Spoilers NX Class in Beyond

I haven't yet seen the new movie, but Kzinti is not pronounced like Xindi, even if it looks on the page like it could be. Kzinti has three syllables: Kuh-zin-tee. Xindi has only two: Zin-dee.

 

Lot of Star Trek Enterprise call-outs.

Loved that Scott had to explain that "these old ships were built in space" and not intended to land.

 

For all we know, the warp scale was recalibrated between ENT and TOS. We already know it was between TOS and TNG. (This could mean both that the S.S. Dierdre's "Warp 2" could be faster than the E.C.S. Fortunate's and that the Franklin's "Warp 4" could be faster than NX-01's "Warp 5.")

 

I hope that they re-dub the line for Blu-ray so that it says the first Warp 6 vessel.

 

Could you imagine the NX-01 or the regular USS Enterprise trying to land on a planet? Be kinda messy. LOL

 

We know the NX-Delta was the first to go Warp 3 and the NX-01 was the first to go Warp 5 but they never mentioned which ship was the first to go Warp 4 until now. I think the Franklin (probably called the NX-Epsilon at the time) was a prototype for the NX-01, a midpoint between the NX-Delta test vehicle and the full fledged warp 5 starship. It was likely pulled into active duty during the Romulan War when ships started getting scarce and redesignated as the USS Frankin, NX-326. NX because it was originally an experimental design and part of the NX project and 326 because it was the 326th ship inducted into Starfleet.

 

how could starfleet though have over 300 ships before the end of the Romulan War?

 

The United Earth fleet had plenty of other ships before the NX-01 like the Intrepid class and likely integrated many of them into Starfleet when the war began. The rest they built as the war progressed over 5 years. For some context, during WWII the Allied Forces built 54,932 ships (7,500 large ships including 165 carriers) in 6 years between 1939-1945.

 

IMO, the notion that the Franklin was a prototype Warp 4 starship that was later integrated into Earth's starfleet and given to Edison seems to make sense--it matches everything in the dialogue; it's just not the order we might expect. But the Warp 4 line is given in a different context than Edison's personal history, so that's fine. It fits Edison's character to have been assigned a ship that was already out of date and unwanted.

If we really want to justify the high registry number, perhaps this is the NX-Gamma, and it was recommissioned into active duty in the Federation Starfleet as the 26th starship. In order to honor its history, it was designated NX-326 as there was already an NX-03 and Starfleed was done with Greek letters for awhile.

I like this headcanon a lot--I had the same idea back in the day, but I never made the Dauntless connection. That's a really cool suggestion. These days I tend to just take Enterprise at face value; but that's a neat idea.

TC

 

Actually most of them starships could have been ships belonging to the United Earth Stellar Navy ships. Also, most of them could had been in mothball, that were recommision and modernize; And later just like the MACOS, they were merge with starfleet

 

It's also possible that building up to the proper formation of the UFP that the Coalition of Planets may have started to integrate their fleets together, if need be that could explain the higher registry number of the Franklin.

 

This is what I was thinking. Starfleet probably had to integrate Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite, etc. ships along with however many Earth vessels.

 

^Yup, I definitely heard "Zin-dee".

Besides, why would the producers use "Kzinti"? Isn't that a ton of legal baggage which no one wants to deal with? It's why Star Trek Online had to say "Ferasan" instead of "Kzinti".

 

I watched STB with subtitles and it was "Xindi". Case closed.

 

Yes, they would have to pay royalties to Larry Niven again to refer to the Kzinti, the feline species from his "Known Space" books. The reference in "The Slaver Weapon" was a one-time deal.

Kor

 

We know that this ship was flying after MACO was disbanded / merged into Starfleet, and after the fight with the Xindi and the Romulan War. I think that the simplest explanation is that Scotty simply got wrong a bit of historical trivia regarding a ship roughly a century old. If the line had simply been that it was the first ship to reach Warp 6, then everything else would fit perfectly.

 

They said it was ONE of the first ships to reach warp four. Probably not as cutting edge or as advanced as NX-01, but definitely cheaper to build, and probably in greater numbers.

 

I've yet to see the movie a second time, but I'm pretty sure I remember the line as "she was the first Earth ship capable of Warp Four." That may not be exact, but I definitely do NOT recall it as "one of the first ships" as you suggest. If I'm wrong, apologies.

And for what it's worth, according to lead picture editor Dylan Highsmith, the "Warp Four" bit is not a mistake:

If you want the official explanation on the Franklin and it’s warp factor: it was a M.A.C.O. ship (or a United Earth Starfleet ship that housed M.A.C.O. personnel at times) that predates the NX-01. When the UFP Starfleet is formed, M.A.C.O. was disbanded and the ship was reclassified as a Starfleet ship [with the USS identifier]. The ship is then “lost” in the early 2160’s. It was important to everyone that the ship, like Edison, predate the Federation; that thematically, the ship mirrored an earlier time in history and served as a bridge in design between then and the NX-01. Doug [Jung] and Simon [Pegg] may have worked up something [on an official launch date], but if they did it never made it to script or screen. Either way it predates the NX-01, and was reclassified after the UFP is formed.

 

To me the Franklin, shows that the timeline split much farther back. Many of you are assuming the Enterprise show happened in this timeline. To me the Franklin is proof it did not

 

If you really want to cut down on the NX numbers being so high, you can borrow an idea from Jeffries in the beginning. Paraphrased, Franklin is a category 300 vessel and it is the 26th ship in such category. Category 300 could be older ships from national fleets inducted into starfleet service during or after the Romulan War.