Dreadnought-Class Production Line (Spoilers?)

[saddestmoon]

The Vengeance was likely first named USS Excelsior, it had transwarp drive after all.

Different timeline, so highly unlikely in both counts, IMHO. If that were indeed the case, I'd expect it would have be called the USS Excelsior, rather than the USS Vengeance - and transwarp would have been gone into in greater detail (and would have actually been mentioned, in-movie).

But neither were referenced in STID.

If ever there was an Excelsior in the Into Darkness timeline, I think this may have been it... (speculation of course, and possible spoilers):

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=213985

 

[captainkirk]

Has anyone been able to figure out why Marcus needed Khan to tell him how to build a more advanced ship. I don't see how Khan could have learned enough about 23rd century technology to build the Vengeance and do it all in one year. What makes more sense to me is that when Nero's drill fell into the sea, it had a crew on board like when he attacked Vulcan, and that Starfleet captured them and used their knowledge to build the Vengeance. After all, they probably would have been engineers.

 

[Kevman7987]

Has anyone been able to figure out why Marcus needed Khan to tell him how to build a more advanced ship. I don't see how Khan could have learned enough about 23rd century technology to build the Vengeance and do it all in one year. What makes more sense to me is that when Nero's drill fell into the sea, it had a crew on board like when he attacked Vulcan, and that Starfleet captured them and used their knowledge to build the Vengeance. After all, they probably would have been engineers.

I had just assumed that Marcus used Khan's knowledge and understanding of warfare itself somehow to make the ship more dangerous.

Actually, your idea about survivors of Nero's crew being used to upgrade the ship's technology makes so much more sense than the confusing mess that Orci/Kurtzman came up with when writing Khan for STiD.

 

[captainkirk]

Thanks. There were also the missiles that Nero fired at Spock just before they went to warp and those missiles weren't detonated so they could have been captured and reverse-engineered.

 

[Timo]

I'm not convinced a couple of random miners, engineer or not, would have been a cornucopia of technological data. But it's also doubtful there ever were any people staying aboard the drill - it's way too small to actually hold any!

A perhaps more likely scenario would involve Nero noticing the saboteurs and beaming down a couple of expendable musclemen who'd then immediately emerge from that hatch. The drilling prevents "broadcast" beaming, but Nero would have been using "cable"...

As regards Khan's role, let's remember that it is Khan himself revealing that role. The egomaniac might have seriously believed he was the only arrow in Admiral Marcus' quiver, or at least would have tried to pass that impression to Kirk, but in reality Marcus probably was working on a much broader front (and barely remembered Khan until the London attack). Khan may have offered input on how to build the dreadnought-class vessels, but a dozen other evil supergeniuses may have been employed as well, not to mention other shady assets.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Has anyone been able to figure out why Marcus needed Khan to tell him how to build a more advanced ship. I don't see how Khan could have learned enough about 23rd century technology to build the Vengeance and do it all in one year. What makes more sense to me is that when Nero's drill fell into the sea, it had a crew on board like when he attacked Vulcan, and that Starfleet captured them and used their knowledge to build the Vengeance. After all, they probably would have been engineers.

I had just assumed that Marcus used Khan's knowledge and understanding of warfare itself somehow to make the ship more dangerous.

That's exactly it. Khan applied current-day methods of warfare (which, like the art of rebooting and resetting a malfunctioning computer in TNG's "Contagion", appear to be lost arts) to 23rd century technology.

 

[Timo]

That shouldn't work too well. After all, most lessons of war from the past are outdated ones today, and would lead to a humiliating defeat if applied.

ST2:TWoK showed that Khan was no good at space warfare anyway... Or was that just because he had forgotten most of what he knew during the time he ate Ceti eels and an occasional follower, sandblasted his face and chest with the morning wind to stay fresh, and plotted revenge?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kruezerman]

Although be fair, TWOK isn't exactly the poster child for "smart" commanders...it makes me wonder if there was something in the water on both Reliant and Enterprise.

 

[Kevman7987]

That shouldn't work too well. After all, most lessons of war from the past are outdated ones today, and would lead to a humiliating defeat if applied.

ST2:TWoK showed that Khan was no good at space warfare anyway... Or was that just because he had forgotten most of what he knew during the time he ate Ceti eels and an occasional follower, sandblasted his face and chest with the morning wind to stay fresh, and plotted revenge?

You're mostly right. Khan's knowledge of warfare should be worthless when it comes to upgrading Vengeance technologically, but that was the best my mind could come up with to fix that plothole about Khan helping them design the ship.

This just highlights another misstep the writers took in building the reboot universe.

 

[Kruezerman]

It's a Federation used to peace. Think of it as the US after the Cold War, we were used to no enemy, then 9/11 happened. We had an enemy and our ideals of invincibility were crushed.

Khan represents the loss of peace.

 

[F. King Daniel]

That shouldn't work too well. After all, most lessons of war from the past are outdated ones today, and would lead to a humiliating defeat if applied.

Yet we're talking about the Trek universe, which never had drone technology or long range missiles until Khan brought them back. Where rebooting a computer and reinstalling from backups was something that was so unknown to Starfleet (although not super genius Noonien Soong) in "Contagion" that it cost the lives of the entire Yamato crew and would have done the same to the compliment of the Enterprise and Romulan Warbird as well. Where Pulaski ordering a splint be put on a patient was met with shock.

These people are amazingly advanced in many ways, but they've shockingly degenerated in others. More due to writers with limited understanding of technology than by design, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

This just highlights another misstep the writers took in building the reboot universe.

Surely it highlights the incredibly limited set of weaponry available in Star Trek until the reboot? Long range photon torpedoes would have been rather useful in the Dominion War. As would mile long Starfleet uberships.

 

[captainkirk]

In the Countdown comic (I know, it's not 100% canon) there was a crew on the drill who operated it.
It hadn't occurred to me that it could have been Khan's ego. Perhaps, since this is the Dreadnought-class and not the Vengeance-class, there was a prototype that failed (being tested in the Laurentian system?) and Khan helped get it working and then just took the credit for designing it.

 

[Kemaiku]

I see it less as Khan proofing the Vengeance, as training her crew every cruel, underhanded, malicious lesson he could to make them shake off 200-300 years of pacifism and take on the mentality they needed to wage a war and win it.

Essentially, telling them to put more guns on it, raise the yields, teach them basic tactical ideas.

I don't know if "teaching them to be meaner" really makes more sense, but it doesn't need to, obviously whatever he taught them worked. The Vengeance turned 20% of the Enterprise into confetti in 3 seconds.

 

[bullethead]

I got the feeling that Marcus's idea behind Khan was to get a different POV on the whole ship and its technologies. Because Khan was from a different time and mindset, he could see applications of existing technology that others would miss or ask questions that would get people to reconsider their previous notions of how things should work.

 

[Set Harth]

I don't know if "teaching them to be meaner" really makes more sense, but it doesn't need to, obviously whatever he taught them worked.

It looks as if he taught them "bigger is better" and "win through superior firepower".

But did they really need Khan to teach them those things?

They already learned them from Nero.

 

[Kemaiku]

I don't know if "teaching them to be meaner" really makes more sense, but it doesn't need to, obviously whatever he taught them worked.

It looks as if he taught them "bigger is better" and "win through superior firepower".

But did they really need Khan to teach them those things?

They already learned them from Nero.

Nero had to have his whole ship and crew sucked into a black hole to even put a crack in the Enterprise. He had them jumping at their own shadows but without Red Matter he wasn't up to much.

The Enterprise was a bug on a windscreen compared to the Vengeance, let loose, that ship would have put the Narada to shame within a few weeks.

 

[Timo]

Yet we're talking about the Trek universe, which never had drone technology or long range missiles until Khan brought them back.

There were plenty of long range missiles and drones in Trek before the premiere of ST:ID. True, in in-universe terms, those didn't exactly precede the events of ST:ID, but that's hardly an issue, since very little of what we saw in-universe preceded ST:ID/TOS anyway.

Nobody claimed that interstellar missiles would be new when they were mentioned or shown in DS9 and VOY, or that intelligence-gathering drones would be when mentioned in TNG, or that assassination drones would be when shown in DS9 and ST:INS. Most of us didn't assume that transporters or warp drives would be an all-new technology in the 2260s just because TOS was the first show to feature them - so we had better things to complain about when ENT expanded the Trek universe... Etc.

Where rebooting a computer and reinstalling from backups was something that was so unknown to Starfleet (although not super genius Noonien Soong) in "Contagion" that it cost the lives of the entire Yamato crew and would have done the same to the compliment of the Enterprise and Romulan Warbird as well.

It doesn't strike me as remotely realistic that something as complex as a starship could be shut down and rebooted at all. It's like shutting down an aircraft in mid-flight, opening all welding seams, redoing them better, and thinking that this solves the problem of seam fatigue that was threatening to down the plane...

What works with tabletop toys isn't usually applicable in the real world. That our heroes didn't think of rebooting at first is the realistic part. That it worked is the unwelcome fantasy element.

Where Pulaski ordering a splint be put on a patient was met with shock.

Yes, there's something really wrong about that. But I doubt Khan would be of any help there.

Perhaps, since this is the Dreadnought-class and not the Vengeance-class, there was a prototype that failed

Or then "dreadnought-class" doesn't specify class name but merely ship type - the way the Arleigh Burke class ships today are destroyer-class vessels. After all, "dreadnought-class" is an existing definition of ship type today, theoretically applying to all the major battleships used in the World Wars...

I see it less as Khan proofing the Vengeance, as training her crew

...But what crew would that be? Marcus seemed to fly out to meet/kill Kirk with a crew of mercenaries; it wouldn't help protect the Federation much if Khan only educated such less than patriotic groups. We never learned that he would have worked with regular Starfleet personnel. Indeed, he didn't even seem to have clearances to blow up the Section 31 workshop in London by himself, but needed to bribe/blackmail a Starfleet officer to do that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Set Harth]

without Red Matter he wasn't up to much.

Just destroying a 47-ship Klingon armada, all the other ships sent to Vulcan, etc.

The Enterprise was a bug on a windscreen compared to the Vengeance

That sounds more like the Narada.

 

[Kemaiku]

without Red Matter he wasn't up to much.

Just destroying a 47-ship Klingon armada, all the other ships sent to Vulcan, etc.

The Enterprise was a bug on a windscreen compared to the Vengeance

That sounds more like the Narada.

The same Narada, who's best shot only took the ships shields down to 32% and made one point of dmaage on the neck that wasn't even visible after that.

Compared to the Vengeance's phasers, contemporary to the Enterprise's, that vapourised sections of her instantly and devastatingly?

 

[bullethead]

without Red Matter he wasn't up to much.

Just destroying a 47-ship Klingon armada, all the other ships sent to Vulcan, etc.

The Enterprise was a bug on a windscreen compared to the Vengeance

That sounds more like the Narada.

The same Narada, who's best shot only took the ships shields down to 32% and made one point of dmaage on the neck that wasn't even visible after that.

Compared to the Vengeance's phasers, contemporary to the Enterprise's, that vapourised sections of her instantly and devastatingly?

Thinking back on it, did we actually get any shots of the ship where the damage would be on display after she was hit? Like every hero shot of the ship from there on out seemed to be either from the front, to starboard, or aft. It was like they went out of their way to avoid showing the port side or something.