See Franklin for other articles with titles that contain, either by relationship or by coincidence, this character's surname.

Matt Franklin was an ensign aboard the USS Jenolen. He had straw-yellow hair. (TNG novelization: Relics)

In 2294, Franklin met Captain Montgomery Scott in a bar in Glasgow, when the engineer broke up an argument he was having with two young men claiming Starfleet Academy was not a "real" school before it became a fight. It was during the subsequent discussion with Franklin that Scott decided to book passage on the Jenolen to the Norpin V retirement colony. (TNG novel: Engines of Destiny) When the Jenolen investigated and ultimately crashed on a Dyson sphere, Scott and Franklin were the only survivors. Knowing that their limited supplies would run out before they could be rescued, they rigged the transporter to dematerialize and store themselves in the pattern buffers. They remained suspended that way for 75 years, until the USS Enterprise-D found the Jenolen in 2369. When Scott was rematerialized, he tried to retrieve Franklin, but found that one of the phase inducers had failed and the transporters could not compensate – Franklin's pattern had degraded too much for him to be rematerialized. Scott regretfully announced that Franklin was dead, and later speaks favorably of Franklin to Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge, telling him that "Aye, he was a good lad." (TNG episode: "Relics")