Ensign Matt Franklin was a Starfleet officer serving aboard the USS Jenolan in 2294.
In that year, the Jenolan crashed on the surface of a previously-undiscovered Dyson sphere. Along with former Starfleet officer Montgomery Scott, who was a passenger on board the Jenolan bound for the Norpin colony, Franklin was the only other survivor.
Realizing that they did not have enough supplies to wait for a rescue, Scott conceived the idea of locking the transporter pattern buffer into a diagnostic cycle, and then cross-connecting the buffer to the phase inducers to provide a regenerative power source. This effectively allowed Scott and Franklin to survive in a dematerialized state of suspended animation until they could be rescued.
This innovation proved successful for Scott, who was rescued by the crew of the USS Enterprise-D 75 years later, but Franklin's pattern had degraded 53 percent due to the failure of one of the inducers, effectively killing him.
Scott later remarked that "he was a good lad". He also dismissed Geordi La Forge's admiration of the method used to preserve them, which La Forge had referred to as "absolutely brilliant", to only have been "50% brilliant", adding, "Franklin deserved better". (TNG: "Relics")
This character was only mentioned in dialogue.
Franklin's status as an ensign was mentioned in the episode's script, but not spoken on-screen. [1]
Franklin's first meeting with Scott is depicted in the Pocket TNG novel Engines of Destiny.
External link[]
- Matt Franklin at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works