posted
In the TNG episode "Cause and Effect", we learn of the starship Bozeman, a Soyuz class ship that has been decommissioned for at least 80 years. Since they traveled into the future, the Bozeman is now in our time. In Generations and First Contact, we hear of the Bozeman again. FC confirms that she is still in service and that Capt. Bateson is still in command. My question is this:
At the end of Generations, one of the ships to evacuate the Ent D crew is a Miranda class ship. Is it possible that the Bozeman (which was close by at the time of the movie) was refit to a Miranda class to correct whatever design flaw the Souyz class had which caused it to be decommissioned? And is it further possible that this Miranda class in Generations was in fact the Bozeman?
Does the Encyclopedia give a name for this ship? If not, what do you think?
posted
I doubt that the USS Bozeman was returned into a Miranda Class configuration. It can be useful it the Soyuz setup, but it would just need some internal hardware and software upgrades.
------------------ He can't be unoriginal The way I feel is sexual The way I feel is sexual.
He can't be just intellectual The way I feel is sexual The way I feel is sexual When you're next to me.
posted
Yes, but the Soyuz was retired from service for some reason. It only served a very short short time before being taken out of service. It's never really made since that Starfleet would keep a ship in service whose class was retired just because it jumped through time. They must've done something to fix whatever was wrong with it, a design flaw or whatever.
posted
Remember that the time period you are referring to is a time when the Federation needs all the ships it can get, with the recent (or perhaps still ongoing) Dominion war and other troubles. It's probable that the Bozeman was decommissioned along with the rest of the Soyuz class ships, then reactivated. I would imagine that Bateman (as well as much of the rest of his crew) were assigned to the Bozeman (and probable others of the Soyuz class) when it was recommissioned, due to his familiarity with the type.
I'm sure the members of the Bozeman's engineering crew were highly sought by other Soyuz class vessels due to their familiarity with a somewhat obsolete design.
--Baloo
------------------ A cheeseburger, french fries and a vanilla shake. It's not the best meal; far from it. But it is perfect, the Holy Trinity of American cuisine. --James Lileks http://members.tripod.com/~Bob_Baloo/index.htm
posted
The Soyuz class could also have been decomissioned because they were warships. The Soyuz does have the big gun on the back of it. They may have made the Soyuz to fight threats like the klingons but when that was over they just got rid of them.
------------------ Death before Dishonor! However Dishonor has quite a disputed defintion.
posted
I believe that "big gun" was supposed to be a sensor assembly of some sort.
And I would have to guess that the other Soyuzes probably weren't even around anymore. Doesn't the DS9TM say that DS9's phasers or something like that came off of Soyuz-class ships? Probably, the ships were disassembled after decommission and the parts went into storage to be used when needed. If the class really was decommissioned soon after introduction due to some design flaw, it makes sense that they wouldn't just toss them in a scrap heap and never touch them again. The parts were all still relatively new, not worn-out like most decommissioned ships.
------------------ "Their 'flower power' is no match for my glower power!" -C. Montgomery Burns, The Simpsons
posted
I agree with TSN, the tech manual clearly states that there was a large need for extra hardware on stations, specifically DS9, and that phaser components from the Soyuz class were used to shore up defenses on installations. Starfleet is worse than my parent; they never throw anything away.
posted
Unless there was a serious design flaw in the Soyuz class vessels, they still would have mothballed the hulls after gutting them of any immediately needed parts. After all, it takes less time to install new equipment in an existing hull than it does to build a new hull and then install new equipment in that.
--Baloo
------------------ A cheeseburger, french fries and a vanilla shake. It's not the best meal; far from it. But it is perfect, the Holy Trinity of American cuisine. --James Lileks http://members.tripod.com/~Bob_Baloo/index.htm
posted
It seems odd, though, that Starfleet would decommission all the Soyuzes in the 2280s, and mothball them so permanently that nobody in "Cause and Effect" thought that the Bozeman could be a reactivated ship with a legitimate 2360s mission and crew - yet would at some point equip the mothballed ships with *type 9 strip phasers* just so that they could later be scavenged for DS9!
The entire chapter on phasers in the DS9 TM has to be viewed with suspicion anyway. Apparently, Rick changed his mind about the types of phasers aboard the station more than once, and failed to edit out all the earlier ideas. So some lines say "type 9", some say "type 10" and some "type 11" when referring essentially to the same type of phaser. Does the station have all three types, or just two - and which two?
As for refitting the Bozeman into a Miranda... Too extensive a refit IMHO. The bridge module could be changed, and the sensor pods removed; but sawing off the extended hull and remounting the impulse engines would seem unnecessary and too time-consuming. Why not refit the Bozeman into an Akira class ship, then?
posted
Hmm, I guess you can turn the Bozeman into an Akira Class starship after you stretch the spaceframe or something. That or melt the entire ship and make the molten metal into an Akira spaceframe.
------------------ He can't be unoriginal The way I feel is sexual The way I feel is sexual.
He can't be just intellectual The way I feel is sexual The way I feel is sexual When you're next to me.
posted
Of course the "real" reason that it seems so odd too us that a class so similar to the Miranda class would have been so decommed after so short a time is rather simple: The Soyuz class was supposed to be an emtirely new model. It wasn't supposed to look anything like the Miranda Class. But due to time and budget restrictions, TPTB decided to modify an existing model. It was a pretty silly mistake IMHO.
But back to reality, I agree that there are probably no more Soyuzes in service right now. All the frames would have been gutted long ago and I doubt Starfleet would put the time and resources into refurbishing an old, defective design when it could just as easily be sprucing up newer, proven ships. When the war started, there had to have been hundreds of construction contracts (my nod to NCC) available to finish. Why divide personel to go dig up an 80 year old design, fix it's problems and send it out?
But you're right, I doubt that the shuttle bay was the problem with the class, so even if the ship was refit, it was probably not done in a manner that would make it look like the Miranda we saw in Generations.
posted
Why was the ship retired in the first place (the real-world motivations for the episode writers notwithstanding)? Because she was conceptually flawed to begin with? Because she featured flawed equipment? Outdated equipment? Because her mission had become outdated?
The first seems unlikely. Sure, this is one of the very few ships that utterly lacks torpedoes, but the designers must have done that deliberately. And the other components of the ship seemed to perform just dandy (and weren't all that different from regular Miranda or Constitution components).
Flawed or outdated equipment could have been changed in a refit, unless it was very bulky or tightly integrated. I doubt the big shuttlebay could ever be considered outdated, but it may have had a structural weakness that could not be fixed. The "sensor pods" may have become outdated, but replacement would seem easy.
Most likely, the mission (Sigint? Shuttlecarrier? Special weapons platform, despite the claims that those big spires were sensors?) of this very special ship *had* become outdated. But why could a new mission not be adopted?
Probably the retirement was a combination of factors: outdated equipment and outdated mission, combined with a tight budget that did not allow extensive adaptation to a new mission. The ships were retired in the middle of the "Klingon crisis", so military budgets probably soared - but perhaps Starfleet did not want to spend a single credit in upgrading its sigint capabilities when all the dough was needed for producing actual fighting ships?
If this is true, then the TNG Starfleet could easily afford to refit the ship anyway. But if she was built from keel up as a sigint platform, then she must be *grossly* outdated in a hundred years (sigint gets outdated on time scales of *months*), so Starfleet could not use her in that role without essentially building her again from keel up. And it might be economically more sound to build a new ship on the credits a refit into a fighting vessel would cost in the TNG era.
posted
Is it possible that the Soyuz was viewed as a spy ship by the Klingons, and that as an olive branch the entire class was retired, so actually their design wasn't out dated they just were considered inappropriate for use by the federation. The sensor technology was probably incorporated into all starships.
posted
Given the tremendous structural similarity to the Miranda class, I really can't think of any reason why these ships should have been retired except integrated equipment problems. Perhaps they used new nacelles or were designed with a new warp core that proved to be flawed. LaForge said the ships were retired, not scrapped. Perhaps the faulty equipment was removed and the structures were modified accordingly to turn the Soyuz class into another Miranda variant we haven't seen or some other class of ship, then recommissioned as that class.
This lack of reason for retirement is why I say the design of the ship was silly mistake. I would rather have seen an older looking Constitution variant (some kind of quick kitbash even) than have the Soyuz look almost exactly like the Miranda. Dems da breaks, I guess.
posted
I agree Aban- a crappy looking kitbash would've been much better than a Miranda in a not so clever disguise.
Now for my theory: The Soyuz class was actually very old. A contemporary of the original Constitutions. Like the Constitutions, the vessels still in service by the early 2270's were given refits. This refit type was never put into production as a new starship however. R & D had already came up with a similar design (that apparently had enough non-visible differences to warrant a new class name) to fill the duties of the old Soyuz. Thus when the Soyuz's were retired in the 2280's due to old age, the Miranda class took over in its place.
------------------ "Stood in firelight, sweltering bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent." -Rorschach
[This message has been edited by Obi Juan (edited December 10, 1999).]
Printer-friendly view of this topic
