ST doesn’t have carriers because fighters are uncommon and bombers are unheard of, for a variety of good reasons. There are a few exceptions, like Jem’hadar “fighters” (which are basically equivalent to a smaller Bird of Prey in terms of crew and armament, but actually seem to serve as troop transports?), runabouts, or the Delta Flyer. That size of ship is also roughly equivalent to the Jedi ships, both in terms of travel range and capacity for violence.
I still can’t decide whether or not I like or dislike that design.
This is inaccurate. It did not say “childlike” at the time that Ada complained. After we got defederated, I asked a new mod of that community to update the sidebar because it was very light on rules, purpose, etc. and I thought that maybe our conflict with blahaj could have been avoided if the sidebar was more explicit about what the community was about. As part of his revision, on his first pass he copied and pasted a dictionary definition of “adorable” which included the word “childlike”, then went back and re-edited it to remove that word on a later editing pass. I want to say it was in there for about two hours? During that time, a couple of people spotted it and made some unwarranted assumptions.
Bjo Trimble is turning 90 in a month.
Tribbles are an excellent lesson in doing more with less. What an iconic creature that’s nothing more than a fistful of rabbit fur on a string.
The false Balok from The Corombite Maneuver deeply freaked me out as a child, but heart forever belongs to the Horta
If there’s one thing that is consistent about the Federation show-to-show and season-to-season is that they pretty much always allow officers to break literally any of the rules as long as the outcome is good. How many times has a ship been stolen for a rescue mission, orders been ignored, senior officers been bamboozled and sidelined, and it’s almost always totally forgiven because it turned out OK in the end. Hell, Janeway straight-up murdered Tuvix as he begged for his life and everyone was like “oh, um, fine?”
I used to think it was lazy writing, but now I think it’s actually just the way the Federation is characterized. The Federation being theoretically utopian and egalitarian but functionally utilitarian makes things like Section 31 make sense, the same way that TNG Klingons claim to be about honor but really they’re treacherous schemers no better than any other species.
The Defiant is an interesting middle ground, basically a corvette type of thing, and it’s only practical because it has a cloak and it’s (for the ST universe) grotesquely overpowered and overgunned. Well it’s only practical because the writers wanted it to be, but that’s the in-universe explanation.