Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years

by David A. Goodman

  But Gileus didn’t want to take that risk; in this critical moment, his focus hadn’t been to win the war, but rather to protect his own power, which would have been threatened if Romulus were attacked. As soon as he realized the Lexington and the Denobulan ships would reach Romulus a day ahead of the ships he’d recalled from Cheron, he contacted Earth by subspace radio and suggested they begin negotiations for a peace to end this conflict. The Romulan War was over.

  ABOVE: The minute-to-minute recounting of the Battle of Cheron combines information from orbital observatories, ships’ logs from both sides, and eyewitness accounts. Time logs are based on the internal ship chronometers of the Starfleet vessels.

  ABOVE: A Romulan warbird, circa 2150.

  THE NEUTRAL ZONE

  The United Earth Council found Gileus’s message unexpected, but they didn’t waste time. “It was clear to me that Gileus’s suing for peace was in fact a surrender,” Samuels wrote in his memoirs. Nathan Samuels dictated the terms. There would no longer be an ill-defined Romulan Empire border; Samuels instead established a neutral zone, where entry by either side would be considered an act of war.

  “Though the penalty seemed equal to both sides,” Samuels wrote, “in fact, I had succeeded in cutting off the Romulans from the rest of the Galaxy.” He had made Earth the savior of the Alpha Quadrant; the Coalition planets, because of Earth’s victory, were now protected from the Romulans. It was leverage that Samuels needed not only to rehabilitate his much damaged reputation, but also to close the loophole that had left Earth alone to face the Romulans to begin with.

  ABOVE: This excerpt from the Romulan/Earth peace treaty takes away territory Romulus had acquired during the war, and more specifically establishes the terms of the Neutral Zone, the borders of which would not be violated by either side for over a century.

  ABOVE: Jonathan Archer speaking at the signing of the Federation Charter. Behind him, left to right, are Ambassadors T’Jan of Vulcan, Gort Sarahd of Andoria, Admiral Douglas, and Ambassador Natha Kell of Tellar.

  CHAPTER III

  * * *

  THE FEDERATION

  2160-2245

  * * *

  “Ex astris, scientia.”

  (From the stars, knowledge.)

  —Starfleet Academy motto

  The Romulan War had raised Earth’s stature in the Galaxy to heroic proportions, giving the Humans political capital that they intended to spend. Unfortunately, it had also been very costly in lives and resources. Nathan Samuels and the United Earth Council knew that despite their success in the war, they were also vulnerable. They could not afford another intergalactic conflict, so every effort needed to be made to protect Earth. The Neutral Zone would be monitored by seven outposts constructed on asteroids. The Starfleet Corps of Engineers would bury the control centers of the monitoring outposts a mile deep in those asteroids and cover the asteroids themselves with a protective shell of castrodinium.

  “I was confident there would be no more surprise attacks from the Romulans,” Samuels wrote in his memoirs, “but now I was worried that somebody, the Klingons perhaps, might take advantage of Earth’s weakened condition. I needed a bold move, a show of strength.” To this end he called a second convention of the Coalition of Planets to amend the charter—to get what he’d wanted from the charter to begin with.

  THE SECOND CHARTER CONVENTION

  Samuels and Ambassador to the Coalition Thomas Vanderbilt agreed that getting the Coalition to approve a second charter convention would be the easy part. It required only a majority vote of the member delegates. With the exception of the Andorians and the Tellarites, the Coalition planets followed Vulcan’s lead. Although Vulcan had lobbied to keep the Coalition from becoming any kind of military alliance, the war had changed their point of view significantly. T’Jan, now the Vulcan ambassador to Earth, recognized along with her government that they owed Earth a huge debt.

  “It is my judgment,” T’Jan wrote to her superiors, “that the fact that Earth kept the connection between our people and the Romulans a secret has saved us much Future conflict.” Indeed, the Vulcans would have found themselves pariahs in the Galaxy if the truth had been known.

  “As illogical as it might seem, we owe them a debt,” T’Jan continued, “one which we can repay by supporting their goals.” Her superiors agreed with her, and as a result, T’Jan worked with Vanderbilt to gain the necessary votes to call the convention.

  The more difficult challenge was amending the charter, which required a two-thirds vote of the delegates. Vanderbilt and T’Jan both agreed that, in order to amend the charter, Andoria’s and Tellar’s approval would be crucial. The smaller planets would be hesitant to join a military alliance given the devastation brought by the recent war unless they were certain that all the major powers in the sector were behind it. “I was confident in my abilities to negotiate with our allies,” Vanderbilt said in an interview for First Captain: A Biography of Jonathan Archer, “but I knew there really was only one Human being who could guarantee Andoria’s and Tellar’s support: Jonathan Archer.” Samuels agreed with him, and used the power of the United Earth Council to bring Archer home.

  When Jonathan Archer received his final orders, to return Enterprise to Earth for decommissioning, he was surprised. “Enterprise was ten years old; it had been officially refitted twice and received a lot of upgrades,” Archer said in First Captain. “I felt it still had a lot of good years left in space.” He had heard a new class of starship was about to make its debut, but that didn’t seem to necessitate Enterprise’s retirement. It was only when he was contacted by Samuels himself that he learned the full story.

  When Samuels told Archer his plan was to get the Coalition Charter amended, Archer immediately agreed to help. “I lost a lot of friends in the [Romulan] war,” he said, “and knew that if the Coalition had stood with Earth the war would have been over a lot sooner. In fact, I think the alliance could have even prevented the war from happening at all.”

  Although Archer was glad to assist with the charter, Samuels recalled in his memoirs that Archer was less understanding of Enterprise’s retirement. “I explained to him,” Samuels said, “that Enterprise had become a symbol. Our first Warp 5 ship had survived the war intact; it showed the Galaxy that Humans were here to stay. And frankly, I didn’t want to risk anything happening to it.” Reluctantly, Archer followed his orders, and on January 18, 2161, Enterprise returned home, one week before the first day of the convention.

  Prom the beginning of the convention, Archer was deeply involved. His introductory speech at the opening ceremonies in the new grand auditorium at United Earth Headquarters would be memorized by schoolchildren for centuries to come. Delegates from eighteen worlds filled the auditorium, and sat enraptured from his opening sentence: “Space, the final frontier.” After weeks of negotiation, the charter was successfully amended. The Coalition would now be an alliance of worlds that would protect each other in times of conflict.

  THE UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS

  During the negotiations over the charter, Vanderbilt began to see the potential for an even greater opportunity. His vision would lead quickly to a cascade of events that would change history.

  At one of the many bumps in the road during discussions, Vanderbilt found himself in a room with the delegates from Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar, and the Earth colony on Proxima Centauri.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Proxima Colony, or Alpha Centauri as it was more colloquially know, had become a thriving world in the century since Zefram Cochrane had helped found, and then terraform, the planet. They peacefully declared their independence twenty years before the founding of the Coalition.

  Natha Kell, the delegate from Tellar, didn’t just want the military alliance to help defend the member planets, he also wanted help maintaining his world’s fleet. Ambassador Sarahd of Andoria had the same motive, but certainly wasn’t going to let Tellar get help building new ships from the Coalition.

  Vanderbilt understood
that both these worlds devoted many of their resources to maintaining their fleets and as a result, their homeworlds often faced shortages of food and other resources. And Vanderbilt knew that they still worried that one of their old adversaries, if given help with their military, might decide to move against them in the future.

  But Vanderbilt saw a diplomatic compromise that could reshape the quadrant. “While I was listening to [Andorian Ambassador] Sarahd and [Tellarite Ambassador] Kell shouting at each other,” Vanderbilt wrote in The Founding, his own memoir on the Federations origins, “I could see the fear in their eyes of what the others might do. That was what drove them, and me. I thought if all these world governments were folded into one body, no one world could make a move on its own. It would take the fear away.”

  And there would be huge advantages: resources could be equally distributed, diplomatic moves would be voted on, and all the fleets of these worlds would be under one command. It would provide the ultimate security. By limiting it to the most powerful worlds in the Coalition, combining their spheres of influence into one large territory, other governments could and would lobby to join. It was a truly visionary idea, and, “Once it was in my head,” Vanderbilt wrote, “I couldn’t let it go, even if it made me a laughingstock.”

  He brought the idea to Samuels. The men later recounted that at this meeting Samuels was initially reluctant. “In my experience as a politician,” Samuels told Vanderbilt, “when someone tries to convince you to share power, it generally means giving up power.” But he had called this second convention to provide security for Earth, and Vanderbilt’s proposal would provide this security much more efficiently.

  “The one thing I did know was that I was constantly surprised how cooperative these governments had become,” Samuels said, “and if there was ever a moment for Earth to try to make this happen, it was then.” He brought the proposal to the United Earth Council, which gave the go-ahead for Vanderbilt to bring it to the other four governments.

  Andoria and Tellar, although protective of their own power, were tantalized by the idea of what this collaboration would bring them. They were aware of the richness of resources available to Earth and Vulcan. Although these resources were available through trade, this agreement would mean much more. Their people would be provided for.

  Vulcan, meanwhile, longed for more influence over violent species in the Coalition and this was one logical way to guarantee it. As Humans, the people of Proxima were the easiest to convince. All agreed that as long as the cultures of their individual worlds remained sovereign, they were on board.

  Vanderbilt saw he had the votes. He faced now a logistical problem. “How do you write an intergalactic Constitution? I’d never done it before,” Vanderbilt wrote in his memoir. “I’m not sure anybody had.” Vanderbilt instructed his staff to work with the staffs of the other four member planets to cobble a document together.

  They used as templates the Coalition Charter and the United Earth Constitution, as well as the governing documents of the member worlds. Where they found agreement was in an equal, democratic body with a president appointed to rule for a defined term. There would also be a military/exploratory arm, a judicial system, and a science council. Though it took months to hammer out, there was little conflict along the way.

  “It didn’t seem to take as long as I thought it would,” Vanderbilt said. “My impression was that everyone really wanted this to work. Whatever we might have been afraid of before, the war with the Romulans had made our other fears less important.”

  The question came up mid-negotiation: what to call this new organization? Vanderbilt has been given credit for the name “United Federation of Planets,” but recently unsealed logs call the origin of this name into question, as Jonathan Archers captain’s log mentions the name years before the organization’s inception. Since this has never been fully explained, the credit stays with Vanderbilt.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: Archer’s defenders consider this at least circumstantial evidence that a Temporal Cold War did—or will—occur.

  On October 11, 2161, the Constitution was signed in San Francisco by Ambassador Thomas Vanderbilt of Earth, Ambassador T’Jan of Vulcan, Ambassador Natha Kell of Tellar, Ambassador Gort Sarahd of Andoria, and Ambassador Titus Oleet for Proxima. It was Ambassador Kell who put the finest point on it. “We defy anyone, even the Romulans, to test our resolve now for collective security.”

  The Council’s first act was to elect a president, and they unanimously elected Vanderbilt. Samuels was openly disappointed. He wrote in his unpublished memoirs, “I had wanted to make history, but history got away from me.”

  ABOVE: Office of the President of the Federation, Paris, France.

  ABOVE: The preamble to the Federation Constitution, more formally known as the Articles of Federation. The preamble has echoes of the Tribunal of Alpha II, the United States Constitution, and the United States Declaration of Independence.

  STARFLEET AND ITS ACADEMY

  The Constitution for the United Federation of Planets provided for a unified fleet under the command of the Federation Council. The makeup of that organization would be similar to the Council; representatives from all the worlds would play a role and have an equal say. But the member worlds agreed that the fleet needed a chain of command.

  “This had a double purpose,” Vanderbilt remembered in his memoir. “The member worlds all had militaries, so a military structure was one they would respect. This would be necessary to keep the peace.” The Federations fleet would not be used to impose the Federation on other worlds; rather, it was to be an instrument of civilization. The fleet would regulate commerce and use force only when necessary to protect its members. Its chief goal would be exploration; representing the Federation to new life and new worlds as the peaceful organization it set out to be.

  The Andorians, Tellarites, and Vulcans did not see themselves—or one another—as the natural leaders of this kind of endeavor, and, still in awe of Earths conduct during the Romulan War, turned to their Human colleagues to carry this out. In a previous time, the Vulcans had been wary of Earth outpacing them, but now they were ready to step in line behind the Earthlings who had more than proven themselves. Add to that, the goals were in many ways the same established goals of the Earth Starfleet. Thus, it was easily agreed upon by the newly formed Federation Council that the combined service mandated by the Constitution would be built under the Earth Starfleet’s framework, and for continuity it would still be called “Starfleet Command.”

  Admiral Douglas, after his extraordinary service during the Romulan War, was offered the rank of commander-in-chief of Starfleet but turned it down. He had another project on the horizon.

  “The biggest problem I faced during the war,” Douglas is quoted as saying in the official Starfleet history of Starfleet Academy, “was the lack of well-trained crews.” Not just crews who knew how to operate a ship, but ones who understood the Galaxy. “There was always such an influx of data,” Douglas said, “it was near impossible for someone raised on a farm in Kansas to be ready to fight a battle in space. We lost a lot of men and women because we had to send them out unprepared.”

  When Admiral Douglas became aware that Starfleet would be part of the new Federation, he convened a meeting with representatives of the Federations founding members’ military organizations. The representatives agreed that the combined Federation Starfleet would also require combined training. A few months after the Constitution was signed, Douglas and officers from the Andorian imperial Guard and the Tellarite and Vulcan fleets presented a proposal for an academic institution for Starfleet that would feature a curriculum contributed to by all the worlds of the Federation.

  Starfleet Academy was approved and founded on December 13, 2161. Admiral Douglas would be its first commandant. “There was an opportunity here,” Douglas said, “to fill our ships with well-educated, progressive individuals representing the Federation. People who weren’t in the Federation would know us through the people in St
arfleet. We had to put our best foot forward.”

  He solicited help not only from the Federation members’ military organizations, but from their academic institutions as well. Starfleet Academy very quickly became one of the finest institutions for learning in the Galaxy. The Academy was built near Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco. On September 8, 2166, Admiral Douglas delivered his commencement address to its first class of students.

  Starfleet Command, meanwhile, was not waiting for these students to graduate. Once the Constitution was ratified, no time was wasted putting the combined resources of the worlds of the Federation to work. The shipyard on Utopia Planitia received an influx of alien expertise and technology, and the Warp 7 ships that had been slowly coming together came off the assembly line at a breakneck pace. By mid-2162 five Warp 7 ships, called the Daedalus class, were exploring the Galaxy in the name of Starfleet: the United Space Ship (U.S.S.) Daedalus, Essex, Horizon, Valiant, and Archon. Though they would have their successes, the Daedalus-class vessels would be marked by tragedy.

  ABOVE: In September of 2166, Admiral Douglas delivered the commencement speech to the first graduating class of Starfleet Academy. Note that this speech suggests the graduates take actions that would eventually be outlawed by the Prime Directive. Among the graduates of the class was James Ogaleesha Davis, maternal grandfather—and namesake—of James T. Kirk.