Starfleet technology after Voyager's return?

[USSHermes]

Voyager picked up a lot of technical data in the delta quadrant on numerous ships and weapons systems, had it's systems upgraded by the borg and again by Admiral Janeway from the alternate future.

Once it returned to the Alpha quadrant what happened to the technology?
In one fanfic (not a great source of facts I know) a directive was issued by starfleet that all ships had to return to spacedock for refits when their current missions were complete for large upgrades.


This seems fairly sensible.

1. Is this what occurred in canon?

2. Can I use this to justify having a 84 - year old Excelsior class with advanced systems for a Trek RPG?

[LastGL]

Quantum Slipstream Drive and Transphasic Torpedoes and shields have popped up in the novels post Voyager.

[SonicRanger]

USSHermes wrote:

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1. Is this what occurred in canon?

The only "canon" evidence would come from Nemesis, and in that film, the Ent-E had absolutely no evidence of "Batmobile" armor, transphasic torpedoes, or any other DQ or future technology. We do suspect that the Ent-E did have some sort of refit before Nemesis because it has new torpedo tubes and other cosmetic changes, like nacelle pylons at a different height. The only "advanced" technology we see -- the personal transporter -- was portrayed as Data's and Geordi's pet project, not something from the DQ or future -- perhaps, though, that device is best explained as something that was reverse engineered from or inspired by DQ or future tech.

[USSHermes]

Maybe we will see some of this in star trek online?

[kv1at3485]

USSHermes wrote:

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2. Can I use this to justify having a 84 - year old Excelsior class with advanced systems for a Trek RPG?

Why worry about what the books or the shows or whatever are doing? If you want batmobile armour, and fancy glowing balls of fire... do it.

It's not like you're worried about the implications of the tech any more than Trek generally is anyway, yes?

[JNG]

I like to think the Batmobile armor and other future stuff disappeared like a soap bubble due to some time travel strangeness about the timeline it came from being gone...or something. You know how almost every time travel episode has its own rules. Maybe it even went Back to the Future on us and faded in and out for a while before disappearing. I don't think many fans were exactly clamoring to see it again (or even to read about Borg cubes getting one-shotted in novels), and if Enterprise-E has no evidence of it on its mission in Nemesis, it's kind of a stretch to think many ships in the fleet would be wandering around with stuff like that.

[LCARS 24]

But the Federation probably did come up with some interesting things while Voyager was gone. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing any of that onscreen, will we?

[Dream]

JNG wrote:

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I like to think the Batmobile armor and other future stuff disappeared like a soap bubble due to some time travel strangeness about the timeline it came from being gone...or something. You know how almost every time travel episode has its own rules. Maybe it even went Back to the Future on us and faded in and out for a while before disappearing. I don't think many fans were exactly clamoring to see it again (or even to read about Borg cubes getting one-shotted in novels), and if Enterprise-E has no evidence of it on its mission in Nemesis, it's kind of a stretch to think many ships in the fleet would be wandering around with stuff like that.

Endgame was so bad the writers had it decanonized sort of like how Nemesis was so bad they had to reboot the entire franchise with the new movie.

[Deks]

The only reason why I think the Enterprise-E never had Voyager's future weapons was because it would be 'game over' in one shot vs the Scimitar.

Also ... the events of Nemesis take place roughly 2 years after Voyager got back (if the Star-dates are to be taken into account).

There is a simple explanation for this:
The Enterprise underwent it's evident re-fits after the events with the Ba'ku (probably after the war because the crew is behaving as we are dealing with a post-war era), and the war concluded 2 years before Voyager got back.
So that leaves about 3 and a half, up to 4 years for Enterprise-E to gain it's upgrades seen in Nemesis.

And SF likely wanted to wait a bit and examine the situation carefully before deciding what to do next with those technologies.

After what happened with the Scimitar though, I think there is a good possibility that SF would likely do what it can to prevent another similar situation.

SF would be wise to work on the future technology extensively and keep in mind the possible return of the Borg.
This means they would have to devise new methods of protecting the effectiveness of Transphasic torpedoes (which was for the most part intact), and make the deploy-able hull armor (which was assimilated) once again very effective against Borg weapons.

Slipstream and numerous other propulsion technologies would likely produce 'some' kind of results after 2 years of study.
Warp drive could improve in efficiency and speed for example, while at the same time, Slipstream could be worked on by SF to at least stabilize the initial version of it that Voyager used but was unable to maintain for more than 1 hour (given it was easiest to produce by the crew and the ship crossed 300 LY's in 1 hour).
The second version (which allowed Voyager to cross through 10000 Ly's in 10 seconds) would be more complex because it featured a heavily modified warp-core, along with benemite crystals that decayed rapidly.
SF would have to devise a way to slow down those crystals degradation for extensive use, and remove the phase-varience problem that resulted Voyager's destruction in an alternate time-line.

Alternatively ... I see no reason why 85 year old ships would not be able to utilize highly advanced technology.
The U.S.S. Lakota (Excelsior class ship) was re-fitted with modern (for 24th century Federation) technology and gave the Defiant a run for her money.
Phasers were very powerful on the Lakota, as were shields, and it came equipped with quantum torpedoes.
Their other systems such as computers and engines were likely up-graded as well.
This only proved that old ships can pack a powerful punch combined with new technologies and further extend their life-span.

[Timo]

Indeed, the very point of the package that Future Janeway provided was to give an old ship the abilities of a much more modern vessel, thus outgunning contemporary opponents.

Even if this package were applied on a ship so decrepit that it would lose to the weakest 25th century patrol boat, the package would still make this ship invincible against 24th century Klingon or Dominion opponents, which should be enough for the purposes described here. Starfleet would have no reason not to do it, even if the results weren't quite up to the highest 25th century standards.

Also, the package that Future Janeway brought was exceptionally easy to replicate and apply - it's not as if she carried any parts of it physically with her in the tiny shuttle. This, too, would prompt Starfleet to slap the tech on each and every one of its vessels, from the mightiest battleship to the tiniest outdated work pod. It would be dirt cheap, it would be decisive, it could and thus should be done.

...The major downside of this would be that any of the Federation's enemies would gain these easy-to-apply abilities right after capturing its first upgraded Federation ship. So for that reason, the tech might be kept off clearly inferior ships. But when worn by something as potent as an old Excelsior, the tech should be quite safe from capture!

(Personally, the above reasons make me think that Starfleet lost the supertech before getting the chance to apply it anywhere. There's no real excuse not to fit it on Picard's ship if it remains available. Even if one or two arch-enemies have already captured it and rendered it less effective against them, Starfleet should still wear the Bat-armor against all other enemies.)

Timo Saloniemi

[Deks]

But Timo, let's keep some things in perspective:
The Lakota was at least 75 years old (true we don't know the EXACT age, but it's an Excelsior class ship that started production 75 years before events of Generations and would likely stop being produced at least 15 to 20 years from the initial starting production date because popping out new/better/more efficient designs would also seem more economical perhaps?), and after being put through those re-fits before the Dominion War, it was virtually on par with every other newest ship in the fleet.
Let's not forget there is almost an 80 year gap between Enterprise-B first launch and TNG.

Voyager was only 26 years behind as far as admiral Janeway was concerned.
I doubt there would be too many drastic technological changes in such a time-frame that would result in difficulties of manufacturing those technologies because it is still SF technology to begin with (the stealth tech was the only aspect that was incompatible).
Voyager was also in the DQ for another 16 years in the alternate timeline.
Admiral Janeway likely planned her one way trip to the past for some time and was able to devise methods with Reg to make most of the crucial technology compatible without reducing them in efficiency compared to the same systems on other (new) ships from the early 25th century.

On your last theory that SF lost the 'supertech'.
Possible, but unlikely.
We know the real world reason it wasn't implemented ... the 'in-universe' explanation might be very simple:
'Let's not pop this out too suddenly because we could alter the balance of power too soon, thus risk angering Klingons and the Romulans.'
I would imagine that SF would be implementing this technology after Nemesis.
And who knows, perhaps Voyager's new technology was a direct result of the Scimitar being created by the Remans.
The Romulans were mentioned as being interested in Voyager for years (by Reg in the episode when he lost the hologram). Sure, this interest likely stems from their dr. Re'mur being in contact with Janeway and her crew 30 years ago (I'm pretty sure that little excursion info would definitely find it's way back to Romulus and to those highest in rank).
In any case, 2 years would provide SF with enough time to analyze the future technologies and try devise methods to recover the armor's efficiency against the Collective.
7 would likely be asked to work on this as she knows the Borg better than anyone.
Picard would likely be able to help out as well.
But I rather doubt they would implement this technology immediately.
Perhaps they would start out with what Voyager's crew did to their ship over the years.
The 29th century drone 'One' also enhanced Voygaer's technology to a certain degree at one point.
So it's entirely possible that SF implemented some of the modifications from Voyager to the Enterprise-E which also resulted in some structural changes that SF wanted to implement before.

[Icemizer]

Section 31 took the technology and made it disappear. There was to much risk that the enemies of the Federation might aquire it.

[Deks]

Icemizer wrote:

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Section 31 took the technology and made it disappear. There was to much risk that the enemies of the Federation might aquire it.

Unlikely.
They would be the first ones to push it into all Federation ships to increase Federation security.
Besides, what will they do if/when the Borg return?

[Plecostomus]

Write a series of novels, some of which suck, detailing the events and eventual solution.

[JNG]

LCARS 24 wrote:

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But the Federation probably did come up with some interesting things while Voyager was gone. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing any of that onscreen, will we?

In fairness, I thought the MIDAS array was pretty cool, though the term "hyper-subspace" is...regrettable.

We must remember that Voyager wasn't gone all that long in the grand scheme of things, and I have no doubt that she was still more or less cutting-edge upon her return as far as starships go (at least after a nice overhaul).