A couple Star Trek Thought back I talked about Captain Solok, who was in charge of the T’Kumbra,a ship with a predominantly-Vulcan crew. Although Solok is a complete tool, I am completely a fan of there being Starfleet vessels where humans are in the minority, it they’re there at all.

The T’Kumbra is not the first such vessel. I know that the USS Intrepid on the original series was a Vulcan majority ship that was destroyed. And I don’t remember the name of it right off, but I believe that Geordi LaForge’s mother captain a vessel that had a crew largely composed of Vulcans. That ship was also destroyed. The T’Kumbra is lucky the Dominion War ended before someone decided to say it was a casualty. Anyway, as far as I’m aware, that’s the full extent of what we’ve canonically been shown for Starfleet ships where Humans aren’t the bulk of the population.

Granted, pretty much ALL Starfleet vessels are made up of a mix of species working together, which is as it should be in the Federation, but if 99% of Starfleet is human, it feels like tokenism when we see an alien. Obviously they want a mostly-human cast for the ships that the shows are set on, but you’d think we’d at least get glimpses of ships with crews made up predominantly of the other Federation founding races now and again. Give me a ship with Tellarite or Andorian crews at the very least.

But it isn’t just my desire to see a more diverse Starfleet that makes this make sense. Alien species should also be adapted to different climates or atmospheres or gravitational constants. Surely you’d want a ship for Starfleet officers who are best suited to live in arctic conditions, and why not have one for aquatic species? These would be easy enough to convey by just having our boring human captains talk to them over a viewscreen and it would make the universe feel that much more rich.