Aventine the new flagship?

[Christopher]

It seems to me that the answer with the quantum slip screen is outline a "control" problem - so they've worked out how to use it to go 60,000 light years but not 2000 light years, they cannot control the energy to that fine of a degree. That way, the delta Quadrant can be used again but you don't have situation where the Enterprise can be at Earth at the start of an adventure and then at the Klingon home world an instant later.

That's not consistent with the depiction of quantum slipstream drive onscreen; as shown, it requires very precise calculation to keep the vortex stable, so the longer the journey, the more difficult it is.

Besides, we already have stories where the Enterprise plays hopscotch across the quadrant -- see Doors into Chaos, for instance. Or First Contact, where the E-E seemingly got from the Romulan border to Earth within a few minutes. It's been a long, long time since anyone's really bothered to obey the injunction of the original TOS and TNG writers' bibles: "Don't treat deep space like a local neighborhood." The UFP and its neighbors are already hours or days apart, at least when the story demands it. At least QSD would be a better rationalization for what's already effectively the case.

 

[Rowan Sjet]

Or First Contact, where the E-E seemingly got from the Romulan border to Earth within a few minutes.

The way I make sense of it is that the battle started further out from Earth than what we first saw in the movie, like Starfleet engaging the Borg at Wolf 359. Except Starfleet ships had made great improvements since then and thus, although being no more effective aggressively, were able to last much longer against the Cube than the first attack. We just missed the prolonged battle in between Enterprise setting course and them arriving at the battle because it would have taken too long to show.

Of course, this idea may not stand up too well under close scrutiny but it's how I fanwank it.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Put differently, one might conclude that the unique role of Enterprise in the Federation's formation (perhaps coupled with the previous history of ships of the same name) might have garnered it a permanent place of honor.

This is how I've always viewed the E's status as "the flagship"; sort of going hand in hand with why all Starfleet personnel now wear a variant of what was once the Enterprise's insignia (an unofficial explanation, of course, but I happen to like it). I just go with the notion that it's going to be that way until another ship and crew distinguishes themselves in a manner that eclipses the voyages of the original Enterprise.

(Not that any such shit is evah gonna happen. Not on my watch!

)

 

[Christopher]

This is how I've always viewed the E's status as "the flagship"; sort of going hand in hand with why all Starfleet personnel now wear a variant of what was once the Enterprise's insignia (an unofficial explanation, of course, but I happen to like it).

Except that the insignia of the 23rd-century Enterprise is now known to be a variant of an insignia used as far back as the Friendship One probe in the 21st century: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:Friendship_One_logo.jpg Perhaps it was the original UESPA logo, and the Big E's use of that insignia was a tribute to UESPA, perhaps because UESPA was (presumably) behind the program that produced the original starship Enterprise NX-01 (a ship whose own insignia wasn't really adaptable to 23rd-century Starfleet's graphic design style).

I think that's a better explanation for why the whole fleet would adopt it -- because it's a former logo of their forerunner organization. The idea that they're honoring one ship among their number never made much sense to me.

And it might explain an episode like "Court-martial" where we see other Starfleet officers already using the arrowhead insignia. Maybe it was never uniquely NCC-1701's logo to begin with. Perhaps the other emblems we saw on other ships weren't unique to those ships, but were the emblems of particular subsets of the fleet, with multiple ships and starbases using each division's insignia. Maybe Starbase 11 was a command base for the division that used the arrowhead insignia, so all the ships there were part of that same subfleet, and hence all the officers in the bar had the arrowhead emblem on their tunics.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Blasphemer.

 

[Fireflywyo300]

Sorry about that. In future I will quote my sources.

True, the Aventine is a test bed of new technologies at the moment. But a working quantum slipstream drive in a Federation starship is a major leap in technology and capability. Like fighters moving from propeller driven propulsion to jet engines or breaking and surpasing the sound barrier. Such a leap that previous classes have been rendered obsolete if they cannot be fitted to the new drive system.

How DARE you not quote your WIKIPEDIA source and their dictionary definition of a flagship, which, if you had written yourself, would have been almost the same! This is an egregious error! Please, please, don't let that happen again.

just kidding.

 

[Herbert1]

How DARE you not quote your WIKIPEDIA source and their dictionary definition of a flagship, which, if you had written yourself, would have been almost the same! This is an egregious error! Please, please, don't let that happen again.

just kidding.

LOL!