Hello all, this video continues on following the post Enterprise stories up to the formation
of the United Federation of Planets and this time we’ll cover the year 2157, looking
at the major events as depicted in the book, “To Brave the Storm”. A lot more went
down in this year as Starfleet seemingly began to get its act together when fighting the
Romulans, despite the dire state the previous year had left them in.
With Starfleet effectively going at it alone, and the Coalition’s vulnerability to the
Romulan hijacking weapon keeping its allies out of the fight, Starfleet had made the decision
to take the NX-01 away from the frontlines. This was for several reasons. First off, it
protected earth’s most advanced ship from the malware the Star Empire routinely deployed
in encounters. So far, Starfleet had managed to avoid losing an NX class to their enemy’s
attempts to capture one, through self-destructs. From June 2156 to December, Commodore Archer
and the Enterprise had been pulled from the frontlines to fly around making friends. Basically,
he was travelling from system to system, rendering aid to needy ships, supplying repairs and
medical aid wherever it was requested while the NX-01 was supplied with extra amounts
of food, stores and spare parts specifically for trade. Not only did this keep the Enterprise
away from the Romulans, but it was alliance building at its most simple level. Several
species even invited Archer to meet with their governments to pitch his case for helping
out in the Earth-Romulan War. But more often than not, the answer was no. Another reason
was intelligence gathering, as Archer was tasked with learning everything about the
territories he visited and keep an ear open for Romulan movements that may have upset
the local powers. In an interesting mirror, future ships of
the name Enterprise would also fulfil similar diplomatic roles in times of war in both primary
and apocryphal canon. We of course have Captain Pike and his orders to stay away from the
frontlines of the Klingon War of 2256. In this instance, the 1701 was tasked with continuing
Starfleet’s mandate to explore, even as the rest of the fleet was plunged into turmoil.
This was so that, in some way, even should the UFP fall, the founding reason of exploration
would be preserved. During the course of the Dominion War in 2373-75,
the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E was in commission, but from the show DS9, we never got even a
whisper as to what it was supposedly up to. The closets we get was that it was patrolling
the Neutral Zone in First Contact, set during the years of that war, but they dealt with
a Borg incident during that film, not the Dominion. A comic series paints the adventures
as far more diplomatic in nature, again during a time when the Federation was caught up in
active conflict. One of these missions had Picard approach the Gorn Hegemony for aid
while others had the ship continue Starfleet’s other mission statement to explore. As well
as the reasons mentioned in the case of the original Federation Enterprise, this ship
also had the added weight of the name’s legacy. By this stage, the Enterprise was
regarded as a poster flagship of the Federation, which made risking it in engagements a very
dangerous thing, as its presence alone could draw unwanted attention to a skirmish. And
if it were lost, the blow to morale would be severe.
By January 28th, 2157. An engineering team led by Stillwell, with both Jefferies of Jefferies
Tubes fame and Tobin Dax, eventually overcome the Romulan hijack weapon by making a more
analogue interface and reducing the amount of networking between consoles. However, this
breakthrough was kept secret from the other Coalition members, as Starfleet reasoned that
they needed to mitigate leaks and the others weren’t fighting anyway, why would they
need it? By the following month, the countermeasures
had been implemented across the fleet, and on February the 16th, the battle of gamma
hydra system began. A Starfleet taskforce led by the NX-01 and 7 other Daedalus vessels
entered the system based on some gossip and hunch-work obtained by their goodwill campaign.
The Vissians had a listening post near the black hole in the system that was constructed
to watch for the advancing Romulans. While they were not joining the battle against the
Star Empire, they were prepared to defend their territory from the expansionist force.
Archer had reasoned that the Romulans would still attack the outpost in an effort to cut
off the Vissian’s eyes in the sector, so they could move through it to attack Coalition
planets, despite the Vissian’s neutrality. His hunch proved correct, but he was too late
to save the outpost. Instead, he encountered a Romulan fleet that
outnumbered his two to one. Things were going badly until the Vissians arrived with their
own fleet of 10 in response to the Romulan’s incursion and they briefly allied with Starfleet
to force back the warbirds. Starfleet lost 5 ships in the battle. While the Vissians
were still not going to ally with the humans, they did tow the fleet to their nearest repair
station before sending them back on their way.
In August, we have the battle of Galorndon Core according to these books. If you watch
my Star Trek Online Story Series, you may have seen an alternate tale as to how this
system was ruined by the Romulans. In this version however, the Enterprise had managed
to intercept a single Romulan Bird of Prey, the IRW Raon, in the system and overwhelm
it, taking its weapons and impulse offline. Galorndon Core in this telling is a mostly
unclaimed world, but one that has a lot of interest from some human researchers, leading
to a team of two to be stationed on the surface. The Star Empire however wanted the location
for a staging ground, and the dilithium deposits on its surface. After all, M class planets
with dilithium veins are a rarity and sought after for the relative ease of access to the
rare mineral. The Romulans had already landed a team on the surface to sack the human’s
facility, presuming it was more nefarious than two biologists, but the Enterprise dispatched
its own MACO team and photon’ed the hell outa the orbiting enemy ship, captained by
Chulak. The vessel retreated at warp speeds before
circling back, at warp 4, and colliding with the planet. The multiwarp collision destroyed
much of the garden world’s surface, caused immense tectonic activity and released high
levels of electromagnetic energy that, even years later in 2366, would still degrade technology
and even the nervous systems of most humanoids. There was also another skirmish in the Prantares
system that only lasted 36 minutes and resulted in a Starfleet victory, although with a great
loss to their fleet. This, combined with the prior two “victories” at Galorndon Core,
which resulted in the loss of the planet and the Gamma Hydra encounter where over half
Archer’s fleet was lost, leads to a strong lapse of moral, even in victory. Hoshi even
has a bit of an understandable breakdown over it.
Meanwhile, the Decepticons, I mean the Romulans were busy securing their other flank, the
Haakonan front. After their failed attack on the species on the orders of the mentally
declining Praetor D’Deridex, the Star Empire had been bearing the brunt of a Haakonan counter-campaign
that was diverting Admiral Valdore’s attention and splitting the Romulan war effort, just
as the Admiral had feared. This was sorted out when an overly ambitious
Romulan Commander, Dagarth acquired a modified version of the mutagenic pathogen that afflicted
the Enterprise crew in the episode “Extinction”. She then dropped it on the Haakonan homeworld,
causing the entire species to rapidly be overcome by its effects and they set off in search
of “Urquat”, the home of the species they were being morphed into. So basically, the
Romulans wiped out the Haakonans. It’s worth pointing out that this action was not condoned
by Admiral Valdore, as he, quite rightly feared the effects of this mutagen, despite assurances
that Romulans, like Vulcans, were mostly immune. Dagarth was executed for her risky actions.
So this pretty much brings us to the end of 2157, the year that saw Earth actually begin
to win against the Romulans, but they were hardly “turning the tide” as every victory
came at a huge cost, and the Star Empire had not even been wholly concentrating on the
Earth campaign. On top of this, Vulcan continued to stand by its policy of non-interference,
despite its status as a Coalition planet and was increasingly concerned with its own security
after the attack on Mount Seleya. So, thank you for watching this part off the
early Federation series, but again, not too much word on what Andor or Tellar got up to,
aside from the occasional supplies and aid from sympathisers with Earth from within their
governments. I’ll keep digging around the apocryphal lore to see what else went down
as I have left out a lot of details, as I don’t want to spoil the books for anyone
who intends on picking them up. Thanks again for watching, I’ve been Ric and I’ll see
you next time, goodbye!