Frontier Day Explained Ahead Of Star Trek: Picard Season 3 and Series Finale!
Star Trek reports.
What is Frontier Day?
Captain Archer’s first mission holds an importance significance in the Federation’s history.
“Thousands of inhabited planets at our fingertips.
And we’ll be able to explore those strange new worlds and seek out new life and new civilizations.
This engine will let us go boldly where no man has gone before.”
– Zefram Cochrane at the dedication of the Warp Five Complex, 2119
Zefram Cochrane’s words at the opening of the Warp Five Complex were both accurate and prophetic. It would take humanity 42 years to launch the first Warp 5 mission into deep space, but that mission would prove to be truly transformative, bringing about a golden age of exploration and scientific advancement, opening up our neighborhood of the Galaxy to a lasting era of cooperation that carries on into the 25th Century.
Frontier Day poster by artist Laz Marquez
Frontier Day celebrates the epic voyage when Earth’s Starfleet sent its first ship with an interspecies crew into the cosmos in 2151. Captain Jonathan Archer, along with a Vulcan first officer and Denobulan chief medical officer, boarded the Enterprise NX-01 and left orbit on a mission of mercy to return a wounded Klingon to his homeworld. Before the conclusion of Archer and his crew’s voyage, they would initiate the first interstellar cooperation between humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites — the four founding species of the United Federation of Planets. Their actions and resourcefulness went on to create many of the foundational policies and dictates that would find their way into the Federation Charter, establishing the foundation of the Starfleet we know today.
Historians had long pointed to Archer’s voyage as the pivotal moment when Earth’s Starfleet became something more and began, brick-by-brick, to build an organization that was equal parts exploration, defense, and diplomacy. Ultimately, those in Starfleet, with strong populace support, believe the contributions of the organization and its legendary voyages of first contact, peace, exploration, and diplomacy should be honored with its own celebration. Frontier Day, along with Federation Day, which honors the formation of Starfleet, along with the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet Academy in 2161, commemorates Starfleet’s storied history.
Frontier Day recognizes the realities of the historical events that marked a transformation of Starfleet’s core mandate. It was with this mission’s launch that Starfleet stood ready to transform itself and make good on Zefram Cochrane’s promise, ushering in a new era for species across the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.
Join us as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Enterprise’s journey with an unprecedented celebration, including a demonstration of the latest in Starfleet innovation with a gathering of the fleet at Earth’s spacedock. With a rededication to the ideals and tenets that have made Starfleet and the Federation endure, the remarkable, golden era continues into the 25th Century and beyond.
Star Trek: Picard S03E10, titled The Last Generation, will air on April 20, 2023.
