Some of the most fascinating laws that everyone in Starfleet should follow.
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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.
00:10We've already done a list of strange Starfleet rules, so you can check that out if you want
00:15to see what we've already covered, but there are so many more obscure regulations, codes,
00:20and general orders that have to be mentioned.
00:22I'm Bri from Trek Culture and here are 10 Starfleet rules that you never knew existed.
00:2810.
00:29The Starfleet Uniform Code Starfleet's uniform code was not as strict
00:33as you may think.
00:34Enforcement was largely up to the discretion of the captain, and some officers, like Deanna
00:38Troi, were allowed to wear casual clothes on duty, though she was forced to wear a standard
00:43uniform when Captain Jellicoe temporarily took command.
00:46There were also a number of allowances made for cultural accessories, including Rolaren's
00:51earring, Worf's baldrick, Nog's Ferengi headdress, and Scotty's kilt, which he wore
00:56as part of his dress uniform.
00:58Ensign Mesk was even allowed to carry a very dangerous Orion multi-key because of a religious
01:03exemption.
01:04However, Ro was initially prevented from wearing her earring, so it's possible that these
01:09allowances were also up to Captain's discretion.
01:12Certain species also needed different uniform styles because of their unique physiology,
01:17such as Arex from the animated series, the beluga whales from Lower Decks, and Saru from
01:23Discovery.
01:24Different uniform styles would also often be used at the same time in Starfleet.
01:28While the gray shoulder uniforms from the Next Generation films were still being used,
01:32California-class ships and others used the style from Lower Decks.
01:36During this same time period, Starbase 80 used their own variant that we saw in Trusted
01:40Sources, and some styles were used only on specific missions, like the ones from the
01:45DS9 episode Shadows and Symbols, which were optimized for hot and sandy environments.
01:51Number 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
02:01species, but the opportunity was open to anyone seeking to join.
02:05The difference is that folks from non-Federation species would have to get a letter of recommendation
02:10from a command-level officer before they would be allowed to apply for the Academy.
02:14Nog, for example, was able to get a recommendation from Sisko in the DS9 episode Heart of Stone.
02:20After 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
02:34get recommendations from a command-level officer before applying.
02:38Starfleet typically doesn't want to exclude people just because of where they come from,
02:42but this rule does give an advantage to aliens who are Federation members, allowing them
02:47to simply jump straight into the entrance exams before having any real-world experience
02:51with Starfleet.
02:52Number 8.
02:53Patient Transfer Procedures
02:55An unnamed Starfleet protocol stated that the transfer of a patient is to be performed
02:59at the discretion of the attending physician.
03:02This may seem like a pretty common-sense rule, but it's easy to exploit.
03:06In the first alternate universe film, Dr. McCoy purposefully infects Kirk with a vaccine
03:11for a Malvarin mud flea bite, giving him the symptoms.
03:14Once Kirk was infected, McCoy was able to take him aboard the Enterprise simply by declaring
03:19himself Kirk's attending physician.
03:21No questions were raised as to why a victim of Malvarin mud fleas would need to be taken
03:26aboard a vessel that was responding to a distress call from Vulcan.
03:29Apparently, no explanation was even required, and the fact that McCoy thought of this loophole
03:34so quickly really suggests that he's done this before, or at least thought about it,
03:39which raises a ton of security concerns.
03:42Number 7.
03:44Starfleet Regulation 3287.0
03:47In the Next Generation episode, Night Terrors, there is a brief scene where Data and Deanna
03:51were looking through the ship's database of available particles when they came across
03:55an entry for Antiduterium, a form of antimatter.
03:59The entry explained that Antiduterium was used as one of the main sources of fuel in
04:03the matter-antimatter reaction that powered the warp core, and it also included a reference
04:09to Starfleet Regulation 3287.0, which requires all forms of antimatter to be stored in magnetic
04:15confinement pods.
04:17This 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, they are
04:25both immediately annihilated and converted into pure energy.
04:29This property makes it very hard to study antimatter, since any container we would use
04:34to hold it would be made of normal matter and filled with air that would destroy any
04:37antimatter particles that were captured.
04:40CERN has actually been able to work through this by trapping antimatter particles using
04:44magnetic fields in a near-perfect vacuum.
04:47We always love to see examples of real-life science in Trek, it's cool that they put
04:51so much thought into something as minor as storage guidelines.
04:556.
04:56General Order 5
04:58In the first episode of Lower Decks, Second Contact, Boimler and Mariner ended up getting
05:02chased by a giant alien creature while Mariner was trying to deliver farming supplies to
05:07the Galardonians.
05:08Boimler tried to request an emergency transport to the Cerritos, but Mariner threw his comm
05:12badge away, explaining that General Order 5 prohibited them from leaving a dangerous
05:17situation if others would be harmed because of it.
05:20She argued that the Galardonians needed the creature to be returned to them in order to
05:24survive.
05:25General Order 5 is probably a good rule to have because it prevents officers from just
05:29abandoning people in need or harming anyone through interactions.
05:33But much like many other rules we've gone over, it's entirely up to interpretation
05:38whether anyone would be harmed by someone beaming out.
05:41In the example from Second Contact, they couldn't just stun the monster because they didn't
05:45want 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.
05:52Luckily though, the creature turned out to be an herbivore, or this episode might have
05:56ended on a much darker note.
05:595.
06:00Regulation 619
06:03Regulation 619 requires any command officer who becomes emotionally compromised from a
06:08mission at hand to resign from said command.
06:11When Kirk was marooned on the ice planet Delta Vega in the 2009 Star Trek film, Old Spock
06:16gave him the idea to use Regulation 619 to take control of the Enterprise back from Young
06:21Spock and go after Nero.
06:24Old Spock knew that his younger counterpart would be easy to provoke after just watching
06:28his whole planet be consumed by a black hole.
06:31Even with all that Vulcan emotional suppression, Kirk hitched a ride back aboard the Enterprise
06:36and basically just bullied Spock until he got angry enough to punch him and slap him
06:40against the bridge console.
06:42Since Kirk was promoted to First Officer by Pike before he was taken captive, Kirk was
06:46apparently next in line after Spock to command the ship.
06:49Yet, for some reason, no one mentions the fact that the whole reason Kirk was marooned
06:54on Delta Vega in the first place was because he assaulted the security officers that Spock
06:59ordered to escort him off the bridge.
07:01Why was his emotional outburst okay, but Spock's wasn't?
07:064.
07:07The Warp Speed Limit
07:08This has been talked to death about, but it is worth mentioning that Starfleet had a warp
07:13speed limit in place that was almost always disregarded.
07:17In the Next Generation episode, Force of Nature, the crew discovered that warp travel was slowly
07:22damaging the fabric of subspace, which could render warp travel and subspace communication
07:27impossible throughout a huge region of the galaxy.
07:30To slow the process until an alternative form of propulsion could be developed, Starfleet
07:34instituted a maximum speed limit of warp 5 throughout Federation space, except in extreme
07:40emergencies.
07:41These rules wouldn't apply to Voyager as they were stranded on the opposite side of
07:44the galaxy, but all throughout the rest of the Next Generation, as well as Deep Space
07:49Nine, Picard, and Lower Decks, we've seen starships ignore this limit and go far beyond
07:54warp 5.
07:55At this point, most fans assume that countermeasures were developed shortly after the episode,
08:00removing the need for the speed limit.
08:02In fact, according to Memory Alpha, the third edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia and
08:07an unpublished Voyager technical manual, explain that Voyager's folding nacelles were designed
08:11specifically to reduce damage to subspace, explaining why they're raised whenever the
08:16ship went to warp.
08:183.
08:19Regulation 191 or Article 14
08:22In our first video on this topic, we went over Regulation 3, Paragraph 12, which had
08:27some really vague wording that left way too much up to interpretation.
08:31Funny enough, there's another Starfleet rule from the same Voyager episode, Equinox,
08:35which was just as imprecise.
08:37Regulation 191 states that in a combat scenario involving more than one ship, presumably with
08:42commanders of equal rank, command would fall to the vessel with tactical superiority.
08:47Captain Janeway used this regulation to supersede Captain Ransom's orders, and he was forced
08:51to agree, as the Equinox was a much older, smaller, and more damaged ship, vastly outgunned
08:57by Voyager.
08:58However, it's not hard to imagine a scenario in which the more tactically superior ship
09:03is not clear, causing a lot of possible confusion in the chain of command.
09:072.
09:08The Starfleet Draft
09:09It may come as a surprise to some that Starfleet actually practices conscripted service on
09:14rare occasions.
09:16In Star Trek The Motion Picture, McCoy, who had returned to civilian life after the Enterprise's
09:21five-year mission, was forced back into service by the Reserve Action Clause in his Starfleet
09:25contract, which gave high-ranking officers the power to reinstate officers who had previously
09:30been discharged.
09:32As McCoy explained, in simpler language, Captain, they drafted me.
09:36The Reserve Action Clause was simply a more gentle term for the same concept.
09:40The Starfleet Draft was further explained in the Discovery episode, Choose Your Pain.
09:45Captain Lorca commissioned the work of a former criminal mutineer, Michael Burnham, near the
09:49beginning of the series.
09:50To justify his actions to Admiral Cornwell, he cited Regulation 13982, which apparently
09:57gives captains the power to draft literally anyone into service during times of war.
10:021.
10:03Starfleet's Alien Sex Protocols
10:06No doubt, thanks to Kirk's many exploits during the original series, Starfleet actually
10:11had medical guidelines on the proper way to have sex with aliens.
10:15The Voyager episode, The Disease, gave us possibly the worst Harry Kim love story in
10:20the entire series, and that is really saying something.
10:23In it, Harry contracts a mysterious glowing skin disease from messing around with an alien
10:28aboard a Generation ship.
10:30This disease made him fall more and more in love with her, to the point where being away
10:33from her gave him withdrawal symptoms.
10:36Super corny.
10:37But what's actually kind of hilarious is watching Kim get in trouble for not following
10:42proper Starfleet alien sex etiquette.
10:45After he started noticing his symptoms, he was forced to admit to the doctor that he
10:48had slept with an alien, violating 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
11:07bedroom, now everyone in Starfleet has to get permission from their boss and their doctor
11:12before they can get freaky with a newly discovered form of life.
11:15All this is to prevent the horror stories like we've seen in The Disease, and also
11:19the episode Unexpected from Enterprise, which introduced sexually transmitted alien hand
11:24nipples as one of the many possible risks of making first contact on a first date.
11:29And those were 10 Starfleet rules that you never knew existed.
11:33If you liked this video you can go ahead and give us a thumbs up, and if you can think
11:36of any other weird regulations that we might have missed, make sure you leave them in the
11:40comment section below.
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11:45You can also find us on various social medias, at Trek Culture or at Trek Culture YT.
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11:57With all that being said, I hope you all have a great rest of your day, and don't forget
12:01to live long and prosper.