The Enterprise That Wasn't

[Henoch]

Shane Johnson had his own timeline in "Star Trek Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise." He has the year as 2212 at the end of Kirk's five year mission. (Set 241 years into the future.) He must have been influenced by Space Seed, Tomorrow is Yesterday, and The Savage Curtain, and took liberties with WNMHGB.

 

[MAGolding]

Drat, I never read this one. It's probably where a lot of the stuff I pieced together from the canon, fanon, and online came from I made a note to order it when my library opens up again.

I do have Star Trek Chronology (and a couple dozen others) upstairs

There's a question: what are some books one could look at on this subject?

Alternate Trek timelines from before / in defiance of the Okuda/Sternbach effort? Besides the Spaceflight Chronology (a Goldstein timeline, really, Rick only did the artwork), the FASA and SFB companions to the RPGs might be of interest. And of course you have to read through James Dixon and study his list of references.

Timo Saloniemi

Shane Johnson had his own timeline in "Star Trek Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise." He has the year as 2212 at the end of Kirk's five year mission. (Set 241 years into the future.) He must have been influenced by Space Seed, Tomorrow is Yesterday, and The Savage Curtain, and took liberties with WNMHGB.

The very first and earliest Star Trek chronology that I have ever heard of was in the very early fanzine Star Trek: An Analysis of a Phenomenon in Science Fiction 1968, It had a brief timeline of history up to the second season of TOS. It put TOS in the 2250s Anno Domini.

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_An_Analysis_of_a_Phenomenon_in_Science_Fiction

The James Dixon chronology is a very extended version of what he calls "the Star Trek Technical Fandom Chronology" that was very popular in the 1980s, and is based upon a very short fanzine chronology first published about 1975 if I remember correctly and elaborated in many different fan publications. That puts TOS in the early 2260s AD, a few crucial years earlier than the official chronology.

William Rotsler (3 July 1926 - 8 October 1997) was an American writer, artist, and filmmaker who wrote several works featuring Star Trek: The Original Series characters, all of them promoted as tie-ins to either Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan or Star Trek III: The Search for Spock from Wanderer Books.

His tie in book Star Trek II Biographies (1982) has biographies of various characters, including various dates. If I remember correctly, Rotsler put Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in AD 2222, which more or less agrees with the date range for TOS which can be deduced from the Star Trek Spacefllight Chronology.

Rotsler's most lasting contribution to Star Trek was devising a first name for Nyota Uhura, used for many years in licenced works before being made canonical in the 2009 feature film Star Trek. In "More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Star Trek Books, or What Uhura's First Name Really Is" (The Best of Trek #13, 1988), Rotsler recounted the process of coming up with the name (from the word "star" in Swahili) for Gene Roddenberry, and obtaining the enthusiastic approval of Nichelle Nichols.

https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/William_Rotsler

History of the Vessel Enterprise: From the 16th to the 24th Century, Ronald M. Roden, Jr., 1992, traces the history of various historic vessels named Enterprise as well as some Star Trek vessels named Enterprise including the Declaration class interstellar liner (inspired by the one in the Star Trek Spacefllight Chronology) Enterprise from 2187 to 2229, NCC-1701 2252, with TOS beginning in 2271, destroyed in 2286; NCC-1701-A 2286--2298; NCC-1701-B 2308-?; NCC-1701-C 2337-2344; NCC-1701- ; NCC-1701- D 2363-2368 & counting.

A few chronologies are mentioned in the thread: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/how-many-different-star-trek-chronologies-are-there.295793/

 

[publiusr]

Thank you for that.

In terms of ring ships I wonder what a staged ringship might look like—a large one pushing successively smaller ships before or behind—the rings left behind as Super impeller/ catapult thingys...

One type of ship that might look cool was called vacuum to antimatter (VARIES) at nextbigfuture.com

Also take a look at ISEP booms at nasaspaceflight.com

 

[Arpy]

These were brainstorming studies for what would have been another ships-collage that I unfortunately won't get to. There's little order to them, and they're not quite how I imagine the Late 21st/Early 22nd Centuries to look, but (like the collage on the 2nd page of this thread) they give an idea. I picture earlier ships to look very NASA, later ships to look more Babylon 5 for in-system long-range and more Galactica for in-system short-range. By ENT's period (Late 22nd Century?), I picture the introduction of the earliest more Trek-looking ships but with super-jacked impulse engines, weapons, deflector dish, nacelles, etc — the earliest versions of the tech that we’re familiar with being unrefined and oversized, like the first computers that were the size of a room.

 

[Tim Walker]

Rewatched Into Darkness. In the scene in which multiple models are displayed, I noticed a model of a ring ship. It looked very much like the one that Arpy posted at the beginning of the thread.

 

[Timo]

Which means that QMx FX Cinema Arts did exactly what was asked of them.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(XCV_330)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[drt]

Shane Johnson had his own timeline in "Star Trek Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise." He has the year as 2212 at the end of Kirk's five year mission. (Set 241 years into the future.) He must have been influenced by Space Seed, Tomorrow is Yesterday, and The Savage Curtain, and took liberties with WNMHGB.

Star Trek II Biographies (1982) has biographies of various characters, including various dates. If I remember correctly, Rotsler put Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in AD 2222, which more or less agrees with the date range for TOS which can be deduced from the Star Trek Spacefllight Chronology

Johnson has stated that Paramount licensing required use of the early 23rd century dates for Mr. Scott's Guide, presumably Rostler was given a similar directive. It seems that Paramount licensing decided this was the "official" dating - likely influenced by the Goldstein Chronology since it was the first licenced publication to use those dates, and no doubt reinforced by WoK pretty clearly stating that it had been around 200 years since the 1990s - which is why all of those early/mid 80s licensed publications (including FASA) were so consistent with that dating.

 

[Soong-type Android]

When Star Trek: Enterprise was in development and it was announced it would be a prequel I always assumed it would be about the ring ship and disappointed when we got the Akiraprise instead.

 

[Lord Garth]

History of the Vessel Enterprise: From the 16th to the 24th Century, Ronald M. Roden, Jr., 1992, traces the history of various historic vessels named Enterprise as well as some Star Trek vessels named Enterprise including the Declaration class interstellar liner (inspired by the one in the Star Trek Spacefllight Chronology) Enterprise from 2187 to 2229, NCC-1701 2252, with TOS beginning in 2271, destroyed in 2286; NCC-1701-A 2286--2298; NCC-1701-B 2308-?; NCC-1701-C 2337-2344; NCC-1701- ; NCC-1701- D 2363-2368 & counting.

Sounds like Roden had this type of timeline in mind:

"The Cage" 2259
TOS/TAS: 2271-2276
TMP: 2278
TWOK-TFF: 2286
TUC: 2298 (to line up with McCoy saying he'd been on the Enterprise for 27 years)

So the idea would be "Encounter at Farpoint" took place 78 years after the most recent Star Trek movie at the time (TVH) and then TUC took place 70 years before the fifth season of TNG.

 

[Henoch]

Sounds like Roden had this type of timeline in mind:

"The Cage" 2259
TOS/TAS: 2271-2276
TMP: 2278
TWOK-TFF: 2286
TUC: 2298 (to line up with McCoy saying he'd been on the Enterprise for 27 years)

Continuing with this theory, then put ST:GEN one year after TUC, ~2299, and back calculate the 30 year remark to put Kirk becoming Captain of the Enterprise in ~2269, then WMNHGB could be around 2269 - 2270.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

When Star Trek: Enterprise was in development and it was announced it would be a prequel I always assumed it would be about the ring ship and disappointed when we got the Akiraprise instead.

I was hoping for a Daedalus class ship myself.

 

[Soong-type Android]

I was hoping for a Daedalus class ship myself.

I think a lot of us imagined it would either be a ring ship, a Daedalus class ship or some sort of radically different design we've never seen before. Spock's description of Romulan war era Earth vessels in Balance of Terror certainly never conjured up an upside down Akira class for me.

 

[C57D]

I think a lot of us imagined it would either be a ring ship, a Daedalus class ship or some sort of radically different design we've never seen before. Spock's description of Romulan war era Earth vessels in Balance of Terror certainly never conjured up an upside down Akira class for me.

Totally. Something like one of these amazing ship designs, or like the Verne or Messier classes from the original Spaceflight Chronology was what I was hoping for. Or, at the extreme, even this amazing, inspiring design https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/romulan-war-destroyer.257674/
And no phase(r) pistols, or photon(ic) torpedoes (yeh gods, how stupid do tptb think we are?!). All landing parties carried by shuttle, no transporters etc etc.
Another lost ST opportunity.
Move along people, there's nothing to see here.

 

[Tim Walker]

When it's done, there should be some recognisably NASA era features, a Project Daedalus style pre-impulse sublight drive, and a few TOS era features, hopefully tying in all the different early human spaceflight design aesthetics.

We could get a hint of the TOS era in the paint job, which might use similar colors, as well as including a registration number.

 

[Tim Walker]

The NASA space probes, as well as the Soviet space probes, tended to be festooned with antennas, including dish antennas.

Proposed spacecraft designs have included conspicuous tanks (such as fuel tanks) with cylindrical or spherical configurations.

An esthetic challenge is to design a ship that looks relatively primitive, but still retains some of the elegance of a ring ship. This would fit in an altered timeline in which the Earth is not devastated by war, allowing the first warp ships to be built a few decades early.

 

[Timo]

The Endurance of Interstellar did the same thing as the Discovery of 2001: stuck to a maximally simple basic form, discernible at a glance, and then used simple repeating elements to execute that form. Both used thin, precarious-looking connecting bits to keep the "relatively primitive" look, but logically abandoned the idea of "festooing" because NASA only does that due to running out of installation space on its teeny weeny space robots. If there are to be antennas, put them all on the same mount as they will be aimed at the same location anyway (but remember to use triply redundant AE-35 modules!); if there are to be camera platforms, place them logically and not in the one corner not yet blocked by RCS nozzles, aerials or radiators.

Trek-style propulsion seems to work because it uses no fuel, that is, no propellant. Going FTL is one thing; merely defeating the rocket equation already calls for abandoning fuel, or at least using something that isn't stored in tanks. Recognizable pressure vessels for storing stuff would be nice reminders that the heroes can run out of stuff, yes - but in most types of adventure, we want to make the audience forget about that instead. And abandoning of tanks, and rocket nozzles, would be the one step needed to sell the idea that this is future technology and for that reason capable of the fantastic feats required of it. With the tanks and nozzles prominently absent, lesser things could be excused: the 22nd century starship could have interfaces or tools or creature comforts the 21st century audience can recognize, even though it's extremely implausible that it "really" would.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tim Walker]

I was reviewing a thread, "warp ship with rotational gravity." Tarek 71 was designing a warp drive ship with a rotating section-a centrifuge.

This is an old concept, but hasn't been applied yet. A centrifuge would therefore seem 21st century rather than 20th century, yet look primitive compared to TOS level technology.

Auxilary/landing craft might be conical, resembling the DC-X.

BTW, we could get inspiration from the spacesuits worn in Robinson Crusoe on Mars. These featured what were obviously cylindrical bottles for oxygen, making the suits look more primitive than those used for Archer's Enterprise.

 

[Tim Walker]

If we are really going to have a ring ship era, we need to explain why a ring is used instead of nacelles.

Perhaps in theory nacelles should allow faster ships than rings. But with the relatively primitive technology of the mid 21st century, a nacelle based drive:

1. Can hardly be made to work.

Or....

2. Won't work at all.

Ring ships, on the other hand, might be an early opportunity. Precursor technologies would include:

1. Centrifuge designs tested in Earth orbit.

2. Long duration life support systems-developed for the manned Mars expeditions.

3. Space program sensors and communications.

With the testing of the first ring prototype, it becomes thinkable to send expeditions to the nearest stars. This may be a bit similar to the situation in Interstellar, where astronauts can essentially explore two different places-an exotic corner of the universe, and our own solar system.

 

[Arpy]

I think nacelles are simply miniaturized rings. The first warp coils were massive rings, later refined and stacked into long cylinders/nacelles.

This allows for odd-number nacelled ships like the Kelvin and dreadnaught E-D as they “magic” happens in the coils themselves, not in between as per Roddenberry’s rules. I prefer the rules myself, but, meh, this does work.

 

[Tim Walker]

Maybe a surprise episode could be about alien visitors who have been visiting us. The grays or whatever they’re called. They showed up, amusingly, on Babylon 5. I wonder if they’re revealed to be us from a million years in the future or future Federation members...little green men from Alpha Centauri lol

Perhaps UFO aliens are explained by the Interdimensional Hypothesis. Which might help explain why they seldom if ever appear in the Trek universe.