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Posted by Jim Phelps (Member # 102) on :

Ok, bear with me, I only saw the episode yesterday...

I know there've been some arguments on this issue, and I haven't been paying much attention to it earlier - however, given what we know about the numbering scheme for the Enterprises, it seems like a logical conclusion to assume that the NX-01 (presumably the first Starfleet ship?) was a U.S.S. Dauntless. Have we ever seen a lettered registry which wasn't used to commemorate a certain original name and registry? We don't know that there wasn't a U.S.S. Yamato NCC-1305, for instance.

Now, true, it is a possibility that ships can be honored with lettered registries -without- recycling the names; however, do we have any canon evidence to this effect? Not really, and until then, the simplest explanation seems to be that the NX-01 was named the Dauntless, and that by keeping silent about the low registry, the Voyager crew assumed that Starfleet wanted to give special significance to the rescue mission by designating the ship after the first explorer.

An argument against this idea might be the fact that nobody on the crew linked the name Dauntless with the first Starfleet ship, but there are ways around this. Perhaps the crew was simply too busy with other thoughts to voice opinions on the subject. On the other hand, if the producers were ever to feature the real NX-01 a show, they would probably ask for some freedom in choosing the name, rather than stick to the Dauntless name because of the registry limitation. Thoughts?

Boris

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited November 10, 1999).]

Posted by Identity Crisis (Member # 67) on :

Why would the first ship be NCC-01 and not NCC-1 or NCC-001?

Wouldn't your theory suggest that there were no other ships called USS Dauntless in the two hundred years between these two?

Maybe the Voyager crew aren't naval historians and therefore didn't realise there was anything odd about the registry. Or maybe they just assumed that a new registry scheme had come into use whilst they had been in the Delta Quadrant. Maybe they did discuss it at length off camera and it simply wasn't shown because such a discussion would have made for very boring television.

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

Yeah. Why watch boring stuff on TV when we can talk about it endlessly? 8)

I agree though, it's pointless. Back then they probably didn't have the NX/NCC scheme anyway.

Posted by Identity Crisis (Member # 67) on :

Oh I think they did. The Essex, NCC-173, was lost in 2167 only six years after the UFP was founded and NAR registries pre-date the UFP by at least 40 years.

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-->Identity Crisis<--

[This message has been edited by Identity Crisis (edited November 10, 1999).]

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

My belief is that the first Starfleet vessel had a registry of NX/ NCC-100. It's doubtful that they would have chosen "1". I imagine they knew that they'd be making at least a few hundred ships. Do we have a canon registry for the Daedalus? Maybe she was the first starfleet ship. The Daedalus was certainly one of the first classes.

I think that the NX-01-A was meant to denote a new type of registry system because of the new slipstream drive.

Also, the only canon ship (with the exeption of the incorrectly labeled Yamato) to have a letter suffixed registry has been the Enterprises. This was done only because she is the flag ship as far as I know. I think it's starfleet's intention to keep the Enterprise as the Flagship forever. So by the time of "Relativity", we can expect to see a NCC-1701-Z

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Posted by Individual 5748 on :

Actually, there are two ships with letters in their registries.

The USS Relativity (according to "Relativity") was actually the NCV-474439-*G*

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Posted by Wes (Member # 212) on :

I see it two ways:

#1) There is a USS Dauntless and it was the first official starfleet ship launched under that registry system. The alien took that data and made the fake Dauntless-A.

#2) The alien had no clue what he was doing, and the name and the Registry was made up.

The only problem with #2: Wouldn't the Voyager crew notice the Dauntless wasn't really the first Federation Starship?

Just Some Thoughts....

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Posted by Wes (Member # 212) on :

Also, another thing. I forgot to look (used to have the episode on tape, but its lost somewhere) but did anyone catch the USS Dauntless-A's Dedication Plauqe? Specificly, the launch date and the mermorial quote?

I know it was a bogus ship, i just wanted to know if there even was a Dedication Plauqe.

Posted by Vacuum robot lady from Spaceballs (Member # 239) on :

The thing is: Why would it be NX/NCC-01? Why the '0'?

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Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :

hehe...oops

[This message has been edited by The359 (edited November 10, 1999).]

Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :

My theory for why the 0 is there is this:

In 2161, with the newly formed Federation, Starfleet decided to dump the pre-existing New UN or whatever registry scheme, and create it's own. Now, by my guess, at the time, Earth, had, say 90 vessels or so. Therefore, they just gathered up the names of these 90 vessels, listed them in some way shape or form, and gave them numbers, going from 01 to 90. Since they already KNEW that there would be double digit registry numbers, they just decided to add the 0 there. Of course, I may be wrong, and Starfleet may have actually had nearly 200 vessels in 2161, which included the Daedalus class. The reason for this, is that if the Daedalus was new in 2161, why would it be retired 30 years later in 2197?

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Posted by Jim Phelps (Member # 102) on :

I agree with 359. I don't really see a problem with NX-01, it might simply be a stylistic thing, as in 09/06/95 instead of 9/6/95. Why Stardate 0024.7 and not 24.7 (Joran Bella's Okudagram birth-date).

If the alien can reproduce Starfleet design and tech to such an extent, what are the chances that he'd miss something as simple as the registry scheme?

The dedication plaque probably exists, Tuvok read off the commissioning stardate as 51478.something, I believe.

To extend on the reregistering theory, it is possible that the Dauntless NCC-01 was the first of the many ships that were reregistered under the NCC-system, and this could explain the lack of significance attributed to the name and the registry of the Dauntless-A by the Voyager crew. Maybe the -real- first ship was actually the NCC-00.

Boris

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

The way I see it is this: They saw it and thought "Hey, wait, SF's first ship wasn't named 'Dauntless', what the... Oh, wait, it's zero-one... Must be some new thing they came up w/..."

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Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :

The359 already said what I think too. Starfleet was founded and they took the already existing ships of the UESPA or whatever other organizations and gave them new numbers. They could have numbered them NCC-1, NCC-2, and so on, but since the early computer age it is a custom that a certain number of digits are reserved and not used digits are filled with "0". Of course it's a matter of style too. Just think of everyone's favorite secret agent.

My problem is why they reserved only two digits, whereas early starships only a few years after Starfleet was founded already had three digits. I have assigned numbers to my Pre-TOS starship designs a long time before I saw "HaF", and they do have three digits, it seems ... logical: http://www.uni-siegen.de/~ihe/bs/startrek/my_ships/sanfrancisco.htm

The question is if the first Starfleet ship is actually named Dauntless and another question is if it is a class ship NX-01 or a regular ship NCC-01. The answer to the first question should be "yes" because no one was in any way suspicious about the very odd registry. Maybe the Dauntless NCC(X)-01 is a very renowned ship that everyone knows and there is no need to talk about it.

The second question is even harder. On one hand, the registry NX-01 A suggests that the original ship was numbered "NX-01" and not "NCC-01". In the latter case the homage would make no sense. However, in the first case there would be two classes named Dauntless.

If the new registry was supposed to suggest that it is a new kind of starship without any historical reference, any other number than "NX-01 A" could have been used, for instance something like NXS-01 or SNX-01 with "S" for slipstream. Or, the ship could be named "SSS Dauntless" (just kidding).

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

One possibility regarding the two-digit scheme of early Starfleet would be that NCC was only supposed to stand for ships of certain design features, just like CVN or DDG today only stand for certain types of naval vessels. Early Starfleet might have had only five or six ships in the NCC category ("real Staaarship with capital S and reverb" category), and a registry reservation for 99 vessels seemed more than enough - lesser vessels could have had, say, NDD and NFF and NSC registries, reflecting their design and mission. (I think you can guess what the last two letters are supposed to mean in this scheme

)

Later on, as all new ships began to meet the criteria for a NCC-type vessel, the registry scheme was simply expanded to three- and four-digit registries. Instead of inventing new categories more closely matching the modern technology, Starfleet entirely dropped the complexity of early years.

Of course, this is just idle musing based on the idea that the first ship of Starfleet really was NX/NCC-01. Personally, I feel that

a) Arturis had extensive knowledge of Starfleet and its history, thanks to spying on Voyager - he probably transmitted things he had learned aboard Voyager to his trusty ship which then autonomously reshaped itself into a Starfleet-like ship, complete with registries.

b) Arturis created a registry that would follow a new, unused format specifically to create the illusion that this ship was something newer than what the Voyager crew was used to. This would be a good strategy: by making the ship just a tad exotic in this respect, Arturis could guide the crew to think that the other exotic features should also be accepted as futuristic, slightly bewildering, vaguely unnerving and DEFINITELY undecipherable by the hopelessly outdated Voyagerites. Anything they felt "wrong" would feel that way only because the crew was ignorant of modern developments, or that is what they would be saying to themselves.

c) In this new format, the extra letter was specifically designed to be the "something new" part of the mixture, i.e. something the real Starfleet most assuredly would not use in any ordinary ship.

d) Thus, the name Dauntless probably also was chosen to be something that the crew would not recognize nor understand, further guiding them to the correct mindset for Arturis' plan to work.

And I'm 100% sure the name Dauntless has been used at least half a dozen times by Starfleet by the 2370s. It's too good and obvious a name to be ignored (unless it's jinxed for some reason, but then this should have been a story point in "HaF").

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Black Knight (Member # 134) on :

Wow Timo. I like the way your mind works.

Sounds good to me.

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Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :

Good points, Timo. They were supposed to see something familiar that they nevertheless don't understand.

Arturis could have chosen any name for the ship, for a former ship of the same name could have been retired or destroyed by the time, and no one aboard Voyager could know about it.

A better registry could have been chosen, though. If NX-01 A is supposed to say "experimental (NX) + "first ship of this type" (01) + "slipstream" (A)", this is not very logical. Why not "slipstream experimental" (NSC) + "number" (01 or 001 or 0001 or 00001 or 000001, depending on how optimistic SF is about the technology).

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Individual: Good call. I stand quite humbly corrected (although I'm still not sure I like the 29th century reg. scheme).

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