I seem to notice several patterns that appear over and over again, and I've noticed several recurring patterns
(I actually wrote most of this prior to Shawnster, except I kept getting logged out; then I created a text-document which I accidentally deleted).
I: Temporal Cold War & Temporal Anomalies
It was a bad idea, and was evidently based on some stuff from Voyager. In my personal opinion, it just threw a monkey-wrench into the timeline and probably made damned near everything afterwords unworkable.
Another thing that's troublesome about time-travel is the issue of temporal paradoxes: Pretty much any explanation of how they wouldn't affect the time-warpers is either something the writers pulled out of their asses in an inconsistent manner, or dependent on parallel realities.
While, it wasn't part of the Temporal Cold War: The Borg-sickles was a really bad idea as it effectively undid everything post 2063
- The Borg go back in time and try to blow up Bozeman, Montana to prevent Zefram Cochrane from making his first manned Warp-flight, so as to prevent first contact with the Vulcans
- The Enterprise-E goes back in time with them and blows up the Borg cube, but Cochrane's crew are killed.
- The Enterprise-E's F/O and Engineer are effectively forced to impersonate the original crew, and get Cochrane to make the flight so as to "right" the timeline
- If the Borg were discovered in the 2150's and they assimilated a few people, and could adapt to energy based weapons: The Federation would have developed the means to counter such a threat.
- By 2365, the Federation would have probably been able to deal with them much better, and it's likely the Borg would have either: Been unable to make Earth in 2366-67 (which means the events of 2373 would never have occurred, thus effectively meaning that the Enterprise-E would have never had to impersonate Cochrane's crew and *RESET*); or would have become more devious and made Earth and assimilated everybody through some other method (Early time-warp, undermining the Federation; aerially dispersed assimilator-nanoprobes as proposed in Voyager: This would have kept humanity fairly grounded)
I'm not, admittedly totally averse to a time-warp occurring, but it would be preferable if it was unintentional
- If a person went back in time to change something; when the timeline changed, provided it did: Their reason for changing it would be eliminated effectively undoing the change
- An unintentional warp would be unaffected by this
For example an alien species do something which initiate a time-warp, and they go out of control and crash into earth somewhere between 2073 and 2124
(explaining some technological differences) without having to retcon as massively.
(Note: I am surprised that nobody ever thought of the fact that if you went back in time, you'd be moving backwards as you did, and you'd crash into yourself
)
Generally, I agree with Kathryn Janeway's sentiment to avoid temporal paradoxes whenever possible!
II: The name of the Enteprise
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there were several vessels depicted, all named Enterprise. While it would be unreasonable for the people in Paramount to predict that in 22 years somebody would create a Star Trek series based on an Enterprise that existed 103 years before the TOS Enterprise flew.
It is also unreasonable to create a story around a ship that was never before in the timeline before.
Every vessel shown the
Enterprise's rec-room either was canonical, or existed in real life.
Real life examples would include
- USS Enterprise (Frigate): Originally a British ship, renamed Enterprise in 1775-1777; played a role in the Revolutionary War
- USS Enterprise (CV-6): The most decorated US Aircraft Carrier of WW2; served from 1938 to 1947
- USS Enterprise (CVAN/CVN-65): First nuclear powered aircraft carrier; served from 1961 to 2012 in many conflicts including Vietnam, and the War on Fr.. I mean Terror
- USS Enterprise (OV-101): First shuttle to take to the air, was originally to be named USS Constitution, but Star Trek fans wrote a massive letter-campaign in and it was re-designated USS Enterprise. It flew the first time in 1977, and it's last in 2012.
Fictional Examples include
- XCV-330: Flew from 2120-2143
- NCC-1701 (Pre Refit): 2245-2270; one of the most famous ships in Star-Fleet.
Being that this ship was not trivial, and the fact that it never appeared on the wall: It would have been best for it to have been named something else.
Off the bat I can think of several good names
- Cochrane: Duh
- Phoenix: Duh
- Challenger: Challenger was ordered the same time as the Enterprise and actually had the hull-number 099 (less than 101).
- Columbia: First space-shuttle to take to space
- Apollo: It was the name of the program that put man on the moon. This was the first time in history, far as I know, that man has actually landed on another celestial body.
- Explorer: It was the first first-world (1st World: Non Communist; 2nd World: Communist; 3rd World: Non Aligned) artificial satellite.
- Mercury: The name of the first United States manned space program.
- Dauntless: NX-01 (J/K sort of)
My favorites are Apollo
(significance: First to ever put a human on another celestial body), Challenger, Columbia.
III: Characters
Jonathan Archer: I'm not really opposed to Scott Bakula. I just think that Archer's character would have been better off if he was more level-headed: He made all sorts of stupid decisions that could have seriously gotten everybody killed.
At other points: He made decisions that may have been logical, but were fundamentally amoral. His rationale were basically "ends justify the means".
Malcolm Reed: Frankly, somehow it seems wrong that his name is spelled Reed instead of Reid: Admittedly, I won't hold that against them; I think he'd be better off as the ship's second in command due at least partially to his age, and the fact that his sense of discipline is good at holding a ship together.
T'Pol: First of all, why don't Vulcans have first/last names? Secondly, she should really be outside the chain of command as a liason officer, irrespective of her rank.
The fact that they had her character soften up a bit was something I didn't like. While Spock did, he was an exception to the rule.
Charles "Trip" Tucker III: I don't mind the actor, I don't mind his hokey accent. I do think it's absurd that the guy didn't go to college, and managed to learn about space-altering engines from fixing boats. It might have been mentioned in TATV, but it was mentioned.
The Doctor: Replace Phlox with a Vulcan doctor. Sounds silly, but the fact is that the Vulcans are often more knowledgeable at this time in the plot than people and people have interacted with them before. Sometimes better to keep things simple.
Security: A team like the Marine Detatchment's (MARDET) would be nice -- remember every single torpedo *is* a nuclear bomb and though in Star Trek every weapon is like a firecracker -- nuclear bombs are HORRIFYINGLY nasty.
Somebody's gotta guard the weapons and the anti-matter
(one gram of that stuff would produce a 22 kt explosion)
Mayweather: I have no problem with him except there needs to be several helmsman (3 as a start) for obvious reasons. The shuttle's need to have pilots as well (4).
Sato: While I understand linguists would be very, very important -- her linguistic abilities seem more like Arturis than anything human. There also need to be several linguistic crew onboard for obvious reasons.
Other Notes: Speaking multiple languages is a virtue -- considering that Vulcans are our allies, it would probably be good if both Federation and Vulcan can speak each other's languages.
IV: Design of the Ship
Almost everybody seems to object to the fact that the vessel looks like an Akira class: This actually includes me.
Honestly, my favorite design so far seems to be a design called the XCV-770 Aachen with the following modifications
- Four engines instead of two
- Redesign the Nav-Deflector to be more flat
- Different Shuttlebay like NX-01
The Daedalus would sort of be a bigger brother that had the advantage of being cheaper and quicker to build.
V. Organizations
Frankly, since Starfleet didn't form initially with the Federation (2161), it would be preferable to have some kind of set-up that reflects this.
- Terran Defense Force (TDF): It's basically the military of Earth, and the Marine Corps all rolled into one. Their job would entail jobs similar to the Coast Guard, and Navy in terms of protecting the border, the Marine Corps in terms of deploying armed forces to planets, as well as protecting transports and convoys (i.e. the Boomers).
- Earth Convoy Service (ECS): Similar to the Merchant Marines -- home of the Boomers.
- United Earth Space Probe Agency: Responsible for the deployment of long-ranged probes from the 2070's. Starting in the early 2100's, their missions included manned vessels (previously handled from another agency)
- United Space Exploratory Services (USES)
All would eventually become Starfleet.
These ships would have different designations because of the nature of their missions. I have no idea what you'd use for UESPA and USES vessels though they'd probably have a common system.
The Uniforms used by USES would effectively be the same as in ENT except ditch the colored piping, and put some kind of qualifier badge on the left breast; and use Navy Stripes.
The Vulcan uniforms should be very functional: Logic after all...
VI. Technology
The Warp 5 capability is not in accord with early canon, but it doesn't really bother me as the Enterprise (1701) often went faster than 512c (Warp 8).
While 100c would definitely make it possible to explore space, it would be stupid to claim that only at 100c could long ranged manned exploration be do-able. It's possible that it would really start to light off at this point however.
Subspace Communications are beyond what they were stated to be early on: Admittedly, I'm not sure how big a deal it is.
It would be an interesting plot device if it failed on a routine basis.
Universal Translator: While it would definitely streamline interaction with other species; it would still be useful if for ship-to-ship communications that they would use linguacode (similar to Future's End), as well as other things that could be useful to a sentient species so as to establish a base to work with.
For planetary service interactions: It would be useful if they actually had to have a device on them and/or an ear-bud that they could hear the corrected audio.
Directed Energy Weapons: The ship should use some kind of laser weapon; the hand-held weapons should be a variable frequency laser and an electron beam of sorts. In the stun setting, the idea would be to set a frequency that would ionize the air; then conduct the electron beam down it and ZAP!
Torpedoes: Just call them anti-ship missiles. They could use fusion or matter/anti-matter and would be sublight only
(at first).
Probes: There should be a good cache of them onboard, and maybe a few would be warp capable?
I'm ambivalent on the transporters; I like the sickbay, and the decontamination facility.
The space-suits, I think they could be made a little more advanced actually. I'm thinking somewhere between ENT and TUC/NU
The ship should have shields!
