Star Trek: 10 Starfleet Rules You Never Knew Existed
Some of the most fascinating laws that everyone in Starfleet should follow.
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00:00 At this point, characters in Star Trek have referenced so many obscure Starfleet regulations
00:05 that many are easy to forget, despite how interesting they are when you really think
00:09 about them.
00:10 We've already done a list of strange Starfleet rules, so you can check that out if you want
00:15 to see what we've already covered, but there are so many more obscure regulations, codes,
00:20 and general orders that have to be mentioned.
00:22 I'm Bri from Trek Culture and here are 10 Starfleet rules that you never knew existed.
00:28 Number 10. The Starfleet Uniform Code.
00:31 Starfleet's uniform code was not as strict as you may think. Enforcement was largely
00:35 up to the discretion of the captain, and some officers, like Deanna Troi, were allowed to
00:40 wear casual clothes on duty, though she was forced to wear a standard uniform when Captain
00:44 Jellicoe temporarily took command.
00:46 There were also a number of allowances made for cultural accessories, including Rolaren's
00:51 earring, Worf's baldrick, Nog's Ferengi headdress, and Scotty's kilt, which he wore
00:56 as part of his dress uniform.
00:58 Ensign Mesk was even allowed to carry a very dangerous Orion multi-key because of a religious
01:03 exemption.
01:04 However, Ro was initially prevented from wearing her earring, so it's possible that these
01:09 allowances were also up to Captain's discretion.
01:12 Certain species also needed different uniform styles because of their unique physiology,
01:17 such as Aurex from the animated series, the beluga whales from Lower Decks, and Saru from
01:22 Discovery.
01:23 Different uniform styles would also often be used at the same time in Starfleet.
01:28 While the gray shoulder uniforms from the Next Generation films were still being used,
01:32 California-class ships and others used the style from Lower Decks.
01:36 During this same time period, Starbase 80 used their own variant that we saw in Trusted
01:40 Sources, and some styles were used only on specific missions, like the ones from the
01:45 DS9 episode Shadows and Symbols, which were optimized for hot and sandy environments.
01:51 Number 9.
01:53 Academy Applications from Non-Federation Aliens
01:56 It was a lot easier to become a Starfleet officer if you were a member of a Federation-aligned
02:01 species, but the opportunity was open to anyone seeking to join.
02:05 The difference is that folks from non-Federation species would have to get a letter of recommendation
02:10 from a command-level officer before they would be allowed to apply for the Academy.
02:14 Nog, for example, was able to get a recommendation from Sisko in the DS9 episode Heart of Stone.
02:20 After convincing him that his desire to serve was indeed genuine.
02:24 Heart of Stone was the only time that this recommendation was mentioned, but it's reasonable
02:28 to assume that all other non-Federation alien officers, like Worf and Saru, also had to
02:34 get recommendations from a command-level officer before applying.
02:38 Starfleet typically doesn't want to exclude people just because of where they come from,
02:42 but this rule does give an advantage to aliens who are Federation members, allowing them
02:47 to simply jump straight into the entrance exams before having any real-world experience
02:51 with Starfleet.
02:53 Patient Transfer Procedures
02:55 An unnamed Starfleet protocol stated that the transfer of a patient is to be performed
02:59 at the discretion of the attending physician.
03:02 This may seem like a pretty common sense rule, but it's easy to exploit.
03:06 In the first alternate universe film, Dr. McCoy purposely infects Kirk with a vaccine
03:11 for a Malvarin mud flea bite, giving him the symptoms.
03:14 Once Kirk was infected, McCoy was able to take him aboard the Enterprise simply by declaring
03:19 himself Kirk's attending physician.
03:21 No questions were raised as to why a victim of Malvarin mud fleas would need to be taken
03:25 aboard a vessel that was responding to a distress call from Vulcan.
03:29 Apparently, no explanation was even required, and the fact that McCoy thought of this loophole
03:34 so quickly really suggests that he's done this before, or at least thought about it,
03:39 which raises a ton of security concerns.
03:44 Regulation 3287.0
03:47 In the Next Generation episode "Night Terrors", there is a brief scene where Data and Deanna
03:51 were looking through the ship's database of available particles when they came across
03:55 an entry for Antiduterium, a form of antimatter.
03:59 The entry explained that Antiduterium was used as one of the main sources of fuel in
04:03 the matter-antimatter reaction that powered the warp core, and it also included a reference
04:08 to Starfleet Regulation 3287.0, which requires all forms of antimatter to be stored in magnetic
04:15 confinement pods.
04:17 This regulation is really interesting because it's actually quite realistic.
04:21 In the real world, whenever matter and antimatter come into contact with each other, they are
04:25 both immediately annihilated and converted into pure energy.
04:29 This property makes it very hard to study antimatter, since any container we would use
04:33 to hold it would be made of normal matter and filled with air that would destroy any
04:37 antimatter particles that were captured.
04:40 CERN has actually been able to work through this by trapping antimatter particles using
04:44 magnetic fields in a near-perfect vacuum.
04:47 We always love to see examples of real life science in Trek; it's cool that they put
04:51 so much thought into something as minor as storage guidelines.
04:55 6.
04:56 General Order 5
04:58 In the first episode of Lower Decks, "Second Contact", Boimler and Mariner ended up getting
05:02 chased by a giant alien creature while Mariner was trying to deliver farming supplies to
05:07 the Galardonians.
05:08 Boimler tried to request an emergency transport to the Cerritos, but Mariner threw his comm
05:12 badge away, explaining that General Order 5 prohibited them from leaving a dangerous
05:17 situation if others would be harmed because of it.
05:20 She argued that the Galardonians needed the creature to be returned to them in order to
05:24 survive.
05:25 General Order 5 is probably a good rule to have because it prevents officers from just
05:29 abandoning people in need or harming anyone through interactions.
05:33 But much like many other rules we've gone over, it's entirely up to interpretation
05:38 whether anyone would be harmed by someone beaming out.
05:41 In the example from Second Contact, they couldn't just stun the monster because they didn't
05:45 want to spoil its milk, so really the only option left was to lure it back to its cage,
05:50 which didn't go very well.
05:52 Luckily though, the creature turned out to be an herbivore, or this episode might have
05:56 ended on a much darker note.
05:59 5.
06:00 Regulations 619
06:03 Regulation 619 requires any command officer who becomes emotionally compromised from a
06:08 mission at hand to resign from said command.
06:11 When Kirk was marooned on the ice planet Delta Vega in the 2009 Star Trek film, Old Spock
06:16 gave him the idea to use Regulation 619 to take control of the Enterprise back from Young
06:21 Spock and go after Nero.
06:24 Old Spock knew that his younger counterpart would be easy to provoke after just watching
06:28 his whole planet be consumed by a black hole, even with all that Vulcan emotional suppression.
06:34 Kirk hitched a ride back aboard the Enterprise and basically just bullied Spock until he
06:38 got angry enough to punch him and slap him against the bridge console.
06:42 Since Kirk was promoted to First Officer by Pike before he was taken captive, Kirk was
06:46 apparently next in line after Spock to command the ship.
06:49 Yet for some reason, no one mentions the fact that the whole reason Kirk was marooned on
06:54 Delta Vega in the first place was because he assaulted the security officers that Spock
06:59 ordered to escort him off the bridge.
07:01 Why was his emotional outburst okay, but Spock's wasn't?
07:06 4.
07:07 The Warp Speed Limit
07:08 This has been talked to death about, but it is worth mentioning that Starfleet had a warp
07:13 speed limit in place that was almost always disregarded.
07:17 In the Next Generation episode "Force of Nature", the crew discovered that warp travel
07:21 was slowly damaging the fabric of subspace, which could render warp travel and subspace
07:26 communication impossible throughout a huge region of the galaxy.
07:30 To slow the process until an alternative form of propulsion could be developed, Starfleet
07:34 instituted a maximum speed limit of warp 5 throughout Federation space, except in extreme
07:40 emergencies.
07:41 These rules wouldn't apply to Voyager as they were stranded on the opposite side of
07:44 the galaxy, but all throughout the rest of the Next Generation, as well as Deep Space
07:49 Nine, Picard, and Lower Decks, we've seen starships ignore this limit and go far beyond
07:54 warp 5.
07:55 At this point, most fans assume that countermeasures were developed shortly after the episode,
08:00 removing the need for the speed limit.
08:02 In fact, according to Memory Alpha, the third edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia and
08:07 an unpublished Voyager technical manual, explain that Voyager's folding nacelles were designed
08:11 specifically to reduce damage to subspace, explaining why they're raised whenever the
08:16 ship went to warp.
08:18 3.
08:19 Regulation 191 or Article 14
08:22 In our first video on this topic, we went over Regulation 3, Paragraph 12, which had
08:26 some really vague wording that left way too much up to interpretation.
08:31 Funny enough, there's another Starfleet rule from the same Voyager episode, Equinox,
08:35 which was just as imprecise.
08:37 Regulation 191 states that in a combat scenario involving more than one ship, presumably with
08:42 commanders of equal rank, command would fall to the vessel with tactical superiority.
08:47 Captain Janeway used this regulation to supersede Captain Ransom's orders, and he was forced
08:51 to agree, as the Equinox was a much older, smaller, and more damaged ship, vastly outgunned
08:57 by Voyager.
08:58 However, it's not hard to imagine a scenario in which the more tactically superior ship
09:03 is not clear, causing a lot of possible confusion in the chain of command.
09:07 2.
09:08 The Starfleet Draft
09:09 It may come as a surprise to some that Starfleet actually practices conscripted service on
09:14 rare occasions.
09:16 In Star Trek The Motion Picture, McCoy, who had returned to civilian life after the Enterprise's
09:21 five-year mission, was forced back into service by the Reserve Action Clause in his Starfleet
09:25 contract, which gave high-ranking officers the power to reinstate officers who had previously
09:30 been discharged.
09:32 As McCoy explained, "In simpler language, Captain, they drafted me."
09:36 The Reserve Action Clause was simply a more gentle term for the same concept.
09:40 The Starfleet Draft was further explained in the Discovery episode "Choose Your Pain."
09:45 Ben Lorka commissioned the work of a former criminal mutineer, Michael Burnham, near the
09:49 beginning of the series.
09:50 To justify his actions to Admiral Cornwell, he cited Regulation 13982, which apparently
09:57 gives captains the power to draft literally anyone into service during times of war.
10:02 1.
10:03 Starfleet's Alien Sex Protocols
10:06 No doubt, thanks to Kirk's many exploits during the original series, Starfleet actually
10:11 had medical guidelines on the proper way to have sex with aliens.
10:15 The Voyager episode "The Disease" gave us possibly the worst Harry-Kim love story
10:19 in the entire series, and that is really saying something.
10:23 In it, Harry contracts a mysterious glowing skin disease from messing around with an alien
10:28 aboard a Generation ship.
10:30 This disease made him fall more and more in love with her, to the point where being away
10:33 from her gave him withdrawal symptoms.
10:36 Super corny.
10:37 What was actually kind of hilarious is watching Kim get in trouble for not following proper
10:42 Starfleet alien sex etiquette.
10:45 After he started noticing his symptoms, he was forced to admit to the doctor that he
10:48 had slept with an alien, violating the unnamed Starfleet protocol that stated "All Starfleet
10:54 personnel must obtain authorization from their CO as well as clearance from their medical
10:58 officer before initiating in an intimate relationship with an alien species."
11:03 What this basically means is that all because Kirk got a little too carried away in the
11:07 bedroom, now everyone in Starfleet has to get permission from their boss and their doctor
11:12 before they can get freaky with a newly discovered form of life.
11:15 All this is to prevent the horror stories like we've seen in "The Disease" and
11:19 also the episode "Unexpected" from "Enterprise" which introduced sexually transmitted alien
11:24 hand nipples as one of the many possible risks of making first contact on a first date.
11:29 And those were 10 Starfleet rules that you never knew existed.
11:33 If you liked this video you can go ahead and give us a thumbs up, and if you can think
11:36 of any other weird regulations that we might have missed, make sure you leave them in the
11:40 comment section below.
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11:45 You can also find us on various social medias @TrekCulture or @TrekCultureYT.
11:51 And if you want to find me, you can do so across various social medias @TrekkiBrie.
11:57 With all that being said, I hope you all have a great rest of your day and don't forget
12:01 to live long and prosper.