Why the Xindi never appear in TOS / TNG / DS9 / VOY

[Methos]

I just calculated the times and distances given on the standard warp scale on Memory Alpha...

Once you have the specific warp speeds, and know the distances, then mapping out travel time is a very simple equation...

I can't really go into continuity problems, as i know TOS is full of them, but using a standard warp scale that's generally accepted, i can map out general distances and times

M

[King Daniel into Darkness]

I'm not sure that a table put in technical manuals that the writers never ever actually adhered to counts as "accepted"

There's a table of canonically stated time-distance ratios here: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_factor and it's totally random.

[Methos]

fair enough... i was just going on calculations, i still firmly believe that the original Constitution class couldn't outrace a Galaxy, Intrepid or Sovereign class ship though, and their speeds are 'standardised' and i can calculate the travel times off them easily...

M

[Timo]

I used the information specificallhy available on Tech Specs for the Constituion class around the internet...

Now there's your problem!

If you can site sources where the Constitution class ships regularly travelled faster than any starship in TNG, DS9 or Voy, please do...

Oh, that's trivial. Warp eight was supposed to be hair-raising at first, but our heroes never faced ill effects from doing it - and, as in that above video link, in "That Which Survives" it got them across a thousand lightyears in a day. For Picard, such speeds were supernatural: seven thousand lightyears in "Q Who?" would take three years rather than a week.

Naturally, "That Which Survives" has always been an outlier. But it's also an example of regular performance, as opposed to alien-induced speeds or other flukes. And outliers are the norm for TNG and VOY as well, more or less requiring us to believe that the speed corresponding to a given warp factor varies per unknown circumstances. Whatever the explanation, the phenomenon itself completely negates the value of any calculations on what these mighty starships "could" or "couldn't" have achieved. What they did onscreen was possible for them, leaving (in good or bad) basically nothing impossible.

Timo Saloniemi

[King Daniel into Darkness]

Methos wrote:

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fair enough... i was just going on calculations, i still firmly believe that the original Constitution class couldn't outrace a Galaxy, Intrepid or Sovereign class ship though, and their speeds are 'standardised' and i can calculate the travel times off them easily...

M

I agree that from an in-universe perspective, the newer ships should and would outpace the old. There's just a big complicated mess of retcons as to how far ships can travel and how fast warp speeds are meant to be, and writers not paying attention, muddling everything up.

[Timo]

I agree that from an in-universe perspective, the newer ships should and would outpace the old.

Very true - although not necessarily in the real world. Destroyers got a lot slower after WWII, for example, as there was no point in them maintaining 35kt+ speeds any more, and endurance was preferable to dash speed. Many fighter aircraft ceased to be multiply supersonic as well. And then there are the supersonic passenger transports... Basing travel time calculations on known 1940s-50s speeds and as such realistic predictions and extrapolations would result in completely erroneous figures in these cases.

In the Trek universe, though, speed would appear to be of value despite the twists and turns of history.

Still, it's not that outlandish to think that Picard's juggernaut would be sluggish in comparison with Kirk's nimbler ship. Or that there has been minimal evolution in warp propulsion between TOS and TNG. After all, there appears to be a "galactic norm" to how fast ships are going (or else we could never have chase scenes!) - which means average starfaring cultures are going to plateau on their warp speed evolution and then get stuck on that plateau for millennia, allowing for the observed synching.

Timo Saloniemi

[NrobbieC]

TOS used a different warp scale though

[Timo]

...Although the only way we can really tell is because VOY "Threshold" tells us that Warp 10 now equals infinite speed, whereas in TOS it clearly did not. The rest of the TNG era ships could simply be unable to go faster than warp 9-point-something on the TOS scale for various reasons.

Timo Saloniemi

[Sci]

Personally, I always hypothesized that the area of space that was formerly encompassed by the Delphic Expanse was the the area spinward of the Federation core planets that included Cardassia, Bajor, Ferenginar, Breen, and Tzenketh. I figure that after the Delphic Expanse was dispersed and the Xindi-Insectoids and -Reptillians' attempt to destroy Earth thwarted, the major local powers all decided to concentrate for the next century or so on expanding antispinward and anticoreward. I figure that only by the time of late TOS (the mid-to-late 23rd century) did the Federation begin expanding and exploring spinward, leading, over the course of the 24th century, to the UFP encountering the Cardassians, Bajorans, Tzenkethi, Breen, and Ferengi.

I figure that this nicely explains why the UFP didn't encounter so many races that are so relatively close to the Federation core planets for so long, and provides a nice excuse for why they don't seem to have encountered many Xindi in the period between 2154 and 2364.

[Deimos Anomaly]

Timo wrote:

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...Although the only way we can really tell is because VOY "Threshold" tells us that Warp 10 now equals infinite speed, whereas in TOS it clearly did not. The rest of the TNG era ships could simply be unable to go faster than warp 9-point-something on the TOS scale for various reasons.

Timo Saloniemi

RAAARGHBLARGH! Threshold isn't canon!

[Finn]

NrobbieC wrote:

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Andorians were never seen TNG, neither were Orions iirc so it's not much of a stretch to say they were there just never seen.

Andorians were seen....

[Nerys Myk]

Why should the Xindi appear in TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY? The Federation has hundreds of planets and is spread out over two quadrants. Starfleet has hundreds of ships. We've only see a handful of species, ships and planets on those show. Most of the species that make up the Federation have probably never been seen even once. Space is big.

[NrobbieC]

I forgot about the hologram in the Offspring and Captain's Holiday isn't an episode I watch often, so I was wrong about the Andorians

[Romulus Prime]

Just another Enterprise "story"line that won't effect me when I watch TOS, TNG or DS9.

Seriously, why the writing team of this series didn't just utilize previous/established races and expand on them from day 1, I'll never know.

Klingons? Could have used Andorians and made them the "adversary" which sets up Shran's debut.

Xindi? How about a conflict between the lesser known races from TOS and Earth with Andorians leading them because they view a Human-Vulcan alliance as a threat. An eventual resolution to the conflict certainly could have lead into season 4 in a decent way with the races trying to decide whether or not to continue fighting, maintain a cease fire or create a pre-Federation thing. Instead, we got space Nazis, but whatev.

[Nerys Myk]

The Andorians appeared in more ENT episodes than the Klingons. In the long run they were more important to the series than the Klingons.