posted
It's still a nasty galaxy, and you need to have people and ships out there who are willing to do the ugly stuff necessary to keep the utopian peaceniks back home on Terra or Aldebaran or Tau Ceti or Alpha Centauri happily blissed out that they know a peaceful existence. Diplomacy goes a long way, but can never be guaranteed to be effective.
As for the canonicity of dedicated combat forces within Starfleet, remember that the assault force led by Kirk in TFF had a department colour of dark blue, never seen on anyone else before or since. Whatever they were called, they were there to kick ass and take names. And I think it more effective to maintain a force like that than to give other regular serving Starfleet personnel cross-training in tactical ops and call them your fighting force.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: 3. The speed of beaming large numbers of people is something I do need to quantify. It'll vary between large-number examples and some of the smaller ones as in "Descent, Pt. II"[TNG7].
I think it's important to take into account the possibility of extra transporters being used at those times as well--- and extra transporters not being used. In Descent, for instance, the E-D was left with a skeleton crew, was there anyone left to press the buttons on the cargo transporter to turn it into a human transporter? Were there enough people to run the regular transporters?
Also, when there are massive and/or quick evacuations [like that at the beginning of Generations] the other ship might be able to contribute to getting those people out. Remembering that emergency transporters are one-way [off ship] and they could be set-up for easy use by nearby personnel, because they are emergency transporters.
PS: It's not Terra, it's Earth.
-------------------- Later, J _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ The Last Person to post in the late Voyager Forum. Bashing both Voyager, Enterprise, and "The Bun" in one glorious post.
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