What's the full service history behind Star Trek's USS Franklin? As any Star Trek fan will attest, ships are more like living, breathing characters than mere inanimate settings. Whether it be the bright, blocky aesthetic of the USS Enterprise, the sleek futurism of the Discovery, or the hallowed halls of Deep Space Nine, it's impossible for audiences (and, indeed, characters) not to become attached after spending week after week with the same vessels.
This phenomenon of emotionally investing in ships might explain why Star Trek just can't stop destroying them. Nothing says "major threat incoming" like a familiar, homely bridge going up in a fiery hail of photon torpedoes, and such moments can create a heart-wrenching sense of loss without one of the main cast being killed off. One of Star Trek's most dramatic ship decimation scenes comes courtesy of Star Trek: Beyond. Set in J.J. Abrams' alternate "Kelvin" timeline, Star Trek: Beyond sees a routine mission rapidly descend into all out carnage when Idris Elba's Krall catches the Enterprise in an ambush, forcing Kirk to leave her behind.
Ditching the Enterprise within the first act, Star Trek: Beyond calls for a second ship to save the day. Enter the USS Franklin. Discovered and reawakened by Kirk and the gang, the Franklin is integral to Star Trek: Beyond's plot and comes complete with a long history that reaches back into the earliest days of the Federation. Here's everything we know about Star Trek's USS Franklin.
The Franklin's Origins & Early Years
The Franklin predates the Federation by approximately 10-15 years. Although Star Trek: Beyond doesn't specify the date of her maiden voyage exactly, a general period can be ascertained thanks to both the big screen Kelvin threequel and Enterprise season 2. In Star Trek: Beyond, Simon Pegg's Scotty helpfully explains that the Franklin was Earth's first ship capable of hitting warp factor 4. Since the Enterprise launched in 2150 and boasted warp 5, the Franklin's debut must've happened several years prior, but no earlier than 2145, which Enterprise claims was when the Delta cracked warp 3 for the first time. These dates provide a 5-year window in which the Franklin's story could've started.
With the Federation not established until 2161, the Franklin began under United Earth jurisdiction, hence the NX registry. During this time, the ship would've been involved in man's ongoing conflict against the Romulans, but the earliest adventures of the pre-Federation vessel are nowhere to be found in Star Trek canon. When the United Federation of Planets finally came together, the Franklin was renamed the "USS Franklin" and put under the command of Balthazar Edison - a decorated veteran from the recently dissolved MACO (Military Assault Command Operations). Following Edison's promotion circa 2161, the USS Franklin became a typical Starfleet operations ship, much like the Enterprise, but that all changed in 2164.
The Gagarin Radiation Belt Incident
Until the 2150s, intense radiation rendered Star Trek's Loracus system a no-go for United Earth's fleet of exploration vessels. After over a decade of relative calm and a few successful trips, Edison and his USS Franklin crew were sent to investigate this seldom-visited area of space, but Starfleet's ambition to boldly explore "strange new worlds" bit them on the backside. Presumably through a combination misfortune and a lack of knowledge about the Loracus system, the Franklin stumbled across a wormhole in the Gagarin Radiation Belt, never to be seen again. The cautionary tale of the Franklin became part of Starfleet academy's training program (under the "don't fly into wormholes" module, presumably), and Edison was officially declared MIA in 2255.
Unbeknownst to Starfleet, the wormhole had whisked Edison's ship far, far away to Altimid, somewhere outside of Federation territory. Only 3 crew members survived the ensuing crash - Edison, Anderson Le, and science officer Jessica Wolff. The trio holed up in the barely-functioning Franklin and sent distress signals to no avail. Being abandoned by his employer intensified reservations Edison already held regarding the Federation's diplomatic philosophy, and the three Franklin survivors became embittered criminals, using Altimid's advanced technology to lengthen their lives at the expense of innocent prisoners.
One of these prisoners, Jaylah, managed to escape Edison (now going under the name of Krall), and take refuge in the abandoned USS Franklin, hoping to restore the vessel and escape Altimid permanently. Jaylah hid the Franklin with hologram tech and gradually rebuilt her new home with scavenged odds and ends, using the ship's data banks to learn about Earth on her days off.
Events Of Star Trek: Beyond
Attempting to rebuild a Federation vessel without proper resources, it would've been a very long time before Jaylah departed Altimid. What she really needed to find in the surrounding forestland wasn't spare parts, but a stranded Starfleet engineer wandering around aimlessly. In 2263, Jaylah finds Scotty, a stranded Starfleet engineer wandering around aimlessly. Within a matter of hours, Scotty has fixed and upgraded the Franklin's transporter to be compatible with life forms, and after other Enterprise survivors make their way to the Franklin's crash site, additional repairs are enacted. Hurtling the Franklin from the edge of a cliff serves to jump start the ship for the first time in a century.
Now under the command of James T. Kirk, the surviving Enterprise crew and Jaylah make the trip to Starfleet's Yorktown base. Despite being vastly outnumbered and outgunned, Krall's swarm proves no match for the Franklin's old-school sound system and the unrivaled power of the Beastie Boys. Though successfully restored to working order, Yorktown was always going to be a last hurrah for the Franklin. On Kirk's order, the ship was used as a battering ram to force entry into Yorktown, then served to shield civilians from Krall's advancing scouts, ultimately landing in a small body of water. Thus, the story of the USS Franklin comes to an end, and a 100-year-old Federation mystery is finally closed.
The USS Franklin In The Prime Star Trek Timeline
Making its sole appearance in Star Trek: Beyond, the USS Franklin is exclusive to the Kelvin movies... for now. The point of deviation between Kelvin and Prime realities comes in 2233 when a disgruntled Romulan (is there any other kind?) travels from the future, altering history. This means the USS Franklin existed in the Prime Star Trek universe, and was captained by Balthazar Edison - just like the parallel timeline. The ship also would've succumbed to the same wormhole and still crashed on Altimid, where Edison's transformation into Krall began.
Star Trek: Beyond takes place in 2263 of the alternate universe, at which point Shatner's Kirk was in his early career as Enterprise captain, still some years from the beginning of The Original Series. This could suggest Krall was dealt with off-screen in the Prime Star Trek continuity, beaten by the Enterprise or some other Starfleet vessel with much less fanfare and fuss than Chris Pine managed. Even so, Krall has never been referenced in Prime Star Trek canon, and his fate remains unknown. In all likelihood, this alternate version of Idris Elba's villain is continuing his search for the missing Abronath part, which evidently didn't come into the possession of William Shatner's Kirk. If she's still alive, Jaylah might be beavering away repairing the Franklin still.
Krall and Jaylah could both still appear in Prime Trek continuity, and with an extra century of cheating death under his belt, the villain wouldn't necessarily look like Idris Elba, making a potential return much easier. Star Trek: Beyond afforded the USS Franklin an explosive swansong... but don't rule out seeing her again.