It was an oversight. He wasn't told to include one, so he didn't.
A bug in Beyond about Transporter
- Thread starter kilorocky
- Start date
That makes more sense.
Oops, somehow I misinterpreted KDB's original post as stating that he was specifically told not to include one.
The Franklin didn't land on a planet. If it had simply landed there, and it had been designed to do that, there would be no reason at all for Edison to stick around on that planet. It crashed on a planet, while remaining more or less intact enough to be repairable if you had the right technology on hand (which Edison and his crew originally didn't, but Jaylah and Scotty did). That it was a tough ship does absolutely nothing to negate anything Scotty said.
Also note that when Kirk had the Enterprise flying through the atmosphere, Scotty was also having a conniption, because that ship wasn't built for that, either. And no, the fact that the ship managed it does not prove that it was ever a good idea. Lots of vehicles can do amazing things, under the right conditions, that would totally destroy them under the wrong conditions.
ETA: Also, the claim that we 'saw it take off' just fine in Beyond is patently absurd. They had to literally throw the ship off a cliff and hope not to hit the ground before the engines caught on. Do you really think that was anything even remotely approaching normal procedure?
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Conversely, there's nothing to suggest that the landing was difficult for the ship. Something made her go down; that something would be the likelier reason for her not taking off again than any imaginary design shortcoming (be it enemy action, malfunction, or something luring Edison to land and investigate). And nothing about her eventual ascent appeared problematic in the slightest - the anxiety was all about that weird kickstart-via-basejumping, the reason for which was never adequately explained.
Starships from that era flew fine onto and out of planets, as seen in ENT. Even if they "weren't designed" to do that, they had the ability, and it could be counted on - sort of like a tank might not be designed to travel on pavement but has no problem with this lesser feat, thanks to indeed having been designed to travel across rocky terrain.
Everything Scotty says on this subject is negated long before he says it, alas. Which is par for the course, as he appears to have the same middle name as Noonien Soong. "They only have simple impulse"; "That is the first ship with warp drive fitted"; "She can't fly off this planet, it's a design shortcoming". Heck, Scotty not trusting transwarp in ST3 is the best reason to assume it became standard for Starfleet soon thereafter...
Timo Saloniemi
Starships from that era flew fine onto and out of planets, as seen in ENT. Even if they "weren't designed" to do that, they had the ability, and it could be counted on - sort of like a tank might not be designed to travel on pavement but has no problem with this lesser feat, thanks to indeed having been designed to travel across rocky terrain.
Everything Scotty says on this subject is negated long before he says it, alas. Which is par for the course, as he appears to have the same middle name as Noonien Soong. "They only have simple impulse"; "That is the first ship with warp drive fitted"; "She can't fly off this planet, it's a design shortcoming". Heck, Scotty not trusting transwarp in ST3 is the best reason to assume it became standard for Starfleet soon thereafter...
Timo Saloniemi
This ship was built before the ships in ENT. And just because a ship can theoretically fly through atmosphere if it needs to still does not mean that doing so is a good idea, unless you have no other choice. It certainly doesn't make much sense to have that as the only means of interacting with a planet if your ship isn't specifically designed to do so. Not to mention, shuttlepods were seen on the ship, to begin with.
And are you seriously claiming that Scotty used a ridiculously dangerous cliff-dive maneuver for no reason whatsoever when he could have just lifted off normally? And that everyone else just let him? (Including Jaylah who is an intelligent engineer who's been working on that exact ship for apparently years)
Not really. She was a contemporary, more like. And naturally came later than the perfectly planets-compatible NX engine testbed that established the previous warp speed record. But that has nothing to do with Scotty's quoted "rationale", of ships from the era when ships were built in orbit being inherently atmosphere-afraid. NX-01 was built in orbit. Prime Kirk's ship supposedly was, too. Both flew through Earth's atmosphere better than anything ever designed to do so!
Naah. Atmospheres should present no problems to ships capable of pushing through nebulae at a good fraction of the speed of light. And one feeble gee should not have a measurable effect on a ship routinely pulling hundreds or thousands. It's not a matter of choice - it's a matter of whether you would even notice that you are doing atmospheres and surfaces. Or mountains, for that matter (the Franklin apparently pierced one without being observably dented).
Assuming the ship is meant to interact with planets. But Scotty was wrong about the specificalluy designed bit, so it doesn't matter.
None were seen on the ship. Two came to give the crew a lift from Earth (?) to their vessel. And then probably promptly came back, to help the crew of the next ship up to their assignment.
Hmh? We don't even know whether Jaylah knew it was a ship.
And that idiotic maneuver was mostly Sulu's doing. Although he at least has a good track record with properly operating antique flying machines.
Timo Saloniemi
IIRC, the shuttlepods were seen on internal footage. If they only came to drop people off and there wasn't actually a shuttlebay on board, how were they in the ship?
And Jaylah specifically referred to the Franklin as her way off the planet. She knew it was a ship.
Also, why would Sulu throw the ship off a cliff if it was even a remote possibility that it could take off normally? You're twisting the facts of the movie into total nonsense.
I do not remember the explanation precisely. I'd had the idea that the (inertial dampeners?) failure to work until the ship had enough speed was the result of damage the ship had sustained in its crash or the century of wear after that. That the dive-off-a-cliff was a desperate hack to get around a broken part that couldn't be fixed and not part of the ship's expected design.
Given that Star Trek ships don't have to respect the rocket equation and have energy to waste it's really hard to come up with a mechanism by which they can zip around between planets just fine and can hover around the lower atmosphere tolerably well but are doomed doomed dooooooomed if they touch dirt.
Perhaps the Franklin and Intrepid classes both had shuttlebay doors that, for some reason, were flush with the rest of the hull or hidden under retractable hull plates, so that you couldn't see them unless they were open. Not sure what the purpose for such a thing would be, though. Aesthetics? Maybe security, so potential boarders wouldn't know where the easiest place to breach was?
Two shuttlepods, apparently slightly longer versions of the things they had in ENT, were seen landing against a sky backdrop, presumably to a starport on Earth so that the Franklin crew could embark. I don't recall any footage of them resting inside a shuttlebay, let alone in a scene that would suggest the bay was aboard the Franklin.
...One capable of taking off from a planet, then, design-wise. Either she knows her stuff or she doesn't - and both of those takes support the idea that taking off was expected rather than exceptional.
They are total nonsense to begin with - sticking to Scotty's particular nonsense doesn't help one iota in explaining why Sulu did what he did. If the ship can't fly in atmospheres or take off from planets, then dropping her off a cliff isn't going to help.
The hatches could simply be hidden in the shadows of the stern cut. I mean, the cut is weird in the first place, and a reasonable explanation for it would be that it provides access to the heart of the ship, past the bulk of the saucer. And if it's about access, then it's about docking ports, airlocks, and potentially also shuttlepod stowage.
That no stowage was actually designed for the model is not a major concern, as most Trek starship features have been created "after the fact", by assigning made-up functions to random decorative features.
FWIW, there is a rectangle of lights surrounding a square feature at the very bottom of the cut in the concept art. Not really "hidden", in the in-universe sense, but more like "highlighted". If we really want to give the ship a shuttlebay, then that's our opening...
Timo Saloniemi
This right here is why I have problems with the destructions of the KT Enterprise and the PT Enterprise-D. Particularly the KT Enterprise. The Enterprise-D at least has the excuse that they lost all helm control. The KT Enterprise had power even after the crash as evidenced by the running lights. As long as you can route power to the ventral thrusters and the impulse drives, which should be possible considering that the saucer sections have fusion reactors to power the ship at impulse, then take off from a planet's surface should be possible.
There could certainly be minor technical problems that result from a survivable crash and cannot be repaired trivially. In certain conditions, repairs might be impossible until somebody finds the required toolkit or spool of superconductive wire or whatnot, but trivial after such access is gained.
Does something like this explain why Edison got stuck on that mountaintop on Altamid? Jaylah lacked the resources and the skill to repair the ship; Edison would have had the skill but perhaps not the resources; and Scotty had enough skill to make do without the resources. But the problem there is that Edison later did gain the resources. And the problem also negates itself - Edison also gained a means of leaving the planet, but he no longer wanted to, as he was hatching this plan of revenge instead.
A better explanation for Edison being briefly stuck on the planet would be that the wormhole that brought him there had gone through obstacles the ship alone could not go through. But would that be the dense asteroid cloud around the planet? Or the rubble covering the ship?
If we assume the asteroid cloud is the problem (it seems to have been impassable to Federation starships until NCC-1701 came along), then Edison would be stuck on the planet even if his ship were fully functional. He could just as well park her on the surface, utilizing her landing ability, and wait for approaching death there rather than on orbit. The rubble around the ship would then just be from a later quake or something, irrelevant to the issue of takeoff (as we clearly see).
If OTOH the wormhole took the ship all the way down to the planet, we would have a nice explanation to how she appeared to embedded in solid rock rather than rubble. She did not arrive through space, but through subspace or whatnot, and was stuck partially inside the mountain for that reason. But the rock would still be irrelevant to the issue of takeoff and escape, as we again see the ship can trivially shake it off; Edison being stranded would be because of the asteroids. And because of the sheer distance, of course - but despair in face of distance would not explain why Edison didn't try takeoff. Despair in face of the asteroid wall right next to the planet would be sufficient cause to not even try.
Timo Saloniemi
Does something like this explain why Edison got stuck on that mountaintop on Altamid? Jaylah lacked the resources and the skill to repair the ship; Edison would have had the skill but perhaps not the resources; and Scotty had enough skill to make do without the resources. But the problem there is that Edison later did gain the resources. And the problem also negates itself - Edison also gained a means of leaving the planet, but he no longer wanted to, as he was hatching this plan of revenge instead.
A better explanation for Edison being briefly stuck on the planet would be that the wormhole that brought him there had gone through obstacles the ship alone could not go through. But would that be the dense asteroid cloud around the planet? Or the rubble covering the ship?
If we assume the asteroid cloud is the problem (it seems to have been impassable to Federation starships until NCC-1701 came along), then Edison would be stuck on the planet even if his ship were fully functional. He could just as well park her on the surface, utilizing her landing ability, and wait for approaching death there rather than on orbit. The rubble around the ship would then just be from a later quake or something, irrelevant to the issue of takeoff (as we clearly see).
If OTOH the wormhole took the ship all the way down to the planet, we would have a nice explanation to how she appeared to embedded in solid rock rather than rubble. She did not arrive through space, but through subspace or whatnot, and was stuck partially inside the mountain for that reason. But the rock would still be irrelevant to the issue of takeoff and escape, as we again see the ship can trivially shake it off; Edison being stranded would be because of the asteroids. And because of the sheer distance, of course - but despair in face of distance would not explain why Edison didn't try takeoff. Despair in face of the asteroid wall right next to the planet would be sufficient cause to not even try.
Timo Saloniemi
There's more to be considered than just power. A hull as massive as either ship's saucer section would surely have suffered serious structural damage after such a crash, and having enough power to run the lights or fire the thrusters doesn't mean the frame is still spaceworthy. Especially for the saucer in Beyond, which crashlanded in a near-vertical, nose-down position.
It would still make a ignificant difference whether there was power to the one relevant gadget, the Structural Integrity Field Doodad. With it, these ships can and will pierce mountains. Without, they might crumble under their own weight.
Can the thing be set at 12.5%, I wonder?
Timo Saloniemi
Can the thing be set at 12.5%, I wonder?
Timo Saloniemi
While I agree that the footage must have predated the crash (the Franklin's crew look like they're having a pretty good time, and those shuttlepods have to come from somewhere - meaning, the Franklin had obviously not yet crashed), I'm not aware of anything that ties this footage to the Romulan War specifically.
Besides, since Edison is in that footage and is wearing his Starfleet uniform, doesn't this mean that the war must have been over? While the war was going on, Edison was a MACO.
Yeah, wasn't his commission meant top be a reward for his service in the war and he felt he go short changed by being sent out on an old ship to the frontier?
^ I think Edison's problem was more along the lines of, why give him a ship at all? He hated the fact that the MACOS were disbanded and that he was being made to fraternize with former enemies. (And also of course, he felt abandoned after his distress calls went unanswered.) The age of the ship he was given, probably didn't matter much - indeed, towards the end of the film, he sees the Franklin and refers to it as "my old friend".
My problem with this whole situation is, why didn't they make Edison a Starfleet Marine? We know Starfleet HAS Marines (as anyone who's seen ST 6 knows). Or perhaps he could have become an instructor at the Academy. There were surely other options than to give him a starship command (was he even qualified for that?).
My problem with this whole situation is, why didn't they make Edison a Starfleet Marine? We know Starfleet HAS Marines (as anyone who's seen ST 6 knows). Or perhaps he could have become an instructor at the Academy. There were surely other options than to give him a starship command (was he even qualified for that?).
If you're referring to the Operation Retrieve document in STVI, the "Marines" referenced their were a fanon addition, the original chart came to light recently and it had different wording.
Anyway, I got the sense from the "push the frontier" video and early log entries that originally Edison was OK with his Franklin assignment (at least on the outside, like any good soldier), it didn't seem like he went nuts until he's been forced to bear witness to the death of most of his crew.
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