You could just save yourself time not trying to write convoluted retcons and say it was just another blip in the canon and move on
Star Trek Beyond
- Thread starter Admiral Jean-Luc Picard
- Start date
Most of the stuff we think we know about the Franklin is false.
No, she's never claimed to be a "freighter" or "transport" in the movie - this was an early concept that never made it into the story. (Indeed, the already designed cargo hatches were omitted, and their hinges became the weird ring on the top surface of her saucer, liberally multiplied.)
No, she's not said to be Freedom class, nor Pioneer class (although it could be those, or then something else) - those were early concepts that never made it into the story.
No, she's not NX class the way Archer's ship was - the NX registry applies to her service in the Federation Starfleet, where NX appears to denote experimental ships while Archer's never was that (his X apparently stood for eXplorer instead). She's Starship class as per her dedication plaque, and as said, her "proper class name" is up for grabs.
No, she's not related to the MACO in any obvious way, and never was - only her skipper Edison had the MACO connection, and that connection was severed with his getting assigned to this ship.
We know she was the first Earth ship to break warp four, and thus preceded at least "Broken Bow" where Archer's ship moved at that speed, and probably postdates the experiments in which the Warp Five Project engine was put through its paces and finally achieved warp three (the wording in "First Flight" is unclear as to whether those test rigs really made absolute speed records, or merely passed the usual milestones on their way to actual records). Most probably, one of the Warp Five experiments also reached warp four, and then perhaps warp four, before the tech was applied on Archer's ship, but we can't be sure about that.
A rather natural slot for her would be somewhere in the 2130s. Since she's shaped almost exactly like Archer's ship, she could be an early attempt at the same thing, that is, a generic jack-of-all-trades frontline starship. Or then a specific testbed for the Archer Configuration, a scale model if you will.
That she gets a high NX-series registry in the Federation Starfleet service appears natural: when this organization gets founded, it no doubt inherits tons of stuff from its predecessors, which include the UESF of which the Franklin probably was part, and then numbers those sequentially, and not necessarily in order of launch date. If the Franklin is no good for anything else but propulsion experiments decades after her launch, it also makes sense that she'd get lost in a wormhole accident: that's exactly what you get from engaging poorly tested new warp engines, as per ST:TMP.
(Also, making new speed records would be a good way for Edison to "push the frontier" in a ship phenomenally unsuited for exploration - lacking in human-rated transporters, say!)
Timo Saloniemi
No, she's never claimed to be a "freighter" or "transport" in the movie - this was an early concept that never made it into the story. (Indeed, the already designed cargo hatches were omitted, and their hinges became the weird ring on the top surface of her saucer, liberally multiplied.)
No, she's not said to be Freedom class, nor Pioneer class (although it could be those, or then something else) - those were early concepts that never made it into the story.
No, she's not NX class the way Archer's ship was - the NX registry applies to her service in the Federation Starfleet, where NX appears to denote experimental ships while Archer's never was that (his X apparently stood for eXplorer instead). She's Starship class as per her dedication plaque, and as said, her "proper class name" is up for grabs.
No, she's not related to the MACO in any obvious way, and never was - only her skipper Edison had the MACO connection, and that connection was severed with his getting assigned to this ship.
We know she was the first Earth ship to break warp four, and thus preceded at least "Broken Bow" where Archer's ship moved at that speed, and probably postdates the experiments in which the Warp Five Project engine was put through its paces and finally achieved warp three (the wording in "First Flight" is unclear as to whether those test rigs really made absolute speed records, or merely passed the usual milestones on their way to actual records). Most probably, one of the Warp Five experiments also reached warp four, and then perhaps warp four, before the tech was applied on Archer's ship, but we can't be sure about that.
A rather natural slot for her would be somewhere in the 2130s. Since she's shaped almost exactly like Archer's ship, she could be an early attempt at the same thing, that is, a generic jack-of-all-trades frontline starship. Or then a specific testbed for the Archer Configuration, a scale model if you will.
That she gets a high NX-series registry in the Federation Starfleet service appears natural: when this organization gets founded, it no doubt inherits tons of stuff from its predecessors, which include the UESF of which the Franklin probably was part, and then numbers those sequentially, and not necessarily in order of launch date. If the Franklin is no good for anything else but propulsion experiments decades after her launch, it also makes sense that she'd get lost in a wormhole accident: that's exactly what you get from engaging poorly tested new warp engines, as per ST:TMP.
(Also, making new speed records would be a good way for Edison to "push the frontier" in a ship phenomenally unsuited for exploration - lacking in human-rated transporters, say!)
Timo Saloniemi
Why? Its fun to excersize the brain on the How, what, when, where and sometimes Y of things, espcically in forums
They don't; the writers stated at the time the Nero incursion changed the timeline backwards as well as forwards which is why all the ships/uniforms/tech from the past still have the Kelvin look about them.
Good point, this was a new engine, a "whole new approach" as Daystrom might put it, as different to Cochrane's early warp engine as the Transwarp experiments in Excelsior were to the 1701. The limits of Cochrane's first (and second?) version engine may well have been warp 4, and it needed a whole rebuild to get into the warp 4-6 range.
However it still feels off to think of a full starship capable of warp 4 (which isn't going to be a lot slower than warp 5) would have been out there making waves. If Enterprise had 100 light years on the clock in the first year, no reason a warp 4 ship couldn't do something similar and got upto 40 lightyears after 2 years.
The surprise that the boomers seemed to get was the leap of NX01 over the Warp 2 engines they were prattling around.
Now it's possible the Franklin was built for Warp 4, which could do say 30x speed of light, but the Vulcans kept Starfleet from sending it out past the core planets in the c.10 light years surounding earth (Vulcan, Centauri, maybe Denobula etc) - and it was Archer, who had daddy issues and really wanted to prove his father right, and would only push for a mission with the Henry Archer warp engine, rather than an non-Henry-Archer warp4 engine, despite the Franklin being able to do things like follow up on Terra Nova just as easily as Enterprise.
Thats utterly ridiculous
Ripples in a pond going back and forth. That's what they said.. Not us
Well if the warp 4 engine was old.. Then why did the cargo ships still have the warp 2 variety? Hell an upgrade to warp 3 would have halved time from system to system. Id still go with a test bed for the warp 5 engine based on that other ships don't have better engines.
Young organization still figuring things out, and the Enterprise would've quickly outpaced a Warp 4 ship.
Hold on there, "Into Darkness" had a display of the NX-01 inside Admiral Marcus office, which made me believe ENT was a prequel to JJTrek... but in some future mission Archer altered space time where he and his crew were wiped out of TOS, TOS movies, TNG, DS9, and VOY memories.
You realise Enterprise was made after those shows?
In the original timeline the NX-01 was destroyed months into its mission, and probably deemed as a major failure by Starfleet, hence its lack of mention. And the XCV-330 being the far more prominent vessel named Enterprise by the time of TMP.
However, its survival for the decade likely altered that. And the NX-01 is actually remembered by the time of STID. Meaning the TCW actually altered the timeline. Even though the timeline was supposed to have repaired itself when Vosk was defeated, meaning the NX-01 should have been destroyed and forgotten about. Of course, Starfleet may have just given Archer another NX-vessel to captain to deal with the Xindi threat.
It does also suggest that the events of "Regeneration" were supposed to happen anyways, meaning the Borg never actually altered the timeline in FC. The NX-01 was just never supposed to encounter the Borg, which they ended up doing, thanks to the TCW.
...Only if ships of the Franklin ilk could be trusted with that operating range, though. If the high-strung engines broke every ten lightyears, they'd make for splendid record-breakers and adequate insystem interception drives, but the ship could never expand the human horizons in a more concrete fashion.
Also, even if the ships eventually had the reliability, warp four can still be defined as so much slower than warp five that the Franklin would never have reached the Expanse in time to assist Archer. Especially since Archer's engine apparently allows the ship to cruise at warp five, while an engine capable of breaking warp four might well be limited to cruising at warp two.
Speaking of which:
Ripples going backwards in time when the lives of our time-traveling heroes are altered is a valid concept as such. But time in Trek is awfully robust: if a single time travel adventure fails to happen, or happens differently, because of Nero, we're unlikely to notice differences in the general case - that is, the cases so far presented to us.
the 15-knot or the 30-knot engine being invented did not change the fact that cargo ships still trundled along at ten knots in WWII and beyond. It's a case of the business case: slow is profitable.
Which IMHO is the best bet in Trek, because even a century after Archer, freighters still move at warp 2 ("Friday's Child"). It's not that the upgrade would be technologically out of reach. It's probably not even a case of it remaining prohibitively expensive to obtain. It's just that one makes more profit operating a slower engine, for assorted reasons.
Timo Saloniemi
Just to clear up I didn't mean you were utterly ridiculous but that cop out comment was
@TimeIsAPredator
Its okay, know it wasn't aimed at anybody, Just pointing out what Mr. Pegg said, we're all good!
Well, it depends on the cargo, its like Air Cargo, and Ground/ship. I order from Japan alot, I usually get the Slow boat because I usually don't care when it gets here, as long as I have it. That can take 6-8 weeks for dilevery.
Now there is air cargo, usually twice the shipping cost, but will get here in 3, maybe 5 days.
By Tos time, the automated cargo ships may just be shipping random not important junk that doesn't really matter what time. maybe just a colony supply ship to a well established colony that needs a few things that they can't make local, but are on a schedualed drop off maybe every 6 months.
where a crewed ship like the cargo ships from Enterprise, or the Antaries may hit warp 5 by Tos time.
Its okay, know it wasn't aimed at anybody, Just pointing out what Mr. Pegg said, we're all good!
Well, it depends on the cargo, its like Air Cargo, and Ground/ship. I order from Japan alot, I usually get the Slow boat because I usually don't care when it gets here, as long as I have it. That can take 6-8 weeks for dilevery.
Now there is air cargo, usually twice the shipping cost, but will get here in 3, maybe 5 days.
By Tos time, the automated cargo ships may just be shipping random not important junk that doesn't really matter what time. maybe just a colony supply ship to a well established colony that needs a few things that they can't make local, but are on a schedualed drop off maybe every 6 months.
where a crewed ship like the cargo ships from Enterprise, or the Antaries may hit warp 5 by Tos time.
Heck, if anything, ships on Earth's oceans have become slower as of late, not faster.
Warships no longer have a tactical requirement for moving at 30 knots, the practical maximum hull speed of ships from destroyer size up in WWII and for that reason a worthwhile pursuit in a rat race. Warships of today don't chase each other: they fire OTH, fire-and-forget weapons and turn tail. Even the goal of strategic deployment at sustained top speed, made possible by nuclear propulsion, has been abandoned: only the US carriers can keep it up nowadays, and their escorts drag them down so much that it's not worth the hassle.
Cargo ships in turn have for quite a long time been built for an ideal hull speed that for most types of bulk tends to be low. But certain types, such as really big container ships or car transports, were built for very high speeds, up to those 30 knots. Nevertheless, even they are moving slower now, the uneconomical lower speed actually being more economical overall with the reduced absolute fuel consumption. If goods can wait for a week to be delivered, they can wait a month or a decade. The choice between the waiting times is made on basis of fuel prices rather than customer needs.
We know little about how warp consumes fuel. Impulse sometimes does, to such a degree that Kirk gets alarmed. But no skipper ever worries about the fuel-wise consequences of choosing a specific speed or sustaining a heading for a specific time...
Timo Saloniemi
Warships no longer have a tactical requirement for moving at 30 knots, the practical maximum hull speed of ships from destroyer size up in WWII and for that reason a worthwhile pursuit in a rat race. Warships of today don't chase each other: they fire OTH, fire-and-forget weapons and turn tail. Even the goal of strategic deployment at sustained top speed, made possible by nuclear propulsion, has been abandoned: only the US carriers can keep it up nowadays, and their escorts drag them down so much that it's not worth the hassle.
Cargo ships in turn have for quite a long time been built for an ideal hull speed that for most types of bulk tends to be low. But certain types, such as really big container ships or car transports, were built for very high speeds, up to those 30 knots. Nevertheless, even they are moving slower now, the uneconomical lower speed actually being more economical overall with the reduced absolute fuel consumption. If goods can wait for a week to be delivered, they can wait a month or a decade. The choice between the waiting times is made on basis of fuel prices rather than customer needs.
We know little about how warp consumes fuel. Impulse sometimes does, to such a degree that Kirk gets alarmed. But no skipper ever worries about the fuel-wise consequences of choosing a specific speed or sustaining a heading for a specific time...
Timo Saloniemi
Robinson was the first person to travel at Warp 2 in a human made ship, so there were no Warp 2 Earth ships until after that. The Franklin may have come out between then and before Broken Bow.
And plus Edison would have served on Enterprise since they were the only MACOs to fight the Xindi.
And plus Edison would have served on Enterprise since they were the only MACOs to fight the Xindi.
Actually, and surprisingly, that's a negatory on both counts.
Robinson passing warp 2 was never said to be an achievement. When it actually happened, it was dismissed as a "bump", and he strove for more, apparently as planned - and this more (perhaps w2.2, perhaps a bit faster but not yet w3) was the actual milestone he was the first to pass.
And Edison was never said to have fought the Xindi. Instead, he lamented on missing out on big fights, mentioning the Xindi in that context. We know he fought somebody and got a rep. But the Xindi, or the Romulans... Not necessarily, and indeed probably not.
Timo Saloniemi
Robinson passing warp 2 was never said to be an achievement. When it actually happened, it was dismissed as a "bump", and he strove for more, apparently as planned - and this more (perhaps w2.2, perhaps a bit faster but not yet w3) was the actual milestone he was the first to pass.
And Edison was never said to have fought the Xindi. Instead, he lamented on missing out on big fights, mentioning the Xindi in that context. We know he fought somebody and got a rep. But the Xindi, or the Romulans... Not necessarily, and indeed probably not.
Timo Saloniemi
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the registry reverted back so they could reuse years of FX shots
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