this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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Is there a canon answer for why Star Trek ships always meet aligned? I always assumed either
I imagine #2 could lead to some comical spinning as two ships keep trying to align to each other.
EDIT: Also, #2 gets exponentially more complicated as the number of ships increases--maybe the smaller ships align to the biggest one?
Because it's aesthetically unpleasing to the audience. I've never heard of a canon reason, though; no.
I don't think it's for possible docking, either. Although that was someone's good guess, they're not going to dock nose to nose, so they'd have to reposition anyway.
Tip-to-tip, not nose-to-nose, they're not Eskimos.
Acrually from what i remember from just rewatching ds9, when ships dock with the station both the defiant and the klingon ships and possibly others dock nose first into the docking ring. So if two ships did dock with eachother it probably would be roughly nose to nose.
There's a scene in Star Trek: TMP where they basically pull the nose up to the edge of the VGER platform and walk across the hull and off the ship. But the obviously exited from somewhere further back.
I seem to remember an episode where there's an actual umbilical between two ships, and those extend from the sides.
Given the variety of species and the large number of models just within the Human Federation, you probably can't reasonably assume docking ports are going to be on the nose. They face one another because the front is usually where most of the weapons are; it's in case you have to shoot, not in case you have to dock. Plus, if things are so bad that neither ship had a functioning transporter, emergency nose-docking is probably not high on the list of deciding your orientation.
Artificial gravity alignment? so that they can dock etc if needed?
Not aligning these could lead to some hilarious boarding situations.
I think it's closer to #2, but by choice/convention. An episode I watched lately had a mention of a ship "matching our orientation"
From my understanding, though I can't pinpoint why I think this, it's "ship #1 orient based however they feel like, any follow up ships orient accordingly to ships already in-system"
It also assumes that every species lives and accommodates their world view relative to how they see and live with gravity in their own species. Not all creatures will be bipedal beings that enjoy an up/ down like we do.
Maybe there will be beings out there that evolved in a liquid atmosphere... or a gaseous environment and they spend more time in different orientations. Maybe some don't even care about orientation and they just meet one another in whatever orientation because that is their norm.
It's another one of those things where we all want to believe that the entire universe will see things the way we do on earth.