Frontier Day poster
Frontier Day was a Federation holiday that commemorated the anniversary of the Enterprise NX-01's maiden voyage in April 2151.
250th celebration[]
For the 250th Frontier Day in 2401, Admiral Jean-Luc Picard and Captain William T. Riker were due to speak, and the USS Enterprise-F was slated for early decommissioning. Ahead of the day, a recruitment drive was held on M'talas Prime, for which a statue of Captain Rachel Garrett was to be dedicated.
Guinan decided to capitalize on the occasion by selling small models of the various starships Enterprise in her bar at 10 Forward Avenue. (PIC: "The Next Generation")
Borg and Changeling plot[]
- Main article: Battle of Frontier Day
The 250th Frontier Day was the focal point of a plot masterminded by the Borg Collective and carried out by renegade Changeling collaborators. Under the influence of Changeling infiltrators, the preparations for the celebration were classified at the highest level and involved the unprecedented gathering of the entire Federation fleet at Earth for display exercises. Objections from concerned officers such as Commodore Geordi La Forge were disregarded. (PIC: "Imposters", "The Bounty")
The celebrations began with the USS Enterprise-F departing Sol Station on a final cruise amidst much fanfare and a fireworks display. After giving a speech, Admiral Elizabeth Shelby ordered a demonstration of fleet formation mode, which slaved the fleet to an automated network.
However, shortly after departing, her crew, and the crews of participating ships were partially assimilated by the Borg Collective, in a 'back door' plot that involved altering their DNA via the ship's transporter systems. This altered DNA allowed the Collective to essentially assimilate everyone under the age of 25 and eliminate the rest.
One ship, the USS Excelsior, managed to resist takeover at least initially, before being reclaimed by the fleet's automated systems. It was positioned in the direct firing line of the USS Luna, USS Hikaru Sulu, USS Intrepid, and the USS Cochrane which opened fire on the ship, destroying it and its crew.
In short order, the fleet was assimilated. Once under the control of the Collective, it turned its sights to Probert Station. (PIC: "Võx")
After destroying its defenses, the ships began attacking Probert Station. One of the ships affected, the USS Titan-A under the command of acting captain Seven of Nine, was able to free itself thanks to the cloaking device taken from the HMS Bounty as the fleet formation mode required line of sight to work. The ship performed hit-and-run tactics to distract the ships, but the Titan-A would be recaptured as the assimilated crew discovered and destroyed the cloaking device. Probert Station would then be disabled, bringing down the planetary shields and allowing the ships to aim at all major cities on Earth.
Before the fleet could destroy Earth, the crew of the rebuilt USS Enterprise-D -- which was immune to the Borg takeover since it was not connected to the Starfleet mainframe -- rescued Jack Crusher and destroyed the Borg cube holding the Borg Queen, freeing the crews from assimilation and ending the threat of the Borg Collective once and for all. (PIC: "The Last Generation")
The five-monitor graphic was constructed by Andrew Jarvis, Casey Felt, Mike Okuda, Geoffrey Mandel, and Todd A. Marks. Star Trek: Picard Production Designer Dave Blass not only released a crisp, crystal-clear behind-the-scenes version of the onscreen graphic with additional detail, [1] but also provided a complete gallery of franchise-sanctioned promo starship identification one-sheets of 123 individual ships present at Frontier Day on his Flickr account. [2] Not all of them had been posted by him on his Twitter and Instagram accounts, and those that were only on a piecemeal basis.
Former Picard Research Assistant Jörg Hillebrand has established that the fleet gathered in the fleet formation mode consisted of a grand total of 339 starships from 17 different ship classes, meaning that Blass had provided identifications for over a little of a third of the ships assembled in the formation. [3]
Appendices[]
Background information[]
The marketing for Star Trek: Picard billed the events of season 3 as transpiring on "the 250th anniversary of Starfleet", [4] though the Earth Starfleet already existed prior the NX-01 launching in 2151. Star Trek: Picard executive producer Terry Matalas elaborated upon his team's thinking that the initiation of Archer's mission would be considered a milestone by future generations for including multiple non-Humans for the first time as senior crewmembers in cooperation with Humans. [5] Matalas also tweeted that Frontier Day was specifically the 13th of April, [6] though the finalized episodes did not mention a day of the month. It would presumably fall before the earliest log date mentioned after the NX-01 launch on April 16—at least a day earlier.