Could ENT's Xindi inhabit the TOS Universe?
- Thread starter Wingsley
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The only major structural inconsistency to the Xindi joining the pre-TOS Federation would be their technology. The Xindi possessed and employed advanced technology, even for the TNG era. They also had some mastery of "transwarp conduits", and built unusual starships.
There's no inconsistency. Kirk just didn't deal with the Xindi in his three years that we saw him in TOS.
The Cardassians didn't appear until year four in STTNG and those guys were apparently serious long term adversaries.
The Cardassians didn't appear until year four in STTNG and those guys were apparently serious long term adversaries.
I agree that the Xindi "jump drive" technology would be deserving of a mention, whether in the hands of a UFP member/ally or a UFP foe. But we could rather easily argue that it was all the doing of the Sphere Builders, and proprietary to them - the Xindi themselves might not have any idea of how to reproduce this capacity, and their as such exotic ships would be stuck to ordinary warp without Sphere Builder boost.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Exactly. Unless the situation called for it, I don't see why Kirk and Company would bring up the Xindi or their attack on Earth. It happened over a hundred years before Kirk's time. How often is WWI brought up outside of a history class or historical drama? We only know about the Earth-Romulan War because the ship was patroling the Neutral Zone. No one mentioned it before (or even after) Balance of Terror.
Let's not forget that we are following the adventures of soldiers. Old wars would have pretty high odds of getting a mention there: say, my grandfather might not have wanted to discuss his own wars all that much, but something like the Boer War, the whole Napoleonic mess, or the Punic Wars could pop up at dinner...
Why the Xindi nastiness might fail to get a mention would more probably be because the heroes have far too many wars to choose from! During the TOS adventures of Kirk, one old foe completely randomly made an appearance; for all we know, this could happen to every skipper on every five-year mission, on top of the ongoing Klingon conflict. The Talarians and the Cardassians were bygone (and insignificantly weak) foes in TNG when popping up; random nasties like Ktarians also surprised us. TAS gave us the Kzinti, DS9 the Tzenkethi and later the Breen. These random appearances could well be taken to mean that Captains Keogh and Varley encountered different bit-player foes from the past - possibly they took care of the 24th century Xindi adventures!
Timo Saloniemi
Why the Xindi nastiness might fail to get a mention would more probably be because the heroes have far too many wars to choose from! During the TOS adventures of Kirk, one old foe completely randomly made an appearance; for all we know, this could happen to every skipper on every five-year mission, on top of the ongoing Klingon conflict. The Talarians and the Cardassians were bygone (and insignificantly weak) foes in TNG when popping up; random nasties like Ktarians also surprised us. TAS gave us the Kzinti, DS9 the Tzenkethi and later the Breen. These random appearances could well be taken to mean that Captains Keogh and Varley encountered different bit-player foes from the past - possibly they took care of the 24th century Xindi adventures!
Timo Saloniemi
This is a good explanation for the transwarp technology. And other than transwarp technology, Xindi ships didn't seem much more advanced than Earth ships. They might look unusual but their weapons seem on par with Earth. In the battle of Ceti Alpha V, the Enterprise, the Intrepid and some unnamed Earth ship held off six Xindi warships for quite a while. If memory serves I think the Earth ships blew up two or three enemy vessels before the Enterprise was destroyed. Not bad for 2 to 1 odds.
The real powerhouse of the 22nd Century was the Surak Class Vulcan combat cruiser. Warp 7 engine and enough firepower to scare three Mazarite warships into giving up without a fight. But even the Surak class cruiser gets cut down in seconds when engaged in battle with a Constitution class starship like the USS Defiant. So in terms of weapons technology, TOS is already way more advanced than ENT. Kirk's ship is also capable of warp 8 (relatively safely) so it is slightly faster than 100 year old Vulcan technology. and then by TNG, the Enterprise-D was hitting warp 9
I agree with the vast majority of the posts here, including my own on the previous page. Nerys, you do bring up an interesting point, however. It might not be at all out of the way for someone on TOS, not even necessarily a member of the Enterprise crew but another Starfleet or Federation official, to reference the event as it was quite significant as the first truly devastating alien attack on Earth and likely would have a bit more resonance than WWI has to us.
Plausible?
Maybe in comparison to the planet-killer in The Doomsday Machine. The motif of a death-beam-of-death that can destroy planets is similar. Otherwise I don't think there's many spots where they faced a problem that resembled any parts of the Xindi peril, not even a multiple-species-on-one-planet situation.
"Journey To Babel: The Special Edition" could have Xindi representatives CGIed into the background*. 
* - Assuming, of course, that it made sense to have them be ambassadors to the Federation in that context.
* - Assuming, of course, that it made sense to have them be ambassadors to the Federation in that context.
Any sneak attack, ala "Balance of Terror", "Arena" or the imagined one in "Day Of The Dove" would've been an opportunity to mention it. While not on the same scale, it would be the sneak attack point of reference for Earthers.
Plus while discussing the Romulans, it would'nt have been out of place for Spock to mention that Earth hadn't seen a threat like the Romulans since the Xindi attack, or something along those lines.
The thing is, whenever we take a look at the Star Trek universe (ENT, TOS, TNG, any number of alternate universes), Earth is always being attacked. It just doesn't sound like an exceptional event - that is, no single attack sounds like deserving of more mention than another. Heck, we don't even know that it would only be Earth that gets attacked regularly; for all we can tell, every civilized planet attracts that sort of constant attention, or at least every capital world of a star empire does.
Sure, the Xindi might have been the first to strike against Earth, and thus perhaps an archetype worth discussing among humans (even if not among Feds, who have a longer collective history of attacks going back to the ancient days of the various members). Then again, they might not have been the first - TAS gives us the Kzinti who ought to have been around and attacking when Cochrane was still working on Earth (or Alpha Centauri or whatnot)...
It is interesting to ponder which of the adventures of our heroes really stand out in the history of Earth or the UFP. Several times, the on-camera heroes are the only thing preventing Earth from being blown up or conquered, but that alone doesn't mean they would be accomplishing anything memorable. After all, when you prevent a certain disaster, history obviously will not remember that disaster as "certain"!
Timo Saloniemi
According to government press releases, "several" terrorist attacks have been prevented through the years, personally I can't place a name on any of the people doing the preventing.
In the Trek universe, the general public would attribute the salvation of Earth to "Starfleet."
And into the front row of the Rec Room scene from TMP.
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You watched ST:ENT. People in the Trek 23rd and 24th centuries apparently didn't, as nobody there remembers Archer's achievements.
Except perhaps Riker and Troi in "These Are the Voyages", but they are Starfleet. It's a bit like asking the average person of the street what he knows about Stephen Decatur and counting the "Huh?"s...
Only by those in the know, supposedly. Nobody but Archer's own crew would even have seen the space battle that prevented the Xindi Death Star from blowing up Earth.
Most probably. Assuming Starfleet even chose to tell them that Earth had been in any danger in the first place! It might be not good for the mental health of mankind to be too aware of the fact that their lives hang on such a thin thread.
Timo Saloniemi
Yes, given the magnitude and era of the thing, I should think the Xindi Death Ball Of Death to be easily the King Philip's War of historical references for the United Federation of Planets.
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