We're the only ship in range......

[Commander Toby]

Have you noticed how many times the Enterprise is the only ship in range?
In Star Trek Generations the Enterprise-B was the only ship in range to rescue the transport ships caught in the Nexus ribbon. Hello? They were in sector 001 which should have been teeming with Star Fleet vessels such as those protecting the system and the dozens of Starships whose captains would have been on hand for the launch of a major ship like the Enterprise-B.

A Warp Five Starship can, according to Trip in Star Trek Enterprise, get to Neptune and back in six minutes so why couldn’t the Federation escort vessels that Chekov noticed were missing in ST:IV go to the rescue? Star Trek Nemesis when the Enterprise-E is routed to Romulus Admiral Janeway tells Captain Picard that they are the closest ship. Imagine how Shinzon’s plans would have come unstuck if they’d sent the U.S.S Crazy Horse instead?

Surely had Picard been told that there is a historical opportunity to go to Romulus and that they had requested him it would have been better than he was closest.

 

[JohnChod]

Well, sure. For the most part, it's a lazy plot device to assure that the Enterprise is the ship that HAS to be involved. It often makes little to no sense, but it usually doesn't bother me. It's a way to get the story going. When it is integral to the plot, like you mention in NEM, even lazy writers should find a way around it. Your suggestion of requesting Picard is so simple - why wouldn't they use that? But, of course, that's one of the problems with NEM. They could have made some simple changes and added just a few explanatory lines of dialogue and many, many nitpicks would have been avoided.

 

[Forbin]

Hell, as far back as TMP, the only ship in range to stop V'Ger was the untested, freshly-refit Enterprise. And again, it was at Earth at the time!

Granted the fleet should be out exploring, but you'd think there would be a few defense ships hanging around the capital of the Federation.

 

[T'Girl]

First, I always thought that "we're the only ship in the quadrant," was nothing more that a ephemeris or a inside Starfleet joke.

Given the large fleet we saw during the Dominion war, Starfleet would appear to have lots of ships. However also given Starfleet mandate of both exploration and defense, the majority of those ships would likely be in the outer marches of the Federation doing exploring and defending, only returning to the inner Federation for extensive maintenance and special activities. The Enterprise B was only where she was because she was just launched and hadn't even been completely fitted out.

 

[Gary7]

Heh, I'd noticed this too quite a long time ago, then forgot about it. Yeah, as John said, it was a lazy plot device. They certainly could have make up some other reason for the Enterprise being chosen, other than it just happened to be "the closest". How about free from critical obligation? The Enterprise either just finished a mission or is on a low importance assignment, easily diverted to deal with a critical situation at hand. Better yet, why even point it out in the first place? Starfleet chose the Enterprise, and off it goes. We don't need to know why another vessel wasn't chosen.

 

[Mach5]

Granted the fleet should be out exploring, but you'd think there would be a few defense ships hanging around the capital of the Federation.

Like this?

And to think people used to bitch about the primary fleet being engaged in the Laurentian System...

 

[T'Girl]

^^ Yeah, but that in the universe of bizarro-trek

 

[Smellincoffee]

Final Frontier did this right: they sent out the Enterprise not because it was the only ship in the quadrant, but because they explicitly wanted Kirk out there to use his experience.

They should've done the same thing in Nemesis: it would have been more appropriate given Picard's history as a diplomat.

 

[RyuRoots]

"We're the only ship in range!" is a stupid plot contrivance that Trek seems to enjoy. I suppose starship availability, like warp drive and turbolift, proceeds at the speed of plot.

 

[C.E. Evans]

To me, it's just a case that Starfleet isn't as big as some people think it should be and that it's also something that happens to other ships as well, not just the Enterprise. We don't see those other adventures for the most part, but "the only ship in range" is probably a common term for any ship operating independently somewhere.

TMP, though, seemed to borrow the idea from TOS that starships were rather a special kind of vessel. Starfleet likely had many smaller ships at their disposal to face V'Ger, but the Enterprise was the only starship-class vessel within range and the only ship probably powerful enough to stand a chance against something like V'Ger, IMO...

 

[The Trekster]

^^This. It probably happens to a lot of ships, those ships just don't have tv shows about them...

I could swear I remember episodes where the conversation goes something like this:

WORF
Captain. A distress call. A whole planet of babies is on fire.

PICARD
Are there any other ships in range?

WORF
Two, sir, none of them capable_of / too_small_to / insert_some_reason_here_that_keeps_them_from helping.

PICARD
Ah, fuck it, let's go.

 

[RyanKCR]

In Nemsis, the Enterprise being close to Romulus was explained in the movie beyond being the closest ship. The why is explained by Shinzon that he used B-4 to lure the Enterprise close so that they would be the ones sent.

 

[The Wormhole]

Well obviously Starfleet ships fly designated flight paths so that they are never in appreciable proximity to the hero ships, unless the plot requires them to meet the hero ship. Therefore, the hero ship is the only ship in range of whatever Starfleet needs.

 

[Brolan]

It's a popular plot device because it does two things: it forces our heroes into action and it raises the drama, because if they fail there is no backup.

 

[Timo]

...Of course, there's no logical fault as such in the Enterprise being the closest ship to adventure X; at the same time, the Venture might be involved in adventure Y because she is the closest ship to that, while the Business is responding to crisis Z for the very same reason. The camera just happens to follow the Enterprise and thus we only get to see adventure X, not Y or Z. Trek is very consistent about there not being multiple starships available for any job without careful preplanning; nothing wrong about that, dramatically or logically speaking.

Only in special cases does this logic become dubious. If adventures X, Y and Z all are really unique and high-profile, for example, yet all feature the Enterprise as the closest ship, then we might have to invent "reasons" as to why the Enterprise either is specifically sent to these adventure-prone areas, or acts as an adventure magnet (both are sensible assumptions for the E-D which is a UFP flagship and political symbol, less so for the other Enterprises which are just workhorses). But that's not really the case from what we see. Other ships besides the hero one have responded to Borg crises, for example. And we have never been told that these UFP- or galaxy-threatening calamities that Kirk or Picard solved would have been unique or even rare instances; at most, we have been dropped a few hints in "Homefront"/"Paradise Lost" that Earth doesn't really go to Planetary Panic Status more than a couple of times in a century.

ST:TMP and ST:GEN are rare examples of poor handling of this plot element, because in both cases the adventure lay close to Earth and in the general case there would be multiple ships near Earth (although we've never been led to believe that there would exist a "Home Fleet" that would be permanently positioned near Earth - to the contrary, the UFP might have gone Roman and decided that the military had no business lingering close to the capital world). In ST:TMP, we at least had the small consolation that Kirk's ship might have been the most capable one available; Starfleet would not have benefited from the launching of a lesser vessel, not after learning what V'Ger had done to the cream of the cream of the Klingon fleet. But in ST:GEN, just about any ship would have been better than the E-B in responding to the Nexus emergency.

ST:NEM, OTOH, seems completely logical. Shinzon had obviously carefully engineered the events, making sure that Picard would stumble onto the signals of B-4 and be lured close to the RNZ by them, at which point a message would be sent out calling for a Starfleet envoy to Romulus. Picard would be the closest by careful design, not by accident. No doubt Shinzon had fallback plans and all sorts of means for fine-tuning the timing, too; I wouldn't wonder a bit if he had paid the natives to harass Picard's away team (but not destroy it) so that Picard wouldn't have time to stop and think through the implications of his discovery of B-4.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Silvercrest]

to the contrary, the UFP might have gone Roman and decided that the military had no business lingering close to the capital world

I'm sure the Klingons, Romulans, etc. would be very interested to hear that.

 

[Timo]

...Yet while the vast borders of the UFP necessarily leak like a sieve, there's plenty of space between them and Earth, plenty of depth to the defenses. Why idle the powerful starships at Earth when they could be contributing to the border defenses, and then rush inward to create an ever-strengthening defense if there's a penetration attempt?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

...and then rush inward to create an ever-strengthening defense if there's a penetration attempt?

Timo Saloniemi

I dated a girl like that once!

 

[Vanyel]

ST:NEM, OTOH, seems completely logical. Shinzon had obviously carefully engineered the events, making sure that Picard would stumble onto the signals of B-4 and be lured close to the RNZ by them, at which point a message would be sent out calling for a Starfleet envoy to Romulus. Picard would be the closest by careful design, not by accident. No doubt Shinzon had fallback plans and all sorts of means for fine-tuning the timing, too; I wouldn't wonder a bit if he had paid the natives to harass Picard's away team (but not destroy it) so that Picard wouldn't have time to stop and think through the implications of his discovery of B-4.

Timo Saloniemi

That's how I saw it.

 

[KJbushway]

Well, you never see many ships around earth, in the last episodes of season 3 of Enterprise, there was no earth ships to protect earth from the weapon, instead it was the andorian ship. The real only time you saw earth ships, near earth is when they were all called back when the weapon prototype attacked earth.

Only ship in the quadrant just means that there the only one close enough to help.
Some times they the only one sizeable to help.
This is just my theory. But somewhat possible.