USS Franklin issue

[DertyNerdy]

I'm sorry if this has been brought up already but i'm a little confused about this.

So the USS Franklin is meant to be this 'Warp 4 prototype' like the NX class. So this would obviously suggest this ship came before 2233 when the timeline split. The ship should exist in both universes right? So then why does it have the USS prefix? We didn't get the Federation until 2160's...shouldn't it just be the 'Franklin'? Cool looking ship btw.

 

[Tiberius Jim]

Could have been built pre-Federation and redesignated USS at a later time.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Or maybe they just used "USS" meaning "United (Earth) Space Ship" then decided for whatever reason to ditch it for the Enterprise.

The Franklin has a dedication plaque, I'm curious to see it up close. I'm sure it'll answer a few questions (or perhaps create a shitload of new ones)

 

[ChristopherPike]

Star Trek (2009) similarly gave the Kobayashi Maru a U.S.S. prefix, not indicated by anything in the viewscreen readout from The Wrath of Khan. Despite it not actually being a Starfleet ship, as far as I'm aware. A freighter or a passenger liner wasn't it? Although that's perhaps rationalised as a training exercise with many variants and outcomes. With it perhaps only being partly based on a real ship and/or event.

The reimagined comicbook version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" probably stuck a U.S.S. on the Valiant didn't it?

 

[DertyNerdy]

Star Trek (2009) similarly gave the Kobayashi Maru a U.S.S. prefix, not indicated by anything in the viewscreen readout in The Wrath of Khan. Although that's perhaps rationalised as training exercise, only partly based on a real ship and event.

The reimagined comicbook version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" probably stuck a U.S.S. on the Valiant.

Funny enough i now seem to remember in that Enterprise episode when the ship and Columbia bridged their warp fields and there was a display that read "USS Enterprise NX-01" and "USS Columbia NX-02"

I guess they just never bothered putting USS on the hull untill much later...

 

[ChristopherPike]

Star Trek: Enterprise drew some criticism (yeah, what didn't draw criticism ) over the way starships were referred to. The show I think deliberately followed how NASA referred to Space Shuttles, without putting "the" in front. Kirk or Picard or Sisko would say "the Enterprise", "the Defiant" etc. Sure Janeway didn't say "the Voyager"... but Archer just said "Enterprise", "Columbia", "Intrepid" etc.

I'm not sure why they never went with an S.S. or a U.S.S. really. Particularly the former. But doing without was obviously to show some regression to an earlier century and then have the familiar being invented the closer it got to the Federation.

In the new film Kraal's motivation as a villain, is reportedly having an axe to grind about the Federation. So the U.S.S. Franklin is where all that must spring from. Depends on how much into detail the dialogue from Scotty or Kirk goes... but it would suggest there was a Federation around at the time it crashed. Or the beef is with humanity going around colonising other worlds. Alternatively there really is no distinction in Kraal's mind.

 

[The Wormhole]

Funny enough i now seem to remember in that Enterprise episode when the ship and Columbia bridged their warp fields and there was a display that read "USS Enterprise NX-01" and "USS Columbia NX-02"

I guess they just never bothered putting USS on the hull untill much later...

That's from the fourth season of Enterprise, and it should be noted that a lot of the world building from the first three seasons of Enterprise was abandoned that year in favor of being more in line with the other Treks. We started getting references to the characters attending Starfleet Academy despite the first three seasons being Starfleet training. Planets began being referred to as "Class M" as opposed to the previous "Minshara class." Other examples, probably, which I'm forgetting. So, that graphic probably just stuck USS in the ship names because that's how it was in the other Treks.

Anyway, in the novels, all Earth Starfleet ships that stayed in service after the Federation was founded had "USS" added to their names. So, prior to 2161 the Franklin likely was just Franklin and after 2161 it became USS Franklin.

 

[Timo]

There's nothing particularly linking "USS" with the Federation - in fact, until now, we have had a hard time inventing justifications for the use of "USS" in front of Federation starship names. For all we know, there is no link there, and USS is equally valid for ships before and after 2161 (and it obviously is valid for ships today!).

That "USS" would be lacking from ENT starships is a claim not all that strongly supported, when so many other things (such as registries and definite articles) are lacking from ENT starships most of the time despite definitely being there part of the time.

Things more solidly at odds with the putative pre-ENT identity of the new hero ship include the Franklin having man-rated transporters and (I wager) phasers, photon torpedoes, shields etc. That, and the actual big deal of her apparently being directly related to the Federation plotwise.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Speaking of the "USS" designation, an early draft of the ENTERPRISE bible had the ship listed as being the ESS (Earth Star Ship) Enterprise. See: https://twitter.com/trekdocs/status/746010579085713408

 

[psCargile]

I don't like the box wrenches array around the hull. What the hell is that supposed to be?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'm sorry if this has been brought up already but i'm a little confused about this.

So the USS Franklin is meant to be this 'Warp 4 prototype' like the NX class. So this would obviously suggest this ship came before 2233 when the timeline split. The ship should exist in both universes right? So then why does it have the USS prefix?

Two reasons
1) Probably because the United States was slow to join the United Earth Government and they comissioned the Franklin themselves through UESPA and/or Starfleet
2) The only way you would know that is if you've been paying really close attention to ST:Enterprise, which probably isn't a good idea

 

[Dukhat]

It's very easy to add "U.S.S." to a ship's name years after the fact if it didn't originally have it.

 

[The Wormhole]

Probably because the United States was slow to join the United Earth Government

Australia was the hold-out to joining the United Earth government.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Australia was the hold-out to joining the United Earth government.

It actually wasn't. There was a question about Earth being allowed to join the Federation if it wasn't entirely unified, and Australia was used hypothetically as a nation that had said no to global unification.

"What if one of the old nation states--say, Australia--had decided not to join the world government in 2150?"
--Dr. Beverly Crusher, "Attached"

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

@The Wormhole: Actually, no. Beverly just brought up Australia as an example of what would have happened if one of the nations had refused to join. It was strictly hypothetical.

Edit: ...ninja'd by @C.E. Evans.

As for U.S.S.: Perhaps the Franklin is so old that it's left over from when the U.S.A. had its own space ships?

 

[The Wormhole]

"What if one of the old nation states--say, Australia--had decided not to join the world government in 2150?"

Reading that quote just made me realize, the United Earth government was only formed a year prior to Enterprise starting. Yet, we never see much indication of this throughout Enterprise, outside of references to Reed's family history establishing the Royal Navy still exists.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Reading that quote just made me realize, the United Earth government was only formed a year prior to Enterprise starting. Yet, we never see much indication of this throughout Enterprise, outside of references to Reed's family history establishing the Royal Navy still exists.

It's possible that the United Earth was established prior to 2150, but 2150 was when all the final issues in its creation were resolved maybe.

 

[Timo]

Or simply that the UE was founded in 2050, with all of two member nations, and went on to sponsor the United Earth Space (Science?) Probe Agency on the launch of Friendship 1 some fifteen years later. By 2100, there were fifty member states and ninety-seven rogues. By 2150, the last sixteen rogues (Australia canonically among them) finally gave up their independence.

It's not as if the name would actually have to mean anything - witness People's Democracies all around.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Sure Janeway didn't say "the Voyager"... but Archer just said "Enterprise", "Columbia", "Intrepid" etc.

The first few episodes had "the Voyager", but I think it just never sounded quite right. Not sure why they dropped the "the" though.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The first few episodes had "the Voyager", but I think it just never sounded quite right. Not sure why they dropped the "the" though.

It's a real-world naval practice to address ships that way. Even the TOS Enterprise would have been commonly addressed simply as "Enterprise" by Kirk and the gang had Roddenberry went that route (and there are a few instances during open communications when they did refer to her without the definite article). As for the Voyager, it doesn't sound right with the definite article to most of us because there were only a few times during the show's 7-year run in which it was used. We've been programmed/conditioned since 1995 to hear her addressed as "Voyager," not "the Voyager."