> I'm a big fan of taking canon "seriously" and trying to work out how it could actually be working.
It's our Alamo :)
> Even such old chestnuts like "Why did the Enterprise actually carry families?" are old chestnuts precisely because it really, honestly doesn't make sense. Starships are blowing up all the time in Star Trek, usually not even due to hostile action (or at least, conventional hostile military action).
Time to pick some nits. Sure, we see ships blow up all the time, but we also see shootings, explosions and robberies on the news every night, but I've only dealt with a break-in at my apartment once, and I've never been shot at in the street, and the only explosions I see are on the fourth of july. Statistically, I'd wager that people are just as safe on a Galaxy-class vessel as they are in San Francisco. (Although, the Enterprise was on a mission of exploration, where you never know where you might end up - it's about as dumb as, say, packing all of your stuff into a wooden box on wheels and heading west... hm.)
But you're right. It's all terribly inconsistent. I'd wager that Futurama is probably easier to rationalize, because at least they portray a lot of the people as human, making dumb mistakes and irrational decisions. "Why is this so?" "Because Fry is an idiot." "Oh, okay." The only difference, really, is in rationalizing the technology, but how different is a self-sealing stembolt from the smelloscope?
"I'd wager that people are just as safe on a Galaxy-class vessel as they are in San Francisco."
No, definitely not. Over the course of TNG I think the Galaxy-class death rate was at least 33% in ~10 years. There weren't that many deployed at the time, and we see several of them blow up, and the carcasses of a couple of others.
On the other hand, how often in Star Trek do you see Earth, and even San Francisco, get attacked? The whole planet almost gets assimilated twice, attacked up by the Xindi and the Dominion, menaced by the whale probe...OK, Earth is probably still safer than any given Galaxy class ship.
Push the casualty rate high enough across the whole run of the series and you end up with an extinct humanity at the end of it. Especially since there is very little evidence to suggest that humanity has any really significant colonies anywhere, and quite a bit of evidence against it. (There's also evidence that none of the other major species do either, which combined with the way the Enterprise in all its incarnations is always the only ship in the sector strongly suggests a Federation and equal-powered foes that are a great deal less wealthy that it may appear at first.) Again we run up against the writers not really seriously thinking through the consequences of their own attempts to create drama, which wrecks up attempts to take it seriously. However, "Federation as declining dystopian human empire" is certainly one popular fanon interpretation.
> there is very little evidence to suggest that humanity has any really significant colonies anywhere, and quite a bit of evidence against it
It is kind of suspicious that most of the characters are from Earth; Tasha Yar is from a colony but there aren't any other major examples.
> combined with the way the Enterprise in all its incarnations is always the only ship in the sector
Space is big, and sparse. There are apparently hundreds of planets in the Federation (explicitly stated at times). There are also hundreds of starbases. And while in the original series there are only about a dozen ships in the same class as the Enterprise, by the time DS9 rolls around we see huge fleets of hundreds of ships on screen.
It's our Alamo :)
> Even such old chestnuts like "Why did the Enterprise actually carry families?" are old chestnuts precisely because it really, honestly doesn't make sense. Starships are blowing up all the time in Star Trek, usually not even due to hostile action (or at least, conventional hostile military action).
Time to pick some nits. Sure, we see ships blow up all the time, but we also see shootings, explosions and robberies on the news every night, but I've only dealt with a break-in at my apartment once, and I've never been shot at in the street, and the only explosions I see are on the fourth of july. Statistically, I'd wager that people are just as safe on a Galaxy-class vessel as they are in San Francisco. (Although, the Enterprise was on a mission of exploration, where you never know where you might end up - it's about as dumb as, say, packing all of your stuff into a wooden box on wheels and heading west... hm.)
But you're right. It's all terribly inconsistent. I'd wager that Futurama is probably easier to rationalize, because at least they portray a lot of the people as human, making dumb mistakes and irrational decisions. "Why is this so?" "Because Fry is an idiot." "Oh, okay." The only difference, really, is in rationalizing the technology, but how different is a self-sealing stembolt from the smelloscope?