Minimalism is something different. What you’re thinking of is better expressed on the TVTropes page, Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale.
Here’s a good example: Firefly is set within a single star system (one with many more habitable planets than ours), yet it is recognizably the same kind of story as *Star Wars * or Babylon 5.
When I pick a nit, it stays picked. 
Ok, but that’s still 261 ships for hundreds of worlds and hundreds of BILLIONs of citizens.
It appeared like some of that in ST:NG and DS9. 35 Federation ships at Wolf 359. Slightly larger numbers mentioned in some of the early Dominion war episodes and noted as emptying entire sectors of Fed ships. Mounting up to 600 or so combined (including allies) ships in Sacrifice of Angels and then the supposed 1200 Dominion ships in the Wormhole being a number impossible for the Federation to overcome.
Of course, I can only harken back to some other scifi in which millions of years old technology and ships are found and are still functioning normally and still usable. Um, ever heard of a little thing called metal fatigue? Oh, I forgot. It’s all run on that special magic called “self-repairing systems” which apparently allow things to last millions of years as if they are a day old. :rolleyes:
I’ll happily agree that estimates of the Federation being a sixth of the size of the Milky Way are ridiculous, even for Picard’s time.
I’d fanwank that one too, but I don’t care enough.
261 warships would still be an absurdly small number to control an area that covers on sixth of the galaxy.
Precisely how much space the Federation occupies is never clearly stated, but one sixth of the galaxy is billions of stars. Heck, one SIXTIETH of the galaxy would be a few billion stars. It would be like China protecting itself with an army of 261 men.
That’s more You Fail Physics Forever than ‘No Sense of Scale’.
[insert my patented “Starfleet doesn’t control anything, it’s a social club for people who like to dress up and do dangerous things, made possible by the post-scarcity economy of the Federation” argument here]
That’s because its realistic. If there was an actual Galaxy-spanning government/civilization it would have tens of millions (probably a billion) inhabited star systems. What’d you want them to? Have the Galactic Empire have five hundred systems or what?
The canonical size of the Federation is 150 full member worlds, and roughly 1,000 colonies “spread over” 8,000 cubic light years. By this phrasing, it is likely that it is not contiguous, but has a central core comprising Earth, Andor, Vulcan, Tellar, and other star systems in our neighborhood and other local groups spread out in whatever direction. A British Empire of the stars, more or less.
I can’t speak to the size of Starfleet except to say **KneadToKnow **was right about the Tech Manual (and all books’) canonicity. If it’s not shown on-screen, it isn’t canon. That said, the Daystrom Institute has this to say at the conclusion of an article about this question:
*During TOS it seems certain that there were twelve Constitution class Starships, plus an unspecified number of smaller vessels. The total fleet size is uncertain, but likely to be from one hundred to several hundred. The largest fleet we ever see in TOS was the five Starships gathered for the M5 test program wargame, which would have represented a very powerful force indeed - almost half of all the Starships (as opposed to smaller interstellar ships) in existence. Put another way, it represents roughly the same percentage of the Federation’s total firepower as the six aircraft carriers that the USA sent to Iraq for the gulf war.
*During TNG the fleet must be considerably larger. The sensible lower limit is 1,000 Starships in total, while 5 - 10,000 is much more likely. A 70,000 Starship fleet seems high, but this becomes much more reasonable if the Federation really does cover anything close to a solid block of space eight thousand light years across. Under these conditions only a few thousand ships would normally be present at the core of the Federation; assembling a fleet of several dozen ships would take a few days, while assembling the thousands or tens of thousands needed for a major war could take anything up to several years.
Except that there are many occasions in which we see Kirk, Picard, and their lieutenants exercising power to control quite a few things. Kirk arrests Harry Mudd. He clearly has genuine authority to decide what will happen with the Klingons wishing to take leave on a Federation (NOT Starfleet) space station. Picard can shut down a terraforming operation. Et cetara.
And you can’t tell me that Sisko didn’t have genuine authority.
It definitely wasn’t the Technical Manual. I had a copy of the Technical Manual when it came out - it was later than the book I referred to and I noted the expanded Star Fleet roster in that book because I was thinking it was probably a reaction to people like me who though the original thirteen ship roster was ridiculous.
I think the book was The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield. But it might have been The World of Star Trek by David Gerrold. I had both books as a young’un.
As for it being canon, the author was clear that, along with the interviews with the show’s staff, he was basing his information on the show’s “bible” - which was the guidelines written by Roddenberry and other on the Star Trek staff to describe the show’s setting and characters to potential scriptwriters for the series. So it was canon at its most official - if Gene Roddenberry said Star Fleet consisted of thirteen starships, then that’s that.
Roddenberry also didn’t like many of the movies, and didn’t consider them canonical, and was once said to consider large chunks of TOS non-canonical after he started producing TNG. He may have been the creator of the franchise, but he doesn’t declare canon by fiat.
I’ve only ever heard of him declaring ST V apocryphal, an opinion shared by many fans. 
As for the canon issue, it’s probably silly to try to declare a canon for TOS. There was not the emphasis on story arcs in tv back then; few episodes directly refer to any other episodes. There was no episode introducing Chekov; there was no episode writing out Rand, or noting Spock’s promotion from Lieutenant Commander to Commander.
I think in this case it’s the idea of a Galactic Empire that is considered a tad unrealistic :).
It’s referenced (and cited) in the Star Trek Canon article on wiki. The sources are Paula Block, a Senior Director of Licensed Publishing, and Richard Block, who was a research analyst on TNG. I’ve also read about his unhappiness with the later movies in various books, and how he was pretty much ousted from ST:VI because he wanted another time travel movie that would have been about Kirk saving JFK from assassination.
I bow to your superior knowledge on this topic, though I do not and shall not concede that you match my level of nerditude in general.
No worries, Skald. I recognize you as the bigger nerd, by far.
I am trying to decide whehther :mad: or is more appropriate here.
Star Trek minimalism hit its peak with the costuming of Orion slave girls.
