High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The United Federation of Planets, usually referred to as "The Federation," is a fictional interplanetary federal republic depicted in the Star Trek television series and motion pictures. In those episodes and films, the Federation is described as an interstellar federal polity with, as of the year 2373, more than 150 member planets and thousands of colonies spread across 8,000 light years of the Milky Way Galaxy and taking the form of a post-capitalist liberal democracy and constitutional republic. It has also been described as a utopian socialist society. The Federation is described as stressing, at least nominally, the values of universal liberty, equality, justice, peace and cooperation. The Federation also maintains its own quasi-militaristic and scientific exploratory agency, known as Starfleet (also written as "Star Fleet" in some texts). Starfleet is seen handling many other governmental processes, sometimes with no other agency`s influence, such as border defense, diplomatic envoy and has seen extensive use as an offensive military force just to name a few instances.