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My list of retcons, as promised...
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Peregrinus: [QB] Fresh from the [i]Constitution[/i] class history thread, I'm laying down a synopsis of my draft of a way to have Matt Jeffries' registry system from TOS change over in the mid-2280s to Okuda's system, followed by my list of the ships that would need some aspect of their being altered to fit. And trust me, that list is far shorter than the lists that come from forcing one system on the other... To recap, for those not familiar with the obscure background material of TOS, Matt Jeffries partially laid out a system for ship registries as a sort of guide to himself. It stemmed out of his speculation on what the various parts of 'NCC-1701' might signify. Granted, he came up with that registry more or less at random, by starting with the 'NC' of American civilian aircraft, and adding another 'C' to make it different. He eliminated all the numerals that look unclear on a TV screen, and that left him with '1', '4', '7', and '0'. And with those to work with, '1701' was as good as anything. Now we come to his speculating. Gene's comments to him were that the ships of the 'Starship' class were the heavy cruisers, the ships-of-the-line, the workhorses. So that was what the 'NCC' prefix came to signify in his mind. Presumably other vessel types would have other prefices. Then he turned to the numbers. Rather than just a sequential assigning, he posited that the '17' stood for the Federation's 17th Starship (read: Cruiser) design, and the '01' indicated the 1st production hull built after the prototype. All this would have stayed in the realm of speculation, and would be utterly irrelevent, were it not for the first season episode "Court Martial". For that episode, Jeffries -- in his capacity as Art Director -- created a wall [URL=http://www.st-spike.de/images/ships/display9.jpg]graphic[/URL] for Commodore Stone's office on Starbase 11. For those who are unable to see this, it is a wall chart listing "STAR SHIP STATUS", and consists of a listing of ten numbers with no prefices down the left hand side, each of which has a horizontal bar to the right, representing differing levels of completion of [i]something[/i]. Some think it indicates repair or refit progress, some think it denotes completion of a patrol cycle or other mission. I lean to the latter interpretation, as the bar after the number '1831' goes to 100%, skips a column, than goes for a further column. First of all, remember Starships all have NCC prefices, hence why he didn't feel the need to put it before each registry number. Next, notice some numbers are in the 16xx range, some in the 17xx range, and one in the 18xx range. By the system Matt had noodled up, the 16xx numbers would be ships of the Cruiser class just before the [i]Constitution[/i] class, and NCC-1831 would belong to the [i]Enterprise[/i]'s successor class. Unfortunately, no one ever interviewed Matt, and he didn't publicize. So more and more half-arsed numbering came along as the years passed, from the cringeworthy numbering of the [i]Constellation[/i] in "The Doomsday Machine", to Franz Joseph's Technical Manual and all the fandom works that use that as a basis, to Greg Jein's cocked-up list in the T'Negative fanzine, to the damn odd freighter registries in TAS, to FASA's offerings. No one ever thought to ask Matt if he had a system, and more and more made-up systems contradicted his and each other's. Mike Okuda coming on the scene in 1986 was rather a windfall, and his registry scheme became the new and current standard, where all Federation Starfleet vessels have the 'NCC' prefix, and numbers are assigned roughly sequentially as ships are built, regardless of class. Works great, but then he tried to apply it to Matt's era. Starting with the erroneous conceit that all the ships on the "Court Martial" chart are [i]Constitution[/i]s, and thus leading to the (let's face it) stupid notion that registry numbers don't have to be chronological or even sequential. Well, then, what's the f***in' point of having registry numbers at all? Anyhoo... My approach was to apply Matt's system to his era and Okuda's to his own era. The two but up against each other in the TOS movies, mostly between 2285 and 2291 (TSFS and TUC), so somewhere in there makes the most sense for the one system to be abandoned for the other. Let me gather my thoughts now before going on to the next stage. --Jonah [/QB][/QUOTE]
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