This is a copy of a thread I started in the "Trek Tech" forum, but I thought since it involved TOS, I should ask for comments here as well:
I got this idea from watching the 1980 NBC miniseries "Shogun", based on the James Clavell novel. If you remember the show, and the final chapter, Pilot-Major Blackthorne (Richard Chamberlain) tried to build a sailing ship from scratch after his own ship was lost in 1601 Japan.
Let's assume we are in the TOS or pre-TOS era and we're telling the story of the Constitution-class starship exploring deep space when a catastrophe occurs. Whether it was an accident, or a hostile encounter, or maybe the crew had to take their ship to its limits to carry out a mission, the ship is damaged severely. Maybe there was a systems failure, maybe an explosion. The ship's engines are damaged; she looses high warp capacity, as well as subspace radio and scanners. She is, for all intents and purposes, beached in a foreign land.
Can the crew repair the ship in deep space by themselves? What if the nacelles were damaged? In ENT, Archer and company kept the NX-01 barely together after having been shot full of holes. Did Constitution-class starships and their crews have the capacity to rebuild in deep space? Would "Where No Man Has Gone Before" indicate they could? What if there were no installations around?
I was thinking up a story called "Constitution", in which Kirk in the TOS/TAS era responded to a low-speed, low-energy subspace distress call (ENT "Regeneration") from the missing U.S.S. Constitution, which had been sent out to deep space as a finalized prototype over 20 years ago, and had been missing for at least 15. The Enterprise diverts beyond explored space to find the Constitution tooling along at Warp 2 (maybe less), badly damaged, no apparent radio contact or tracking scanners left, minimal power and life support, and Kirk and company board her to find the aging crew surviving an endless crisis of system failures, patchwork repairs, and scarcity of resources. The ship is not going to make it home as-is, and no quickie repair job will do it. The Constitution's crew improvised and scavenged inferior ores from asteroids to repair a ruptured nacelle and keep their starship moving, but recent patchworks failed and the nacelle reptured again, damaging the reactor and leaving the ship one heartbeat away from dropping out of warp and stranded in deep space. Without sufficient power to send out a high-power distress beacon, the crew managed a low-speed distress burst.
Scotty and Spock determine the Constitution is spaceworthy and fully salvageable. But her crew cannot survive indefinitely in deep space with exhausted resources. Scotty says the best solution would be to tow her to a repair base ("The Doomsday Machine", "The Paradise Syndrome"). Uhura signals Starfleet, and the eventual reply is that Starbase 27 could send an automated warptug with a fully manned and provisioned spacedock pod in tow, to rebuild the refit the Constitution on the spot, but Starfleet would not have the pod ready and mated to the warptug for at least 20 solar weeks. So Kirk is left with the inevitable decision: can the Enterprise undertake the salvage operation by themselves, get the Constitution fully repaired, and able to get underway? Spock and Scotty list the options:
1: Offload most or all of the Constitution's crew to the Enterprise, haul them to Starbase 27 (a significant diversion) at maximum warp, and leave the Constitution in deep space, unable to move, with either minimal crew, or repair party, aboard. This would strain the Enterprise's life support and leave a spaceworthy ship out on the frontier.
2: Offload the Constitution's entire crew to the Enterprise, take them to Starbase, and either abandon or scuttle a spaceworthy ship.
3: The Enterprise could wait there with the Constitution, possibly for months, for a proper spacedock to arrive via warptug.
4: Most risky: Enterprise could attempt to carry the Constitution piggy-back style, straining her warp engines to the critical point, to serve as an improvised tug to get the ship back to Starbase. It would take almost as long as waiting for the spacedock pod, and risk severe damage to both ships.
5: The Enterprise could separate its primary hull, use it as a command base to host repair crews and give the Constitution's crew some rest and rehab, while the Enterprise's stardrive section probes deeper in this region to gather the raw materials necessary and bring them back to refit the Constitution without a proper spacedock. This could take at least 2-3 solar months, but if done properly, Constitution could be fully re-energized and her crew exposed to the latest technology while rebuilding their ship. This would amount to modernizing the crew so they would not be out of time when the Constitution finally reached Starbase under her own power.
I would expect that if "The Cage" were any indication, replication technology may not have been as polished as it was during TOS, and the old Constitution may have had far less capacity to repair her damage on her own. I would also assume, with little to go on, that, to borrow a term from DS9, only the Main Engineering station in the stardrive section of the Enterprise would be equipped with "industrial replicator" technology capable of fabricating/rejuvinating needed parts for the repairs, so maybe Scotty would have to refit the saucer with this kind of heavy machinery before anyone could go anywhere, plus the saucer would have to accommodate shuttlecrafts and/or work bees for demolition and construction. It would also be interesting to consider if the stardrive section would be equipped to function on its own for deep space exploration and perhaps mining for bulk raw materials. (I'm assuming the only feasible way for repair/rebuilding operations on this scale to work would be to conserve energy by having industrial replication machinery that draws on raw materials (perhaps refined ore) to build hull components, etc.)
Does this make sense?
I got this idea from watching the 1980 NBC miniseries "Shogun", based on the James Clavell novel. If you remember the show, and the final chapter, Pilot-Major Blackthorne (Richard Chamberlain) tried to build a sailing ship from scratch after his own ship was lost in 1601 Japan.
Let's assume we are in the TOS or pre-TOS era and we're telling the story of the Constitution-class starship exploring deep space when a catastrophe occurs. Whether it was an accident, or a hostile encounter, or maybe the crew had to take their ship to its limits to carry out a mission, the ship is damaged severely. Maybe there was a systems failure, maybe an explosion. The ship's engines are damaged; she looses high warp capacity, as well as subspace radio and scanners. She is, for all intents and purposes, beached in a foreign land.
Can the crew repair the ship in deep space by themselves? What if the nacelles were damaged? In ENT, Archer and company kept the NX-01 barely together after having been shot full of holes. Did Constitution-class starships and their crews have the capacity to rebuild in deep space? Would "Where No Man Has Gone Before" indicate they could? What if there were no installations around?
I was thinking up a story called "Constitution", in which Kirk in the TOS/TAS era responded to a low-speed, low-energy subspace distress call (ENT "Regeneration") from the missing U.S.S. Constitution, which had been sent out to deep space as a finalized prototype over 20 years ago, and had been missing for at least 15. The Enterprise diverts beyond explored space to find the Constitution tooling along at Warp 2 (maybe less), badly damaged, no apparent radio contact or tracking scanners left, minimal power and life support, and Kirk and company board her to find the aging crew surviving an endless crisis of system failures, patchwork repairs, and scarcity of resources. The ship is not going to make it home as-is, and no quickie repair job will do it. The Constitution's crew improvised and scavenged inferior ores from asteroids to repair a ruptured nacelle and keep their starship moving, but recent patchworks failed and the nacelle reptured again, damaging the reactor and leaving the ship one heartbeat away from dropping out of warp and stranded in deep space. Without sufficient power to send out a high-power distress beacon, the crew managed a low-speed distress burst.
Scotty and Spock determine the Constitution is spaceworthy and fully salvageable. But her crew cannot survive indefinitely in deep space with exhausted resources. Scotty says the best solution would be to tow her to a repair base ("The Doomsday Machine", "The Paradise Syndrome"). Uhura signals Starfleet, and the eventual reply is that Starbase 27 could send an automated warptug with a fully manned and provisioned spacedock pod in tow, to rebuild the refit the Constitution on the spot, but Starfleet would not have the pod ready and mated to the warptug for at least 20 solar weeks. So Kirk is left with the inevitable decision: can the Enterprise undertake the salvage operation by themselves, get the Constitution fully repaired, and able to get underway? Spock and Scotty list the options:
1: Offload most or all of the Constitution's crew to the Enterprise, haul them to Starbase 27 (a significant diversion) at maximum warp, and leave the Constitution in deep space, unable to move, with either minimal crew, or repair party, aboard. This would strain the Enterprise's life support and leave a spaceworthy ship out on the frontier.
2: Offload the Constitution's entire crew to the Enterprise, take them to Starbase, and either abandon or scuttle a spaceworthy ship.
3: The Enterprise could wait there with the Constitution, possibly for months, for a proper spacedock to arrive via warptug.
4: Most risky: Enterprise could attempt to carry the Constitution piggy-back style, straining her warp engines to the critical point, to serve as an improvised tug to get the ship back to Starbase. It would take almost as long as waiting for the spacedock pod, and risk severe damage to both ships.
5: The Enterprise could separate its primary hull, use it as a command base to host repair crews and give the Constitution's crew some rest and rehab, while the Enterprise's stardrive section probes deeper in this region to gather the raw materials necessary and bring them back to refit the Constitution without a proper spacedock. This could take at least 2-3 solar months, but if done properly, Constitution could be fully re-energized and her crew exposed to the latest technology while rebuilding their ship. This would amount to modernizing the crew so they would not be out of time when the Constitution finally reached Starbase under her own power.
I would expect that if "The Cage" were any indication, replication technology may not have been as polished as it was during TOS, and the old Constitution may have had far less capacity to repair her damage on her own. I would also assume, with little to go on, that, to borrow a term from DS9, only the Main Engineering station in the stardrive section of the Enterprise would be equipped with "industrial replicator" technology capable of fabricating/rejuvinating needed parts for the repairs, so maybe Scotty would have to refit the saucer with this kind of heavy machinery before anyone could go anywhere, plus the saucer would have to accommodate shuttlecrafts and/or work bees for demolition and construction. It would also be interesting to consider if the stardrive section would be equipped to function on its own for deep space exploration and perhaps mining for bulk raw materials. (I'm assuming the only feasible way for repair/rebuilding operations on this scale to work would be to conserve energy by having industrial replication machinery that draws on raw materials (perhaps refined ore) to build hull components, etc.)
Does this make sense?
