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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

OK, there was/is a Chart in the background of Commodore Stone's office in Court Martial. Does anyone have a screen cap of this? It lists a number of Starships.

The Ship Kirk was on as and Ensign... ?The Republic? was it one of these ships. We know that its NCC was 13.. Does this mean it wasn't a Connie? They are still using the designation of "Vulcanis" and "Vulcanians" in this episode. Does this mean we could go by Matt Jefferies naming system of NCC numbers? That all Connies are 17..'s?

What where those bar graph lines after each starship representing?

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Homer: I'm gonna miss Springfield. This town's been awfully good to us.
Bart: No, it hasn't, Dad. That's why we're leaving.
Homer: Oh, yeah. [pokes his head out the window] So long, Stinktown!

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :

I go by Matt's intention (at the time, the first two numbers signified hull design -- so all those 16XX registries were Baton Rouges). Okuda doesn't. Take your pick. As for the graph, we figure it's the mission status of the ships currently operating in SB 11's "jurisdiction". It almost certainly isn't construction or refit status, as a couple of bars are over 100%.

I think Timo's got some pretty clear statements to make regarding this bugger...

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

Baton Rouge? Do you mean those ships from the Goldsteins/Sternbach Spaceflight Chronology?

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Posted by Daniel (Member # 453) on :

We KNOW for a fact that all Constitutions are not 17**'s. I believe that the Constellation had an 11** registry number. There are, of course, various ways of explaining this away.

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :

Constellation was "1017". The reason is inattentive laziness on the part of the VFX house. The took an AMT model kit and decal sheet and used it/them to make the Constellation, but for whatever reason they didn't bother to inquire into any potential meaning of the Enterprise's registry number to guide them in creating a new one for the Constellation. Or else they DID make it "1710" and decided it looked too much like "1701" and swapped the first two numbers for the last two numbers. Lord knows why they didn't splurge for a second kit to get more decal fodder and make it "1711" or "1717" or "1707" or "1700" or like that.

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Posted by colin (Member # 217) on :

The registies are-
NCC
1664
1672
1685
1697
1700
1701
1703
1709
1718
1831

FYI
The Making of Star Trek (1968)
USS Enterprise is a Starship Class and Enterprise Class ship.

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takeoffs are optional; landings are mandatory

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :

Oo, I hate that book. "Stephen Whitfield" (actually not even PART of his real name in this case...) gathered memos and talked to Gene. Two unfortunatelies here...

Unfortunately... He didn't bother to track down Matt Jeffries and talk to him about the ship he'd designed, inside and out.

Unfortunately... He spoke almost entirely to Gene himself, a man who had the unfortunate tendancy to, when posed with a question to which he dind't know the answer, pull something out of his ass on the spot. That book is the source of most of the errors in Franz Joseph's works.

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

Not to mention that TNG established the Enterprise as a Constitution-Class.

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Average Rated 8.32 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with seven eps posted)
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"Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!"
-Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001
***
I wouln't say that anyone who has ceased to post every time you rant has "realized that they couldn't win" Omega. It's more like "oh, great he comes Mr. conservative frontal lobotomy boy who only hits one note over and over and over and over..."
-Jay, July 15, 2000

Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :

Yup. And you can't call the refit Enterprise-class either, since STVI confirmed it to be Constitution-class.

It may have been Jeffries idea to have all the Constitutions be NCC-17xx, and you could argue that they were, but the Constellation would stand up and loudly shout out "OI! You're wrong!".

This isn't something like the Melbourne which can be easily explained away. The Constellation, with registy of NCC-1017, was shown extremely clearly on screen. And (anticipating the Yamoto arguement), has never been contradicted on screen.

So, what can we learn from this? That there was at least one Constitution whos registry began with something other than NCC-17xx, and that there will always be people who believe the Earth is flat, that bitter is better than larger, and that the Enterprise was a Starship/Enterprise-class starship.

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You know, when Comedy Central asked us to do a Thanksgiving episode, the first thought that went through my mind was, "Boy, I'd like to have sex with Jennifer Aniston."
-Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park

Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :

Maybe the lettering team made a mistake. Remember the Brittain.

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"Second star to the right, and then straight on till morning."

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

NCC 1709, 75%
NCC 1831, 100%
NCC 1703, 50%
NCC 1672, 72%
NCC 1664, 76%
NCC 1697, 30%
NCC 1701, 83%
NCC 1718, 45%
NCC 1685, 21%
NCC 1700, 11%

As near as I can tell, anyway. The screencap isn't too great. I stepped through the actual frames of the DVD to come up w/ the numbers.

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"Although, from what I understand, having travelled around the Mid-west quite a bit, apparently Jesus is coming, so I guess the choice now is we should decide whether we should spit or swallow."
-Maynard James Keenan

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

BTW, this pretty well proves that the Intrepid was neither NCC-1631, nor NCC-1831. The 1631 wasn't even at the starbase, according to the chart, and the 1831 was already finished, meaning it wouldn't have to be postponed...

[This message has been edited by TSN (edited April 16, 2001).]

Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :

@TSN: Cool, can I use this pic on my homepage?

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"Second star to the right, and then straight on till morning."

Posted by colin (Member # 217) on :

This is speculation and based on memory.
When Commodore Stone decided to postpone work on the USS Intrepid, he was looking at the top of the chart. The registries he was looking at were NCC-1709 and NCC-1831. If the starship Intrepid is not NCC-1831, then she could have been NCC-1709.

In the end, the issues will never be solved. We don't have documented evidence on how the original producers understood the registry system. We don't know enough of the original classification system for starships or how many starship classes were in the whole starship family. And, finally, we don't have an understanding of the chart. Was the chart a random sorting of registries, or was there an order to the chart?

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takeoffs are optional; landings are mandatory

[This message has been edited by targetemployee (edited April 17, 2001).]

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

So this was for how much work was completed on each ship. Makes sense.

Now it also makes sense why Commodore Stone is in Red... this starbase seems to be a prominent Engineering station.

Do all those registries have to belong to connies?

I might have missed the dialogue? Are you assuming that the Intrepid was a connie from his dialogue!?! confuse here, can someone run me passed the scene dialogue again.

About the registries, the problem with the 17xx group of ships arise when we see the Constellation in season 2 saying its a 1017... so can't the constellation be in reality a 17xx ship, but for some sort of reason wanted to keep the 1017 registry? We've seen the E's do it - although maybe for ships that wanted to keep the registries before the E-A there was no letter suffix.

Posted by Jim Phelps (Member # 102) on :

BTW, Kirk never says that the Republic was NCC-1371. He merely says "number 1371".

Boris

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

I've just watched the scene again. It looks like Stone is looking lower down on the chart. Maybe 1672 or 1664...

Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :

Usually I like to think that those ships with the 16xx range are actually refits to the Constitution class. If the Constitution class is a whole lot older than what we like to believe then the USS Constitution NCC-1700 is the prototype and everything in the 17xx range is the actual production run. I doubt that Starfleet would build ships with a lower number unless it was part of a older class.

Just for curiosty, is there evidence that these 16xx ships are Constitution class?

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Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :

We don't really get ANY hints about ship classes in TOS. There's Kirk's "There's only twelve like it in the fleet", but apart from that, there's pretty much nothing on the various classes of ship Starfleet has. We get ship types, but not classes.

Posted by Zor Prime on :

Errors in Franz Joseph's work?
I know that engineering has some problems, but does anyone have a rundown of other errors?

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :

Wrong shape of the bridge superstructure, wrong taper on the warp engine nacelles, wrong shape of the secondary hull, wrong angle on the primary hull rim, wrong interpretation of Main Engineering -- both size and placement, bad interpretation of what would have to be behind the place where the main sensor/deflector dish attaches to the secondary hull, massive redundancy between primary and secondary hull layouts.

But everything else is wonderful. He even got the bowling alley -- and in the right place. His research methods leave me shaking my head. Some of the obscure things he got right and some of the blatant things he got wrong...

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Posted by colin (Member # 217) on :

A consideration-
One of the captains at the "Court Martial" is wearing science blue. This captain may command a research starship. This starship could be at the docking yards which are near to M-11 (Starbase 11) and is on the list.

Another consideration-
There is no evidence for all of these ships to be Connies. There is evidence to support the contention that the list may be listing ships of different starship classes. In the year of this episode, there were at least two starship classes in service-the Enterprise and the unnamed starship of "The Menagerie".

Another consideration-
There is no canonical evidence to support the registry theories that I am reading at this thread. Further, the only time the NCC-1700 is seen is in the episode "Datalore". This ship is seen from the top with the registry and no corresponding name. (She is a refit.) And since the diagram in "Space Seed" is not readable and hasn't been seen again, the NCC-1700 is a Constitution Class starship with no name. So, our list reads as follows-

NCC- USS Constitution
NCC- USS Defiant
NCC- USS Excalibur
NCC- USS Exeter
NCC- USS Farrugut (rf. below)
NCC- USS Hood
NCC- USS Intrepid (rf. below)
NCC- USS Lexingtion
NCC- USS Potemkin
NCC-1017 USS Constellation
NCC-1700
NCC-1701 USS Enterprise
NCC-1701-A USS Enterprise

This partial list supports the contention by some that the USS Constitution precedes the USS Constellation in the order of ships.

Another consideration-
The USS Intrepid's crew is numbered at 430. This is from "The Immunity Syndrome". How many classes of ships would have the same number of crew? I don't think very many, and this is why I list the USS Intrepid as Connie. Though there is a possibility that the ship was Connie, she may have been something else. The same could be said for the USS Farrugut which had about 400 crew members in the 2250's.

All of the above has been based on what is hearable and seeable in the episodes and films without the assistance of tech manuals, encyclopedias, and other wriiten material.

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takeoffs are optional; landings are mandatory

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Oh, I forgot to mention... Yes, Fitz, go ahead and use it. Before I saw the episode, I'd always wished there were a screencap of that chart, but there wasn't. Now that I've made one, it'd be nice if everyone could see it... :-)

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Connies used to only have 203 crewmembers... as per The Menagerie/The Cage. I wonder why that changed.

Was the Constellation definately a connie? '17' type... maybe it was a '10' type connie? i.e. 1701 and 1017

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

The 203 crew thing could be mission-specific. Perhaps the trip to Rigel had been a long one, and the crew had eaten each other en route? Or a bit more seriously, forks, perhaps crew size was limited and stores increased for long trips?

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :

If the Constellation wasn't a Constitution-class, it was doing a damn good impression.

Is it the Franz Joseph blueprints that put Engineering behind the Impulse engines, while everyone else puts them in the secondary hull? Or the other way around?

Posted by Daniel (Member # 453) on :

Yeah, we got to see some pretty good images of the half-destroyed Constellation. It's a Constitution. And I'm not sure if I buy into this "17" connie versus "10" connie. I mean, it is possible there were two construction contracts, but if we go by the theory that early registries are in (relatively) sequential order, the "10" connies would be much older than the "17" connies. Perhaps by decades. I don't think there would be such a big gap between "orders".

Posted by MC Infinity (Member # 531) on :

strange, i always thought they were all 17xx, oh well..

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"Well if it's gonna be that kind of a party, I'm putting my dick in the mashed potatoes!"

-Nimrod 16/4/2001

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :

It was indeed FJ who put Engineering (half-wide, at that -- and no second-floor office for Scotty) in front of the impulse engines.

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

We already know that it isn't uncommon for registries to be totally non-indicative of when a ship was launched. So I don't see the problem w/ having Constitutions back to the ten-hundreds (or even nine-hundreds, counting the Eagle).

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

OK, still trying to work at this.

Maybe then, we can come back to the 'blocks' of registries. Maybe the 1700's are for the connies, its just that a few others WERE assigned 1700 registries, but decided to take older, unused registries like 1017 and 16xx or what ever.

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Or maybe there is absolutely no reason to believe that numbers in the 1700s are in any way special to the class...

Posted by Psi'a Meese on :

______________________________________________________
"Unfortunately... He spoke almost entirely to Gene himself, a man who had the unfortunate tendancy to, when posed with a question to which he dind't know the answer, pull something out of his ass on the spot."
______________________________________________________

I have always read both the Whitfield and Joseph books with wonder since childhood. It is always disheartening to me to see them taken to task so.

Nothing about TOS was ever 'perfect' or 'accurate'. I don't think Gene Roddenberry was GOD. But Star Trek WAS his brainchild. When writing a book of a type ( The Making of _insert favorite tv show_) not yet published, why not go to the source? That source-like it or not-was Gene Roddenberry.

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Purrr...

Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :

I'm going to use the SotF classes as a easier way of thrying to explain this.

In the 2240's Starfleet starts building a new type of starship, this class is the first of three batches, the first stating in 2243 (2 years before E-nil is commissioned) 2250's for the Bonhonmme class and 2260's for the Achenar class. The basis behind this is to when the last of the first batch is commissioned by this time technology will have been advanced far to put this first batch behind, so a second is built while these ships are in service so when the second batch is done, the first batch is brought in and the second batch fill in. The third finishes while the second batch is sent in for a refit while the first and third batch fill in then the first goes in and the seond fills in.

The old USS Eagle NCC-956 and USS Constellation NCC-1017 are old ships with a service life almost coming to an end along with their classmates. Starfleet use these ships to refit them up to the Constitution specs (hey Star Trek 1 did it) This is only a test to see how much better they are compared to a scratch built Connie. Tests show that the ships are 80% as strong but Starfleet decides against it. In 2250's the issue is brought up again and the USS Republic NCC-1371 is brough in for refit, not much of an improvement. However in the 2260's Starfleet brings in the previous class prior to the Connie class for a refit to Achernar class. Since the similarity between the two classes the 1600's type was easily refitted to the Connie config. About 10 to 12 ships of the 1600's type was refitted.

It needs to be flshed out for inconsistencies but it works. The original Connies of the 2240's would be structurally different than the Connies of the 2250's so when Kirk mentioned only 12 ships of this type he meant the 2240's not the entire complement of ships. That's my two cents...

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Hey, that's a good reasoning. I was trying to explain it in a round-about way like that earlier in the thread (or was it another thread). That the older registries were 'refits' seeing as the Encyc said even the TOS Enterprise had been refitted several times throughout its life time - its most major refit was for TMP...

The Eagle, and the Constellation could have been DRASTICALLY different, with even a 'ball' for the 'saucer' like the Daedelus Class ships!

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Not *too* different, though, so that it would make at least some minimal sense to attempt the refit. Perhaps the primary hull and the engines were completely different, but the secondary hull was virtually identical to the final product? Then, it would make sense to do a "refit" instead of a "rebuild", if an entire section of the original could be used without major modifications.

I've doodled my share of pre-TOS ships, and a "Horizon class" made out of a Constitution secondary hull, a flattened-sphere primary hull mounted on a very short neck, and two nacelles slightly smaller than the eventual Constitution ones, on extremely short pylons close to the hull, would seem to do the trick. A relatively sleek starship would result, nicely between Daedalus and Constitution in design philosophy.

Starfleet would then try out several different ways to fit a saucer hull into that design. Not all of them would have to look like Constitutions - perhaps the Eagle and the Republic never much looked like the Enterprise, and only the Constellation (the only low-rego ship we actually saw on screen) actually resembled the end product?

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Maybe they had vastly different internal configurations?

Like the whole secondary hull full of jelly!?!

Posted by Teelie (Member # 280) on :

I like that jelly hull idea, I can see it's usefulness in helping absorb and then distribute impact blows from space debris or weapons fire.

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :

Seriously, though. I've stubbornly clung to Matt Jeffries' notion that the registry numbers' significance was far more logical than what we ended up with -- as I said earlier. But to recap:

"NCC" would be the Starfleet prefix for their Cruisers. The "17" indicated the 17th Federation cruiser design. "01" indicated the first production hull built after the prototype.

We have a non-canon 16th cruiser design in the Baton Rouge, and they were more-or-less externally comparable to the TOS Enterprise as the TOS Enterprise was to the movie Enterprise -- a little smaller, a little less refined, a little lower tech. Most of the Constitution class' breakthroughs were evidently internal, and probably due in no small part to the breakthrough of Duotronics.

The non-canon Horizon class was essentially a larger version of the Daedalus, with registries in the low 1000s. This is what the Constellation originally was, and I even wrote a story about Captain Decker saving his ship and crew in the face of nasty odds, getting promoted to Commodore, and using his clout to have the Constellation refit using the new Constitution prototype as a template.

And then there was also the non-canon Archon class, which was a refit of the Horizon, replacing the spherical primary hull with the first large-scale saucer hull. They had registries in the 1300s, and the Republic belonged to this class.

Bear in mind this is all fandom stuff, and much of it is not in keeping with the current official party line, but I like it so much better than said party line...

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :

Also, to respon to Psi'a Meese:

I said -- "Unfortunately... He spoke almost entirely to Gene himself, a man who had the unfortunate tendancy to, when posed with a question to which he dind't know the answer, pull something out of his ass on the spot."

To which our Caitian pal said -- "I have always read both the Whitfield and Joseph books with wonder since childhood. It is always disheartening to me to see them taken to task so.

"Nothing about TOS was ever 'perfect' or 'accurate'. I don't think Gene Roddenberry was GOD. But Star Trek WAS his brainchild. When writing a book of a type ( The Making of _insert favorite tv show_) not yet published, why not go to the source? That source-like it or not-was Gene Roddenberry."

I, too, have been the proud owner of the Star Fleet Technical Manual, the Enterprise deckplans, and The Making of Star Trek for long years now, but my love for Star Trek is more than devotion to any single individual associated with it -- even Gene himself. He had a wonderful idea for the show, and wrote some good episodes himself, but when it came to the ship, Gene's only real input was that it wouldn't use conventional sci-fi or real-world propulsion effects, that the main bridge was to be on the top of the primary hull, and that it would have a large engine room. Everything else was created by Matt Jeffries, and in my decidedly-unhumble opinion, Mr. Whitfield made a serious error in not talking to Mr. Jeffries for the bit on what's where on the big 'E'.

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH

Posted by Starbuck (Member # 153) on :

If Starfleet was supposed to be more of a scientific/exploratory group than a military presence, why was it called a court martial anyway and not, say, a "court spatial"?

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"Replicate some marmalade, Commander - helm control is toast!"