Hello and welcome to another episode of Truth OR Myth Beta Canon, a Star Trek web series that dives into the history of any given topic using Beta Canon sources and my own imagination to fill in the gaps. In today’s episode, we’re taking a look at the Kelvin Constitution Class of Starfleet Starships, where Ill endeavour to create a cogent narrative to explain how this Amazing Class of Starship came to exist as it was seen in Star Trek 2009.
Because this IS a Beta Canon video, all information relaid should pretty much be taken with a grain of stardust, and only considered a little bit of Star Trek Fun! And so, with all that out of the way, let’s begin.
Launching a FULL investigation into a devastating attack by a vessel appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Starfleet Command would head down a path that would see it abandon its original plans for the Constitution Class, replacing it with vessel class the likes of which no one had ever seen before…
In late 2233, the Federation Starship U.S.S. Kelvin would detect and subsequently investigate what appeared to be a lightning storm in space that had suddenly appeared on their long-range sensor.
Well conducting routine observations and scientific study for Starfleet, a massive vessel of unknown origin would exit the phenomenon, and immediately began attacking the Kelvin with weaponry so far advanced that the Federation Starship had little chance against the enemy vessel. In a desperate bid to save his wife, who was in labour and the ship’s surviving crew, George Kirk, who had been given command of the ship by its Captain, now deceased. Richard Robau would set a collision course with the enemy ship causing major damage to the vessel, which allowed several evacuation shuttlecraft to make it to safety.
A task force, under the Command of Captain Brett Anderson was immediately dispatched to the area, but to their surprise, the vessel and the anomaly were no where to be found.
Doing intensive searches of the area and the surrounding systems, the task force was not able to locate the vessel but DID detect Klingon Warp Signatures, leading Starfleet to believe that the Klingon Empire now processed the powerful starship. Fearing what the Klingon Empire could do with such technology, Admiral Marcus ordered that all of the enemies remaining debris, left by the collision with the U.S.S. Kelvin, be collected by the task force and returned to Starfleet Command immediately.
While awaiting the task forces return to HQ, the Starfleet Admiralty held various meetings in effort to decide how to proceed with the current situation.
Admiral Alexander Marcus had been newly promoted at the time, after a decade of exemplary service to the Federation as Captain of the U.S.S. Jonathan Archer. His first contact with the Tholian Assembly had not only prevented a war with the unusual Crystalline Species, but led to a non-aggression treaty signed by both sides, and so his voice in this matter carried a lot of weight.
Admiral Marcus believed, that if the Klingon Empire did in fact have this powerful vessel in their clutches, that it would only be a matter of time before the Empire reverse-engineered its technology to use against the Federation. Both the Federation Council and Starfleet agreed with Marcus’s assessment and placed the Admiral in charge of a team to contract this threat, with ALL of Starfleets and the Federations resources at his disposal.
Assembling his teams of Starfleet’s best and brightest, Marcus had every inch of the debris scanned and analyzed. To their benefit, Starfleet Command had the detailed scans of the Enemy Starship taken by the U.S.S. Kelvin as well, as before its destruction, George Kirk had downloaded the logs in to one of the escaping shuttlecraft. The U.S.S. Kelvin, being a specialized pure science starship, had gotten a lot of useful information about the enemy vessel, including some technological breakdowns that would prove useful to Marcus and Starfleet in the future.
For its part, Starfleet Intelligence was set the priority of finding out if the Klingon Empire did in fact have the vessel, and if so, where it was located. And over the next 2 decades, although there would be rumours about the starship and its position, none would pan out to be true, eventually causing some of the Admiralty to believe that the ship had actually either returned from whence it came, or had simply been destroyed at later date… The truth though was a far different matter.
After it’s run in with the U.S.S. Kelvin, the Narada, the name of the enemy starship, had been rendered powerless and adrift in space. A Klingon War Group, that had been hastily assembled the Klingon High Council was in fact sent to a star system with orders to destroy the ship as the Klingon High Council was concerned about its own security if this starship was to fall into Federation hands, the War Group was comprised of forces from House Mokai of the Empire and upon arrival, they discovered the Narada to be completely dead, having only minimal emergency power at it’s disposal.
The leader of House Mokai, K’trec, was amazed to find that the ship seemed almost to be alive, as it was steadily repairing itself, and it would not be long before the Narada had regained full power. Springing his warrior into action, the Klingon War Group were able to capture the starship, discovering its crew to be of Romulan Decent. Something which did not make sense to K’trec, who knew the Romulan Star Empire had not achieved anywhere near the level of technology this vessel processed, leading him to believe that the Narada may be from a point in the distant future.
Swearing his warriors to silence, K’trec reported the Narada destroyed to the high council, and towed the vessel to a secret facility in the Rura Pente System, imprisoning the Narada’s crew at the Penal Colony itself.
Attempting to get the starship operational, K’trec’s scientists would time and time again be met with failure, unable to crack the advanced computer command codes used within its systems. Interrogating the Romulan Crew, K’trec would be met by an unbelievable silence as not one of the crew would offer up any information about the starship.
Preparing to use other, more forceful techniques to gain the information he sought, K’trec was surprised that before he could act, he and his house was called to step before the High Council on charges of treason. The House of Duras had brought the charges against House Mokai after intelligence gathered by their forces suggested that House Mokai had not in fact destroyed the Narada as ordered, but rather had kept the starship in a secret location, planning to use the vessel to overthrow the council.
Though K’trec fought hard against the charges, the High Council could not ignore the holes in his story as well as the implications of the charge itself. And so The High Council ordered the entire house executed and its assets to be redistributed through out the remaining houses, because of this fact, and this fact alone, the Narada would spend 2 decades in a secret Klingon Facility run by a skeleton crew of House Mogai loyalists and scientists, who feared rejoining the Empire because it would mean their deaths.
And the Romulan Crew would remain on Rura Penthe as lifetime prisoners, to live out the remainder of their days. Or so the High Council thought… Of course the truth was that Nero, captain of the Romulan Mining Ship Narada, was from the future, the year 2387, where he had used Borg Technology to modify his vessel, in search of revenge for the destruction of the Romulan Home World, placing all the rage and hate he felt about it on one man, Ambassador Spock of Vulcan.
Using data that had been collected from their trip through the anomaly to the past, he had calculated the basic time when he believed Ambassador Spock would himself emerge from a 2nd anomaly, that being in 2258, and set his Romulan Crew Mates the task of biding their time and preparing for an escape when the time was right.
Early in 2258, the Narada’s crew would in fact escape Rura Penthe, and knowing the location of the Narada, thanks to the information they gleaned during their initial interrogations by House Mokai, were able to recapture the vessel and immediately launched the starship to head out and capture Ambassador Spock.
The High Council, when informed of the Narada’s reappearance, sent a fleet of 47 Klingon Battleships to intercept the vessel and destroy it once and for all, but the Klingon Forces were no match for the Fully Functional, completely repaired Narada and ALL 47 starship were obliterated, leaving the Narada to wait for its prey.
By the year 2240, Admiral Marcus’s team had made very little progress on the debris the Narada had left behind, aside from fascinating reports on its regenerative qualities. Admiral Marcus, fueled by endless rumours of the Narada’s continued existence, kept Starfleet concerned enough to ensure its support, even though the Federation Council had by this point felt the Narada Question to be more paranoia than anything else.
It was Admiral Marcus’s plan to create a string of starship classes with advanced technology that could combat the threat of the Narada and the Klingon Empire with ease. Using the Collected Kelvin data, Marcus had teams developing brand new Weaponry and Propulsion Technologies that Starfleet had never even dreamed about. It seemed to him, that this enemy vessel had spurred the imagination of Starfleet’s Engineering Teams as nothing else could, and yet, there was the problem of little progress, and Starfleet Command had begun to lose its faith in Marcus ever so slightly.
Starfleet had been designing a brand new exploration style starship, which was to be known as the Constitution Class. And when Marcus saw the plans for this starship, he immediately decided he wanted the class to be the first in his new fleet. Doing a lot of fancy dancing around, Admiral Marcus was able to convince Starfleet of his need for the Constitution Class as he promised that recent breakthroughs needed a special kind of starship class to test them in.
And Starfleet, believing the Admiral had finally made some breakthroughs, granted him control over the Constitution Class, much to the elation of the Admiral, though now he knew, he HAD to come up with actual breakthroughs immediately, or Starfleet Command would have his head. It was at this point, while watching the Federation News Service after his meeting with Starfleet Command, that Admiral Marcus caught a brief report about a Young Genius named Richard Daystrom, a 21-year-old scientist who was claiming to be close to what he called “the Duotronic Breakthrough,” a revolution in computing technology.
Thinking only a moment, Marcus immediately called the Boy Genius to his office and offered the young Doctor the position of head scientist of his team, explaining the entire situation to Daystrom. Daystrom, being fascinated by the entire project, immediately signed aboard Marcus’s teams, but would the Boy Wonder be able to solve Marcus’s problem?
Well, tune in Next Week, Same Trek Time, Same Trek Channel, for the exciting conclusion…
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