What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing)?

[C.E. Evans]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

I hold to the idea that the Enterprise A was originally name something different, and was quickly renamed "Enterprise" for Kirk's sake.

Many people consider her to have started life as the "Yorktown", as a reference to an earlier name for the TOS ship, before they decided on "Enterprise".

I recall Gene Rodenberry saying that, but the Yorktown was disabled at the start of STIV. Would they have had time to repair it, replace all the bridge graphics, rename and relaunch by the end of the film?

We actually don't know how much time elapsed between Kirk surrendering himself before the Federation Council and his taking command of the Enterprise-A. It could have taken a week or more for the Council to decide what to do with Kirk, which would likely be more than enough time to change the markings on the hull and doors.

And what about the Yorktown's crew? Did the solar sail fail and they all die? Was Kirk given a Ship of Death?

I would think that Roddenberry would have them all survive, but ultimately forced to abandon the Yorktown to its fate by the whalesong probe. In that sense, Kirk could have got a renamed ship that had actually seen better days. Meanwhile, the former Yorktown's crew would later go on to a new Excelsior-class ship with that name for all intents and purposes, IMO.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

Or it was the prototype TARDIS technology which squeezed 78 decks into a ship meant for 21. I imagine that would cause some glitches!

^ This.

Especially considering that the bridge we see at the end of TVH looks nothing like the bridge from TFF, and not to mention the sudden presence of those enormous Jeffries tubes. And am I the only one who noticed the wheel lounge with its large floor-to-ceiling windows is implied as being somewhere in the FRONT of the ship despite the lack of any visible windows in that area?

The only explanation for this is the Enterprise-A is bigger on the inside, having at least 78 decks, at least two bridges, shrunken rooms that fit into much larger windows, and lots of extra/hidden corridors that were never there before.

 

[Amasov]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

I like to think the ship's systems might have gone haywire from the probe in Star Trek IV? I assume the "Enterprise," or whatever ship it had been beforehand was in spacedock or was indeed the Yorktown (since we saw her Captain on screen in TVH) and basically limped home after being affected by the probe.

::shrugs::

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

They could always work the last bugs out of the ship later, which they appeared to have ultimately did by the time the Enterprise left for the Great Barrier.

Plus those last bugs weren't even major. It was just doors not opening when they should, the log recorder not working (I have no idea why that even happened), and the transporters being down. Other than that everything seemed to be working.

 

[Jose Tyler]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

They could always work the last bugs out of the ship later, which they appeared to have ultimately did by the time the Enterprise left for the Great Barrier.

Plus those last bugs weren't even major. It was just doors not opening when they should, the log recorder not working (I have no idea why that even happened), and the transporters being down. Other than that everything seemed to be working.

The things that I can recall that were not working:

• Transporter
• Communications Problems - Difficulty getting initial message about recalling personnel and connecting with Admiral "Bob"
• Turbolift Problems - Problems with voice command leaving shuttlebay and turbo shat 3 closed for repairs
• Problems with doors
• Log recorder issue - Agree, no idea why that happened
• Problems with several bridge consoles given all the repair equipment.

I'm thinking that there may have also been problems with the tactical systems since nobody noticed a bird-of-prey cloaking and the ship didn't raise deflectors automatically (Sulu always seemed to be annoucing the deflectors popped up on TOS)

 

[Satyrquaze]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

The real reason for the problems?

They wanted to insert gags and awkward humor into the script, so the Enterprise-A became a laughing stock. Lovely.

Yeah, it really was the bad writing.

Don't forget all the bad direction as well.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

They could always work the last bugs out of the ship later, which they appeared to have ultimately did by the time the Enterprise left for the Great Barrier.

Plus those last bugs weren't even major. It was just doors not opening when they should, the log recorder not working (I have no idea why that even happened), and the transporters being down. Other than that everything seemed to be working.

The things that I can recall that were not working:

• Transporter
• Communications Problems - Difficulty getting initial message about recalling personnel and connecting with Admiral "Bob"
• Turbolift Problems - Problems with voice command leaving shuttlebay and turbo shat 3 closed for repairs
• Problems with doors
• Log recorder issue - Agree, no idea why that happened
• Problems with several bridge consoles given all the repair equipment.

To be fair, those problems seemed to have been fixed once the Enterprise reached the Great Barrier. Scotty even got the transporter briefly working again before it was knocked out once more when the Klingons bird-of-prey attacked.

I'm thinking that there may have also been problems with the tactical systems since nobody noticed a bird-of-prey cloaking and the ship didn't raise deflectors automatically (Sulu always seemed to be annoucing the deflectors popped up on TOS)

The tactical systems seemed to work fine: they automatically detected the Klingon ship when it entered the same sector the Enterprise was in. The problem was that nobody was paying attention as they were still under Sybok's spell (stranger stuff has happened in Trek). As far as deflectors automatically popping on, that's been used very inconsistently in Trek, even during TOS. It could be they only come on automatically when there's something unidentified in very close, essentially point-blank proximity to the ship or after the ship has been actually attacked.

 

[Cyke101]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

turbo shat

*giggle*

 

[Nightowl1701]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

OK, so let's combine the best elements here. The Yorktown, a ship practically as old as the first Enterprise, is disabled by the probe somewhere near Earth. Maybe the crew survives, maybe they don't. Anyway, the Yorktown is towed into Spacedock and SF Command decides to use it as a testbed for a stripped-down transwarp drive using most of the ship's pre-existing warp engines. The bridge module and computer core directly underneath (basically designed as "plug-and-play") is swapped out, and the TNG-style warp core (presumably a smaller version of what was already on the Excelsior) is installed.

Just as everything is plugged back in (two or so weeks after the probe crisis), the Federation Council hands SF Command an edict - give Kirk a new ship, NOW. One quick paint job later, the Yorktown is the Enterprise-A and launches from Spacedock with its' new bridge and transwarp core (and the SCE crosses their fingers). It thankfully doesn't blow up, but doesn't make it too far past Earth orbit either. Presumably this is the point SF throws up their hands and gives up on the Transwarp project. The ship has to be reprogrammed for standard warp using the new TNG-style core, which means another bridge module/computer core swapout (and another nice piece of experimental new equipment in the form of the bridge module). Unfortunately, it's something like trying to install Windows 7 on a Pentium II (especially after you'd just installed a buggy version of Vista); Not impossible, but it takes some finessing.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

^ It's never been canonically stated that the new transwarp drive didn't work. It's strongly implied that the TNG warp scale is very different (and significantly faster) than the TOS scale, so obviously SOMETHING has happened to the warp drives between the 23rd and 24th centuries, some fundamental change in their operating principles that makes the new engines no longer comparable to the old.

If anything, we need to figure out why they stopped calling it "transwarp," but then we'd have to figure out what "transwarp" even means and whether or not the new engines had a different "superfast" operating mode that we never saw or just worked completely differently.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

It could be just a case that it was warp drive that was redefined sometime prior to TNG and a new warp scale was devised that led to a redefinition of transwarp drive as well. If the Excelsior was able to cruise at Warp 11 on the TOS scale, that woud now be Warp 8.6 on the TNG one. Transwarp would then become a catch phrase for anything capable of surpassing the maximum driver coil limitations associated with warp drive. Even slipstream drive could be considered a form of transwarp propulsion in that regard.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

"That Which Survives", "Broken Bow", STV and others make it pretty clear that TOS-era warp speeds were actually much faster than their TNG/VOY era equivalents, despite the strange claims of the technical manuals.

But, I know, we're supposed to pretend those episodes and movies don't count...

 

[C.E. Evans]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

Naturally, all ships move at the speed of plot regardless of their stated warp factors, so they might as well be looked at as technobabble. A ship could move many times faster at warp four in one episode than it could at warp nine in another.

There's a compelling reason, IMO, to regard any warp factor values as being base values that can be multiplied or divided depending on where you are in the Galaxy and its subspace density.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

^ That or warp factors as units of acceleration instead of absolute speeds. If that's the case there would be a lot of "in the background" stuff going on with the helm, like maybe the ship accelerated quickly to its cruise phase to save power in one case, but accelerated all the way through the journey in the other. The only point of stating the warp factor in dialog is for the audience's benefit, it's a way of quantifying "On a scale of one to ten, how fast do you want me to get you there?"

 

[C.E. Evans]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

I've been inclined to think that's all warp factors were really meant to do. Look at them too closely, though, and their truly arbitrary nature shows.

 

[Timo]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

The only downside there is that warp factors are used by the heroes as absolute units of speed in the all-important chase scenes. And that's the big issue: warp factors were not designed only to obfuscate, but sometimes also to simplify and clarify things for the audience.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

Re: What was the Enterprise-A's problem in STV (Other than bad writing

In a real sense, that's exactly what I mean. The only thing we really need to know is that the ship goes faster the higher the warp factor is, but as far as figuring how much faster each warp factor is, eh...that's where I think "fast enough" is as valid an answer than one figured out by doing the actual math in a given episode.