Were we ever told where Earth's ships were at this point (or for that matter defence platforms?) They've had a year to prepare for the Xindi Attack which they know is coming, are we really supposed to believe that they haven't been: a) Keeping every Starfleet Ship patrolling the Sol System, with some right next to Earth b) Building *more* of this Intrepid/Neptune class ships we saw for orbital defence c) Building orbital defence platforms to combat the Xindi (or anyone else) d) Recalling the *armed* ECS Ships (granted most of them would be too far away to help, but in a year they should be able to get a few back to the Sol System) and Federalizing them? e) Requesting that the Vulcans who have *Hundreds* of ships keep at least one in the system, after all we are allies?
I don't recall any discussion in concerning that. Good, advice, obviously delivered too late. It appears they preferred to put all of their Survival Eggs in one basket. Perhaps SFC decided to take a "Please, Mother, I'd rather do it myself" approach.
It may not be possible to build new starships in less than, say, three years. Furthermore, it may not be possible to recall an existing starship from deep space in less than a year, unless it happens to be one of the new warp five starships - of which only one existed at the time. So the question becomes, did Earth have enough preexisting starships in shallow space to mount a defense at Sol? In "The Expanse", we saw three ships being available. And that was after the Xindi attack, so probably every ship within range had been summoned to Earth at that point, and these three were it. Perhaps a year later there would be, say, six. Certainly it would seem odd if even these three went away for some reason... So where were these six ships in "Zero Hour"? The answer could be as simple as "on the other side of the star system". After all, the battle only lasted for a few minutes, and if the ships were trying to stop the Xindi from closing within striking range of Earth, they might have been spread out in six directions to cover the celestial sphere. However, that would be pretty silly of the UESF, since they had seen the first time around that the Xindi didn't need to "approach" Earth. Rather, their big weapon could be expected to jump right next to Earth through unblockable hyperspace, just like their smaller one had done. Thus, all the available ships ought to have been on low Earth orbit, ready to pounce on the invader as soon as he materialized. It still boils down to it being such a short battle that the defending ships might theoretically not have had time to attend. Which is a barely working explanation for the curious directional decision not to show any defending ships, but I guess it's the best we can do. As for Vulcan help, why should they have said yes? Earth probably wasn't precious enough an ally or protege for them. Which may be exactly why Earth got Andorian help... Timo Saloniemi
There's also the fact that they only detected one orbital facility, when there are at least two dry docks as well...
Yet later Sato says she's lost contact with the orbital platforms, plural - and when Reed reminds her that Yosemite Station was destroyed, she emphasizes that there's no comm traffic coming from "any" of them, indicating a large number of such platforms. The Xindi detected one orbital facility near the attack coordinates. Dolim decided to destroy that one, despite it being harmless, because he was on a mission of extermination anyway; nowhere did he indicate that there wouldn't be other orbital facilities elsewhere. He wouldn't have to do anything about those, of course, as they would be lost when Earth was destroyed - but as he said, there was no reason not to fire on Yosemite Station which was sort of blocking their way. Timo Saloniemi
The weird thing, of course, is that a giant fleet of Starfleet, civilian, human and Vulcan ships pops into existence when Enterprise returns the 22nd century at the end of "Storm Front" part 2.
^ Especially since, correct me if i'm wrong...about the only ship *missing* from that flotilla was the Kumari!
What annoys me about that shot is how tiny they made the Sarajevo (I'm probably misspelling that... on my phone and can't check). It's got several window rows and is obviously meant to be comparable in size to Enterprise, yet when it flies past it's not much bigger than a shuttlepod. 'Tis a ship of Keensers!
How so? Isn't the ship in this picture just taking a wide arc around the NX-01, and appearing small because she's distant? http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x02/front_storm_pt2_438.jpg TrekCore photorecords are a bit incomplete, and I didn't find an appropriate YouTube clip, but it doesn't seem to me that the trajectory of the ship would take her between NX-01 and the camera. Here we see the Sarajevo type compare "favourably" to the lifting-body starships, or to the ship from "Regeneration": http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x02/front_storm_pt2_446.jpg Timo Saloniemi
I still love seeing those three Steamrunner class ships in the far background...thye didn't get past my all-seeing eyes
^It's a Steamrunner like Enterprise is an Akira. The Intrepid actually owes much more to fandom's old Akyazi-class "perimeter action ship" than First Contact's Steamrunner. When it swoops around and over the Enterprise's saucer, you can see it's about the height of the NX-01's (one-deck) saucer rim. I guess they just wanted Enterprise to look uber-heroic.
Here is a better pic for assessing the Steamrunneriness of those three ships: there's a real Intrepid-type ship to the upper left corner, with the different reds and blues and the prominent downcanted wings. http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x02/front_storm_pt2_434.jpg As for the size of the Sarajevo-type ship, the above shot again has her as a multi-decker in comparison with the surrounding ships. Also, found a YouTube clip of the flyby. The flightpath is not particularly defined, and certainly doesn't force us to think that the guest ship would only be as tall as the NX-01 saucer. Not unless the guest ship flies suicidally close - but why should we think she does? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcVrm2nhfFo&feature=related Timo Saloniemi
One thing that kinda bugged me was that they had been using those blue cone-shaped ships (formerly the Hazari ship from Voyager) several times as presumed Earth ships, which would have worked fine if they'd just changed the nacelles from the Dominion-looking kind to a more primitive type. They're in those pics too (The CGI model even had "KT720" written on it, presumably after it's use as a Delta Quadrant ship and before it's use as an Earth ship). But then later it was used as a Rigelian scout. Why would Rigelian scouts be used as Earth ships, or even be part of the welcoming fleet, when Earth didn't even know about the Rigelians until "Broken Bow?" Did I ever mention I hated it when Star Trek re-used ships?
Or simply ships of Earth's (lamentably few) allies. I mean, we saw those ships operating in concert with Earth ships, but we didn't exactly see them operated as Earth ships. Various folks helped or pretended to help Earth in "Twilight", so it would make sense to have some aliens in the exodus fleet, too. Ditto for "Storm Front pt II". Just say that Rigelians (if that's a species or a culture, instead of a more generic expression akin to "Asians" or "capitalists", considering how multicultural this place Rigel or these places Rigel seem to be) are Earth allies, and leave it at that. It needn't be a particularly solid alliance - but Rigelians tend to be opportunistic traders in most Trek references, and it wouldn't be difficult to believe they'd jump at the chance to see baubles and biaxial subspace tri-doodads to Earthlings as soon as first contact was made. On the issue of that welcoming fleet in "Storm Front II", Archer might have returned to a slightly different universe from the one where nobody but him and Shran opposed the Xindi invasion. After all, sifting through parallel realities was what "Storm Front" ended up being all about. Timo Saloniemi