Does Star Trek Need Starfleet?

A solarpunk Star Trek would be amazing! Tell the story of civilians living in a post-scarcity economy, building a colony, farming, and running restaurants. The "Articles of the Federation" idea of "The West Wing in Space" made my heart skip a beat.

I want to see more of Federation life, through a lens other than the military!

I enjoyed the couple episodes of DS9 where you meet Sisco's dad back on earth running a restaurant.
- Exactly what I was thinking about. Though I think if you wanted to do a series, you'd probably want a little more conflict than a paradise planet could offer.

A Star Trek about civilians would have to be done extremely carefully to not ruin everything with gold pressed latinum.

- Absolutely. Star Trek writers are in no way immune to capitalist realism themselves, especially when they're beholden to studio execs and budgets.
  I didn't make it more than a few episodes into Picard before giving up in disgust, and this only validates my choice there. It's not just Picard though. Strange New Worlds is generally quite good, but the colony shown in the most recent episode was explicitly modeled on a mid 20th century American small town, a place Federation citizens should know better than to emulate.
  Are there any novels or fanfics you'd recommend that do an actual good job of portraying a properly post scarcity Federation culture?

Could we have a spinoff show but it's just every faction except Starfleet going about their day? Klingons, Cardassians, Vulcans, Ferengi....

Lower Decks basically did a pilot episode for that.
- Is it just me or did they do a Borg Lower Decks for like 5 seconds of screen time?
Vulcan dispute resolution being the snippiest academic back-and-forth.
Minus Ferengi, they’re boring.
- they were the center of some of DS9’s best episodes
- They are excellent negotiators and traders. If you need something like an ionized plasma channel or even a prototype phase cloak, the Ferengi can find it for you.
- @cabronoffsets @atlasraven31 disagree, my wife and I are ferengiHolics lol. I blame Quark
- TNG Ferengi or DS9 Ferengi?

idk but I would like to know how they get dome people to be dilithium miners, as like in a moneyless society, what benefit they have in return.

Would love to explore that.

@AChileanCyborg @ValueSubtracted You might be interested in Ursula K. LeGuin’s book THE DISPOSSESSED. In one scene, the character from the anarchist planet explains to a character from the capitalist planet how they get people to do the dirty or dangerous jobs.

Just watched the video… it seems like it's asking for Prodigy without acknowledging its existence. 😕

I would argue that Prodigy is very Starfleet-centric.
- Those kids aren't technically Starfleet officers (in season 1) but they're very Starfleet.

@ValueSubtracted I don't think so, the canon has a lot links to possible stories without starfleet. i would find stories about living under the Dominion interesting.

Absolutely!