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Posted by TorgaDaxIV (Member # 617) on :

i really enjoyed broken bow. i have a few questions if anyone would be so kind enough to answer them.

first off, why were they talking about how awesome their warp 5 engine is when the fastest they could go is warp 4.5?

secondly, they made it seem like now that they have warp 5 engines, they can actually travel the galaxy and swim (get more than just their ankles wet), but couldn't warp 4 still do this?

finally, and i know this is a stupid question, but when was the federation formed, and were the humans and vulcans the first 2 races to join?

thanks alot!

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Well, I don't think they said how fast they could go before. We don't know that they went from warp 4 to 5. Maybe they could only do warp 2 before, or something.

The UFP was (will be) formed in 2161, a decade after the beginning of "Enterprise". I don't think there's any canon information about who joined first, but everyone assumes the Terrans and Vulcans were among the founding members.

Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :

I think the engine really was capable of Warp 5, but the highest they tested it to in the episode was Warp 4.5; however, if I'm wrong on this count, then it's simply a case of rounding the number to the nearest integer. 4.5 rounds up to 5.

As for the big deal about the Warp 5 engine, this was supposed to be a monumental leap forward in warp propulsion. I think the backstory goes that previous ships were only capable of Warp 2 to Warp 2.5 or so. There's a whole lot of difference between Warp 2 and Warp 5 no matter which warp scale you're using.

And I think it was TNG's "Data's Day" that established the Federation was founded in 2161. I think that's the episode, but I'm probably wrong. Either way, Deanna said so when she was playing poker with the cards 1, 2, and 6 being wild in honor of Federation Day. It's never been specifically stated that Earth and Vulcan were the first two members of the Federation, though. Shane Johnson's "Worlds of the Federation" says that Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar, and Alpha Centauri are the founding members (this is a non-canon work, by the way).

Posted by J (Member # 608) on :

quote:
Originally posted by TorgaDaxIV:
first off, why were they talking about how awesome their warp 5 engine is when the fastest they could go is warp 4.5?

They had only tested the engine to the point of Warp 4.5.... they think, and I repeat think, that the warp drive is capable of producing a warp field equivalent to their Warp 5 [whatever that maybe]. But they have not tested it yet.

quote:
secondly, they made it seem like now that they have warp 5 engines, they can actually travel the galaxy and swim (get more than just their ankles wet), but couldn't warp 4 still do this?

Warp 4 is about half the speed of Warp 5 [give or take a dozen factors of light]. In any case, Warp 5 is much faster, and it seems that Warp 4 was not accessable until this warp drive as well.

quote:
finally, and i know this is a stupid question, but when was the federation formed, and were the humans and vulcans the first 2 races to join?

Federation foundation was 2161, will be 2161... and shall remain so with or without Enterprise. As for who was there; Humans, Vulcans, Bolians, Andorians, & Tellarites are among the most common choices. It is too bad that there is so much arguement over the TNG races though. I do however think that most people will agree with me when I say that there is enough evidence to indicate that Betazed was a founding member [notice it's closeness to Earth (DS9)]. DS9 Trills are argued about a lot [we can't even agree on how the TNG Trills fit into it]. There are other races as well that cannot be agreed on but there are at least a few.

Posted by J (Member # 608) on :

I thought Alpha Centauri was an Earth colony???

Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :

Hey, that's just what Shane Johnson says. I'm not throwing my support behind it one way or the other.

Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :

The only original series references to Alpha Centauri were that its a beuatiful place (Tomorrow is Yesterday) and that Zefram Cochrane lived there 'Metamorphosis'

Some really silly people took this to mean that Zefram Cochrane was Alpha Centauran (with a human name) and that Alpha Centauri was populated by human-like beings with human-like names and were our first contact.

Other people correctly inferred that, due to its proximity and inhabitation by humans, Alpha Centauri was a colony.

And just because my car's speedometer goes up to 120 mph i still prefer to stay under 90 mph, even on the highway. I think 4.5 or so is safer for all concerned. My car shakes when i go over 80, and all of the enterprises have complained about going their top speed (or at least their engineers have complained). I think its a matter of not overdoing it

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

The UFP logo (you know, the one with the olive branches and the starfield) has three big stars on it amongst the field of smaller stars. I've always kind of wondered if those are supposed to be referring to the founding members. And I would second any opinion that Earth and Vulcan were two of the founding members, regardless of how many there were.

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

That's just the logo from ST2 onwards, though (I think). An earlier one was glimpsed in ST:TMP (see for example the SF HQ shuttle pier floor) and had no trio of central stars.

Whether the TMP logo should be considered a brief aberration, or the norm from 2161 to the mid-2270s, is so far up to personal preference. ENT just barely might show us the UFP logo in some of the later episodes, perhaps by leaping ahead more than one year per season, or then by visiting this guy who's been contracted to design the logo for this upcoming big alliance, with an unusually distant deadline... Would they show the trio of stars or the TMP version?

Vulcan might be a founding member; but it could as well be like the US under Wilson, in essence founding the League of Nations but not joining it. Earth is very probably a founder.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

Didn't "Journey to Babel" name a few members *founding* members (not that I ever saw that ep..)

I'd say the founders are Earth, Andor and Vulcan, with perhaps Tellar (*if* they make a return to canon) and some former colonies of the respective planets.

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

"Return to canon"? Just because we haven't seen them in a while, they don't become noncanon. There isn't a statute of limitations on canonicity. :-)

And we don't even know that those three stars are supposed to represent three stars. Maybe the starfield represents stars in general, and the three bright ones represent some kind of concepts like... I dunno... "unity", "freedom", and "peace", or something (because the first letters spell "UFP" and I can pretend I'm clever)...

Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Harry:
Didn't "Journey to Babel" name a few members *founding* members (not that I ever saw that ep...

No. "Journey to Babel" only established that the Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites were members in 2267. It makes no mention of the founding at all.

Before First Contact, I bucked fandom and preferred to think that Earth and her colonies were the only planets that were united and federated at first, and that it was within a generation of Kirk that any aliens joined at all. The movie implied that humans and Vulcans were quite close from 2063 on, so I ammended that to include Vulcan as a founding member. Enterprise as of yet doesn't indicate that we have a close relationship with any race besides Vulcan, so unless it becomes clear that there are multiple founders, I'll stick with that for now. For example, we know that the Andorians are ultimately members, but there's no pressing need for them to be founding members just because they're relatively close by. After all, the Klingons are relatively close by...

Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :

The old Star Fleet Technical Manual in 1975 listed 5 member systems by name in the Articles of Federation: the United Nations of the Planet Earth, the Planetary Confederation of 40 Eridani, the United Planets of 61 Cygni, the Star Empire of Epsilon Indi, and the Alpha Centauri Concordium of Planets. The Starfleet Medical Handbook listed the races for those planets as being human, Vulcan, Tellarite, Andorian, and human derived (the ancestors of the Alpha Centaurians were supposedly transplanted ancient Greeks).

The Starfleet Spaceflight Chronology that came out after TMP accepted these descriptions as gospel, and Shane Johnson used that as reference in "Worlds." Indeed, his entry for Alpha Centauri quotes the Chronology directly.

BTW, the flags and symbols Franz Joseph designed for those 5 worlds can just barely be glimpsed as wall decorations in the travel pod sequence in STII.

Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Woodside Kid:
The Starfleet Spaceflight Chronology that came out after TMP accepted these descriptions as gospel[...]

Actually, the Spaceflight Chronology adds Rigel as a founding member in addition to the "big five," doesn't it? Mine copy is in another city.

Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :

You could be right, Ryan. I donated my copy to the library when I went into the Air Force, many moons ago. What I meant was that the chronology accepted the five worlds listed in the Tech Manual as founders; there could have been others.