genocide and the assassination of alien represenatives and … 
Those aren’t going to be on the mind of the common person on Neo Podunk in the Tau Boring system, any more than the inner workings of Majestic 12 are on mine. How does the average Fed citizen live, when his planet isn’t being ravaged by jupiter spores / shifted into phased space / destroyed by a giant flame bird hatching?
I imagine they work 9-5 replicating all sorts of cogs, sprockets, doohickies, and thingamajigs for all those starships. They don’t grow on trees, y’know.
Actually, I always figured that most exploration-type missions in Starfleet go through similar adventures, but Enterprise Crews are the ones selected to be heavily documented in film.
I have a better (ok, maybe only more intrigueing for me) Star Trek question: Why are the ships always shown “right side up”? Because, there’s no up or down in space, but the ships are always right-side-up, if two ships meet in space, they always tend to be oriented identically…and when the ship is turned around, it always makes a neat U-turn like a car does.
They’d grow on trees if those danged scientists had been busier on genetic engineering than on World War Three! Wait. Genetics, Kahn, Eugenics Wars… Okay, maybe that was a bad example.
My point was that non-Starfleet personnel seem to live pretty non-remarkable lives unless they’re making androids that go amok when a vessel just happens to be nearby. All we know is that in the future, there will be robots and tight pants and lasers.