So basically your problem is with 1) Warp four being too close to warp five for the purposes of seeking the Xindi, and 2) something that was never mentioned getting mentioned? As said, w4 being as good as w5 is pretty subjective, especially if w4 is a record for the smaller ship and w5 is an operational speed for the bigger one. And we know Starfleet had lots of ships before Enterprise; one not getting a mention until she does get a mention shouldn't warrant comment. Let's not give Henry too much credit here; the show would be biased already for its focus on the son. But even if we do, so what? If earlier versions of his engine could do warp three, obviously they would be put to use. Likewise, the versions that could do warp four. No need to wait for the special Warp Five Ship, as Vulcans clearly weren't opposed to Starfleet merely deploying ships (such as the Republic, the Saratoga or the Intrepid, or the Franklin), only to Starfleet deploying the warp five deep space explorer. Timo Saloniemi
There's something huge that no one is mentioning that absolutely dates the ship pre-nx01 and even pre-NV intrepid type. The lack of a deflector dish. Looking at the franklin and the warp delta (which is warp 3 according to eaglemoss) you can clearly see the delta shape in the frame of the franklin from the engines to the bridge. It looks like they essentially built a saucer around the frame of the warp delta for the warp 4 ship. Also the delta doesn't have a deflector.
Plenty of Starfleet ships from the subsequent centuries lack a deflector dish, tho. It's simply not a mandatory piece of equipment. Timo Saloniemi
The same thing that USS Reliant uses. Maybe a lower setting on the ship's shields serves the same purpose. Kor
^Well, they didn't have shields at the time the Franklin was built. Only polarized hull plating. But still, she must have...something.
The warp field bubble itself probably protects them at warp. And the hull plating seemed to protect them well enough from crashing into mountains and space station doors, though it could only take so much.
I could see that. When they travel at warp, the ship itself isn't actually moving, right? Maybe the deflector dish is for moving at impulse. There was that Voyager episode where they meet the Borg children, who are trying to jack Voyager's deflector dish, and they say they'd by S.O.L without it, and not be able to get home. Edit: Tuvok says: "If we surrender our deflector, we'll be dead in space. We won't be able to go to warp."
Yeah, well, Voyager says you can't make course corrections at warp, either. And something about salamanders. Voyager says a lot of things.
For all we know, it's the ramscoops that are the vital part in protecting a ship from the dust she flies through - they suck it out of the way. I mean, it's not as if we ever learned of any other intended role for those on screen. But why bother with such protection at all when the ships indeed can fly through mountains easily enough? Timo Saloniemi
Voyager was notorious for coming up with a thousand and one different uses for the main deflector, outside of it's primary use. Which was to deflect and repel space debris.
Or the not, as we never actually got an onsceen explanation as to what that thing does. For all we know, the big dish is just a long range sensor that is vitally important for ships venturing into the unknown but superfluous for ships staying in the known. It being called "deflector" dish need not mean much - perhaps it just refers to the fact that the FTL sensor draws the humungous amounts of power it needs from the equally high-powered deflector machinery (which deflects much better without this disk draining its power). Timo Saloniemi
I'm sure that's not the only episode or series where this function was mentioned. In fact, I can think of another one: In "Year of Hell," they need to flee at warp a very short distance(to a nebula?) and the deflector is down. Someone warns Janeway what will happen if they attempt it. Janeway probably says something like "to hell with it," and they go. The ship immediately starts taking crazy damage all over from micrometeors(or something). I think all of the shows were notorious for coming up with dozens of different ways for using the deflector, like opening a wormhole, time traveling, traveling at above warp to the center of the galaxy, saving planets(lots of planets) from environmental catastrophes, creating super anti Borg weapons that disappoint, and even as a modified phaser array. These are all examples from DS9 and TNG. ...b b bbbut I gave two. Well, that's not... entirely accurate, and this might be the most important piece of evidence: What is it called? The "Navigational Deflector."
The dish does a lot of different things, so they mounted a dish on the ship to do those different things. And instead of continuing to use the method of deflection that doesn't need a dish, they added deflection to all the other things a dish does. The dish is a Swiss army knife
If it's called a "Navigational Deflector," then the primary purpose would indicate deflecting while navigating. They also have "navigational sensors," and sensor arrays. It seems to me that the navigational sensors would be in the navigational sensors, but I could be wrong.
Point is, if we see multiple ships in various shows/movies getting along just fine despite lacking anything obviously resembling the prominent dish, seemingly described as vitally important to others for this reason or that, then such a dish must not be the only way those requisite functions can be provided for in an absolute sense, even if some designs are reliant—not Reliant, though—upon one, as claimed. Franklin is far from the first such case we've encountered, and won't be the last. It's likely that there are important purposes served by having saucer-shaped components and external warp nacelles, too, given the recurrence of those design themes across centuries, and yet it is amply clear that there are plenty of fully-functioning vessels that exhibit neither. Why should the dish be any different? Any attempt at devising and then holding to some overall set of starship design "rules" that say "you must include this, and you cannot have that" is doomed to failure, and always has been. There are certain patterns and principles that we can discern, but none of them are universally binding. -MMoM P.S. According to The Making of Star Trek, the NCC-1701's dish is her "main sensor-deflector (a parabolic sensor and asteroid-deflector)" so by that it's both a sensor and a deflector. (However, it need not be the only form of either that the ship possesses, and indeed needs to not be, since there would be no point in calling it the "main" one otherwise!) P.P.S. The second season writers/directors' guide for TOS has this tidbit, without any mention of the dish specifically: P.P.P.S. Never specified onscreen in TOS as where any or all of that business was located or emitted from, though.