USS Jenolan The USS " Jenolan " ( NCC - 2010 ) was a 23rd century Federation starship operated by Starfleet . In 2294 , the transport was carrying passengers to the Norpin colony when the ship experienced an overload to one of its plasma transfer conduit s . When the captain brought the ship out of warp , it hit the gravimetric interference caused by the gravitational field of a previously uncharted Dyson sphere . The ship conducted a standard survey of the surface . Having discovered hundreds of communication array s , " Jenolan " hail ed the sphere . This inadvertently activated one of the sphere ' s docking tractor beam s . The beam attempted to lock onto the ship , but only managed to cause the ship ' s systems to overload and the aft power coil s to explode . Effectively disabled , the ship was caught in the gravity well and crashed onto the northern hemisphere , killing all but two of her crew . The ship itself sustained moderate structural damage , along with heavy damage to its memory core and main drive assembly . Additionally , its inducers were melted and its power couplings were wrecked . The survivors , Ensign Matt Franklin and passenger Captain Montgomery Scott , were unable to devise a means of escaping the sphere . To maximize the probability of surviving until rescue , they placed themselves in suspended animation through an ingenious modification of the transporter pattern buffer by locking it in a continuous level 4 diagnostic , and feeding it power from auxiliary system s . The " Jenolan " s distress call was not received until seventy - five years later , when the discovered the sphere crash site and detected a very low power signature from the " Jenolan " . An away team boarded the " Jenolan " and discovered that life support was still barely functioning and the transporter was still online . By this time only Scott ' s transporter pattern was still intact and only he was rematerialized ; Franklin ' s pattern had degraded by 53 % , effectively killing him . While the " Enterprise " continued to investigate the sphere , Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge and Captain Scott returned to the " Jenolan " to retrieve the sensor data gathered during the initial scan of the sphere . Necessary repairs were made more difficult as some of the repair equipment from the " Enterprise " could not easily interface with the much older components of the " Jenolan " . Recovery of the data became secondary to restoring the impulse engine s when the " Enterprise " failed to answer hails . The engineers proceeded to perform a series of jury - rigged repairs to the ship ' s impulse engines , including the shunting of the ships deuterium from the main cryo pump to the auxiliary tank , and were successfully able to make a week ' s worth of repairs in less than three hours . Following the " Enterprise " s ion trail , the " Jenolan " s short - ranged sensors determined the larger ship ' s point of entry into the sphere . To help the " Enterprise " escape La Forge and Scott brought the " Jenolan " to a stop within the sphere ' s hatch , using the ship ' s shields to prevent the hatch from closing . However , the strain disabled the " Jenolan " once more , preventing it from moving out of the way so the larger ship could pass . The " Enterprise " then beamed off the engineers and destroyed the " Jenolan " with two photon torpedo es just before the two collided , clearing the path and allowing the " Enterprise " and her crew to escape unharmed before the hatch closed once again . ( ) Background information . The " Jenolan " was named for the Australian tourist attraction Jenolan Caves , visited by Naren Shankar and episode writer Ronald D . Moore following a convention . ( " " ) In the first draft script of " Relics " , the " Jenolan " was cited as having the registry number " NC - 567 " ( which persisted in the episode ' s novelization ) and the ship was established as having been reported missing on stardate 7895 . 1 . The " Jenolan " studio model was a reuse of the transport shuttle SD - 103 from , albeit heavily refurbished at Gregory Jein , Inc . with a bridge module and 23rd century style warp nacelles added . The original model was built by Bill George and John Goodson at ILM . ( Michael Okuda , " Departmental Briefing Year Six - Production " , TNG Season 6 DVD special feature ) As the new spin - off series was already in pre - production at the time of " Relics " , the modified " Jenolan " model was also seriously considered by Production Designer Herman Zimmerman and the producers to serve as the regular runabout shuttlecraft for the namesake station . Yet , it was ultimately decided to pass over the model in favor of the , though the model served as a starting point for its design , and made guest appearances in the new series as the . ( ) For further information on the studio model , see SD - 103 model . The name was " Jenolan " in the script and in a computer screen readout seen in the episode ; however , it was mislabeled as " Jenolin " on the studio model and " Jenolen " in the closed captioning and subsequent entries in the reference works , " Star Trek Fact Files " , and . When Scott materialized in the " Jenolan " s transporter chamber , the transporter effect , rather than being " Next Generation " standard or even that seen in the 23rd century films , was a re - creation of the transporter effect used in the original series . The novelization of the episode establishes that Scott and Franklin were on the bridge when the crash took place – Scott having volunteered his services after discovering the sphere due to his experience - with the ship ' s captain and engineer , all others having evacuated to the residential quarters in the belief that the ship would be more protected there . The captain and engineer died in the accident , while the rest of the retiring officers and crew were killed when the ship ' s residential quarters suffered a hull breach in the crash , all of them suffocating before Scott or Franklin could regain consciousness and let them out .