The Enterprise D, an exploration ship?

[Spot261]

If the starbases have phasers like the verteron array (which has sufficient range to precisely shoot Starfleet Command on Earth from Mars) then parking a fleet at primary worlds might not be needed. However, we know Earth either has a dedicated fleet or a fleet nearby on call. The Wolf 359 fleet is called together on fairly short notice and that comprised 30 ships. The fleet which met the Borg Sphere in "Endgame" (not the 7 which escort Voyager after the Sphere's destructino) is almost 30 ships with minutes, instead of hours, to assemble.

Even there the 359 fleet was very much a desperate mismatch of everything and anything available within range, large or small, highly armed or not, modern or (mostly) outdated, many of which would have simply been passing through on other more mundane assignments and hardly constituting a standing defence fleet.

As for the Endgame fleet, there we see a totally different scenario, with Earth having not long since been attacked by the Breen, a conventional military power as opposed to some uber tech powered alien threat. Yes the war is over but nonetheless the only treaty we saw signed was with the Dominion, not the Bree with whom relations may yet sour. It only makes sense that many of the wartime precautions would still be in place, which by definition implies a totally different strategic philosophy to peacetime deployments.

In fact, looking at the composition of the two fleets above is instructive by itself. The Endgame fleet contains a Prometheus, at least one Nebula, a Defiant (I think), and generally presents as a high end mobile response operating deep within Federation space under wartime conditions. The 359 fleet on the other hand is a low level affair by comparison, which Admiral Hansen openly states he cobbled together from whatever was available (Mirandas and similar or lower level workhorses being prevalent as far as we can tell), indicating that the peacetime Federation operates no dedicated home defence fleet as such.

 

[Go-Captain]

Even there the 359 fleet was very much a desperate mismatch of everything and anything available within range, large or small, highly armed or not, modern or (mostly) outdated, many of which would have simply been passing through on other more mundane assignments and hardly constituting a standing defence fleet.

As for the Endgame fleet, there we see a totally different scenario, with Earth having not long since been attacked by the Breen, a conventional military power as opposed to some uber tech powered alien threat. Yes the war is over but nonetheless the only treaty we saw signed was with the Dominion, not the Bree with whom relations may yet sour. It only makes sense that many of the wartime precautions would still be in place, which by definition implies a totally different strategic philosophy to peacetime deployments.

In fact, looking at the composition of the two fleets above is instructive by itself. The Endgame fleet contains a Prometheus, at least one Nebula, a Defiant (I think), and generally presents as a high end mobile response operating deep within Federation space under wartime conditions. The 359 fleet on the other hand is a low level affair by comparison, which Admiral Hansen openly states he cobbled together from whatever was available (Mirandas and similar or lower level workhorses being prevalent as far as we can tell), indicating that the peacetime Federation operates no dedicated home defence fleet as such.

I believe it also so represents war time attrition of old designs and perhaps expansion of the fleet.

Another thing about the "Endgame" fleet is it simply strikes me as being closer to a realistic force to have in Sol given the population of the Federation and probable over all fleet size. Utopia Planetia is also the largest shipyard we have ever seen in Star Trek and is in the Sol system. There should be ships in all sorts of states of readiness coming into and out of the Sol system at all times without counting a proper standing force for guard duty.

 

[Praetor]

The original intent that the D had families aboard because she was truly about to go where no one had gone before certainly seem to fall by the wayside quickly. The TNG TM certainly speaks of the ship's range and a potential for a one-hundred year lifespan requiring overhauls at the twenty year mark, so a twenty year mission might not be out of the question. If memory serves, Gene et al originally wanted to get away from anything that recalled TOS, but soon changed their minds. C'est la vie.

As for the classification of the Galaxy class, the term "mobile starbase" comes to mind. Again the TNG TM classifies her an explorer, but I've long held that Starfleet maintained separate peacetime and wartime vessel classifications. In peacetime she may've been an explorer, but indeed in wartime she may've been classified a battleship or dreadnought. I'd theorize that the peactime classifications were more generic buckets, while the wartime terms were probably much more specific. Each would no doubt have different criteria; range vs. armaments and so forth.

 

[publiusr]

Should have been a Galaxy class to go into the Badlands...

 

[USS Firefly]

I thought they were too big for the badlands

 

[Shikarnov]

It was postulated in another thread (I'll try to dig up a link later when I have more time) that the Enterprise's mission may have been altered after Q's warning in Encounter at Farpoint or at some point soon after it due to an increase in direct threats to the Federation's core. Admiral Quinn, suspicious of the Conspiracy aliens, might have had a hand in making sure key vessels weren't straying too far from home during a time of need. And later events in The Neutral Zone and Q-Who may have been a catalyst for permanently altering fleet deployments and severely curtailing Starfleet's exploration program.

 

[ProwlAlpha]

I enjoy the TNG TM, however, its biggest failing was that it didn't take the any of the ongoing events in recent Federation history. At the time of the Galaxy's design and construction phase, the Federation was involved in a number of conflicts, including a hinted at Cold War with the Klingons. I, personally, believe that the first units of the Galaxy-class (Galaxy, Challenger, and Yamato) were originally built as all-purpose flagships with facilities that include transporting flag staff officers, main communications hub, emergency hospital, the main bridge would be the Admiral's bridge while the battle bridge is the real bridge, and so on, but with the conflicts winding down, the Enterprise was modified to have more exploration equipment such as more powerful sensors, more laboratories, the extra room for barracks and hospital beds to be converted into family quarters and other civilian related duties.

 

[Ithekro]

I would think the Galaxy-class was designed as a long range explorer as suggested early on in he series, but the writers couldn't be asked to keep coming up with new aliens and planets all the time farther and farther away from Federation space, and instead came up with patrol stories and inner sphere diplomatic missions to keep the plots from being "new planet of the week with new alien of the weeks every week".

In universe the events of the first year Enterprise was out likely forced Starfleet to pull back its deep space explorers as there were now local problems again that required skilled officers and captains. Thus Picard and his new ship are recalled to Federation space (which is still not fully explored).

However the idea that she should have been assigned to defend Earth as the massive force is not within reason early on, as the last time Earth had known to have been directly threatened by any alien threat was V'Ger around 90 years before the new Galaxy-class Enterprise was commissioned, and before that Earth itself was likely not directly threatened since the Xindi attack, if the Romulans never got that close to Earth during the Romulan War, both over a hundred years before V'Ger arrived. The Klingons certainly never managed to directly threaten Earth. But after the new Enterprise is commissioned, Earth is threated by parasitic aliens in Starfleet, followed by the Borg invasions (two of note), The Founders infiltrated the planet (not as direct of a threat as Starfleet Admirals thought), then the Breen direct assault on Earth (which somehow managed to do relatively little damage compared to other planetary assaults in Star Trek). The Borg Sphere that followed USS Voyager to Earth was not an actual invasion, and Starfleet could probably have taken it out eventually without Voyager's aid.

 

[Idran]

as the last time Earth had known to have been directly threatened by any alien threat was V'Ger around 90 years before the new Galaxy-class Enterprise was commissioned

Minor quibble that doesn't really hurt your point: wouldn't the last time have been the probe from ST4?

 

[Ithekro]

Probably, though is was trying to send a message to its friends, rather than kill all life on the planet. V'Ger, while looking for its creator, was specifically going to remove all the carbon lifeforms infesting Earth.

 

[Idran]

Probably, though is was trying to send a message to its friends, rather than kill all life on the planet. V'Ger, while looking for its creator, was specifically going to remove all the carbon lifeforms infesting Earth.

Fair point!

 

[Ithekro]

It should be noted that neither threat could have been defeated by military strength. V'Ger and the Probe neutralized Earth's defenses, intentionally or not. The Xindi or Romulans and later Breen could be handled by force of arms, and the Borg eventually by force of arms, and being clever.

 

[at Quark's]

Still.... it would be weird that one week, they'd be in contact with aliens never encountered before, the second week, they'd be ferrying between Vulcan and Earth, and the third week they'd again have a first contact situation with another race... either inner core Federation territory isn't all that large, or perhaps Stardates can't be translated 1:1 to our time system

 

[Ithekro]

Its that transwarp drive for off screen travel. It works plot to plot only, rather than during a plot.

 

[Idran]

Plus space travel and exploration isn't necessarily omnidirectional, but rather a massive patchwork, a bunch of separate surges outward; there could easily still be races never encountered by the Federation within the core territories even if they are fairly large since there's just that many stars out there. There's about 1,800 known stars of stellar type F, G, or K (the most likely to hold life) just within 100 light years of Sol, a region we've got a relatively good handle on today. Assuming that we know of all of them within 100ly (which we honestly probably don't), that means that statistically speaking that means there's probably around 28,000 within 250ly or so (given isotropic distribution on such a relatively small scale), each of which could have any number of planets to survey. 225,000 if you expanded out to 500ly That's a massive task to survey, even over the 200 years-ish of the Federation's existence. And that's not even including type M stars, which have an outside chance at possibly holding some type of life; there's about as many of them as there are the previously-mentioned three types combined.

Even in Star Trek, well-charted space is more likely a big patchwork than a contiguous territory at anything more than very small scales.

Edit: Wait wait never mind, I misread the argument you were making; this is less applicable than I thought. This doesn't really address what you're saying, so disregard most of it.

 

[Timo]

Dunno - it's fair to point out that Pollux, right next door to Earth, allows Kirk to make First Contact with a fascinating alien species right in between ferrying somebody from Vulcan to Andor and resupplying Nearspace Outpost Proximal.

That Kirk also explicitly spans hundreds of lightyears between episodes doesn't change the argument much. That he spans hundreds of lightyears during episodes sets him at odds with Picard to some degree. But some episodes take weeks (what's the record, barring time travel or fictional passages of time - the two months of "Paradise Syndrome"?), allowing for true long distance travel.

The ballpark figures for onscreen warp speeds in TOS and TNG allow for visiting all the usual neighboring species during a week-long episode or in any pair of adjoining episodes - we don't need transwarp for that, as long as the UFP rubs against those adversaries at a couple of hundred lightyears from Earth rather than thousands. And since Klingons and Romulans were met back when Earth only explored as far as an NX class ship flies, that's a pretty reasonable assumption. Outliers... Should be dealt with case by case, I guess.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[arch101]

I have always preferred Christopher Bennett's description of the Galaxy Class as "a college town in space". The first time I read that, it just made sense.