The crew (and especially Riker) seemed to treat Jellico as a “substitute teacher” - someone who is nominally in charge, but who won’t make any significant changes to the system while the “real” teacher is away. Jellico, by contrast, knows that he’s not a substitute captain - and takes actions to shake up the system (insisting on formal attire for bridge officers, shifting the watch schedule, redecorating the captain’s office), partially at least as a reminder that he is in charge (the watch schedule shift might be a bad idea when the ship is preparing for combat operations - but it’s the captain’s prerogative to decide such things - the other actions seem completely justified).
They experimented with it once. Didn’t work out too well for them. Never again.
And they kind of admitted he had at least partially a point because Deanna stayed in her uniform from then on.
Except when she had a private counseling session with Will. 
Or, more likely, Worf. 
Yeah, that’s right. She didn’t reconnect with Riker until after Worf went to Deep Space Nine.
That actually proves it’s possible. Just work out the implementation errors in a simulation and, when you’ve created a useful and tractable system, release it into the galaxy.
OTOH, your example does point up a possible reason they didn’t do it in TOS: That series was, on the whole, too optimistic for the concept to work. Yes, the Federation had its problems with Klingons and Romulans, but they were political disagreements, obvious analogs for the Cold War. Extermination wasn’t the answer, and escalation along these lines would turn it into wars of extermination, because it was at least possible to live in peace with those species.
Had Star Trek remained like that, sure, dedicated war machines would be out of place in that universe. But we all know that TNG didn’t hew to that idealism. TNG brought the Borg, and then turned the Borg into something a step removed from Saberhagen’s Berserker concept, things which cannot be reasoned with and will destroy you to the greatest extent they can. TNG tried to hold onto the optimism in the face of the Classic Borg, but it didn’t fit: Picard’s refusal to use the memetic virus in “Hugh” was not mercy, but stupidity, and stupidity everyone, including himself, paid horribly for. Against the Classic Borg, extermination is the only answer, and automated extermination, which doesn’t put sentient life at risk, is the best possible extermination strategy.
(I say “Classic Borg” because the Borg Queen and so on fundamentally re-imagines the Borg as a species and turns them into a comprehensible entity it’s possible to have a political disagreement with.)
Fine, we’ll run a holodeck simulation of an intellect capable of defeating Data.
You know, the leakiness of Starfleet holodecks might be the best reason to not do this, come to think of it.
And really, any problems with Jellico’s integration with the rest of his team weren’t his fault to begin with, but that of his superior officers. Whose idea was it to have a “substitute captain”, anyway? Why not leave Picard on the Enterprise, and send Jellico on the secret mission? Or if they wanted Jellico in charge of the negotiations, what was the Enterprise doing there at all? Send him in his own ship, where he’s already got a system down with his crew.
Sadly, it didn’t work for whoever had tried it before. As the Enterprise also found out:
The entire thing was a setup to piss off Riker and drive him to his own command. He’s too much of a manly man for batshit crazy Admirals to confront openly.
I almost forgot about that episode. You’re right, that technology does exist in the Trek universe.
Edit: nvm
The whole point is that Picard is, apparently, Starfleet’s ranking expert on the type of easily-mistaken-for-background-radiation phenomena that the Cardassians are using, because the other guys who studied that stuff back when have since left the service; that’s why he can play Jeanny-On-The-Spot to scan for the source of it when they’re sneaking around down there.
The Feds are reallly, REALLY bad at that secret mission stuff. See “The Enterprise Incident”
Hey lets risk the Romulans getting some of our best technology. On a mission that at best will see 430 people throw their lives away.
And lets make sure only the Captain and XO know, and have them beam over without the guy taking over while they’re gone know.
So…IF the Romulans don’t just start immediately opening fire…and IF Spock encounters a Romulan Commander to seduce…? Or was Spocks plan not dependent on gender???
You’re totally right that Starfleet does a pretty piss-poor job at being a military. That’s because everyone in Starfleet is only there because they think it’s cool to wear a silly uniform and zoom around in space play-acting at being in the military. Oh, they do have real weapons, and they really do real stuff, and really do fight, and really do explore, and really do get in real danger from negative space wedges, and so on. But they only do that because they think it’s fun.
Nobody has to join Starfleet, and 99.99% of humanity doesn’t. The ones who do are acting as if they’re in the military, and they obey orders, but only because they think that’s how you’re supposed to do things. You could staff the Enterprise with four or five guys. Data runs it by himself. And you could just leave out Data. But what would be the point of that? The point of having a starship is so you can zoom around the galaxy. And it’s no fun doing it by yourself, you’ve got to have your pals with you so you can talk about all the awesome shit you’re doing.
Regular people stay back on Earth having hologram orgies and whatnot.
So the people in Starfleet are only good at their jobs when they want to be. And the only bad thing that can happen to them–aside from getting killed–is being told they can’t play in the cool space explorers club anymore.
Wasn’t this similar to a concept Roddenberry had that wasn’t expanded on?
Not the orgies, but the idea that the majority of humans in the Federation were this new advanced race and that the people in Starfleet were primitive, violent throwbacks who had no place on Earth or any of the larger colonies.
[One Google search and a bit of reading later… wow, Gene was kind of a freak… ]
Yes, the concept is part of the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, written by Gene Roddenberry in 1979. His idea was that humans on Earth live in a perfect, idealized world, and are basically the Human Potential Movement: The Species, incorporating every bizarre 1930s-1960s countercultural idea, from nudism to free love to optional last names to love instructors. The new humans (italics in the original) apparently live in the Brave New World, but without all the various cheats Huxley used to make that seem like a terrible dystopia; they’re “well-adjusted”, in the enlightened 1960s sense of the concept, which makes them too laid-back to do anything as rigorous as exploring strange new worlds, and as for finding new life or new civilizations, well, let’s not split any infinitives here, buddy.
Oh, and Kirk’s straight and never got it on with Spock. Gene felt the need to address that one explicitly.
Kirk is NOT GAY. He’s not overcompensating for ANYTHING.
[quote=“Lemur866, post:39, topic:771665”]
Kirk is NOT GAY. He’s not overcompensating for ANYTHING.
[/QUOTE] [Maybe you think I'm joking. Don't think I'm joking. Here it is from the novel](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Roddenberry_Footnote): [quote] *Editor's note:* The human concept of friend is most nearly duplicated in Vulcan thought by the term *t'hy'la*, which can also mean brother and lover. Spock's recollection (from which this chapter has drawn) is that it was a most difficult moment for him since he did indeed consider Kirk to have become his brother. However, because *t'hy'la* can be used to mean lover, and since Kirk's and Spock's friendship was unusually close, this has led to some speculation over whether they had actually indeed become lovers. At our request, Admiral Kirk supplied the following comment on this subject:“I was never aware of this lovers rumor, although I have been told that Spock encountered it several times. Apparently he had always dismissed it with his characteristic lifting of his right eyebrow which usually connoted some combination of surprise, disbelief, and/or annoyance. As for myself, although I have no moral or other objections to physical love in any of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms, I have always found my best gratification in that creature woman. Also, I would dislike being thought of as so foolish that I would select a love partner who came into sexual heat only once every seven years.”
[/quote]
OK, maybe Kirk’s bi but prefers women. Maybe our notions of “gay” and “straight” and “Iowan” don’t really apply to that universe. But there’s one think Kirk’s clear on: He’d never fall for someone who’s only in the mood once every seven years. And I think we can all agree on that being canon.