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Simon_Jester wrote:Weren't most of the "hat planets" the homes of extremely humanoid aliens? Or places where a colony world had gone horribly wrong in ways the Federation would probably not have approved of (e.g. almost everyone dying and a handful of survivors being mass-reproduced by cloning)?

In TOS, yes to the 'extremely humanoid aliens' thing. The latter was more TNG. One of the few saving graces of Voyager was that they didn't have so much 'extremely humanoid aliens' laying around the Delta Quadrant... albeit they abused bits of silicone and rubber forehead makeup to an absurd degree to achieve that, but still.

Simon_Jester wrote:Weren't most of the "hat planets" the homes of extremely humanoid aliens? Or places where a colony world had gone horribly wrong in ways the Federation would probably not have approved of (e.g. almost everyone dying and a handful of survivors being mass-reproduced by cloning)?

Some, others, like Beverly Crusher's world, specifically set out to be 'traditional Scotland', or home of a Native American tribe. So the UFP, for whatever reason, accepts some people making a wacky home somewhere.

This is all supposition, but this is probably for long term gain.

Probably because after a few generations, the colony will thrive, and become part of the UFP. They do love the IDIC, after all.

Or the colony fails, and they can outfit an expedition to a world where there's already been settlement.

Meanwhile, it's made into UFP territory, and widens UFP borders on the map.

Again, that's all supposition.

Honestly, there's no obvious reason the Federation couldn't settle a bunch of these weirdo separatist colonies with highly specific cultural goals on the same planet, except of course for the fact that there seem to be nearly unlimited numbers of habitable planets in Star Trek, mostly uninhabited ones, and claiming many of them by parking little colonies can serve strategic goals.

Though occasionally it goes badly for the colonists out on the frontier when they run up against the antagonistic Alien of the Week; the Cardassians and the Maquis are the biggest example but I can think of at least two TNG episodes involving forgettable one-shot aliens who had recently attacked Federation colonies.

Yeah. See my comments regarding the security concerns of Federation colonies.

A lot of my planning is based around the presumption that their is a good chance of shit going horribly wrong and Starfleet being too far away to help in time.