Speculative Fiction and Logistics
Whenever I read a comic or a science-fiction novel, or any other speculative meta really, I am immediately drawn to the question of logistics.
What I mean is most of those speculative universes fail to answer the basic questions such as
- Who builds those things (spaceships, weapons, etc)
- Who trains the people?
- What is the logistics of things?
A universe which kinda answers these questions is Warhammer 40k. In the imperium side we know that there are factory worlds, agro worlds and other worlds that are similar to ours. So the question of "Who makes these ships?" can be tentatively answered as "Forge worlds are doing that and they get their materials from the worlds that are dedicated to resource allocation". As for education we know that there are Schola Progeniums and other scholams providing this. As for the logistics, the space is a busy place. As I said, they are not definite answers - and in the Chaos side things get very murky and handwavey - but at least you feel that someone had spent some brain labor on that question.
Star Trek, on the other hand, fails to answer these especially on the encountered alien cultures. Yes, we know there is a Starfleet and the human civilization is providing the goods and the services. But when you encounter a "nomad" spacefaring civilization the question of "Who builds these spaceships, who trains the personnel on them" and so on fells flat. Voyager's Kazon can be given as an example. We know that their planetside civilization is - at best - feudal and non-technological. So, where do these spaceships pop from? If they are building them on a spaceport... How did this spaceport come into existence? Star Trek has many problematic aspects in addition to logistics. Why, for example, our characters always encounter a planet-wide civilization? Sure some episodes take a planet in internal crisis, but we never - as far as my memory goes - encounter a scene where captain is talking with multiple governmental leaders (more than two I mean).
Battletech gives us an out for this question. It basically says that there was a technologically advanced civilization before (Star League) and the existing governmental entities are just using what was left from before. The maintenance is done from the handover knowledge - even though the modern technology cannot build starships - they can extend their lifetime. Not a good answer, in my humble opinion, but an answer nonetheless. Because if you know how to maintain a device, how can't you reverse-engineer the damn thing and build it for yourself?
This is a poisoning question which kills the suspense of disbelief.