Minimalism is when the scale of the setting is underestimated (often horribly) by the authors.
Some cases in Star Wars:
-Three million clone troopers for a galactic-scale war. For Pete’s sake, the American army in World War II could field twelve million men and its one part of a single planet!
-Twenty-five thousand Star Destroyers. Even if we underestimate and say that in the Galactic Empire there are sixty-nine million (canon) inhabited systems it still means a single Star Destroyer protects roughly two thousand eight hundred systems.
I understand that most people (including myself) would have trouble grasping the idea of a galactic-scale civilization, but at least try!
The Senate chambers we saw had nowhere near 69m seats, and I seriously doubt that many individual systems would actually be governable under a single body politic, even if they were all of one species. A multi-species empire would collapse long before they got to 1 million systems, much less 69 million - there would be way too many differences, attitudes, belief systems to be integrated.
Its a Galactic government and that’s the way its in Star Wars! Plus the Senate seats are by sectors not systems any more than our Senate seats are by states not by counties or cities.
Looks like you had all sorts in the senate, more than enough to fill 69m seats.
Anyway, this is an example of what you started this thread about (I guess) - a “Republic” with 69million+ senators is unworkable. A “Republic” with 69,000 senators is unworkable, especially given the speciation of the SW universe.
I think the problem is the opposite - what I’d call “biggism”, in which science fiction writers throw HUUUUGE numbers at the readers in order to distract them from their storytelling deficiencies. For instance, a few years ago I started reading “Consider Phlebas” by Iain M. Banks. Within the first 100 pages, we had a spaceship being attacked by 100,000 missiles, a collection of millions of superintelligent AIs, a casual genocide of 57 million innocent people, a ringworld, and a fucking Dyson sphere. And at the same time, the writing was terrible. I gave up almost immeidately.
Some wirters think that throwing big numbers (69 million systems? Really?) at readers is somehow impressive. It isn’t. What we want is depth and complexity - that every system be fleshed out and provided some distinction. Anyone can write numbers. For instance: 138 million inhabited systems! My universe is TWICE as awesome as Star Wars!
Pay attention some time to the numbers they use for populations in s.f. and notice how often it is roughly equivalent (or a multiple of) to the population of the United States or the Earth at the time of writing. It’s amusing.
Back in the sixties, there was a book about the original Star Trek series. The show’s staff had worked with the author so it was considered “canon”. In addition to information about the show, it had a section of information on the show’s setting - stuff about the Enterprise and star fleet and the Federation.
One of the things in the book was a map of the Federation and the Klingon and Romulan Empires. It showed that the Federation encompassed a significant portion of the galaxy - approximately a sixth of the entire galaxy.
Another thing the book mentioned was how many Enterprise-class starships there were - thirteen.
No way. The galaxy is huge. This would be like the United States trying to fight World War II with only thirteen airplanes.
If you have a cite to back up your claim that it was canon, I’ll be happy to concede that point, but as it was first published in 1975, 6 years after TOS went off the air and the a year after the animated series stopped airing new episodes, I don’t see how it could possibly be relevant. Star Trek was dead at that point. A ham sandwich could have been canon and it wouldn’t have mattered.
Also, it did not list 13 starships. It listed, by rough count:
14 Constitution-class Heavy Cruisers (like USS Enterprise)
16 Bonhomme Richard-class Heavy Cruisers
4 replacements for Constitution-class vessels lost in the line of duty
111 Archernar-class Heavy Cruisers
While I agree with your ultimate point, I took Little Nemo to mean that there were only a baker’s dozen Constitution class ships in all of Starfleet, not that Starfleet consisted of only those thirteen vessels.