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SpaceChampion

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3 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

What was the continuity issue? And when it comes to warp travel, the first two are way more dreadful than anything else.

Oh, that was the type of the warp drive the Starfleet ship that crashed on that foreign planet had. I only watched the movie once in the theater and only noticed it because I was rewatching Enterprise roughly at the same time.

I'm not getting it together right now but it basically is that only the Enterprise and one other ship had a prototype warp drive at that time, which means the other ship couldn't have had the type that was mentioned it had. Or there might be a further glitch that at the time the ship crashed Starfleet wasn't yet or no longer using this kind of warp drive. And I think the problem creeps in from the date of the crash given in the movie. Which shows that it would have been remarkably easy to avoid that kind of error by either moving the date around or changing the type of the warp drive.

But for what it's worth, the third movie is the best one, I guess. I for one never could take those movies seriously as Star Trek movies. At best they were kind of dumb action movies you could enjoy on that level if want to.

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I actually like the third of the Abrams films. I remember expecting to hate that one after I first saw the trailer and being pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it.

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13 minutes ago, sifth said:

I actually like the third of the Abrams films. I remember expecting to hate that one after I first saw the trailer and being pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed it.

That's probably because Abrams had nothing to do with it. :laugh:

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22 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, that was the type of the warp drive the Starfleet ship that crashed on that foreign planet had. I only watched the movie once in the theater and only noticed it because I was rewatching Enterprise roughly at the same time.

I'm not getting it together right now but it basically is that only the Enterprise and one other ship had a prototype warp drive at that time, which means the other ship couldn't have had the type that was mentioned it had. Or there might be a further glitch that at the time the ship crashed Starfleet wasn't yet or no longer using this kind of warp drive. And I think the problem creeps in from the date of the crash given in the movie. Which shows that it would have been remarkably easy to avoid that kind of error by either moving the date around or changing the type of the warp drive.

But for what it's worth, the third movie is the best one, I guess. I for one never could take those movies seriously as Star Trek movies. At best they were kind of dumb action movies you could enjoy on that level if want to.

It sort of works out. The Beyond ship had a warp 4 engine (massively slower than Enterprise’s warp 5 engine).

Essentially the two projects could have been worked separately but simultaneously on different theories. When the warp 5 proved successful, the warp 4 was shelved along with that ship.

Years later, war with Romulans and it’s recommissioned, speed being less an issue than a ship capable of fighting.

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2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

It sort of works out. The Beyond ship had a warp 4 engine (massively slower than Enterprise’s warp 5 engine).

Essentially the two projects could have been worked separately but simultaneously on different theories. When the warp 5 proved successful, the warp 4 was shelved along with that ship.

Years later, war with Romulans and it’s recommissioned, speed being less an issue than a ship capable of fighting.

I'd have to rewatch the movie - which I most likely won't be doing in the foreseeable future - as well as double-check the Enterprise stuff.

I guess the problem I had was simply with the talk about anyone using a big exploration ship with a warp 4 engine when the ship was supposedly commissioned only after the foundation of the Federation - when warp 5 as per the Enterprise should have been the standard. After all, even back in the first season of the show they make a huge point about the Enterprise's engines will eventually replace all the old engines the freighters are still using.

And with the Enterprise being the prototype ship of Starfleet I really see no good reason to assume why I should indulge the sloppiness of the writers and imagine other ships of that era were given a lesser warp 4 engine. I'd assume that whoever came up with the numbers remembered that the Enterprise mostly flew around with warp 4.something and wrongly assumed this meant they only had a warp 4 engine. But they did not.

And neither should other ships which were built in the wake of the success of the Enterprise.

The idea that the ship was actually in service prior to the Enterprise also doesn't sit very well with the entire plot of the Enterprise series because it is quite clear in the series that Starfleet just as only one really fast ship - the Enterprise - which wouldn't be the case if there was at least one other ship out there capable of reaching warp 4.

 

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55 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I think the problem is just that Enterprise, the first Warp 5 ship is the NX-01 and the Franklin is NX-326 but can only do warp 4. Doesn't make a lot of sense. 

Thanks, that settles it. It was what I meant, and the Franklin being NX-326 means it would have been produced years after both the Enterprise and the Columbia which both were equipped with those warp 5 engines. It makes no sense the ship would then have been capable of only reaching warp 4.

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4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

the Franklin being NX-326 means it would have been produced years after both the Enterprise and the Columbia which both were equipped with those warp 5 engines. It makes no sense the ship would then have been capable of only reaching warp 4.

The Franklin is much smaller than the NX-01 - perhaps ships of that class just don't have the power to go faster than warp 4, though its larger contemporaries can?

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10 hours ago, felice said:

The Franklin is much smaller than the NX-01 - perhaps ships of that class just don't have the power to go faster than warp 4, though its larger contemporaries can?

I just read the Memory Alpha entry on the Franklin: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Franklin

It claims that the Franklin was also the first Earth ship to ever reach warp 4. If that's also part of the dialogue in the movie - which I don't recall - then this shows how things get as convoluted as I remember. You have to go with a weird rechristening of the ship after the Federation was founded to explain why it NX-326 and why it is viewed as a Federation rather than a United Earth ship - which it would have to be if it was older than the Enterprise which also could reach warp 4.

This stuff could all have been avoided if they hadn't insisted on showing that plate which clearly marks it as a Federation ship.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

I just read the Memory Alpha entry on the Franklin: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Franklin

It claims that the Franklin was also the first Earth ship to ever reach warp 4. If that's also part of the dialogue in the movie - which I don't recall - then this shows how things get as convoluted as I remember. You have to go with a weird rechristening of the ship after the Federation was founded to explain why it NX-326 and why it is viewed as a Federation rather than a United Earth ship - which it would have to be if it was older than the Enterprise which also could reach warp 4.

This stuff could all have been avoided if they hadn't insisted on showing that plate which clearly marks it as a Federation ship.

No reason for that to clash with lore. Earth had sub-warp 5 ships before Enterprise. Not just starships; Mayweather grew up on a warp-capable freighter. It’s possible the Franklin hit warp 4, but warp 4 is too slow for effective exploration. It’s soon decommissioned, and Enterprise is commissioned for the new warp 5 engine (and the Klingon crisis accelerates humanity using it to explore). The NX pre-fix is then established. 
Romulan war kicks off, Franklin is recommissioned, warp4 being ample to defend space local to Earth, and given the next NX number.

Should probably be NCC but maybe at that point all earth ships were prototypes to some degree

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21 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

No reason for that to clash with lore. Earth had sub-warp 5 ships before Enterprise. Not just starships; Mayweather grew up on a warp-capable freighter. It’s possible the Franklin hit warp 4, but warp 4 is too slow for effective exploration. It’s soon decommissioned, and Enterprise is commissioned for the new warp 5 engine (and the Klingon crisis accelerates humanity using it to explore). The NX pre-fix is then established. 
Romulan war kicks off, Franklin is recommissioned, warp4 being ample to defend space local to Earth, and given the next NX number.

Should probably be NCC but maybe at that point all earth ships were prototypes to some degree

As presented in the movie in creates an inconsistency which you have to explain away by assuming the ship was redisignated - which isn't something that's established by the movie as such. And it is also not something that would have to be done if the Franklin had neither been the first warp 4 ship of Starfleet nor been designated a NX-326 of the United Federation of Planets.

It could just as well have been a warp 5 ship from the 2160s. Then there would have been no problem at all.

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42 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

No reason for that to clash with lore. Earth had sub-warp 5 ships before Enterprise. Not just starships; Mayweather grew up on a warp-capable freighter. It’s possible the Franklin hit warp 4, but warp 4 is too slow for effective exploration. It’s soon decommissioned, and Enterprise is commissioned for the new warp 5 engine (and the Klingon crisis accelerates humanity using it to explore). The NX pre-fix is then established. 
Romulan war kicks off, Franklin is recommissioned, warp4 being ample to defend space local to Earth, and given the next NX number.

Should probably be NCC but maybe at that point all earth ships were prototypes to some degree

The behind-the-scenes explanation doesn't mention a decommissioning, but rather indicates a re-registration when entering Federation service. To me it sounds reasonable enough that they went Tabula Rasa with the ship registrations upon the foundation of the Federation, what with them having to simultaneously bring in the fleets of the Andorians, Tellarites and Vulkans and giving them Federation registry. We tend to forget that while the Federation had always a strangely human dominated touch, United Earth Starfleet isn't necessarily to be treated as the predecessor of UFP Starfleet, it was just absorbed by it. Have we seen that the Enterprise kept the NX-01 designation? Oh right, it was said that it was decommissioned at exactly the same time the Federation was founded, so they probably didn't bother giving it a new one.

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1 hour ago, Toth said:

The behind-the-scenes explanation doesn't mention a decommissioning, but rather indicates a re-registration when entering Federation service. To me it sounds reasonable enough that they went Tabula Rasa with the ship registrations upon the foundation of the Federation, what with them having to simultaneously bring in the fleets of the Andorians, Tellarites and Vulkans and giving them Federation registry. We tend to forget that while the Federation had always a strangely human dominated touch, United Earth Starfleet isn't necessarily to be treated as the predecessor of UFP Starfleet, it was just absorbed by it. Have we seen that the Enterprise kept the NX-01 designation? Oh right, it was said that it was decommissioned at exactly the same time the Federation was founded, so they probably didn't bother giving it a new one.

That certainly can make sense, but they could have dealt with that without creating such a mess by simply going with a warp 5 engine or by showing a document/plate which reflected the status of the ship as United Earth and, eventually, a United Federation of Planets ship.

I'd expect that Earth's Starfleet basically is the basis for the Federation Starfleet of later days simply because even as late the TNG and DS9 era we do have an independent Vulcan fleet ... which indicates that not all founding members of the Federation disbanded their own forces to become part of the Federation Starfleet.

But the bottom line is that this is a continuity mess that could have been avoided rather easily. It reflects very bad on the movie, in my opinion, that they failed to keep things straight when they only referenced one Star Trek show.

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2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I'd expect that Earth's Starfleet basically is the basis for the Federation Starfleet of later days simply because even as late the TNG and DS9 era we do have an independent Vulcan fleet ... which indicates that not all founding members of the Federation disbanded their own forces to become part of the Federation Starfleet.

That struck me, so I did some digging. Apparently in DS9 there is a Vulcan Science Fleet and a Vulcan National Merchant Fleet and in TNG there was a mention of a Vulcan Defense Force tasked with protecting the Vulcan homeworld (which many viewers seem to argue as being something of a coast guard like system fleet). So I agree that they still have fleets for specific purposes, but all of those seem to have strictly defined roles that aren't the all-compassing Federation-wide missions of Starfleet.

I mean, just from a practical POV it makes no sense that they'd turn Earth Starfleet and only Earth Starfleet into the Federation's main military and exploratory arm while all others keep doing those things with their own fleets. It would be just asking for conflicts between fleets down the road. The other founding members must have put Starfleet stickers onto their existing military arms and called it a day, even if they kept ships for other essential jobs which didn't fall specifically into Starfleet's territory (or, like the Vulcans, have ships set aside for their own pet science projects). And that means for the newly formed Starfleet there must have been the busy task of unifying all these organizations into one.

Notably DS9 also mentioned that if Bajor joins the Federation, its militia forces would be merged into Starfleet (and we have seen that the militia has its own fleet of ships). Yes, the canon is blurry (as usual), but it does make sense for Starfleet to specifically gobble up military arms of each member planet and let them otherwise keep stuff within the wiggle room of a member world.

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5 hours ago, Toth said:

That struck me, so I did some digging. Apparently in DS9 there is a Vulcan Science Fleet and a Vulcan National Merchant Fleet and in TNG there was a mention of a Vulcan Defense Force tasked with protecting the Vulcan homeworld (which many viewers seem to argue as being something of a coast guard like system fleet). So I agree that they still have fleets for specific purposes, but all of those seem to have strictly defined roles that aren't the all-compassing Federation-wide missions of Starfleet.

I mean, just from a practical POV it makes no sense that they'd turn Earth Starfleet and only Earth Starfleet into the Federation's main military and exploratory arm while all others keep doing those things with their own fleets. It would be just asking for conflicts between fleets down the road. The other founding members must have put Starfleet stickers onto their existing military ships and called it a day, even if they kept ships for other essential jobs which didn't fall specifically into Starfleet's territory (or, like the Vulcans, have ships set aside for their own pet science projects).

Notably DS9 also mentioned that if Bajor joins the Federation, its militia forces would be merged into Starfleet (and we have seen that the militia has its own fleet of ships). Yes, the canon is blurry (as usual), but it does make sense for Starfleet to specifically gobble up military arms of each member planet and let them otherwise keep stuff within the wiggle room of a member world.

I don't know the details how the Federation Starfleet is supposed to work but if we were to pretend that Starfleet was a multi-species enterprise with there being as many folks from other species joining the organization as there are humans - or making it up because the foundation of the Federation involved a merging of the various spacefaring organizations the founding members had - then I'd say that no Star Trek show to date properly reflected that. Else we would have a much smaller percentage of humans in Starfleet of any given show or movie taking place after Enterprise.

And in that sense I'd assume it makes more sense that Earth's Starfleet became the Federation's Starfleet. I'd expect that it was open from day 1 for all other species from the Federation worlds and, as Discovery and TNG later show, even for species from planets who didn't join the Federation yet.

In the Abrams movies as well as Discovery the idea that a proper Vulcan should serve at Starfleet is somewhat hilarious considering how proud the Vulcans are of their own Science Academy and service within their own forces.

I'm not saying that some of the planets joining might not have abandoned their own forces, but I don't think this was obligatory. The situation with Bajor may have to do with a later regulation not affecting the status of founding worlds of the Federation - or those who joined before such a rule was established.

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Remind me, do we ever see a distinctly Vulcan ship that is a federation NCC-whatever vessel? It seems like most of the federation fleet is based on earth designs at least. Which is a bit odd since Earth was the last of the founding species to discover warp. 

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4 hours ago, RumHam said:

Remind me, do we ever see a distinctly Vulcan ship that is a federation NCC-whatever vessel? It seems like most of the federation fleet is based on earth designs at least. Which is a bit odd since Earth was the last of the founding species to discover warp. 

Not necessarily, only Vulcan ships of Federation design like the USS Intrepid NCC-1631 (which was a Constitution class), USS Hera and USS T'Kumbra (both Nebula Class). All three have been mentioned as Federation ships crewed mainly (but not entirely) by Vulcans.

I must say I really chalk that up to the fact that Enterprise failed to establish Federation design philosophy as an amalgamation of its founding members. At most we can see that TOS weaponry is of Andorian origin, otherwise it does indeed seem like they ludicrously decided to make the technologically most inferior among the bunch the trend setter. But I'd say from a logical in-universe POV for the Federation to be an actual Federation and not just a human empire, we need to assume that everyone pitches in for Starfleet and otherwise is free to build their own mercantile or system defense fleet. I have seen the musing that the reason we haven't seen a United Earth Defense force in the 23rd and 24th century is that Earth houses Starfleet headquarters and therefore has an unusually high Starfleet presence anyway, making a dedicated defense force redundant.

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4 hours ago, RumHam said:

Remind me, do we ever see a distinctly Vulcan ship that is a federation NCC-whatever vessel? It seems like most of the federation fleet is based on earth designs at least. Which is a bit odd since Earth was the last of the founding species to discover warp. 

We also get it that the Vulcans serving within the Federation usually kept to themselves and had their own ship, e.g. that Captain who had that rivalry with Sisko about baseball in DS9.

In essence, Starfleet is basically a human organization in which some 'outsiders' are allowed to serve. But not TOS nor TNG or DS9 or Voyager or Discovery ever sent the message that many non-humans were part of the organizations.

Ideology does rarely match the facts on the screen in Star Trek.

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52 minutes ago, Toth said:

it does indeed seem like they ludicrously decided to make the technologically most inferior among the bunch the trend setter.

If you look at it another way, it's the newest, most cutting edge technology building on what the Vulcans etc have previously developed but also taking advantage of fresh perspectives to challenge orthodox approaches.

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