I'm in the middle of watching "First Contact," and it occurs to me that we might be able to trace back the NX-01 to the interference that we saw in the movie...
I hate to be an ENT apologist, but this just might make some weird sense --
In the "original" timeline, Cochrane developed his ships without any kind of interference. But thanks to the Borg's interference, the Enterprise-E showed up to give some help. Picard, Riker and company specifically called the ship the Enterprise... which could potentially inspire Dr. Cochrane to leave a request for the first Warp Five starship to be named "Enterprise."
On top of that, Cochrane got a chance to look at the Enterprise-E through a telescope. Of course it was just a brief glimpse -- but it was long enough to make note of a saucer and nacelles... thus inspiring the basic and too-advanced configuration of the NX-01.
See? We can blame it all on temporal interference! And since it's clear that the previous series -- specifically TOS, TNG, and DS9 -- were "before" the interference, and so in the 24th century timeline there's no history of the NX-01. But for Voyager (specifically the Friendship One ship which carried Cochrane's message) was apparently influenced by the Starfleet interference...
Of course, the intricacies of time travel are too much for our simplistic 21st-century minds to understand...
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Why is the first serious interstellar Earth mission of any consequence something whose absence in dialogue we have to go all nuts about, and yet no one rants about the absence of, say, the exact founding members of the Federation in dialogue, or its first president, or something. Surely those are far more important events to your average 24th century citizen, culturally speaking?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
About MinutiaeMan's original theory: just take one step more (or actually n steps). The events of "FC" could have been the nth iteration of a time loop, a loop that began with Cochrane inventing exactly nothing. Then the meddlesome Borg created this time loop in order to slowly nurture a technologically advanced Federation, which they thought would present much richer pickings than the separate Vulcan, Andorian etc. cultures. This plan then either backfired, or is proceeding as planned and the seeming Borg setbacks are of no real consequence...
But I agree that the failure to mention NX-01 is no great anomaly. It's a far greater anomaly that NCC-1701 was mentioned so many times in TNG and even DS9 and VOY...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Once? Once? And, uh...well, more than once, I think?
Really, I would have liked a handful of Kirk references from TNG, ideally of the "Your ship is part of a grand legacy Picard. And it's an election year! You have to make time for the Betazed Annual Flotilla." But I suppose an episode about Council candidates swarming the ship while in port, eager for a photo op, probably fell outside of anyone's conception of the show.
But, you know, not mine.
Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :
Most people in the US Navy if asked about the "first" Enterprise are going to talk about the "Big-E" during WWII. Only very few are going to know (or care) that there were ships with the name before that or if some other service is using the name.
It is easy to figure that the corporate memory of Star Fleet isn't going to go back past the creation of their service. At least not in casual conversation or ship lineage. Of course that leaves us with the TMP wall-o-ships, but hey it is just a TV show... Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
A predestination paradoxon is definitely an option here. Maybe rather for the name than for the shape of the ship (after all, it wasn't the Akira top view he saw through the telescope). And for the Starfleet arrowhead on Friendship One.
I think that it is in fact remarkable that NX-01 was never shown or mentioned. At least on TNG it made a lot of sense to have references to NCC-1701, considering the name of the ship.
Anyway, if we go with the time travel explanation, we could at least maintain the USS Dauntless NX-01. :-) While I'm usually opposed to messed up timelines, it would make a nice side remark (from Daniels, for instance) that NX-01 was not supposed to be named Enterprise in the original timeline.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
quote:Why we've never heard of the NX-01 before...?
I don't have a problem with that. Until First Contact we didn't know that Cochrane's ship was named Phoenix. One should think that Earth's first warp ship is far more important than the first Warp-5 ship.
And I don't think the Dauntless has anything to do with the Enterprise. The Dauntless was probably the first ship of the Federation Starfleet. And regarding the registry: We've learned that Earth Starfleet uses another registry-system than Federation Starfleet.
It is possible that the Federation Starfleet used NX as prefix for prototypes, because the NX-class was the first starship class equipped with the experimental Warp 5 drive.
Posted by Obi Juan (Member # 90) on :
I agree with your theory Spike, but imagine how confusing it could get seeing as the foundation of the Federation is only a few years away.
Joe Officer: I was just assigned to the NX-01. Fred Officer: The Enterprise? Joe Officer: No the Dauntless. The Enterprise is now NCC-07.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
But, if Joe Officer were a normal person, he would simply have said "I was just assigned to the Enterprise" in the first place.
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
quote:But, if Joe Officer were a normal person, he would simply have said "I was just assigned to the Enterprise" in the first place.
Of course, assuming that the ship was awarded an article.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
I just don't think the NX-01-A Dauntless is worth worrying about. We've seen that even in the future people don't have perfect recall of history, so might not immediately think that any A-variant of an NX-01 should necessarily be called Enterprise, especially when the NCC-1701 registry is much better known.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
Add to this the fact that while externally it was the NX-01-A, but the MSD said NX-01A:
. . . and they might think that while the registry would have been meant to evoke the first Enterprise, the name itself had to be different as the data from Starfleet might have told them there already was a new NCC-1701.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
One wonders if the crew of a Los Angeles-class submarine stumbled across the USS SeaWolf (SSN-21) they'd immediately decide that it came from the sixties or that it bore the number of a sub named the same thing from the sixties.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
Sonar would say it was newer than the 60's....
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
I don't think it's that hard to believe that the NX-01 Enterprise was never mentioned before. All the other Trek shows have been about Federation Starfleet and we all know that the 1701 was the first Federation Starfleet Enterprise and the most significant historically (to the Federation).
Posted by EdipisReks (Member # 510) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ritten: Sonar would say it was newer than the 60's....
assuming the sonar said anything at all. the Seawolf class is pretty damn stealthy.
Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :
I was running on the assumption that they had stumbled upon it, as indicted....
But if they weren't stealthy then they would be defeating their own purpose.....
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
In any case, the Seawolf is still a USN vessel, registered during the same "epoch" as the Los Angeleses and the Virginias, even if there is no obvious sequence or logic to the SSN numbering between these classes.
The NX-01 in turn is run by an organization very different from the one that was supposed to have christened and registered the NX-01*A.
The USN wouldn't worry much about giving, say, the registry "DD-2001" to a new destroyer, even if the very same registry was in use on contemporary British, German or Russian vessels. UFP Starfleet thus might not pay much heed to the existence of Archer's ship when registering its first Dauntless class starship in 2163...
Timo Saloniemi
P.S. Do modern subs even have pennant numbers on the sail? How could the Los Angeles crew identify the Seawolf registry?
Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :
They couldn't, at least from the sonar trace. They would be able to distinguish it from a different submarine, since they would sound different from one another, but the only way they would know the number is if they both surfaced near each other and took a look.
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
Maybe in the 99.999+% of these people's conversations that occur offscreen, someone questioned the Dauntless registry being the same as Enterprise, everyone scratched their heads, and then they all said, "Fuck it, there are more important things to worry about. Let's go slipstreamin'!"
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Dammit, I hate being an ENT apologist... the way continuity has been butchered ticks me off sometimes, but every once in a while I come up with ideas that just might explain things.
(Assuming that Arturis's Dauntless were real,) What if Starfleet was reusing the registry number but not the name? The NX-01 was the first big leap in interstellar travel after Cochrane's original flight. Perhaps they were comparing the slipstream drive to the warp five engine?
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
I too have had some thoughts along those lines. . .
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Of course, there's no reason to assume that the Dauntless' registry was meant to reflect that of the first Starfleet vessel. I see no reason to come up with any explanation other than it being a coincidence. Who knows what kind of effect Arturis was going for. He had plenty of access to Voyager's database. Perhaps he intentionally choice a meaningless registry, on the theory that it was better to make up something rather than try to mimic a more "real" registry and having someone on board catch on because of some minor fact he overlooked.
Posted by O Captain Mike Captain (Member # 709) on :
i still like the Federation Starfleet differs from the Earth Starfleet defense. that there will be a Dauntless NCC-01... whatever im pretty sure this is on a list of things that the creators will never touch on anyway...
(BTW Timo.. 2163?)
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Just wanted to show that the launching of UFP Starfleet's first new ship need not coincide with any significant historical date. Come to think of it, there's no real reason why NX-01 would even have to be the first ship registered. NCC-200 could have been launched years prior...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Obi Juan (Member # 90) on :
To those who can�t deal with the fact that the Earth Starfleet�s (ESF) NX-01 doesn�t necessarily have to be the Federation Starfleet�s (FSF) NX-01:
Firstly�What if there�s an NCC class floating around out there too? Then we can argue why the ESF NCC-01 isn�t the Dauntless either?
Secondly�Let�s assume for a second that the Dauntless was indeed the FSF ship that carried the numerical registry designation of 01. That does not mean that it was NX-01. Hell, the Dauntless could have been an older class (even an NX) meaning that it would be NCC-01. If it�s a prototype, it gets an NX�if it�s a standard ship of the line it gets an NCC.
Thirdly�One would assume that if the NX-01 Enterprise is still around when the ESF gets incorporated into the FSF, it will be a tried and true design with many other NX offspring plying the spaceways. Meaning that the 10+ year old ship would not warrant a NX designation anyway. If anything, it would be the NCC-01. However, there is no reason it would necessarily deserve that special honor anyway, especially not because of its numerical registry designation of 01. Every pre-fed ship that is the first of its class would be 01.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
quote:Meaning that the 10+ year old ship would not warrant a NX designation anyway. If anything, it would be the NCC-01.
Now you're mixing ESF und FSF registry schemes. The "NX" in "NX-01" has nothing to do with prototype status as far as we know. That's the class name.
Posted by Obi Juan (Member # 90) on :
quote: Now you're mixing ESF und FSF registry schemes. The "NX" in "NX-01" has nothing to do with prototype status as far as we know. That's the class name.
I mix nothing sir!
My point is that, despite the fact we now know that Ent�s NX-01 is based on the class type�not the experimental status of FSF's system, some people still think that the FSF�s NX-01 should be the Enterprise. Why? I don�t know. Perhaps I�ll piss them off enough that they explain it to me using small words�preferably not the four-letter variety...
Anyway, the point I was trying to make with:
quote: Meaning that the 10+ year old ship would not warrant a NX designation anyway. If anything, it would be the NCC-01.
Is that even if the E-nil did end up being ship number 01 in the FSF�s registry system (instead of the Dauntless, or the USS Fred, or the Good Ship Lollypop-A) it would still end up being the NCC-01, not the NX-01, which pretty much invalidates the only argument I can see for it being FSF�s 01 anyway (which I already rambled on about enough in my previous post).
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
And since it's clear that the previous series -- specifically TOS, TNG, and DS9 -- were "before" the interference, and so in the 24th century timeline there's no history of the NX-01. But for Voyager (specifically the Friendship One ship which carried Cochrane's message) was apparently influenced by the Starfleet interference...![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
