I don't think the Kelvin looks very much like a Hermes/Saladdin, if that's what you mean, apart from single nacelle.
Starship design history in light of Discovery
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
- Start date
I see where you're coming from, though I feel like it's all part and parcel of TAS...you could redo the visuals, but anything more modern and sophisticated would seem at odds with things like the obviously and constantly re-used music cues.
I wouldn't mind seeing a version of the Bonaventure that kept the general idea of the TAS ship but lost some of the obvious TOS livery in favor of NX-01/Franklin-type detailing. (I realize that flies in the face of my earlier idea, but it would be nice to see.) The Bonaventure has been interpreted a couple of other ways over the years, but none of them look much like the TAS ship.
Was it ever established that Alpha Centauri had people on it already by the time the people from Earth arrived? So it couldn't be a colony if there are people there...human or not.
The Kzinti Wars (four of them) could all have been small conflicts taking place during a single year in some part of known space, and separate conflicts because the forces involved in each barely, or didn't even know the other conflict was happening due to distance. Say a Kzinti war party attacks in the Sol System in 2064 when there are few warp engines at all, and only makeshift weaponry. That's the first war. The second war is between a different Kzinti war party and the exploration group over Alpha Centauri in 2067. Third War could be around Barnard's Star involving another war party and another exploration group, also in 2067. The last war being a follow-up attack on Sol in 2070 that ends when the Vulcans decide to move in and crush the pests, the dishonor of the leaf eaters fleet vaporizing a war party and then showing up to make terms at the homeword was too much for the Kzinti and they signed the treaty of ultimate shame and rememberance for being soundly defeated by "herbivores".
Though it be interesting in Saru's people were the prey of the Kzinti.
The Kzinti Wars (four of them) could all have been small conflicts taking place during a single year in some part of known space, and separate conflicts because the forces involved in each barely, or didn't even know the other conflict was happening due to distance. Say a Kzinti war party attacks in the Sol System in 2064 when there are few warp engines at all, and only makeshift weaponry. That's the first war. The second war is between a different Kzinti war party and the exploration group over Alpha Centauri in 2067. Third War could be around Barnard's Star involving another war party and another exploration group, also in 2067. The last war being a follow-up attack on Sol in 2070 that ends when the Vulcans decide to move in and crush the pests, the dishonor of the leaf eaters fleet vaporizing a war party and then showing up to make terms at the homeword was too much for the Kzinti and they signed the treaty of ultimate shame and rememberance for being soundly defeated by "herbivores".
Though it be interesting in Saru's people were the prey of the Kzinti.
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That wasn't what I was referring to but ok.
In ENT, I would honestly rather they had introduced the Romulans before the Klingons, keeping with their position as Trek's first great adversary Empire - and that perhaps Earth's first major attack (it's Pearl Harbour) should have been Romulan rather than Xindi in keeping with that. Perhaps it would have been better if Broken Bow had featured a Kzin.
I figured the Kzin Wars could have been an extremely early police action by Earth, around the time when the fleet was composed of Ganges-class ships (warp deltas).
The Babylon 5 equivalent was the Dilgar War; a minor unaligned species, the Dilgar, embarked on a war of expansionism against other small unaligned states - Earth proved to the League of Non-Aligned Worlds be a rising military force by defeating the Dilgar expansionism where the Centauri and others refused to intervene.
I think I spent a lot of time wishing that ENT had taken some tips from Babylon 5, as the idea that Earth went from nothing to superpower in a few years always felt a bit hard to believe when I compared the Allies of WW2 to the people who would be fighting the Romulan Empire. And the history of B5's Earth Alliance was believable.
But the show depicted the early history of Starfleet as being a NASA-like international body, so war wasn't really their focus, and painting a highly geopolitical background to Starfleet was perhaps not right considering the ideals of the show.
I figured the Kzin Wars could have been an extremely early police action by Earth, around the time when the fleet was composed of Ganges-class ships (warp deltas).
The Babylon 5 equivalent was the Dilgar War; a minor unaligned species, the Dilgar, embarked on a war of expansionism against other small unaligned states - Earth proved to the League of Non-Aligned Worlds be a rising military force by defeating the Dilgar expansionism where the Centauri and others refused to intervene.
I think I spent a lot of time wishing that ENT had taken some tips from Babylon 5, as the idea that Earth went from nothing to superpower in a few years always felt a bit hard to believe when I compared the Allies of WW2 to the people who would be fighting the Romulan Empire. And the history of B5's Earth Alliance was believable.
But the show depicted the early history of Starfleet as being a NASA-like international body, so war wasn't really their focus, and painting a highly geopolitical background to Starfleet was perhaps not right considering the ideals of the show.
"I'm not saying the Enterprise is a litter box, I'm saying it should be hauled away AS litter!"
A lot of the early stuff in Earth's starflight history has the perfect excuse to appear disjointed and even contradictory. Back then, communications between Earth assets were slow and unreliable. Vulcans apparently weren't letting Earthlings use their commnets, and were supposedly actively interfering anyway, vetoing missions and withholding star charts. One planet's truth would often be different from another's, then.
Terra Nova could well have been the one and only planet within 20 lightyears that Earth knew to be free for pitching a tent on. Alpha Centauri? Either not free, or then requiring something more extensive than a tent and a campfire. Since it takes warp drive to get to either of those, choosing Terra Nova sounds like a no-brainer. Later on, lots of things could change: Earth might learn that Alpha Centauri wasn't taken after all, the tech to settle hostile planets might be improved, or Earth might simply get desperate for colonies and be willing to settle for the substandard AC after all.
Early ships could also be making discoveries left and right, meeting aliens, even waging wars. Earth would not learn of this until (if!) the ships returned, though. Or until Archer's adventures led to the establishing of better comms (Vulcans less obstructionist, Earth relay buoys sown, alliances made, better tech devised).
For all we know, people from Earth bravely fought back four Kzinti attacks against Earth Colony Two between 2105 and 2148, and were finally able to report back on these in 2157...
Although of course ENT still has room for Dilgar Wars that would be known but nothing to write home about. Starfleet exists, after all, with big starships and all, decades before it launches its first exploration vessel in 2151. What is it doing back then if not fighting wars? Why are the taxpayers funding these ships?
Timo Saloniemi
Terra Nova could well have been the one and only planet within 20 lightyears that Earth knew to be free for pitching a tent on. Alpha Centauri? Either not free, or then requiring something more extensive than a tent and a campfire. Since it takes warp drive to get to either of those, choosing Terra Nova sounds like a no-brainer. Later on, lots of things could change: Earth might learn that Alpha Centauri wasn't taken after all, the tech to settle hostile planets might be improved, or Earth might simply get desperate for colonies and be willing to settle for the substandard AC after all.
Early ships could also be making discoveries left and right, meeting aliens, even waging wars. Earth would not learn of this until (if!) the ships returned, though. Or until Archer's adventures led to the establishing of better comms (Vulcans less obstructionist, Earth relay buoys sown, alliances made, better tech devised).
For all we know, people from Earth bravely fought back four Kzinti attacks against Earth Colony Two between 2105 and 2148, and were finally able to report back on these in 2157...
Although of course ENT still has room for Dilgar Wars that would be known but nothing to write home about. Starfleet exists, after all, with big starships and all, decades before it launches its first exploration vessel in 2151. What is it doing back then if not fighting wars? Why are the taxpayers funding these ships?
Timo Saloniemi
Which brings up an interesting point: technically, NX-01 was a "warp five ship" that could just barely reach warp five. In Franklin's case, it would be a ship whose normal cruising velocity is warp 2, strains at warp 3, and managed to hit warp 4 during speed trials under ideal conditions.
Enterprise hit warp 4 with ease and can sustain it for several days at a time. Franklin -- which vanished in the Van Allen Radiation belt -- probably can't run at faster than warp 3 for more than a few hours. The ship is fast enough to dash from one end of the solar system to the other, or maybe get to Alpha Centauri in a few days. Plus, it's a very SMALL ship; it doens't have much cargo space and probably limited sensor capability. It's not built for exploration. It's pretty much a coast guard cutter with a high speed engine.
Nope. What we currently call CBS Studios is actually Paramount Television Broadcasting under a different name. It used to be PARAMOUNT that owned it all... and then Viacom bought Paramount and then VIACOM owned it all.
Viacom sold off Paramount Television and it turned into CBS, so the license was split at that point. It was never entirely made clear in the split who still owned what or had what rights because it was all sort of grandfathered in. A lawsuit over that issue would tie up the franchise in litigation for a long time and would cost everyone a whole lot of money while accomplishing very little, so they've sort of agreed not to make a fuss about it and just cooperate in the resulting grey area.
It's basically like a divorced couple deciding to do a co-parenting arrangement because neither of them really want to go through a custody battle. Strictly speaking, they both have full custody, even though they don't live together anymore.
That's just it: they did indeed make that arrangement, but it wasn't part of the "contract" at all. It was all under the table, wink and a nod type deal to keep from stepping on each other's toes.
Hell, even the lawsuit over Axanar brought this up as an issue when the fan film's producers tried to nail down CBS/Paramount over which one of them actually owned the rights to Star Trek. The two of them basically replied in unison "WE DO" and refused to clarify further.
Honestly, that was my thought too. Travis was a TERRIBLE character in Enterprise; my dad calls him "Black Wesley Crusher."
You don't remember "Strange New World?" Enterprise did not have a flight plan or any pre-determined exploration targets, they stumbled onto that planet entirely by accident and then didn't have any procedures in place for how to actually conduct a survey of it and just started making shit up on the fly. The first thing they did when they discovered this planet was to land on it and star taking selfies.
NX-01 was literally just dicking around in space.
If we were talking about ANY OTHER STARSHIP, I would agree with you. But we're talking about NX-01, the starship captained by Captain Jonathan "I improvised my first contact greeting because I'm too fucking stupid to rehearse this sort of thing" Archer.
Bsides, even if Franklin even had the range to fly to Terra Nova -- which I highly doubt -- it wasn't outfitted for deep space exploration anyway. It probably spent most of its time patrolling around the solar system or, at the most, running along the Earth Cargo Service's trade routes to help protect them from pirates.
I quite agree with the rest of your post, but one small correction: Gagarin Radiation Belt.
I quite agree with the rest of your post, too, and I know we've done this dance at least once before, but so far as we know, what it was doing is "wading ankle deep in the ocean of space," surveying (in those Neptune-class survey ships—perhaps the Bonaventure was the first of those, i.e. the first Starfleet ship to be built?), designing and building and testing new warp engines and other components that would allow exploration farther afield, training personnel and setting up and maintaining the various facilities and infrastructure required to support all of these activities.
There could surely be small conflicts that arose in the process, yes indeed, but the idea that Starfleet was at its inception set up and funded for the purpose of fighting wars small or great is IMO problematic for a number of reasons. If so, what use would they have for contingents of simulator-trained-only MACOs decades later, and why would they be leery of the idea of military officers on their bridges? Why would those MACOs have weapons and fighting tactics years more advanced than Starfleet's, when there has been no war on Earth for half a century? Why would we so begrudgingly and humiliatingly supplicate ourselves to the Vulcans for so long if we didn't require their protection from Kzinti and Klingon warbirds and such? Why are ECS freighters left to fend for themselves against Nausicaan pirates? Why is the motto on their flag Semper Exploro? Why is their operating authority the United Earth Space Probe Agency and not the United Earth Stellar Navy or somesuch? And why deprive ourselves of the (close-as-we'll-get-to-a) perfect resolution to the thorny question of whether later iterations of Starfleet are or aren't military organizations that can be had in saying the original one (wistfully pined for by the rose-tintedly-historical-minded Picard in asking "Does anyone remember when we were explorers?") wasn't, but was later merged with the military to become the "combined service" of Georgiou and Lorca and Kirk's day?
-MMoM
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After seeing the Discovery I have way less issue with the design of the Vengeance from STID
But is that how history would view them.?
Hmmmm....
Wiki refers to the American Indian Wars. Plural.
Your suggestion may have merit. Especially if the Kzinti are a loose coalition and not a unified governmental entity. Maybe 4 or 5 clans or houses semi independent or completely independent. These could wage simultaneous wars that would fit a plural description.
By definition a war may be compromised of several battles. All engagements would be viewed as part of the larger war. The war starts with the first attack or declaration of war, and ends with a peace treaty or cessation of hostilities. To have a plural wars means either multiple declarations of war and multiple peace treaties OR multiple simultaneous and independent armed conflicts.
What a splendid idea!
This is fine and well otherwise, but doesn't quite account for the existence of those big warships of theirs. I mean, you may build the Mercury and the Gemini to test for Apollo, and you may build "test tanks" that can't really fight but do carry guns and armor, but you don't build a test warship. You just don't. Should we assume the Intrepid started out as somehow more significantly inferior to the Enterprise than she ultimately appears? If she's this sorta-50%-Enterprise in terms of armament and perhaps propulsion, and more-or-less-100%-Enterprise in sheer size, it's very difficult to see her as non-operational.
That these "The Expanse" ships would be whipped up parallel to or after the Enterprises is sort of futile as a line of speculation, too, because we know from dialogue that there were ships in Starfleet before Archer sailed out in one.
In any scenario, we have a bit of a mystery. If the Neptunes surveyed, what did they survey? There's no Dominion of Earth there where these ships would be allowed to sail without fear of alien attack. We hear of a couple of colonies, but if Vulcans won't let Archer explore uncharted space, and Terra Nova was already such a gem within charted space, then surveying for further colony sites doesn't sound possible. If Archer is the first Starfleet explorer, did the Neptunes perhaps only ever survey from afar (making no planetary excursions or deep space contacts, novelties for Archer)?
On the "simulator-trained" bit, the Dilgar Wars happening back in the 2130s to spur the development of Earth's fighting Starfleet would already account for a shortage of fighting-age troops in 2153. Perhaps Major Hayes might have seen some combat with BEMs, but his troops wouldn't.
On the other hand, if ENT tells us that Starfleet and the Military don't usually cooperate, then the Dilgar Wars would have been fought "nonintegrated", without futuro-Marines proficient in two realms. But the Military would still be there, so supposedly proficient in ground fighting. It rather makes sense that they would wish to butt in even though their usual mode of deployment is an unopposed landing by clumsy transports, followed by two weeks of tea-brewing and sorting out of supplies. And also that Archer could even theoretically feel their presence unwarranted.
Because of the fact of there never having been any, this in turn because Starfleet fights and the Military from their viewpoint just crawls in the mud? Lack of joint operations just reinforces the idea that both sides can do their fighting all on their own.
Which they demonstrably can, so this is coming from an odd angle to begin with. But clearly Forrest thinks Archer might oppose the presence of the Military, and still thinks Archer sane enough to be given command of the mission, so supposedly Archer could do the fighting without the Military.
Because of the Dilgar Wars, I suppose. But Starfleet would also have been needed in those, unless the Military also fought in starships, of their very own, at which point we're right back at "why does Starfleet have ships, then?".
It's just that if a war drags on at a given battlefield, the role of the Military is easy to postulate. But one would probably need an expanding war if it involved starships. So any Dilgar War would begin as a two-pronged action, with Starfleet Command and Military Command competing for glory in their separate realms, but Starfleet would soon be out of a job.
Although of course Starfleet could have been fighting its own wars in the recent years, too, nothing in the material against it. These just wouldn't involve the planetside action that would allow the tactics and plasma rifles of Reed's redstripes to evolve.
That's what the Dilgar Wars were all about in B5, though. Fighting aliens who wield sharpened space avocados at worst is a good way to train your fledging fighting force, but it won't protect you against the Minbari or the Centauri. So better choose an ally (while probably shadily dealing with another).
Because Starfleet's demonstrated fighting starships have better things to do? I.e. Dilgar Wars. Which nicely reflects how our parallels here, the fledging navies of South America, also concentrated on coastal fighting against their neighbors because that was so much easier on their primitive ships than hunting for pirates (or, conversely, trying to sever shipping connections) across vast oceans.
It isn't - that's the UESPA flag.
[quuote]Why is their operating authority the United Earth Space Probe Agency[/quote]
But it isn't - no such organization is ever mentioned in ENT, or associated with Archer's work. Quite to the contrary, when Archer and his Starfleet team are invited to attend some negotiations where they are explicated as the outsiders, this is when UESPA appears in graphic form.
Doesn't "Starfleet" suffice? That's what the authority is always called in ENT, after all.
I'm all for this. Starfleet was always the Space Navy, and eventually it also grabbed the role of the Space Military, that is, the Space Army, depriving Balthazar Edison of peace of mind.
Timo Saloniemi
I wouldn't give it too much thought, given space shots in the first nine episodes, if we do see any Constitution shots, it'll only be on screen for about 2.1 seconds at a time.
If they ever brought on a connie they'd make an episode out of the fact it's there. The ship is iconic.
So is Darth Vader, but they still only gave him a short (if incredibly EPIC) cameo in "Rogue One."
Perhaps you've already answered this elsewhere, but where does "Einstein-class" come from? Was it on the Kelvin's dedication plaque? Can't seem to find anything about it in Memory Alpha - they just mention it as "Kelvin-type". I can't seem to find any canonical reference to "Einstein".2190s(?)
Einstein-class (assuming Federation: The First 100 Years)
It's from David A Goodman's Federation: The First 150 Years. He came up with it.
Ah...so..."soft" canon then. 