Titan question for the group-mind...

[JD]

I'm pretty sure that was just something that Riker wanted to do.

 

[JAG]

That was just Rikers ship.

 

[Christopher]

^ And give her crew an opportunity to recover from the trauma of Borg attack/fatalities/near assimilation. That is, for however long an interval there was between Greater than the Sum and Destiny.

Rhea had already returned to its mission by the time the Borg invasion began.

I understand that all Luna-class ships are on similar missions of way-out-there exploration. But are all Luna-class ships undergoing the same multi-species crew experiment as Titan, or is Titan the only one?

It is not just Riker's ship. Excerpted from Orion's Hounds:

...However, it was still fairly unusual for humanoids and nonhumanoids to crew together routinely.

The minds behind Titan’s mission had wanted to change that. This new generation of Luna-class explorer ships—a prototype design mothballed when the Dominion War had forced a shift toward more combat-oriented starships—had been revived after war’s end, promoted as a reassertion of Starfleet’s core ideals of peaceful exploration and diplomacy. ... Many in Starfleet felt it was essential to reaffirm a higher set of values than survival alone, to remind the peoples of the Federation that it was more important to live for something than simply to stay alive. Hence the ambitious new mission of Titan and its eleven sister ships—emissaries to the unknown, questing out in all directions, hands extended to friends not yet met.

But if these ships were to represent the Federation, it was resolved, then they must represent it in all its diversity. If they stood for peaceful coexistence with future neighbors, then they must stand for peaceful, eager coexistence among the Federation’s members. Hence the Great Experiment was spawned, reviving Willard Decker’s dream and going it one better—or twelve better.

Will Riker had been a natural choice to carry forward that dream—even aside from the striking similarity of their names and aspects of their life histories. For as long as Deanna had known him, William Thomas Riker had been a passionate xenophile, not merely tolerant of others’ differences, but positively delighted by them. ... The chance to captain a crew with so many different species onboard, many of which he’d never worked alongside before, had been a dream come true for him.

So the diversity of the crew wasn't his idea, it was one of the main enticements that convinced him to accept the promotion.

Also, remember from the A Time To... series that Riker accepted the captaincy of Titan rather late in the game, so clearly the bulk of the planning for the "Great Experiment" was done before he signed on. (And in Over a Torrent Sea, you'll briefly meet one of the prime movers behind the program.)

 

[Geoff Thorne]

I chose Charon because of the name and what I knew would happen to the vessel. NEVER, EVER name a starship after the ferryman of the dead. What was Starfleet thinking? They might as well have painted a target on the side and left Fate a really evil voicemail.

I didn't do anything like the meticulous star charting that CLB did because, frankly, that's not something that generally appeals to me. Just a different style, not a knock of any kind. If precise locations had been a story requirement, I'd have included them. They weren't so I didn't worry about it. Nothing more complex than that.

That said, I didn't perceive the two vessels as being in close proximity. Titan's crew is puzzled that Charon would still be in the area of the distress signal's origin when they should have been weeks and lightyears away from there. Under normal conditions, they would have been.

The temporal distortions around Orisha are in the nature of a hurricane that generates a water spout. Causality is in knots.


And, yes, Ellington was destroyed. Blowed up. Kaputskied.

 

[David cgc]

They should've known something was up when Tuvok steps on board and WHOOSH they get pulled a tad further than 70,000 light years away Titan itself hasn't been free of casualty since its launch, though nothing on the scale of Charon. Maybe the Luna class is doomed beyond hope...

I remember when the Constitution-class ships were the deathtraps of Starfleet.

 

[JD]

^ And give her crew an opportunity to recover from the trauma of Borg attack/fatalities/near assimilation. That is, for however long an interval there was between Greater than the Sum and Destiny.

Rhea had already returned to its mission by the time the Borg invasion began.

I understand that all Luna-class ships are on similar missions of way-out-there exploration. But are all Luna-class ships undergoing the same multi-species crew experiment as Titan, or is Titan the only one?

It is not just Riker's ship. Excerpted from Orion's Hounds:

...However, it was still fairly unusual for humanoids and nonhumanoids to crew together routinely.

The minds behind Titan’s mission had wanted to change that. This new generation of Luna-class explorer ships—a prototype design mothballed when the Dominion War had forced a shift toward more combat-oriented starships—had been revived after war’s end, promoted as a reassertion of Starfleet’s core ideals of peaceful exploration and diplomacy. ... Many in Starfleet felt it was essential to reaffirm a higher set of values than survival alone, to remind the peoples of the Federation that it was more important to live for something than simply to stay alive. Hence the ambitious new mission of Titan and its eleven sister ships—emissaries to the unknown, questing out in all directions, hands extended to friends not yet met.

But if these ships were to represent the Federation, it was resolved, then they must represent it in all its diversity. If they stood for peaceful coexistence with future neighbors, then they must stand for peaceful, eager coexistence among the Federation’s members. Hence the Great Experiment was spawned, reviving Willard Decker’s dream and going it one better—or twelve better.

Will Riker had been a natural choice to carry forward that dream—even aside from the striking similarity of their names and aspects of their life histories. For as long as Deanna had known him, William Thomas Riker had been a passionate xenophile, not merely tolerant of others’ differences, but positively delighted by them. ... The chance to captain a crew with so many different species onboard, many of which he’d never worked alongside before, had been a dream come true for him.

So the diversity of the crew wasn't his idea, it was one of the main enticements that convinced him to accept the promotion.

Also, remember from the A Time To... series that Riker accepted the captaincy of Titan rather late in the game, so clearly the bulk of the planning for the "Great Experiment" was done before he signed on. (And in Over a Torrent Sea, you'll briefly meet one of the prime movers behind the program.)

Oh, my bad. I thought I remembered references to Riker's experiement, but apparently it must have been to just "The Great Expirement".

 

[Geoff Thorne]

^ And give her crew an opportunity to recover from the trauma of Borg attack/fatalities/near assimilation. That is, for however long an interval there was between Greater than the Sum and Destiny.

Rhea had already returned to its mission by the time the Borg invasion began.




It is not just Riker's ship. Excerpted from Orion's Hounds:

...However, it was still fairly unusual for humanoids and nonhumanoids to crew together routinely.

The minds behind Titan’s mission had wanted to change that. This new generation of Luna-class explorer ships—a prototype design mothballed when the Dominion War had forced a shift toward more combat-oriented starships—had been revived after war’s end, promoted as a reassertion of Starfleet’s core ideals of peaceful exploration and diplomacy. ... Many in Starfleet felt it was essential to reaffirm a higher set of values than survival alone, to remind the peoples of the Federation that it was more important to live for something than simply to stay alive. Hence the ambitious new mission of Titan and its eleven sister ships—emissaries to the unknown, questing out in all directions, hands extended to friends not yet met.

But if these ships were to represent the Federation, it was resolved, then they must represent it in all its diversity. If they stood for peaceful coexistence with future neighbors, then they must stand for peaceful, eager coexistence among the Federation’s members. Hence the Great Experiment was spawned, reviving Willard Decker’s dream and going it one better—or twelve better.

Will Riker had been a natural choice to carry forward that dream—even aside from the striking similarity of their names and aspects of their life histories. For as long as Deanna had known him, William Thomas Riker had been a passionate xenophile, not merely tolerant of others’ differences, but positively delighted by them. ... The chance to captain a crew with so many different species onboard, many of which he’d never worked alongside before, had been a dream come true for him.

So the diversity of the crew wasn't his idea, it was one of the main enticements that convinced him to accept the promotion.

Also, remember from the A Time To... series that Riker accepted the captaincy of Titan rather late in the game, so clearly the bulk of the planning for the "Great Experiment" was done before he signed on. (And in Over a Torrent Sea, you'll briefly meet one of the prime movers behind the program.)

Oh, my bad. I thought I remembered references to Riker's experiement, but apparently it must have been to just "The Great Expirement".

Nah. I think referred to it as Riker's a least once.

 

[JAG]

Nah. I think referred to it as Riker's a least once.

I am glad to hear you say that. I thought I was nuts.

 

[BrotherBenny]

The Ellington's been rebuilt a la Voyager's shuttles.

 

[JD]

Oh, my bad. I thought I remembered references to Riker's experiement, but apparently it must have been to just "The Great Expirement".

Nah. I think referred to it as Riker's a least once.

Ok, so at least I wasn't remembering completely wrong.

 

[foravalon]

Okay, slightly related question.

I understand that all Luna-class ships are on similar missions of way-out-there exploration. But are all Luna-class ships undergoing the same multi-species crew experiment as Titan, or is Titan the only one?

I haven't seen any other books put forth this idea but Christopher's. He first expressed the notion that this was the case in Orion's Hounds, where he also made reference to his previous book Ex Machina and a similar program he created there and attributed to Will Decker IIRC. Christopher then went on to support this idea further in Greater Than the Sum.

 

[SicOne]

How was Rhea destroyed? How did the Io's crew get radiation poisoning?

It's OK to tell me; I have the books but haven't gotten that far yet. Thanks to an earlier thread, I am in the process of reading earlier TNG books (earlier in the post-relaunch, that is) in prep for the Destiny trilogy. Where I am at is having recently read Before Dishonor and the Red King. I'm gettin' there.

 

[Turbo]

Rhea was attacked and badly damaged by Einstein, but was frozen in time by a cluster entity to prevent its crew from being killed, and was later saved by Enterprise (GTTS). I'm not sure about Io.

 

[Christopher]

How was Rhea destroyed?

It wasn't.

How did the Io's crew get radiation poisoning?

You have to read Articles of the Federation to find that out. (Finally, a case where that's actually true!)

Well, not really: http://startrek.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Io

 

[Turtletrekker]

^