After first contact.

[Manusho]

Hi, I'm new to this site and only a moderate Star Trek fan, so I'm not really knowledgeable on everything. So, forgive me if I sound stupid.

I've always found 'First Contact' to be my favorite Star Trek movie because it was a look back at the past and showed what happened that would eventually lead up to the Star Trek universe. I always found some enjoyment from 'Star Trek: Enterprise' because it was a look back at the early days of space exploration for humans.

The problem is that 'First Contact' takes place in 2063 and 'Enterprise' starts in 2151. I'm really interested in the events that transpired between those years. What happened immediately after first contact with the Vulcan? What where the first deep space missions like? What were the first star ships like? How did the people transition from post WWIII Earth to a unified earth? Etc.

I've looked but I can't find anything about this time frame. Even just a book that takes place during this time. Can anyone help me? Do you know of any source, book, TV episode, even a video game, that has more information about that time frame?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'll just take this opportunity to plug a very excellent - and, apparently, soon to be an actual Trek novel - TBBS fanfic:

First Contact: The Iron Horse.

 

[BillJ]

I'll just take this opportunity to plug a very excellent - and, apparently, soon to be an actual Trek novel - TBBS fanfic:

First Contact: The Iron Horse.

I would also recommend the Pocket Books novels Strangers from the Sky and Federation.

 

[T'Girl]

What where the first deep space missions like?

Zephram Cochrane's first warp flight as on April 5, 2063

The SS Valiant left Earth only some two years later, eventual they reached the galactic barrier, in the year 2265 the ship had been missing over 200 years.

In 2067 the warp drive probe Friendship One leaves Earth.

The Human colony Terra Nova was founded on June 23, 2078, after a nine-year warp flight. So they left Earth in 2069. By the year 2151 the colony had been silent for over seventy years.

The Terratin colony also left Earth around this time, they originally named their colony Terra Ten. Suggest a number of colony efforts before their departure.

By the year 2102 Humans were building multiple J-class freighters (where Travis was born).

2151 (Terra Nova) TRAVIS: "I always thought lost colonies affected boomers." Travis statement was with "colonies" in the plural, so Terra Nova wasn't the only lost colony, and so not the only colony, Earth had more than a few by that point.

2269 (Terratin)SPOCK: "Descendants of an early lost colony ... These Earth colonists named and numbered this planet Terra Ten." Spock's comment might indicate that there are both early and not-early "lost colonies."

It sounds like Humans began to use the brand new warp drive engine just a soon as Cochrane made his first flight. To me that sound like some people on Earth were ready for the warp drive prior to Cochrane making his first flight, they were in a position technologically and financially to exploit the new discovery.

But at the same time, elsewhere on Earth, there was something call the "post atomic horror." Where apparently civilization fell following the events of World War Three.

I interpret this to mean that WW3 didn't effect the Human race "equally." Cochrane built his warp drive craft at a "missile complex in central Montana," you would think that such a place would be a prime target, but it was still there after the war, suggesting that America wasn't directly involved in the third world war, we sat it out on the side lines.

From the movies, the TransAmerica building in San Francisco is still standing centuries later, so San Francisco (a major population center) wasn't attacked.

For the SS Valiant to have reached the edge of the galaxy, they would have had to have something faster than a Human built engine, and the Vulcans weren't providing theirs. My interpretation again, the Valiant's crew traded/bought a more advanced drive on their outward journey. They didn't wait for Henry Archer's team to invent a purely Human faster engine.

What were the first star ships like?

A fan site, non-canon, and superseded by various episodes. But in many ways makes more sense than what was presented on screen.

http://www.starfleet-museum.org/index.htm

 

[The Wormhole]

^^Worth mentioning, the guy who runs that site designed Starbase Vanguard for the Pocket Books novel series. The design of Vanguard was later used in the remastered version of The Ultimate Computer as the starbase the Enterprise visited in the episode.