posted
Yeah, I believe that the early decommisioning was some of the best (well okay--only) canonical evidence that the A was another starship (Yorktown) that was renamed.
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The only problem is that, even though Roddenberry and Okuda support the fact that it was the renamed USS Yorktown, the movie depicted the USS Yorktown being stranded in space shortly before the crew arrived on Earth. With a full crew, Captain, etc. Did they just tow them in, tell Captain Randolph, his first officer, chief engineer, security chief, surgeon, helmsman and communications officer to take a hike because some new guys deserved this ship more? How would the remaining few hundred crewpoeple feel about sucha random decision by the Federation council. I know some my argue that politics and military assignments arent always fair, this seems a little extreme to displace 7 officers and repaint their ship as a political favor. Seems more likely that the Yorktown, presumably the same refit old one from TOS was retired (being a similar age and design to the already retired 1701-no suffix) and a new one was being built and just renamed before it was launched. Renaming an old ship seems like bad karma.
Unless Okuda was wrong, and it IS a refit, but of another vessel besides the Yorktown renamed. This would explain why it was quickly decommissioned five years later
[ September 13, 2001: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
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quote: The ship should never have left spacedock without its major systems
That's my point. The Navy doesn't grant a ship her commission until she passes a pretty damned thorough series of evaluations. Why should Starfleet? Especially when you consider that on a naval vessel, you don't have to worry about how you're going to breathe if the power fails.
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The Enterprises seem to be media darlings though.. I think that in the cases of the E-A and E-B they were being sailed around for political reasons. I don think either vessel was intended to enter the actions they did in those films. And i also believe Starfleet uses a different tangent of the concept of 'commissioned' because even when the ships are taken apart in dock they seem to be considered commissioned, whereas the Navy would decomission and recommission the vessel every time it was refit (i believe? Navy guys?)
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posted
I also suspect the E-B was being sailed around due to political or commercial pressure: the Excelsior project might not have been in much favor if the NX-2000 indeed had humiliatingly failed in demonstrating transwarp, her supposed raison d'etre. Too many promises may have been made, regarding schedule and performance of follow-on vessels of the class.
This could also tie in to why the E-A was retired so early. If the Excelsiors could not be transwarp superships, then Starfleet might have begun marketing them as Constitution successors. Constitutions had a high public profile, and the names Enterprise and Kirk had an even higher one. The smart move for Starfleet would be to declare all the Constitutions as outdated and insist that they be replaced by the Excelsiors *now*, thus justifying the project already underway.
Naming the first post-transwarp Excelsior the Enterprise and dragging in Kirk to do a PR tour would further help market the idea that these ships were the rightful inheritors of the Constitution fame.
As for the Yorktown theory, that ship's crew was left in mortal danger when we last saw them. Perhaps there wasn't a happy end to the story, and Starfleet towed home a big starship-shaped coffin? The ship could have been renamed to scare away the ghosts in any case, and the need to find something to reward Kirk with provided extra incentive. And Starfleet probably wasn't all that happy to reward a mutineer, despite the public pressure, so giving him a former deathtrap after a half-hearted refit might have evoked grim smiles on some high-ranking faces...
posted
The Enterprise-B didn't seem in that bad of shape, anyway. They didn't have torpedos, a main tractor beam (presumably they had mooring beams, if that technology was in use at the time), or a medical staff. Well, why should they? Puttering around the solar system has to be more like sailing in a harbor than the open ocean. What sort of emergency could possibly happen that other ships couldn't take care of?
The ship's only problem was that it found itself in a film, which neither it nor Starfleet had any say in.
posted
Me, I think Starfleet rigged it up so that there would be no other starships present in the Sol system to steal the E-B's big moment. That plan just backfired badly...
Or perhaps the other ships were sent away because Starfleet wanted no witnesses should the half-finished ship fail? Sure enough, when she first went to warp, she was torn apart: all of the modifications that distinguished her from the Excelsior were sent spinning into space. Just watch the snippet of the ship warping toward the Nexus... Good thing they were able to recover and reattach the pieces without any of the reporters aboard noticing.
I thought they hadn't installed the warp drive yet.
-------------------- "Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It?s us. Only us." Rorschach
posted
Apparently it did (and, just to avoid confusion, Timo's referring to the fact that they used a shot of the Excelsior from ST VI for the shot at warp. Unless you're looking out for it though, you probably wouldn't notice).
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Ooh a stock footage problem.
I noticed another one. In ST.III and ST.VI the Excelsior's nacelles didnt light up, and they kept this for the Excelsior reuses in TNG.'Where No One..' and TNG.'The Child' but then in VGR.'Flashback', supposedly portraying the original Excelsior, the nacelles suddenly glow blue. Except where they used Excelsior ship shots from ST.VI.
But then, Tuvok doesnt remember Valtane not dying and the fact that the Khitomer conference was two months after Praxis, not two hours, so hes just suffering from virus-addled brains. $Endgame spoil $ $ $
$
$ But they cured that in 'Endgame' by getting him home in time before he went completely insane.
ok.. ive wandered far enough off the beaten thread..
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posted
Help me out here, it's been a while since I saw STVI. How much of a clear shot did we see of the Excelsior in warp? I don't mean the rainbow-smear shots. Was there a clear enough shot that we could see whether or not the engines were glowing blue? The reason I'm asking is that I remember reading a little blip somewhere that the original Excelsior model's engines were designed to light up; it was just never filmed that way.
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posted
Of course, that Excelsior was a new model that Greg Jein built after the original was too heavily modified into the E-B and Lakota to be turned back to it's ST6 appearance. Whether the grills of the original model could be lit up remains to be seen, but they did light up when it was turned into the E-B. The new model did have lightable grills for sure and I believe that was the model the was used to make the CGI Excelsior.
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Good thing they were able to recover and reattach the pieces without any of the reporters aboard noticing.
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