Topic: A Quick Thought On the Lack Of Refits Around
OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
So I just finished watching TMP and a thought occurs to me.
Surely by the end of Enterprise's refit and the events of TMP, Excelsior and Transwarp must be well into design and under construction.
What if the reason there are so few Constitution refits around is because they're were always meant to be a very temporary stop gap measure to increase the lifespan of Starfleet's primary cruiser while the next generation one was brought to fruition? Therefore, not necessarily all of the Constitutions would be refitted in the first place, and certainly none would be new builds (hence A's early retirement).
All of those ships would be around forty years old during the time of Search for Spock to Undiscovered Country (the admiral's line in Search for Spock not withstanding).
I'm sure there are holes to the idea, so have at it.
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posted
If the refit was only meant to be a stopgap measure, then I highly doubt they would completely rebuild a ship for that purpose. Seems a bit excessive to me.
No, I think they were designed for a purpose and served that purpose very well. Probably a long production run. At the time the Excelsior was probably only a prototype and they were expecting to work on the design for a while to work out the bugs. The apparent failure of the transwarp program shoved that aside and they went with the Excelsior design as a regular ship, to save on R&D costs for the prototype.
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posted
Also, the initial Transwarp experients must have been promising- no way would they build a giant ship otherwise when a smaller (even skeletal) spaceframe would do. There may have been several Excelsiors partly built to test various configurations (possibly explaining the "B" and other variants).
I think that Starfleet saw themselves far behind the other major powers with outdated ships and decided to build a "big stick" line of ships to serve as the backbone of a revamped fleet. Starfleet probably refitted many older classes (Soyuz, Connie, etc.) to extend their lifespan as new ships were commisioned, then scapped the old ships or possibly sold/traded them to lesser friendly powers or decommisioned their weapons and pressed them into civillian service (freighters etc.).
I doubt any Connie Refits ever served by the time the Ambasador first arrived on the scene.
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Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
At least not in their original capacity. Depends on how you interpret that line from DS9 but I like to think the Academy trainer Republic was a refitted connie. As for why there were so few connies around I'd say that it's because we just didn't see them. Being Starfleet's best all rounders in their heyday it's likely they were deployed all across the frontier. So the chances of more than one of them being in the same sector were rather slim and since we followed the Enterprise around everywhere, we only saw what they saw. Of course even in the three or so years that we saw they still managed to cross paths with four other connies, eight if you count the M-5 war games.
As for the movies, although we did see at least one connie in spacedock in ST:IV most of the time they were the victim of the "only ship in range" conceit.
posted
It's possible that with the Excelsior in pre-production phase, Starfleet decided that, instead of refitting all of her Constitution-Class ships, they would instead only refit a smaller percentage than they originally intended. Non-refit Connies would be retired from service and replaced by new Excelsiors, and the refit Connies would serve until the end of their new refit lifetimes. As we saw the Excelsior class as the "workhorse" of the fleet in TNG (DeSoto's line in "Tin Man" about shuttling back and forth from starbases), the Connies would become the workhorses of the film fleet, with the Excelsiors as the front line, exploration ships.
posted
I'd think that refits would be relatively common. The avionics, turbolift, warp core & coils, the various emitters, and sliding doors, would be a few of the things that would wear out or become obsolete. The basic frame should be in good condition. Some design changes could also appear during this SLEP (Service Life Extension Program) if a research group discovered various tweaks in hull design, discovered weaknesses in the basic design, etc... A different shape would emerge.
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
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posted
I was just thinking, it may come to be that STXI shows us that the TOS incarnation was already an extensive refit from what the ship looked like before. I wonder if SF might not have found it necessary to refit the entire Connie fleet, but maybe just those that had seen stressful tours of duty like the Enterprise.
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I agree with Reverend, that we probably just didn't see the refit Connies in use in the TNG era. I'm not sure what use they might be � perhaps local patrol cruisers, a la the US Coast Guard, etc. (That would explain the presence of Connie wreckage at Wolf 359, at least.)
One thing that a lot of people forget is that despite the common fandom designations for the Connie and the Miranda (heavy cruiser and frigate), they're both practically the same size and volume. According to this chart, the Connie was 235K cubic meters, and the Miranda was 218K. But the Miranda's volume would be much more useful because it's not an odd shape; the large rear section makes it quite simple for rearranging the internal layout and making it into a transport or whatever.
The only thing I can't think of a justification for would be why we never saw a Connie in the huge Dominion War fleets, when we always saw Mirandas aplenty.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Connies that Starfleet no longer wanted may have been sold off to UFP members worlds' own space fleets, for defense purposes.
As for the greater number of Mirandas ... there are (or should be) a lot of questions about the class. The Constellation, Soyuz, and Constitution, the Miranda's contemporaries, are all out of service by TNG. Presumably, Starfleet decided that the Miranda -Class suited itself to relatively inexpensive lifetime extension plans, and that the ship could serve as a suitable transport with a small crew (The Lantree from TNG's second season). When the war started, it was probably simple to pull those ships into drydock, slap some new phaser banks onto 'em, give 'em more crew, and send them out as cannon fodder.
posted
Well what we saw of the war were mostly offensive actions, which is where you're going to want the bulk of your big guns (hence all the Galaxies.) Next to those beasts and going up against Galors and Dominion Cruisers Mirandas are more useful as escorts and destroyers, whereas Connies (that is if there are many left in active service) would have been relegated to the home systems. Indeed there could in theory have been some guarding Betazed when it fell, Odo (or was it Worf?) did say the defence system was outdated and the main fleet was off on manoeuvres. This would also be consistent with the Connie that was at Wolf 359 as I imagine most of that fleet was scrambled from the surrounding systems. As for the Miranda question, remember that most of the Mirandas we've seen in TNG and beyond are in the NCC-2xxxx ish range, so clearly the design was given a second lease on life at some point in the early 24th century, possibly because they are easier to build and more adaptable to new technologies and multiple roles. Though there are probably a few stragglers from the old NCC-18xx runs they would be few and far between and mostly on milk run duties. The Connies on the other hand were simply superseded by the Excelsiors and didn't receive a new production run, so those that were left from Kirk's era would become rarer and rarer as time went on. By the 2370's I'd be surprised if there were more than a dozen left in all of Starfleet and most of them wouldn't be up to going toe to toe with a Jem'Hadar figher.
posted
I think the success of the Miranda over the Connie is twofold: Firstly, the Miranda seems more modular- and more readliy adaptable for specific uses: we've seen several variants and mission-profiles (freighter, destroyer, cruiser). Secondly, I think the Connie's unique shape would require a larger crew than practical for downgraded vessels. The Miranda in freighter mode can operare for missions with as few as 12 crewmembers (assuming the freighter configuration with minimal weapons) whereas I cant imaging the Connie really working for long without a much larger crew (yes, we saw the ship half-ass manned by Kirk's gang a few times, but I'm talking about missions lasting for months- possibly even years).
An aside, the Connie has some serious blind-spots regarding weapon-coverage that the Miranda (rollbar equiped) does not- making the Miranda a better destroyer for the Dominion War fleet actions.
The notion of the Connie serving in "home fleets" is a good one- they possibly act as trainers, patrol ships and even starliners. I can easily see a Connie refitted as civillian transport- possibly adding a secondary shuttlebay where the torpedo launcher is.
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-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
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Teh PW
Self Impossed Exile (This Space for rent)
Member # 1203
posted
quote:Originally posted by Ritten: Or a bar
Let's look at this from a RL production POV...
when TNG was ramping up to begin production, they used minutures from the TMP series. what movies were being made during that time frame?
TFFucktier... The E-A filming minuature probably wasn't availible for use on TNG effects (that assumes that they would even OK the idea of relabeling the E-A as another ship-of-the-line.)
using that line of thought, when did the BOP appear on TNG? that minuature is the only other mini being used in ST:V.
i recall reading somewhere online where the TNG folks dilberately did not use the E-A as a generic filming mini because they didn't want to confuse viewers (as you recall, the original reason they remade the ST:II story boards and created the Reliant filming model... of course, i also would have loved the original version of it, too...)
posted
My thoughts were similar to Rev's: that the Mirandas must have been easier to build/maintain and the Excelsiors filling the role of the Connies. I always imagined the Mirandas were like the Volkswagen Beetles of the fleet: maybe not the best ship, but with parts that were easy to come-by and maybe a flexible internal arrangement they could easily be upgraded to use whatever technological improvements happened over the decades.
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