Never mind the Federation’s code of non-interference or whatever it’s called. The fact is that the Federation starships zoom around the galaxy armed to teeth. Of course the enemy fires on them first; that’s the standard justification for militarism, an external threat that must be defeated. This is not unusual in Hollywood, but something like Star Trek, that has at least pretensions to belonging to the canon of speculative fiction, it is not unreasonable to hold it to a higher standard. Kirk’s father drives his starship into the enemy: he ends his life as a suicide bomber. You can’t get much more militaristic than that.
[ the rest of this post is on my tech blog ]