Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Simultaneous Names and Registries

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Posted by Stingray (Member # 621) on :

A proposed solution to the Interpid/Yeager/etc. difficulties. It is established that different classes of ships are built by different
shipbuilders at different shipyards. Perhaps Starfleet Command does not assign names to their ships when they order them. Imagine
the process as something along these lines: Starfleet orders a certain number of a particular class of a production starship. Starfleet
also attaches registries to each ship at the time of ordering to insure a distinct registry for each. The manufacturer then sets about
constructing its ships and when the time comes, the ships' names are assigned by the shipyard. Thus, ships of different batches,
classes, and manufacturers can have names that are the same. Much like the TPTB and what actually happened, two shipyards may
have both decided to honor Charles Yeager and would have been unaware of the other's actions. The attractiveness of this theory, IMHO, is
also in the explanation of the NCC code. Since NCC almost certainly stands for Naval Construction Code, it explains why the code
exists in such a form. Also, something that has troubled me for a long time was to why the registry was so prominent on the hull -
even more prominent than the name itself. With this theory, the only definitive non-repeated, absolutely distinctive way of
distinguishing ships from one another is the registry, and not the name, making it more important in the eyes of Starfleet engineers,
shipbuilders, and beuracrats (but not in the eyes of our Horatio Hornblowers).

This is not to say that shipnaming is totally beyond Starfleet's control. I would imagine a Starfleet officer attached to each shipyard whose responibilities included or consisted of overseeing the naming process. Also, it would not be uncommon that HQ itself would issue special directives that this ship will be named this or that; not just the Enterprise though, many others and any other ship being conceived by the ASDB (Galaxy, Prometheus, essentially any prototype etc.). And finally, this point is rather obvious and stated before, the registries can be assigned at the time of conception or ordering. Thus the Prometheus NX-5xxxx could literally have been under development for decades. If she were to go into production, the next would have something in the more recent NCC-7xxxx or NCC-8xxxx (I imagine that the first production Excelsior would have a number much higher than 2000 b/c of the time between conception and recommission after transwarp failure).

Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stingray:
The manufacturer then sets about
constructing its ships and when the time comes, the ships' names are assigned by the shipyard. Thus, ships of different batches,
classes, and manufacturers can have names that are the same. Much like the TPTB and what actually happened, two shipyards may
have both decided to honor Charles Yeager and would have been unaware of the other's actions.

Um....Can you think about the absurdity of that?
"You're assigned to the USS Tyler Durden..."
"The Tyler Durden?!? Wow! A Nebula on deep-space exploration assignment! Great!"
"No, not THAT Tyler Durden, the OTHER Tyler Durden. Y'know, the freighter running from Boredom to Tedium & back again, with the occasional side trip to Ennui."
"Oh. Damn."

quote:
The attractiveness of this theory, IMHO, is
also in the explanation of the NCC code. Since NCC almost certainly stands for Naval Construction Code,

What??

quote:
it explains why the code
exists in such a form. Also, something that has troubled me for a long time was to why the registry was so prominent on the hull -
even more prominent than the name itself. With this theory, the only definitive non-repeated, absolutely distinctive way of
distinguishing ships from one another is the registry, and not the name, making it more important in the eyes of Starfleet engineers,
shipbuilders, and beuracrats (but not in the eyes of our Horatio Hornblowers).

We've seen thast ships can be renamed easily. Renumbering, however, is probably much like switching the VIN plates in cars, although possibly slightly more legal.

quote:
I would imagine a Starfleet officer attached to each shipyard whose responibilities included or consisted of overseeing the naming process. Also, it would not be uncommon that HQ itself would issue special directives that this ship will be named this or that; not just the Enterprise though, many others and any other ship being conceived by the ASDB (Galaxy, Prometheus, essentially any prototype etc.).

Granted.

quote:
And finally, this point is rather obvious and stated before, the registries can be assigned at the time of conception or ordering.

Nei. Sternbach-san has already stated that it's more likely a first-come, first-serve basis.

quote:
(I imagine that the first production Excelsior would have a number much higher than 2000 b/c of the time between conception and recommission after transwarp failure).

Not THAT much higher; the next one is Repulse as NCC-2544. Hathaway was NCC-2593 & commissioned in 2285...& Excelsior was 2284, so...yeah.

[ June 28, 2001: Message edited by: Shik ]

Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :

Well, I don't know about all the details you're filling in with your own speculation, but I do know that we've seen several examples of ships of different classes with the same name that may have been in service simultaneously. Plus, we've also seen many examples which indicate that registry numbers are not sequential.

I'll have a list of examples in my next post.

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

quote:
Since NCC almost certainly stands for Naval Construction Code

It almost certainly does not.

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

I second Sol's absolute conviction...

Okuda sez he doesn't think it stands for that. FJ said he did, but he's not around any more, and what he did to the registries was travestry anyway (if not for him and his influence on TMP, we would now undoubtedly have different designs of starships carrying different letter codes in their registries, just like US Navy ships do).

Why would anybody decide that every car registry in existence has to begin with the letters "TIAC", meaning "this is a car"? Such letters would provide no information content whatsoever, and would not help in differentiating between the cars. Instead, if New York cars all had TIAC and Maryland cars had FDGB, then there would be important information content there, even if the letter combinations themselves were meaningless. Undoubtedly, the general public would sooner or later begin claiming that TIAC stands for "this is a car", event though there would be no truth in it (like there is no truth in "SOS" meaning "Save Our Ship/Souls" or CQ meaning "Seek You" or "Come Quick").

We know (or at least currently seme to agree) that NCC specifies Starfleet as the operator of the vessel, whereas vessels displaying other registry letters have not been identified as Starfleet ships. Wouldn't it thus be most logical to say that "NCC" stands for "Starfleet"?

About those overlapping names... I think we could and should eliminate at least one overlap. "USS Yeager" of Saber class coexisting with Yeager-class vessels should not be a problem at all. The name of the Saber ship was CGI'd on the hull, so we can let that be - but the Yeager class name has never been printed out canonically. So if we want to stand by the existence of that class name (which also is noncanon), we can simply say it's spelled "Jaeger" and honors a different celebrity in the aerospace business...

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :

Jesus
Fucking
Christ, what is it with people who persistently type like
this when
it's plainly obvious to even the most blithering of idiots
that such
a thing as word wrap exists? I'm sick to death of reading
posts like this.

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

I suppose it's
also possible that the Yeager
Class U.S.S. Yeager was
destroyed before the Saber Class U.S.S.
Yeager was built.

I would argue that the same could be
true for all of the other
starships who have had
the
same names.

Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :

Could each shipyard be assigned numbers, as opposed to the class being assigned blocks the yards are.
Yard 1 gets 72001-75000 & 81001-83000
Yard 2 gets 75001-77000 & 83001-85000
Yard 3 gets 77001-79000 & 85001-87000
Yard 4 gets 79001-81000 & 87001-89000

Etc..

Posted by Stingray (Member # 621) on :

quote:
I second Sol's absolute conviction...
Okuda sez he doesn't think it stands for that. FJ said he did, but he's not around any more, and what he did to the registries was travestry anyway (if not for him and his influence on TMP, we would now undoubtedly have different designs of starships carrying different letter codes in their registries, just like US Navy ships do).

Well, I hadn't realized different people said different things concerning it. I thought it was one of those "Gene said once..." like the number of Galaxies or Yorktown/E-A. Oh well, even if it shouldn't be NCC for everything, it is now and there should be some sort of explanation - are there alternate theories?

quote:
Why would anybody decide that every car registry in existence has to begin with the letters "TIAC", meaning "this is a car"? Such letters would provide no information content whatsoever, and would not help in differentiating between the cars. Instead, if New York cars all had TIAC and Maryland cars had FDGB, then there would be important information content there, even if the letter combinations themselves were meaningless. Undoubtedly, the general public would sooner or later begin claiming that TIAC stands for "this is a car", event though there would be no truth in it (like there is no truth in "SOS" meaning "Save Our Ship/Souls" or CQ meaning "Seek You" or "Come Quick").

Well there has to be some reason somebody decided to use those letters. I was just trying to explain what I thought was the prevalent assumption.

quote:
About those overlapping names... I think we could and should eliminate at least one overlap. "USS Yeager" of Saber class coexisting with Yeager-class vessels should not be a problem at all. The name of the Saber ship was CGI'd on the hull, so we can let that be - but the Yeager class name has never been printed out canonically. So if we want to stand by the existence of that class name (which also is noncanon), we can simply say it's spelled "Jaeger" and honors a different celebrity in the aerospace business...

That's one perhaps, but overlap still exists. In a Starfleet with thousands of ships, I don't think its implausible that there might be two Intrepids or two Majestics or whatever.

quote:
Jesus Fucking Christ, what is it with people who persistently type like this when it's plainly obvious to even the most blithering of idiots that such a thing as word wrap exists? I'm sick to death of reading posts like this.

I apologize deeply Vogon. It was a quick cut and paste from an old email and I assure you I carefully weighed the pros and cons of fixing it over the agrivation I would cause versus the fact I wanted to type and post and leave. I hope you can live with my decision. And as this if my first offense, I plead for the mercy of the court.

I think that's everything in my defense for now. More to come later, I'm sure.

Posted by Jeff Kardde (Member # 411) on :

To the computer he did go,
To Flare he did log on.
To "Starships & Technology" he clicked,
With only one goal in mind.

He began typing, ignoring "shift" and "enter",
And when he was done, the wrath of hell.
Vogon Poet screamed and ranted,
Blew things up and killed people.
All he wanted was good grammar.

Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :

The following are previous examples of ships names that apparently have been given to more than one vessel simultaneously. (Of course, as said, it's possible that some of these were actually cases of a vessel's destruction, followed in rapid succession by a new one's construction.) Anyway, here goes:

1. The Nebula-class USS Prometheus NCC-71201, seen on DS9 only a short time before the Prometheus-class prototype USS Prometheus, NX-59650 was seen on Voyager.

2. The Nebula-class USS Farragut NCC-60591, was seen/mentioned in ST: Generations and on DS9, but at a not-much-later date, (DS9, "Chrysalis") an Excelsior-class USS Farragut was seen.

3. My personal favorite. The imfamous Melbourne predicament. In TNG "The Best of Both Worlds" we saw the wreakage of the Nebula-class USS Melbourne NCC-62043. But in DS9 "Emissary" during the battle (Wolf 359) which took place before and during "BoBW" we see an Excelsior-class USS Melbourne, with the exact same registry number!

4. The aforementioned thing with the Yeager. In FC we see a Sabre-class ship with that name and then in DS9 we find out about a supposedly contemporary Yeager-class, which of course would have required a prototype ship called USS Yeager.

NOTE: These are not the only examples, they're just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Tomorrow, children, we shall discuss the chronologicality (or lack thereof) of registry numbers.

For homework, please consider the following: Just what is the deal with Nebbies and Excelsiors?

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :

1. There are actually FOUR years between the sight of the Nebbie Prommie and the Prommie Prommie. That's time for the ship to be lost, and the name assigned to a new class of ship. As for the registry, the interior graphics do identify the ship as NX-74913. One of the more popular rationalizations is that the exterior was purposely given that number to confuse people - God knows, it screwed *us* up enough.

2. The Farragut in DS9's "Crysalis" was stock footage. It's not necessarily confirmed as the Farragut; that Excelsior could easily have been any other ship that happened to be there, and the Farragut had just left / had not arrived. Another example of this is that we never saw the ship that Sisko arrived on in "Emmisary", but you don't see people assuming it's that Galaxy-class ship hanging off the top of the sation..

If you want a real flummox, try explaining the two USS Lexingtons!

3. Yup, no way around that.

4. Well, since neither ship had a name or registry clearly seen, it could easily be explained that the Sabre-class Yearger didn't exactly exist.

Mark

Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :

The Nebula class Farragut had been destroyed in an earlier DS9 episode, therefore, even if the Excelsior is truely the Farragut, it didn't necessarily exist at the same time as the Nebula one.

Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :

I agree that there are decent explanations for most of this (Melbourne excepted

) but I was just trying to be helpful to the starter of this thread, and I wanted to point out that it is POSSIBLE, if illogical, that there can be 'simultaneous names and regidtries.'

But, by the way, the Encyclopedia confirms that the Excelsior was indeed the Farragut. (Even though yes, it was stock footage.)

Oh, and Mark: refresh my memory, what was the deal with the Lexington(s)?