There’s no doubt that star trek very clearly uses a Naval metaphor. There’s also no doubt that space is basically 2D and that the sailing metaphor is taken ridiculously far at times (e.g. this episode, where they even had to manually operate the sails).
But the discussion was more in the abstract: does such a metaphor make sense versus the alternatives?
Starfleet is a nautical metaphor, not an aviation one. This is highlighted more in the movies than the TV shows though.
If I had to draw a parallel between Starfleet and an American uniformed service, I’d go with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps. They’re a uniformed service because there were concerns that they’d be arrested and executed for spying if they were found doing their primary mission (making maps) during a time of war otherwise. Combine them with the Coast Guard and you have a sort of combination exploratory/scientific organization and naval reserve.
Also, the norm for Starfleet seems to be that Admirals command desks at starbases, coordinating the efforts of many disparate spaceborne assets, and Captains command starships that are “at sea”. If you need someone to command a fleet of starships, you just pick which ever captain is senior (or whichever one has top billing for that episode, same thing really) One episode of TNG had Picard commanding a task force of something like a dozen starships. Later episodes of DS9 had Captain Sisko leading hundreds of starships in battle, while his boss Admiral Ross made sure Sisko had the right chess pieces to play as he saw fit.
Here you go: Is Starfleet more like a navy or an air force? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
Starfleet never should’ve ditched the Commodore rank.
Agreed. Neither, for that matter, should the U.S. Navy. “Rear Admiral (Lower Half)” - what kind of a dumb rank is that?: Rear admiral (United States) - Wikipedia
Commodore would have been the best rank in Starfleet.
High enough to outrank Captains, but hopefully not senior enough to sit at a desk on some planet somewhere.
They also had a rank of fleet captain between captain and commodore.
One of the things that must be kept in consideration is the ‘future history’ that the Earth will undergo. Militarism and fanaticism almost destroyed our global culture. It is not surprising that the ideas of war-for-profit and faith-for-control would become almost unimaginable to the survivors who eventually helped found the Federation. Even when such constructs appear to be more deeply seated than we would wish for a futuristic society built upon secular humanism.
Words evolve relatively rapidly even when slang is removed from the observed data-set. Note that when used first in World War I, the word ‘fascism’ was not pejorative and the political movement associated with that word was considerably more complex than the version parodied in the Post War years. Compare this with the word ‘military’ in the Federation.
Wasn’t that more of a seniority position as opposed to an actual rank?
Commodore was an appointment that was given to some Caotain in real Navies not a rank, although by tradition a captain would be referred by that term even when his appointment had ended. Just when you wanted to emphaise that he was more important than your average Captain, but not quite ready to be an Admiral.The Rotal Navy had other appointments for senior Captains, including Post Captain and Flag Captain, usually these commanded shore installations.Other Navies had different terms.
I see no reason why a squadron of ships in Starfleet cannot led by a Captain with the appointment as Commodore and a base commander or Staff office be called Fleet Captain etc.
But it was a rank in some real navies, and in the original Star Trek series, it was pretty clearly a rank.
Excellent points. “Military” could indeed be a pretty awful word by Kirk’s time.
I blame the Vulcans.
Clearly, their stewardship over the Earth had profound political correctness aspects.
It would make sense except that they were a lot less ashamed about it in TOS, and Enterprise is pretty cool with it. I think the idea is mostly a later addition from the early TNG era, where Gene was in competition with himself to see how far he could convince Patrick Stewart to play a self-righteous jerk.
Plus, weren’t the whole “global war” bit mostly because of crazy genetic supermen, anyway? Religion and militarism didn’t even seem to factor in as much as the measurable genetic superiority of scientific monstrosities.
As noted above, you’ll never hear Kirk or any of his shipmates describe themselves as “military” in TOS, and in Enterprise, there are obvious differences and some institutional-culture tensions between the Starfleet crew and the MACO commandos who come aboard - one of Archer’s superiors is actually surprised that Archer would want them on his ship: Military Assault Command Operations | Memory Alpha | Fandom
Kirk in “Errand of Mercy”:
I’m sorry. I’m a soldier, not a diplomat. I can only tell you the truth!
In the US Navy, Commodore was a flag rank equivalent to a Brigadier (One-star) General in the Army through most of the 20th century at least. It changed sometime in the '70s or '80s* and became Rear Admiral (Lower Half), which has got to be one of the silliest-sounding ranks ever devised anywhere.
*That is, about the same time as the Susan B. Anthony dollar, another abortion, was introduced.
I’d forgotten that comment! He’s clearly pissed off and under some stress at the time, though, FWIW.
Yeah, ranks are odd in the Trek-verse. Chief Medical Officer? Ship’s Doctor? Starfleet Medical?
I’m a doctor, dammit, not an admiral!* And yet he attained the (honorary, was it?) rank of admiral by TNG.
*escalator, brick layer, physicist,
He’s also under stress in “Metamorphosis,” prompting McCoy to riff on the same theme: Kirk asks how he’s supposed to fight a thing like that, and the good doctor replies “Maybe you’re a soldier so often that you forget you’re also trained to be a diplomat. Why not try a carrot instead of a stick?”