- 11 minutes ago
Some of the most fascinating laws that everyone in Starfleet should follow.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00At this point, characters in Star Trek have referenced so many obscure Starfleet regulations
00:05that many are easy to forget, despite how interesting they are when you really think
00:09about them. We've already done a list of strange Starfleet rules, so you can check that out if you
00:14want to see what we've already covered, but there are so many more obscure regulations,
00:19codes, and general orders that have to be mentioned. I'm Bri from TrekCulture and here
00:24are 10 Starfleet rules that you never knew existed. 10. The Starfleet Uniform Code
00:30Starfleet's uniform code was not as strict as you may think. Enforcement was largely up to the
00:35discretion of the captain, and some officers, like Deanna Troi, were allowed to wear casual
00:40clothes on duty, though she was forced to wear a standard uniform when Captain Jellico temporarily
00:45took command. There were also a number of allowances made for cultural accessories,
00:50including Rolaren's earring, Worf's Baldrick, Nog's Ferengi headdress, and Scotty's kilt,
00:55which he wore as part of his dress uniform. Ensign Mask was even allowed to carry a very
01:00dangerous Orion multi-key because of a religious exemption. However, Rho was initially prevented
01:06from wearing her earring, so it's possible that these allowances were also up to Captain's
01:11discretion. Certain species also needed different uniform styles because of their unique physiology,
01:17such as Rx from the animated series, the beluga whales from Lower Decks, and Saru from Discovery.
01:23Different uniform styles would also often be used at the same time in Starfleet. While the
01:28grey shoulder uniforms from the Next Generation films were still being used, California-class
01:32ships and others used the style from Lower Decks. During this same time period, Starbase 80 used
01:38their own variant that we saw in trusted sources, and some styles were used only on specific missions,
01:44like the ones from the DS9 episode Shadows and Symbols, which were optimized for hot and sandy
01:50environments. Number 9. Academy Applications from Non-Federation Aliens
01:56It was a lot easier to become a Starfleet officer if you were a member of a federation-aligned species,
02:01but the opportunity was open to anyone seeking to join. The difference is that folks from non-federation
02:07species would have to get a letter of recommendation from a command-level officer before they would be
02:12allowed to apply for the Academy. Nog, for example, was able to get a recommendation from Cisco in the
02:18DS9 episode Heart of Stone, after convincing him that his desire to serve was indeed genuine.
02:24Heart of Stone was the only time that this recommendation was mentioned, but it's reasonable
02:28to assume that all other non-federation alien officers, like Worf and Saru, also had to get
02:34recommendations from a command-level officer before applying. Starfleet typically doesn't want to
02:39exclude people just because of where they come from, but this rule does give an advantage to
02:44aliens who are Federation members, allowing them to simply jump straight into the entrance exams before
02:49having any real-world experience with Starfleet. Number 8. Patient Transfer Procedures
02:55An unnamed Starfleet protocol stated that the transfer of a patient is to be performed at the
03:00discretion of the attending physician. This may seem like a pretty common-sense rule, but it's easy to
03:06exploit. In the first alternate universe film, Dr. McCoy purposefully infects Kirk with a vaccine
03:11for a Melvarin mud flea bite, giving him the symptoms. Once Kirk was infected, McCoy was able
03:16to take him aboard the Enterprise simply by declaring himself Kirk's attending physician. No questions
03:22were raised as to why a victim of Melvarin mud fleas would need to be taken aboard a vessel that was
03:27responding to a distress call from Vulcan. Apparently, no explanation was even required,
03:32and the fact that McCoy thought of this loophole so quickly really suggests that he's done this before,
03:37or at least thought about it, which raises a ton of security concerns.
03:42Number 7. Regulation 3287.0
03:47In the Next Generation episode Night Terrors, there is a brief scene where Data and Deanna were looking
03:52through the ship's database of available particles when they came across an entry for anti-deuterium,
03:57a form of antimatter. The entry explained that anti-deuterium was used as one of the main sources
04:03of fuel in the matter-antimatter reaction that powered the warp core, and it also included a
04:08reference to Starfleet Regulation 3287.0, which requires all forms of antimatter to be stored in
04:15magnetic confinement pods. This regulation is really interesting because it's actually quite realistic.
04:21In the real world, whenever matter and antimatter come into contact with each other,
04:25they are both immediately annihilated and converted into pure energy. This property makes it very hard
04:31to study antimatter, since any container we would use to hold it would be made of normal matter and
04:36filled with air that would destroy any antimatter particles that were captured. CERN has actually
04:41been able to work through this by trapping antimatter particles using magnetic fields in a near-perfect
04:46vacuum. We always love to see examples of real-life science in Trek. It's cool that they put so much
04:51thought into something as minor as storage guidelines. 6. General Order 5
04:57In the first episode of Lower Decks, Second Contact, Boimler and Mariner ended up getting chased by a
05:03giant alien creature while Mariner was trying to deliver farming supplies to the Galardonians.
05:08Boimler tried to request an emergency transport to the Cerritos, but Mariner threw his comm badge away,
05:13explaining that General Order 5 prohibited them from leaving a dangerous situation if others would be
05:18harmed because of it. She argued that the Galardonians needed the creature to be returned to them in
05:23order to survive. General Order 5 is probably a good rule to have because it prevents officers from
05:28just abandoning people in need or harming anyone through interactions. But, much like many other
05:34rules we've gone over, it's entirely up to interpretation whether anyone would be harmed by
05:39someone beaming out. In the example from Second Contact, they couldn't just stun the monster because
05:44they didn't want to spoil its milk, so really the only option left was to lure it back to its cage,
05:50which didn't go very well. Luckily though, the creature turned out to be an herbivore,
05:55or this episode might have ended on a much darker note.
05:585. Regulation 619 Regulation 619 requires any command officer who becomes emotionally
06:07compromised from a mission at hand to resign from said command. When Kirk was marooned on the ice
06:12planet Delta Vega in the 2009 Star Trek film, Old Spock gave him the idea to use Regulation 619 to
06:19take control of the Enterprise back from young Spock and go after Nero. Old Spock knew that his
06:25younger counterpart would be easy to provoke after just watching his whole planet be consumed by a
06:30black hole, even with all that Vulcan emotional suppression. Kirk hitched a ride back aboard the
06:35Enterprise and basically just bullied Spock until he got angry enough to punch him and slap him against the
06:40bridge console. Since Kirk was promoted to first officer by Pike before he was taken captive,
06:45Kirk was apparently next in line after Spock to command the ship. Yet, for some reason,
06:51no one mentions the fact that the whole reason Kirk was marooned on Delta Vega in the first place
06:56was because he assaulted the security officers that Spock ordered to escort him off the bridge.
07:01Why was his emotional outburst okay, but Spock's wasn't?
07:054. The warp speed limit This has been talked to death about,
07:11but it is worth mentioning that Starfleet had a warp speed limit in place that was almost always
07:16disregarded. In the Next Generation episode, Force of Nature, the crew discovered that warp travel was
07:21slowly damaging the fabric of subspace, which could render warp travel and subspace communication
07:27impossible throughout a huge region of the galaxy. To slow the process until an alternative form of
07:32propulsion could be developed, Starfleet instituted a maximum speed limit of warp 5 throughout Federation
07:38space except in extreme emergencies. These rules wouldn't apply to Voyager as they were stranded on
07:43the opposite side of the galaxy, but all throughout the rest of the Next Generation, as well as Deep Space
07:489, Picard, and Lower Decks, we've seen starships ignore this limit and go far beyond warp 5. At this point,
07:56most fans assume that countermeasures were developed shortly after the episode, removing the need for the speed
08:01limit. In fact, according to Memory Alpha, the third edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia and an
08:07unpublished Voyager technical manual explain that Voyager's folding nacelles were designed specifically
08:12to reduce damage to subspace, explaining why they're raised whenever the ship went to warp.
08:173. Regulation 191, or Article 14
08:22In our first video on this topic, we went over Regulation 3, Paragraph 12, which had some really
08:27vague wording that left way too much up to interpretation. Funny enough, there's another
08:32Starfleet rule from the same Voyager episode, Equinox, which was just as imprecise. Regulation
08:38191 states that in a combat scenario involving more than one ship, presumably with commanders of
08:43equal rank, command would fall to the vessel with tactical superiority. Captain Janeway used this
08:48regulation to supersede Captain Ransom's orders, and he was forced to agree. As the Equinox was a much older,
08:54smaller, and more damaged ship vastly outgunned by Voyager. However, it's not hard to imagine a
09:00scenario in which the more tactically superior ship is not clear, causing a lot of possible
09:05confusion in the chain of command. 2. The Starfleet Draft
09:10It may come as a surprise to some that Starfleet actually practices conscripted service on rare
09:15occasions. In Star Trek The Motion Picture, McCoy, who had returned to civilian life after the
09:20Enterprise's five-year mission, was forced back into service by the Reserve Action Clause in his
09:25Starfleet contract, which gave high-ranking officers the power to reinstate officers who had
09:30previously been discharged. As McCoy explained, in simpler language, Captain, they drafted me.
09:36The Reserve Action Clause was simply a more gentle term for the same concept. The Starfleet
09:41draft was further explained in the Discovery episode Choose Your Pain. Captain Lorca commissioned the work
09:46of a former criminal mutineer, Michael Burnham, near the beginning of the series. To justify his
09:51actions to Admiral Cornwell, he cited Regulation 13982, which apparently gives captains the power
09:58to draft literally anyone into service during times of war. 1. Starfleet's Alien Sex Protocols
10:06No doubt, thanks to Kirk's many exploits during the original series, Starfleet actually had medical
10:11guidelines on the proper way to have sex with aliens. The Voyager episode The Disease gave us
10:17possibly the worst Harry Kim love story in the entire series, and that is really saying something.
10:23In it, Harry contracts a mysterious glowing skin disease from messing around with an alien aboard a
10:28generation ship. This disease made him fall more and more in love with her to the point where being
10:33away from her gave him withdrawal symptoms. Super corny. But what's actually kind of hilarious
10:39is watching Kim get in trouble for not following proper Starfleet alien sex etiquette. After he
10:45started noticing his symptoms, he was forced to admit to the doctor that he had slept with an alien,
10:50violating the unnamed Starfleet protocol that stated,
10:53All Starfleet personnel must obtain authorization from their CO as well as clearance from their
10:58medical officer before initiating in an intimate relationship with an alien species.
11:03What this basically means is that all because Kirk got a little too carried away in the bedroom,
11:08now everyone in Starfleet has to get permission from their boss and their doctor before they can
11:12get freaky with a newly discovered form of life. All this is to prevent the horror stories like
11:17we've seen in The Disease and also the episode Unexpected from Enterprise, which introduced sexually
11:23transmitted alien hand nipples as one of the many possible risks of making first contact on a first
11:29date. And those were 10 Starfleet rules that you never knew existed. If you liked this video,
11:34you can go ahead and give us a thumbs up. And if you can think of any other weird regulations that
11:38we might have missed, make sure you leave them in the comments section below. You can also subscribe
11:42to us here on YouTube to never miss a new upload. You can also find us on various social medias at
11:48TrekCulture or at TrekCultureYT. And if you want to find me, you can do so across various social medias
11:55at TrekkieBree. With all that being said, I hope you all have a great rest of your day,
12:00and don't forget to live long and prosper.
Be the first to comment