What if the Stargazer was destroyed at Zeta Maxima?

[Timo]

Actually, it makes perfect sense, when one takes into account the principles of Starfleet's Prime Directive.

Ah, good point. But Starfleet might be thinking in terms of realism: the odds of somebody stumbling onto a dead starship are virtually zero, unless that somebody possesses such advanced sensors as to put Starfleet to shame.

A ship closer to home might have been subject to a PD sanitation team mission. But it's possible that Picard was too far outside the actual operating theater of Starfleet, and it simply wasn't affordable to enforce the Prime Directive to the fullest.

Picard may have wanted to recover the vessel later once he had gotten the crew to safety.

That sounds like valid speculation. Certainly his last log suggests that he didn't expect the ship to be destroyed after abandonment - "Let her find her way without us" or words to that effect. That would be at odds with the one literary treatment of the incident, our Christopher's Buried Age.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JM1776]

Ah, good point. But Starfleet might be thinking in terms of realism: the odds of somebody stumbling onto a dead starship are virtually zero, unless that somebody possesses such advanced sensors as to put Starfleet to shame.

Does "the Battle of Maxia"—assuming Maxia isn't Ferengi for "middle of freakin' nowhere"—imply proximity to, say, the Maxia star system or other astronomical [heh ... I actually wrote astrological first, here; feel free to yank on my Freudian slip] phenomenon? Such would greatly increase the likelihood of discovery. After all, if Starfleet was investigating the area, others might well be inclined to do so, as well.

TNG's Starfleet strikes me as far more idealistic than to simply consign one of their ships to the cold dark, but ... see below.

A ship closer to home might have been subject to a PD sanitation team mission. But it's possible that Picard was too far outside the actual operating theater of Starfleet, and it simply wasn't affordable to enforce the Prime Directive to the fullest.

Yep. It might well have been functionally impossible.

 

[cmdr_forst]

We would not have had to sit through "The Battle."

 

[USS Fardell]

If the Stargazer had been destroyed at Maxia Zeta, we'd have Captain Thomas Halloway or Captain Edward Jellico as the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D.

Meh.

But how would Halloway or Jellico deal with the situations that the Enterprise finds itself in? And what effects would these different decisions have on immediate events or on events down the track?

What if instead of barely escaping being destroyed by the Ferengi ship, which they destroy using the Picard Maneouvre, the Stargazer is instead lost with all hands?

It SHOULD have been destroyed, by Picard at the very least. Nice of him to leave Federation technology floating around for anyone to grab.

Let me guess.....the auto destruct was off line? I don't know how many times they used that poor excuse in Trek but it always made no sense. At the very least, they should have had a bunch of dynamite and lit a fuse like in the old Roadrunner cartoons.

Another example of poor writing.

The ship was devastated by the Ferengi attack, and yes, the self destruct was offline. Picard thought that it would burn up in the gas giant's atmosphere, and thus thought little more about it until the court martial.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

If the Stargazer had been destroyed at Maxia Zeta, we'd have Captain Thomas Halloway or Captain Edward Jellico as the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D.

Meh.

But how would Halloway or Jellico deal with the situations that the Enterprise finds itself in? And what effects would these different decisions have on immediate events or on events down the track?

I don't know how Halloway would have dealt with things, but Jellico wouldn't have been quite as diplomatic as Picard was. The whole Picard/Crusher subplot would have been completely erased, obviously, and Deanna would have had a uniform on at all times.

It's hard to say what exactly would happen, but obviously the difference in commanding officers would have caused vast changes in the way TNG unfolded.

 

[Meredith]

If the Stargazer had been destroyed at Maxia Zeta, we'd have Captain Thomas Halloway or Captain Edward Jellico as the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D.

Meh.

But how would Halloway or Jellico deal with the situations that the Enterprise finds itself in? And what effects would these different decisions have on immediate events or on events down the track?

I don't know how Halloway would have dealt with things, but Jellico wouldn't have been quite as diplomatic as Picard was. The whole Picard/Crusher subplot would have been completely erased, obviously, and Deanna would have had a uniform on at all times.

It's hard to say what exactly would happen, but obviously the difference in commanding officers would have caused vast changes in the way TNG unfolded.

I would give good money to see what Jellico would do against Q.

 

[chancellorjake]

If Picard had died on the Stargazer, then Guinan would have died in 1800's San Fransisco. I wonder what the repercussions from her death would look like.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

The Borg wouldn't have happened across the Federation sooner?

 

[DanCPA]

Why? Guinan advised the command staff on the Borg, but didn't have anything to do with the initial confrontation with the Borg

 

[Dancing Doctor]

But Q wouldn't have necessarily popped the Enterprise all that distance to where the Borg where.

 

[Red Ranger]

But Q wouldn't have necessarily popped the Enterprise all that distance to where the Borg where.

Well, I don't buy that explanation.

I don't think any starship captain, let alone the captain of the Federation flagship, would have agreed to make Q a member of the crew, least of all, the hard-nosed Jellico.

As I recall, Q introduced the Enterprise to the Borg because of Picard's insistence that not only wouldn't he make him a member of the crew, but that his help wasn't required. Q then says, "We'll see about that," snaps his fingers, and transports the ship to what may be the outskirts of Borg territory.

And I'm sure that Q didn't just do this because he was pissed. He probably intended to introduce the Federation to the Borg as part of the Q Continuum's ongoing trial of humanity to force them to "grow up."

Recall Q's comments about the Federation's enemies up to that point. He ticks off, disdainfully, the names of their major adversaries: "The Klingons. The Romulans. They're NOTHING compared to what's out there!"

Which always made me think there must be even more implacable species than the Borg, too!

Red Ranger

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The ship was devastated by the Ferengi attack, and yes, the self destruct was offline.

Apparently the *environmental spacesuits* were missing, as well.

 

[USS Fardell]

Christopher L Bennet's novel The Buried Age gives a plausible explanation as to why the ship was left.

Without giving too much away, the Stargazer was abandoned after an attack, and became so poisoned and toxic for various reasons that no one could go back aboard, so she was put onto autopilot and aimed for one of the gas giants, where she would have been pulled in by the greater mass and destroyed. However, the ship instead "bounced" off the atmosphere of the gas giant and ricocheted back into space, where the Ferengi found her.

That is essentially it. The Stargazer was lost and as far as Picard knew, it was going to be destroyed.

Without giving too much away, the Stargazer was abandoned after an attack, and became so poisoned and toxic for various reasons that no one could go back aboard, so she was put onto autopilot and aimed for one of the gas giants,

Ok, if they were able to put her on autopilot and aim her for a gas giant, that would imply that they had some "remote" control over the ship, therefore, they still should have been able to set the auto-destruct via remote control.

Not a bad attempt at fixing the "error" but the explanation is still full of holes.

As others (and I, already) have said, the self destruct was offline.

 

[Timo]

That is essentially it. The Stargazer was lost and as far as Picard knew, it was going to be destroyed.

How would that be compatible with Picard's last log entry (apparently not forged by Bok as Data reads it out loud, and Picard fondly embraces it)?

"We are forced to abandon our starship. May she find her way without us."

Picard, something of a disbeliever in afterlife, probably isn't speaking about how the spirit of the ship will find "her way" after the hull has been vaporized...

It instead seems that Picard did not attempt to scuttle the ship beyond what damage had already been done, and readily accepted that the future of the hulk might be full of surprises.

Is there any real indication that Starfleet would have standing orders to scuttle hardware that has to be left behind? When Kirk threatened to blow up his ship, it was a means of blackmail against enemies aboard the vessel, denying them the use of the ship there and then and not in some indeterminate future. When he did blow her up, it was to entrap and kill enemy troops to even the odds in an upcoming fight. So no proof for or against the scuttling of abandoned ships there.

In TNG, many a shuttlecraft crashed and was deemed unsalvageable. Yet only one wreck was ever deliberately destroyed - the one in "Skin of Evil", to prevent the entity down on the planet from repairing it and using it to escape. There was no evidence that the fallen saucer of the E-D would have been blown up, either, at least not immediately.

In DS9, runabouts left behind (say, "Battle Lines") were let be. The Defiant self-destruct was attempted once, not to deny the vessel from the enemy in general terms but to stop her from performing an attack under enemy control.

VOY continued the tradition of leaving behind shuttlecraft wrecks. The ship herself was an important prize for the Kazon during the initial seasons, so Janeway was ready to attempt self-destruct for PD/political reasons - but only because she definitely knew there would be specific primitives coming to capture the secrets of the ship. Apart from that, abandoning of the ship never really made plot sense, except in "Year of Hell" where she was expended as a suicide weapon.

As far as we can tell, then, self-destruct is a good way to countermand boarding and commandeering attempts in certain situations, but far from an expected and dictated maneuver.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS Fardell]

The problem is that I'm really not doing justice to the explanation given in The Buried Age. I'm sure the author (who does frequent this board...frequently) could probably do a much better job.

You mad a good attempt at it anyway. Having read The Buried Age myself, I am sure that your description was a good one.

Or if the attack didn't destroy all Federation secrets, Picard could have deleted them with a push of a button. Or, more probably, with something like this:

"Computer, this is Captain Jean-Luc Picard, authorization Fancy Code Seven-Eleven. Purge main computer. Fuse all engineering subsystems. Countdown to self-destruct."
"Unable to comply on self-destruct. Access to demolition charges severed."
"Umm. Very well. Proceed anyway. And see you on the other side - it was fun while it lasted."
"Proceeding. Daisy, daisy..."

Something like that would have worked.

Fundamentally, though, I don't see why spaceships should be destroyed when abandoned - least of all antiquated spaceships that were recently bested in battle. It smacks of paranoia that isn't part of the easygoing Starfleet of TNG.

Timo Saloniemi

I agree, the Stargazer was at the least more than 60 years old. (The also Constellation Class Hathaway was about 80 years old in 2365). It is not as if it was an Ambassador Class. (Even then it would certainly be too paranoid for Starfleet as depicted in TNG)

 

[USS Fardell]

And the Stargazer was definitely antiquated, probably even when Picard first took command.

Also, considering how much damage was probably done to her during the battle, it makes sense that there would be little of worth remaining...intact, at least. And being left alone in space for 10+ years or thereabouts wouldn't help either.

Still enough was working in The Battle for Riker to be worried about the Stargazer damaging the Enterprise though.
Otherwise though, hardly anything was working.

Fundamentally, though, I don't see why spaceships should be destroyed when abandoned - least of all antiquated spaceships that were recently bested in battle. It smacks of paranoia that isn't part of the easygoing Starfleet of TNG.

Timo Saloniemi

Actually, it makes perfect sense, when one takes into account the principles of Starfleet's Prime Directive. One civilization's "antiquated" is another's "advanced," after all; and if five days, weeks, months, years or even decades after the battle representatives of a clever pre- or only recently warp-capable civilization stumble upon, say, an abandoned Constitution-class starship with even a few of its systems intact and accessible, they've just been handed a technological smorgasboard for which they may not be prepared. This could result in anything from culpability in the deaths of curious explorers who blow themselves to bits tinkering where they don't belong, to that in a new enemy for the Federation a generation afterward.

True, that would be a reason to destroy the starship. It was unlikely for a primitive civilisation to find the Stargazer though.

Makes you wonder if the Carthaginians said, "Aaaahhh, don't worry; it's just one warship. What could the Romans possibly do with it?"

They probably did .

 

[Dancing Doctor]

And the Stargazer was definitely antiquated, probably even when Picard first took command.

Also, considering how much damage was probably done to her during the battle, it makes sense that there would be little of worth remaining...intact, at least. And being left alone in space for 10+ years or thereabouts wouldn't help either.

Still enough was working in The Battle for Riker to be worried about the Stargazer damaging the Enterprise though.
Otherwise though, hardly anything was working.

Well, so long as phasers and shields remained or could be brought back online, and depending on the person commanding it and whatever tricks or knowledge they have, then yeah, I'd be relatively worried. Although the situations don't exactly go together, the Duras sisters had a crappy old BoP. Yet they were able to inflict damage based on the knowledge they had and the fact that they had a cloaking device and weapons.

 

[USS Fardell]

Actually, it makes perfect sense, when one takes into account the principles of Starfleet's Prime Directive.

Ah, good point. But Starfleet might be thinking in terms of realism: the odds of somebody stumbling onto a dead starship are virtually zero, unless that somebody possesses such advanced sensors as to put Starfleet to shame.

Absolutely, space is big. It would be very difficult to detect something as small as a Constellation Class Starship.

A ship closer to home might have been subject to a PD sanitation team mission. But it's possible that Picard was too far outside the actual operating theater of Starfleet, and it simply wasn't affordable to enforce the Prime Directive to the fullest.

Most likely. I agree that Zeta Maxia system was too far away for such a mission.

Picard may have wanted to recover the vessel later once he had gotten the crew to safety.

That sounds like valid speculation. Certainly his last log suggests that he didn't expect the ship to be destroyed after abandonment - "Let her find her way without us" or words to that effect. That would be at odds with the one literary treatment of the incident, our Christopher's Buried Age.

Timo Saloniemi

Agreed

 

[Kaziarl]

Absolutely, space is big. It would be very difficult to detect something as small as a Constellation Class Starship.

[sarcasm] Yeah, it's just to big, you'd never be able to find a derelict starfleet ship, or the living gomtu, or the dyson sphere (granted... that one is HUGE, but they still didn't see it till they were right on top of it.), or a menkarian battle criuser trapped inside a radio-active asteroid belt... yeah... these things are just to dang small. [/sarcasm]

 

[Timo]

Well, Gomtuu was active, which makes a big difference as regards visibility. The Promellian ship was caught in a trap which was still trapping further vessels - again, an active element, without which the ship would never have been found. A passive starship would be invisible to basically all sensors, attracting no attention unless one stumbled into the vicinity for some other reason.

It just shouldn't be possible to spot a dead starship, even when one regularly does the above types of spotting for non-dead things.

Timo Saloniemi