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Posted by The First One (Member # 35) on :

In the Next Generation Technical Manual, a brief final section is given over to the design of ship that might one day replace the Galaxy-class starship. Given the operational lifetime of the GCS was estimated at more than a hundred years, one could assume that the class, called the Nova, would one day appear, but not in any of the current incarnations of Trek.

This has led to many amateur ship designers creating their own concepts of what the Nova might look like. Most of these were better than the meagre sketches in the TNGTM. However, several events have occurred to banish the Nova as we know it into oblivion:

1. The steady eroding of the TNGTM's credibility as 'canon.'

2. No mention in the TNGTM of the Sovereign-class, which while in no way meant to fulfil the duties of the GCS is similar enough to warrant notice. Of course, we know this is because when they wrote the TM they had no idea of what was going to happen, but the mere exclusion damns the book.

3. Finally, a science vessel, the USS Equinox, has appeared in Star Trek: Voyager, and is now confirmed as being a Nova-class vessel developed and built in the early- to m-d-2360s. Sadly, this last fact completely invalidates the Nova section in the TM.

Therefore, in order to retain this section as part of the Trek canon, one has to come up with a theory to explain what happened to the original Nova. Two likely ones are:

1. Someone liked the name and stole it for their science ship project, or used it in error.

2. With the rollout of the Sovereign-class, its potential as an Explorer made the development of a Galaxy replacement unnnecessary for the foreseeable future, and the Nova Project was instead rethought as a small science ship - to replace the Oberth class? To save further time, they might have also used the warp-tested Defiant Pathfinder spaceframe as their basic design.

[This message was edited by The First One on June 14, 1999.]

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Best explanation, in my mind: Through a mix-up in the bureaucracy, the name Nova was never officially given to the Galaxy's successor. Someone in R&D liked the name and got someone up in the heirarchy to assign it to his project, a new science vessel. The other memebers of SFR&D kicked his ass later on, but he still got to keep the name. When the Galaxy's "replacement" was built, they had to come up w/ a new name, so they picked Sovereign.

Uh... If this becomes part of the official SWDAO write-up, I'd suggest taking out the part about the R&D guys beating down the guy who stole the name... :-)

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

The Sovereign has nothing to do with the eventual replacement for the Galaxy class.

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Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :

T_T's_T (that's The_Tom's_Theory)

(NB: This sorta hinges upon my history of the Sovereign class which is far too complex to go into here).

The Nova-Class development project began in early 2364 and placed the designers in a rather interesting position: to design the replacement for a ship that had only been in service for 2% of its operational lifetime or so. Quickly the design team became very divided over the ship's purpose... most of the more engineer-type guys wanted a very forward-looking groundbreaking design to be ready in 35 years, while the more lets-come-up-with-a-useful-ship-that-we-can-have-now people wanted the smaller volume easily-done ship concepts we hear about in the TNGTM. (at this point my Sovereign theory comes into play--suffice to say we suddenly have a new Explorer ready to go). So the team pretty much splits... the more engineery types want to keep working and come up with a replacement for the Sovvy in 40 years or so, the others are slightly pissed off, to say the least, and aren't too happy with all their work being sorta put on hold. So the project is officially sliced in half by SFC, and the small-ship-now folks keep the Nova name while the big-ship-later get another one. Unfortunately for the Nova guys, most of the physical design folks shipped out, so one day over lunch the lead Nova guy is talking to this guy who was just working on this Defiant class thingy. They just found out about the Borg and this cool ship design they were just working on has to be almost completely redone. Hmm... a small spaceframe design already warp-tested and basically perfect... It'll have to be a little smaller than they had originally hoped... probably only a science platform, but 8 months of interior redesign and we have a working science-ship design. Wham bam, USS Nova... wham bam, USS Equinox, launched in 2366.

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

That could work, too...

Sol: I don't mean the ship that would replace the Galaxy when the Galaxy is taken completely out of commission. I mean in the sense that the Ambassador replaced the Excelsior and the Galaxy replaced the Ambassador.

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Posted by Mikey T (Member # 144) on :

Okay, maybe someone at Starfleet R&D decided to change the project of the Nova Class and make it from the successor of the Galaxy Class to a pure science ship since we now haven't seen an Oberth Class for a long while. The staff at R&D could be working with the Theoretical Propulsion Group and the Daystrom Institute to make a new successor. That or an admiral decided to take the Nova Class name for a starship project that was to replace the Oberth Class and the starship project that is to succed the Galaxy Class is still ongoing, minus a class name until a later time.

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Posted by The First One (Member # 35) on :

All this homespun theorising is very nice, but it doesn't answer the ultimate question: was there ever a replacement-Galaxy Nova-class starship at all? If the Encyclopaedia after next, or the much-vaunted Voyager Tech Manual, includes the class and says that it started life as a exploratory concept for a starship to be brought out in 40-odd years, then yes. If not, no. We should just ignore the TNGTM section, sad though it may be to have to do so.

Posted by Mikey T (Member # 144) on :

I heard somewhere in this forum that Paramount will be releasing a 10th anniversary issure of the Star Trek: TNG Tech Manual. It will be updated and also include info on the Soverign Class Enterprise-E. Now, hopefully in this update, they fix or explain the Nova Class problem.

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

They won't. If anywhere, they'll mention it in the VOYTM. But they probably won't even give a second thought to what the TNGTM said. In their minds now, that last section probably never existed...

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Posted by Cargile (Member # 45) on :

Ya know, the Nova class actually looks like a Chevy.

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Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

Lee: Could you alter your text to include what everyone's mentioned, especially the possibility that the Nova-class from the TM might have been since been renamed?

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Posted by The First One (Member # 35) on :

I have edited the post to include the possibilities that were brought up.

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

I have previously commented on the Nova etc. in an earlier thread... can that also be included?

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Posted by The First One (Member # 35) on :

I'll look it up and see if there's anything there I can use. . . only not now, I'm using a laptop today and it's sheer murder. Bloody mouse cursor keeps vanishing. Anyone else feel something needs to be aqdded?

Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :

I don't have a great problem with the Nova class. The project outlined in the TNGTM has been given the preliminary name "Nova class development project". This does not necessarily mean that the class name Nova is officially occupied. It's a fleetyard and not a fleet designation. So another development team could have stolen the name and made it official by building their prototype first, while the previous Nova class project is either discontinued or frozen or continued with another name.

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

The problem isn't really that it can't be reconciled w/ the TNGTM. That's easy. The problem is that, for years now, the name Nova has been used for a future ship that will nudge the Galaxy back a notch in the fleet. The writers didn't even bother to consider that. They just liked the name, so they stole it. That's the problem.

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Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :

Well, this seems to be rather a problem for fandom. TPTB have never cared about it anyway.

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

"TPTB have never cared..."

That's the problem.

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