This is topic Musings about Sulu's deleted TWOK scene; Enterprise-A/Yorktown thing in forum Starships & Technology at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.


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Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
 
I was just thinking idly about stuff and I got some interesting ideas. Nothing spectacular or hugely original, mind you, but interesting.

I was cosnidering my shiplist (I really should get back to work on that ) and my policy of counting deleted scenes and shooting scripts as being canon. I was thinking about whether there were cases in which this would become awkward or contradictory. Particularly, I was running over the dropped dialogue between Kirk and Sulu in the travel pod sequence from TWOK, where it's mentioned that Sulu is going to be promoted to Captain and assume command of the Excelsior. As I'm sure most of us know, Sulu's mention of his upcoming promotion was in fact filmed, but cut because (of all things) William Shatner complained about having more than one captain among the main cast. (He obviously forgot about Spock... ) You can see in the final film exactly where the pertinent dialogue was cut. As I said, it's during the travel pod sequence when Kirk and the gang are being brought over to the Enterprise in drydock. Right after Sulu says "I'm delighted. Any chance to go aboard the Enterprise---" and then is abruptly cut off, even though you can see his mouth still moving. The original scene, before being edited, played out like this:

code:

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                                           KIRK
                             I really must thank you.

                                           SULU
                                     (embarrassed)
                             I am delighted; any chance to go
                             aboard Enterprise, however briefly,
                             is always an excuse for nostalgia.

                                           KIRK
                             I cut your new orders personally. By
                             the end of the month, you'll have your
                             first command: USS EXCELSIOR.

                                           SULU
                             Thank you, sir. I've looked
                             forward to this for a long time.

                                           KIRK
                             You've earned it. But I'm still
                             grateful to have you at the helm
                             for three weeks. I don't believe
                             these kids can steer. 

---

That's from the shooting script.

Now obviously, Sulu was still a commander up until at least the time of STV, as he wore the Cmdr rank pin and was repeatedly referred to as "Commander Sulu." But there's still no real contradiction with the deleted scene from TWOK, if you take into account the fact that immediately following TWOK (which occurs a month before Sulu was to be promoted) the Enterprise returns to Earth and a few days later is stolen from Spacedock by, among others, Sulu. (Who also assaulted a Starfleet security guard and aided in the jailbreak of a Federation prisoner in the process, not the best citations the Starfleet Promotion & Command Review Board like to see on your record.) She is pusued breifly by the newly-completed U.S.S. Excelsior, which had been placed under the "command" of one Captain Styles during her construction and test-run phase. The Enterprise is soon after destroyed by her hijackers, who proceed to Vulcan aboard a captured Klingon vessel and spend the next three months there in self-imposed exile before deciding to return home to face court martial. (This already puts us at least two months after Sulu was to be promoted.) It just so happens that they end up making a side trip to the late 20th century and ultimately saving Earth from the devastation of a gigantic alien probe. Only after all of this does the crew actually face trial. Fortuantely, any charges against Sulu are dropped. But the poor Excelsior is still non-operational, so Sulu's promotion and command must be postponed. Due to the delay, Sulu is reassigned to the U.S.S. Enterprise-A along with his shipmates. The Excelsior is still languishing in Spacedock some time later, when the whole Nimbus III crisis occurs, and so Sulu is still serving as helmsman aboard the Enterprise (albeit enjoying some well-deserved planetside R & R) when the ship is scrambled unexpectedly to deal with the situation.

Ultimately, it's not until 2290 (three years before TUC) that Commander Sulu finally becomes Captain Sulu and accepts command of the Excelsior. (Starfleet finally having given up on trying to make the transwarp drive work after Scotty trashed it way back in STIII, and having refitted the ship as a conventional warp vessel and assigning her to some nice gaseous anomaly surveying in the Beta Quadrant, where poor Sulu can finally enjoy some peace and quiet and some quality tea-totalling time. )

Of course then those damned Klingons had to go and overmine their moon and...well, that's another story...

The other thing I was thinking about was the oft-debated issue of whether the Enterprise-A was in fact the renamed U.S.S. Yorktown NCC-1717 that was disabled by the Probe in TVH. I've always said that she was, since I generally consider the Encyclopedia and Tech Manuals to be canon sources. It's been pointed out to me by Spikey and others, however, that she is referred to as a "new" ship in TFF. Which, admittedly, is quite true.

So I was thinking about this and then I remembered something that I'd forgotten for quite some time, and which apparently everyone else has too. The Encyclopedia presents two scenarios---two sets of circumstances under which the postulated re-naming of the ship might have taken place. Okuda says: "...Roddenberry reportedly suggested that the second Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701-A, launched at the end of Star Trek IV, had previously been named the Yorktown, since it seems unlikely that Starfleet could have built an all-new ship so quickly. If this was the case, the Yorktown [NCC-1717] may have made it safely back to Earth and been repaired and renamed, or perhaps there was a newer, replacement Yorktown alredy under construction at the time of the probe crisis."

It's that second part that I had forgotten about. The book never specifies which of these scenarios is what "really" happened, and neither does the TNG Tech Manual, which simply says that the NCC-1701-A had previously been named Yorktown. Yet everyone seems to have latched on to the first story and left the alternative by the wayside. But what if the second option was the correct one. Then all conflicts are resolved. The Enterprise can be a new ship in TFF and still have been named Yorktown, just as the official sources say. Starfleet had a new ship on hand that had either just been completed or maybe even hadn't been totally finished yet (witness the glitches seen in TFF) that was to be named Yorktown, but was instead renamed Enterprise to honor Kirk & co.

How about it?

-MMoM
 

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Posted by Ace (Member # 389) on :
 
Yeah, Sulu's backstory with the Excelsior would be great continuity between the films (though I always thought Sulu's obvious affinity for the Excelsior, as seen at the end of ST IV, was good enough to connect later with when we finally see him as the skipper).

However, I don't know about the Yorktown/Enterprise naming obsession. First off, why rename a ship? Isn't it bad luck? And even if they did rename a new vessel named Yorktown, why would Starfleet be building a new Yorktown of the same class as the current Yorktown in the same film?
 

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
For further continuity, check out the (non-canon) movie novelizations from Treks 2-6. In the first few chapters there's ALWAYS a paragraph or two describing Sulu and why he's not gotten the Excelsior yet.

IIRC, Sulu was "temporarily" replaced by Styles by Admiral Morrow in ST3 due to the Genesis incident, to wit Style was thumbing his nose at everyone and basically calling her his own as a permenant thing. Following the Whalesong probe fun, Styles (who was aboard Excelsior when the probe depowered her AGAIN) got sideways promoted to Fleet Command while Excelsior was being refitted; during that time Sulu willing accepted a temporary demotion to Commander so he could serve aboard Enterprise until they were done. Then things pretty much fell into place for him to take command.

Mark
 

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
Was there ever any reference in a deleted scene as to why Styles was there? Presumably becuase Sulu was helping out his friends. So why in TWOK SE didn't they put that bit of dialogue about the Captaincy back in? After all Shatners ego should be all that bruised seeing as we all know Sulu gets the Excelsior in the end.
 

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Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :
 
I wonder if, when TWOK was written, Excelsior was planned as a next-generation ship or was just a regular ship (Reliant or Connie, perhaps). I suspect it was just supposed to be a regular ship and not what we later saw in STIII.
 

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Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
Well, Mim, two things about the Yorktown.

I have a problem with the whole 'newbuild' theory. By the time of Star Trek IV, the Excelsior class was coming into its ascendancy. And while Enterprise-class vessels built within the last ten years might continue to serve for close to a century as their Miranda-class contemporaries did and do, refitted Constitutions would be retired, as the Enterprise was scheduled to be. To my thinking, any venerable Constitutions would see their names applied to new Excelsiors rather than to an end-of-the-production-line Enterprise. We know there was a new Yorktown, as Tuvok said his parents were serving aboard her around the time of the Khitomer Conference.

And second, if the old Yorktown DID make it back, as is posited, and that ship became the new Enterprise, what did Starfleet do with the Yorktown's crew? If Sulu's comment at the end of TVH is any indication, new postings were presumed to be to Excelsiors, rather than the now second-string Enterprises.

Forgive my rather jumbled technique tonight, but my brain is being foggy for some reason.

--Jonah
 

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
Some minor misconceptions might need to be clarified.

First off, renaming of ships is not considered bad luck in sailor circles. Ships in some commercial fleets are renamed more often than they are repainted. Ships in military navies are often renamed and re-renamed during construction phase (which can drag on for years) and there's no special aversity to renaming operational ships, either. It just hasn't happened all that much in the USN yet. (But e.g. the Thresher class of submarines was renamed the Permit class after the loss of the class boat, to dispel "bad luck"!)

Also, it is not unusual to move large chunks of crews from ship to ship. It depends a bit on how the crew is trained. If you have a commercial or conscript crew, moving around is the norm. Professional military navies might want to train personnel to specific tasks aboard specific ships, but Starfleet is famous for its multi-proficient personnel (or Desilu/Paramount was famous for its recycling of extras, including "dead" ones!).

And several RW navies are famous for going to silly lengths to keep an "honored" name active. When a ship with such a name goes down, a newbuild or an older active vessel of same or different class will be renamed. The Royal Navy and IIRC the Indian and Argentine navies like to play such games with their carrier names, for example.

Timo Saloniemi
 

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Posted by Fleet-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
 
It would be funny when we see a Star Trek film where there's an Enterprise-E and Enterprise-F at the same time.
 

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
But please, please, pretty PLEASE let it not be due to yet another case of time travel!

Timo Saloniemi
 

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Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
 

quote:

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(or Desilu/Paramount was famous for its recycling of extras, including "dead" ones!)

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Really? I never noticed. . . Is there anywhere I can read about this, with examples?
 

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Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
 
I hadn't realized the producers had been tossing the name Excelsior about before STIII. Wow.

The first explanation for the Yorktown still makes the most sense to me. The refit Constitution Yorktown may have been a fairly newly commissioned 'new build' as of STIV. The Whale Probe power-down was just the first of it's many troubles to be seen by STV! The Yorktown limped home, it's crew reassigned while engineers repainted NCC-1701-A on the hull and Kirk took it out. Shortly thereafter another ship of some type is named Yorktown, an available name now, and a Vulcan officer is assigned to it who has a kid named Tuvok. There...easy explanation.

And, as Ace said above, "First off, why rename a ship? Isn't it bad luck?"

Didn't you see how well the ship was running during STV?
 

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

quote:

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Originally posted by Peregrinus:
Well, Mim, two things about the Yorktown.

I have a problem with the whole 'newbuild' theory. By the time of Star Trek IV, the Excelsior class was coming into its ascendancy. And while Enterprise-class vessels built within the last ten years might continue to serve for close to a century as their Miranda-class contemporaries did and do, refitted Constitutions would be retired, as the Enterprise was scheduled to be. To my thinking, any venerable Constitutions would see their names applied to new Excelsiors rather than to an end-of-the-production-line Enterprise. We know there was a new Yorktown, as Tuvok said his parents were serving aboard her around the time of the Khitomer Conference.

And second, if the old Yorktown DID make it back, as is posited, and that ship became the new Enterprise, what did Starfleet do with the Yorktown's crew? If Sulu's comment at the end of TVH is any indication, new postings were presumed to be to Excelsiors, rather than the now second-string Enterprises.

Forgive my rather jumbled technique tonight, but my brain is being foggy for some reason.

--Jonah

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I've only got a few minutes to type at the moment, I post more later, but:

I don't buy it at all that Excelsiors were replacing Constitution-class ( ) ships at the time of TVH. For God's sake, the prototype hadn't even been made to work yet! I seriously doubt that Starfleet placed any real faith in the Excelsior program after its lack of performance in STIII, and it's my view that NO new Excelsiors were built until the design was refitted as a conventional warp vessel and the prototype was awarded active status, circa 2290. (A full 7 years after TVH.)

So, where do you think that the E-A came from, if you don't think it's a newbuild and you don't think it was a pre-existing vessel that was renamed? Did SF just wave a magic wand and there it was?

-MMoM
 

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
I also think that the Excelsior was a) intended to be the replacement for the Constitutions and their ilk and b) far, far from that goal in the 2280s or even the 2290s.

But I also like to think that more than one Excelsior spaceframe had been completed or near completion by the time of ST2-4&5. A costly mistake for Starfleet, perhaps, a gamble they lost, but at least it would help explain the 2000-range Excelsior(s) we hear of later on. Perhaps the project was iced after ST3, but probably only after ST4 (where Sulu still considers the Excelsiors a fine breed), and the E-B created in an attempt to rectify the errors. And only in the 24th cnetury did series production begin, and the era of the Constitutions end for good.

Timo Saloniemi
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
There are some interesting speculations here. I'm going to bring up a few issues, though...

What's the general timeline for the construction and launching of the Excelsior, both as the transwarp testbed and as a commissioned ship? Furthermore, would Starfleet already start building further ships of that class while the prototype was still being debugged?

There was a line in one episode of TNG ("Evolution," I think) where Data said that no Starfleet ship had experienced full systems failure in XX years (number may be slightly off). Some fan pointed out that that number dated back to around 2287, which could arguably be the failure of the Excelsior. (Circa ST:V.) That failure would've prompted the ultimate end of the Great Experiment. (After all, they could've just replaced the chips that Scotty pulled out in ST:III, right?)

In TUC, Sulu's log said that the Excelsior had been on a three-year mission -- a long-range mission at that. Arguably, the ship might have gotten a shakedown period (at least a few months long) before that, meaning Sulu probably took command in late 2288 or 2289.

Personally, I now disregard Roddenberry's Yorktown speculation as non-applicable, just the same as his speculation that V'ger had encountered the Borg. There's nothing to directly suggest it, and when you consider other factors (especially Tuvok's parents and the likely Excelsior-class construction schedule) I find it less probable that the Yorktown itself was renamed the Enterprise-A.

Another minor detail: some Flareites have analyzed the Spacedock scenes at the end of TVH and pointed out that there were almost certainly several Constitution-class ships in the area; why does the Enterprise-A have to be the ex-Yorktown?

However, I still think that the Enterprise-A was a renamed ship rather than a new build, given the state of disrepair. (I've only seen TFF once, many many years ago, and have no desire to see it again anytime soon; therefore I can't comment about the "new ship" line in the movie.)
 

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Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
 

quote:

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why does the Enterprise-A have to be the ex-Yorktown?

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quote:

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Cataloguing gaseous anomalies is really lame and unbefitting such a ship.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Sol System:
It seems to me to be just as likely that the ASDB had come up with this great new design they called the Excelsior class, and then decided to test transwarp on it, rather than the other way around. In that case, while the failure of the transwarp project would require an (extensive?) refit of the Excelsior herself, the soundness of the design wouldn't be effected, nor would the construction of other ships in the class be delayed for any great period of time.

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I've always figured that if the Excelsior's Transwarp Drive was as radical a development as most of the characters seemed to think (Scotty excepted), then it would probably require some pretty extensive special developments. It seems unlikely that they could just flip a switch to change the ship from transwarp to regular warp... just how many components would need to be swapped out to make the ship a truly reliable standard vessel?

I suppose that Starfleet could have started production on some other Excelsiors while the Experiment was in progress, but that seems awfully conceited and wasteful to start full production on an unproven design. When the Experiment was ultimately cancelled (whenever), they would've had to halt production on any ships then in work, rip out some of its guts and start again. Refitting one prototype to new standards is believable. I don't think so for more than one. (Sidebar: was there any definitive proof of a second Excelsior-class ship hanging out in Spacedock in one of the movies?)

Also, from the dialogue I always got the impression that the name "The Great Experiment" was synonomyous with the Excelsior -- meaning that there were no other testbed ships.
 

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
But the experiment could just be transwarp drive, and as I said I think it just as likely that the Excelsior was designed, and then chosen as the testbed for the transwarp project. As far as how extensive a refit would be required to rework the Excelsior, all we really have to go on is external features, and those changes are minor. A new bridge. A tweaked impulse deck.

Whatever design innovations the transwarp project required, they obviously weren't so tied to the design of the ship that the Excelsior class became useless when the project failed. Just the opposite, it would seem. Furthermore, I'd imagine that the Excelsior was not the first transwarp testbed, but rather the first time the experiment was carried out on a "real" ship, as opposed to some specialized unmanned test vehicle.

Of course, to some extent, this whole issue arises because financial considerations warrented the extensive reuse of the Excelsior model. If we consider Star Trek III alone on its own merits, then yes, it's possible that the entire Excelsior design was specifically tied to transwarp. But since we know that in "reality" the Excelsior class goes on to become the backbone of Starfleet, it would seem, to me anyway, that the designers had more in mind.

Were I to come up with a timeline, it would be something like this:
Late TOS: Starfleet starts looking for a successor to the venerable but aged Constitution class. As a stopgap measure, they decide to undertake a massive refit project. Meanwhile, a number of designs gets turned in, one of which will eventually become the Excelsior. (I suppose maybe this should all happen earlier than "late TOS," but work with me here.)

+ a few years: Another Starfleet project, this one seeking to boost warp drive performance, moves into its final stages, and starts looking around for an active duty ship on which to carry out the final tests. Well, over in another branch of the fleet you've got this brand new class just receiving the green light. All its systems are fresh and new. Why not use one of those? Heck, why not use the class ship? We'll just have to mess about with engineering a bit, and make room in the nacelles for our Fancy Technical Equipment.

Something like that is a possibility, is all I'm saying, and seeming just as likely a one.
 

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Multiple Trek (and especially Voyager) episodes suggest that transwarp, slipstream and other faster-than-typical warp technology rarely requires large refits to existing hardware. While the Borg transwarp coil was obviously nano-cool stuff that the Federation couldn't hope to replicate, even in its infancy the theory behind Federation transwarp could be a relatively small number of distributed adjustments to an existing frame and warp engine core. coils, or power systems. From that perspective one could assume that transwarp was retrofitted into the Excelsior design, then retrofitted right back out when it proved unfeasible.

Mark
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Good point there Sol. Another point in that vein is the ship's registry number -- it's extremely unlikely that only 300 ships have been launched in the past 40 years, given the rate beforehand. (Yeah yeah, that's all up for debate... )

The thing is though, that the Excelsior was also the class prototype. And why wouldn't there be more Excelsiors around by the time of TWOK or TFF?

To borrow a metaphor, I've figured that when the transwarp project failed, Starfleet decided to make lemonades out of the lemon that the Excelsior was...
 

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Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim:
...it's my view that NO new Excelsiors were built until the design was refitted as a conventional warp vessel and the prototype was awarded active status, circa 2290. (A full 7 years after TVH.)

-MMoM

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Just checkin' the math. I believe TVH occurred in 2286, one year after WOK and SFS. 2290-2286= 4 years, not 7.
 

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Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Kind of a sidebar here, but I always thought the scene in STVI where Enterprise just happens to have "all that equipment for studying gaseous anomalies" was intended for the Excelsior crew.
When you watch the movie there's zero mention of Enterprise charting anything except Shatner's waistline until that moment and the scene seems kind od added in rathevr than part of the original screenplay.
Just my opinion here though.

As to Sulu not getting the immeadiate promotion to Captain: He probably took some time off to be with his daughter (she would have been a little kid back then)....or mabye Sulu love intrest was Admiral Nakimura's (sp?) daughter and daddy held him back.
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Regarding late build Constitutions; I seam to recall that someone here had positively identified several NCC-2xxx range registries assigned to Constitution-Class silhouettes seen on the Operation Retrieve chart in TUC.
I don't have time to dig up the thread at the moment but this is what my ship list says was on the OR chart.

quote:

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U.S.S. EAGLE
NCC-956 OBERTH-CLASS

U.S.S. SCOVIL
NCC-1598 OBERTH-CLASS

U.S.S. ENDEAVOUR
NCC-1895 OBERTH-CLASS

U.S.S. SPRINGFIELD
NCC-1963 CONSTITUTION-CLASS

U.S.S. CHALLENGER
NCC-2032 EXCELSIOR-CLASS

U.S.S. AHWAHNEE
NCC-2048 CONSTITUTION-CLASS

U.S.S. POTEMKIN
NCC- >UNW< CONSTITUTION-CLASS

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quote:

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but I always thought the scene in STVI where Enterprise just happens to have "all that equipment for studying gaseous anomalies" was intended for the Excelsior crew.

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quote:

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41 INT. R DECK CORRIDOR 41

leaving the Enterprise Science Labs...

GORKON
Your research laboratory is most
impressive...

KIRK
Starfleet's been charting and
cataloging planetary atmospheres.
All vessels are equipped with
chemical analytic sensors...

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quote:

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Originally posted by AndrewR:
1. Enterprise-A had to be an older ship. Why would they decommision a roughly 10 year old ship?

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quote:

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Originally posted by AndrewR:
AND why would the Transwarp project be ended - Scotty just removed some computer parts - nothing to do with the ACTUAL drive. They presumably would have everything backed up on Starbases and Earth etc.

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That's what I was suggesting earlier -- that Scotty's sabotage didn't end the Experiment in and of itself. Instead, the project never worked in subsequent tests after the sabotage was repaired.

When the Excelsior failed to have a practical transwarp drive, they re-worked the essential parts of the design to conform to normal warp principles instead.

Also, having a propulsion system that can be completely disabled by removing three tiny chips can not be a good thing...
 

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Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
 
Here is how I believe things went:

2240s:
Constitution-class commissioned, and at the time is SF's largest and most powerful starship design. There are only 12 built at this time and most or all of them are sent out onto the frontiers to conduct exploration, initiate contact with new races, and to patrol hostile border zones.

2260s:
Heavy losses to Constitution-class lineup, as many hostile lifeforms and races are encountered. The Romulans make a reappearance, their first since the War in the 2150-60s. An intense Cold War-type atmosphere develops between the UFP and the Klingon Empire, kept from exploding into full-scale conflict only by the fragile Organian Peace Treaty. Starfleet would have felt the need to bolster its defensive and offensive capabilities. They plan and initiate the development of new designs including the Federation-class dreadnought, though for whatever reason these do not end up being produced in any large numbers. It is also somewhere between this point and TMP that the very earliest stages of Excelsior-class development project are initiated. (Why? Because the prototype has NX-2000 as its number, but by TMP we have already have the dreadnought U.S.S. Entente with NCC-2120.)

I will state firmly now that I personally believe the Excelsior project was transwarp-oriented from the first, that the ship was designed and planned to be a transwarp cruiser whose designers (probably a small group of aspiring theoretical engineers and scientists convinced that they'd discovered the key to the next big bang in starship propulsion) likely hoped would EVENTUALLY some day replace the Constitution at the forefront of the Fleet. I DO NOT believe that Starfleet Command authorized its development specifically as a replacement for the Connies. A couple of guys presented SFC with some starry-eyed preachings about the potential of transwarp drive and found enough support to get a ball rolling (albeit very slowly) on the development of their brainchild. Starfleet probably didn't realize the grand implications until later. I think that the higher-ups were more concerned simply with strengthening, expanding, and augmenting the Fleet at this time, and I think the rest of the timeline supports this. That is my opinion.

2270:
The Enterprise returns from her 5-year mission in deep space and SF initiates a massive refit program to update its remaining Constitutions and initiates the construction of new vessels as well.

2273:
The V'Ger incident takes place, an event which I think would have inspired a great feeling of vulnerability in both the Federation Council and Starfleet Command. Their desire to solidify their defenses (and offenses) would have been further reinforced. A short time later, the Miranda- and Soyuz-classes are developed and launched, using modified Connie-refit components.

2280:
The Constellation-class development project is initiated. The Constellation is designed to carry out long-range sensor analysis within threat territories, reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, deployment and retrieval of cargo and stealth shuttles, as well as general science and patrol duties. Like the Miranda and Soyuz, it is intended to augment the newly redesigned Constitution-class cruisers. The earliest design stages of the Ambassador-class have been begun as well.

2284:
The U.S.S. Constellation NX-1974 is launched. Project Genesis begins.

2285:
STII
Construction of U.S.S. Excelsior nears completion.

STIII
Older Constitutions are being scheduled for replacement. (I admit that this is curious, given that most or all underwent refits little more than a decade before. Perhaps as the construction of newbuilt ships progressed, flaws were found in the design of the early refits? At any rate, they were being replaced probably with newbuilt Connies, or possibly something else, but NOT with Excelsiors.)

Excelsior has been officially commissioned (SD 8205.5 according to the dedication plaque, which falls nicely between TWOK's 8130.3 and TSFS's 8219.3) and is ready for trial runs, but is sabotaged by Scotty when the Enterprise is stolen. (The way I look at it, we can interpret the subsequent failure of the transwarp drive in two ways. Firstly, it could be attributed to flaws in the theoretical science behind the drive system, in which case Scotty's sabotage was---unbeknownst to him, of course---quite unnecessary, as the ship wouldn't have worked anyway. Alternatively, and perhaps more controversially, Scotty could have done something more to the Excelsior than just pulling out the chips he handed to McCoy. Perhaps, in addition to pocketing those "souvenirs," he damaged the ship in some more critical internal way. Completely fried her circuits or something. I wouldn't put it past him, considering his utter hatred of the ship. And the reason why Starfleet never again experimented with transwarp was because they simply lost faith in the concept after this fiasco, even though it may have been theoretically sound.)

2286:
Starfleet continues replacing old Constitutions with newbuilt ones. Among the ships slated for replacement is the U.S.S. Yorktown NCC-1717.

TVH
The Probe/Whalesong crisis occurs. At this point, the Excelsior is still sitting in Spacedock, disabled. The Yorktown is neutralized by the Probe. After the crisis, her intended replacement is instead christened Enterprise. (The Yorktown will still be replaced at some point before 2293. Whether the NCC-1717 was kept in service until a new replacement was built or was simply scrapped after the Probe incident is unclear, but unimportant.)

2287:
The Excelsior is STILL non-functional in Spacedock.

2288:
The Soyuz-class is taken out of service. (The reason for this has never been explained, but has been theorized to possibly be because of some class-specific design flaw, hence the similar Miranda-class and other ships utilizing the same components remaining in service. Or, alternatively, it was a gesture for the benefit of the talks that Ambassador Curzon Dax conducted with the Klingons the following year. [As per DS9 "Blood Oath"])

2290:
The Excelsior is finally refitted as a conventional warp vessel and put into active service. It is at this point that I feel Starfleet first recognized that even without transwarp, the Excelsior could be a powerful weapon and could have the potential to replace the Constitution-class as the "big gun" of the Fleet. Upon this revelation, they probably began mass-producing the design. (SoundEffect: When I said 7 years in my earlier post, I was mistakenly counting from 2286 to 2293, rather than 2290. )

2293:
TUC
The Khitomer talks threaten to undo all of the militaristic expansion that SF has gone through over the previous three decades, and many within Starfleet are none too anxious for that to happen, hence the conspiracy to undermine the peace initiative.

By this point, there are at least a few Excelsior-class ships in service. (Reverend: I have come to the conclusion that the Operation Retrieve silhouettes---the largest of the three types shown---which were interpreted as Connies are actually Excelsiors. The two smaller silhouette types are, I believe, Constitutions and Mirandas. There were definitely no Oberths on the chart.)

About the Enterprise-A's decommissioning: There is something that is often forgotten. Kirk's closing log at the end of TUC implies that while the old TOS crew is being retired, the ship herself is to be passed on to another crew. The E-A was not intended to be decommissioned at the end of the film. However, when TPTB went to make Generations, they wanted to show the launching of the Enterprise-B, which they placed in the months following TUC. So what's the explanation? Why did SF decide to decommission the only 7-year-old Enterprise-A? I believe it's because once they knew they had a bigger and better design on their hands, namely the Excelsior-class, they were eager to use the Enterprise legacy to endorse it. Remember that the name Enterprise had in the eyes of Federation citizens everywhere a representation of Starfleet's best qualities. It held, I suspect, a massive amount of propaganda (or, to put it politely, "publicity") value. So they were eager to have one of their new cruisers be named Enterprise, and that was their reason for scrapping the E-A. Once they *did* see the damage inflicted on the vessel by the fight with the BoP, I'm sure they felt all the more justified in this.


So, by the beginning of the 24th century, the Excelsior had gone from being a pipe dream transwarp super-ship to being regarded as an utter failure and all but disowned by SF to becoming the strongest defensive and offensive weapon in widespread use throughout the Fleet. The ship was obviously a subsequent success, as it went on to be one of the most widely-produced and longest-lived designs known.

And there you have my conjectural history of the Excelsior-class!

-MMoM
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Mim, I really, really like that line of reasoning! For one thing, having a 20-year-long transwarp development project actually JUSTIFIES the tag name "The Great Experiment." (Emphasis on "experiment" -- as in, "unproven.")

A couple of minor points: considering the basically-chronological system of registry numbers (which I know is a can of worms unto itself), the Miranda-class would have to predate the Excelsior by a few years, maybe even a decade. This would lead to the suggestion (which some fans have already supported) that the Mirandas were originally similar to the TOS Enterprise in appearance, and were refitted shortly after (or before) the 1701 in TMP.

Coincidentally, that would mean that the Constellation-class starships would also have to predate the Excelsior, perhaps with the prototype being the first new ship launched with the new style of appearance around 2270. (Of course, that questions the reason why the prototype Constellation was still undergoing trials in 2293, but that might be explained somehow...)

Actually, I just remembered the mention of the USS Hathaway from TNG, which was given a specific age and launch date of 2285... by that reasoning, the number NCC-2593 fits in rather well!

OTOH, there's also the USS Repulse from TNG which was an Excelsior, with the number NCC-2544...

*sigh*

Anyway, to get back to the Excelsior's transwarp drive... I figure that Scotty wouldn't have totally disabled the ship or actually destroyed anything. First, IMO he was derisive of the ship because it was over-thought and overall a hair-brained engineering concept. Second, he didn't need to totally destroy the project, he just needed to prevent the ship from chasing down the Enterprise.
 

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Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
 
The history of the Constellation and Miranda classes was expounded upon in this article by Rick Sternbach in Star Trek: The Magaizne some months ago.

He says (and I happen to agree) that the Miranda and Soyuz were outgrowths of the Constitution-class refit program, and therefore did not exist in some other form prior to the 2270s. They, and the Constellation are products of the movie era.

About registries, it could easily be that there are certain blocks or ranges that are sometimes reserved for particluar projects in advance. Therefore, if SF knew it was going to be expanding in the near future, they might have set aside the NCC-1800 to NCC-1900 range for that purpose. When the Excelsior project was first initiated, it got NX-2000 reserved and then things went from there. The Connies continued on in the NCC-1700 range Thus you have all your new vessels from the movie era with registries in those three ranges. The oddities like the Connies may be a result of Starfleet going back and filling gaps in the system by assigning registries that were reserved at some point in the past for something but never ended up being used to other vessels. Or something.

Of course, as I said, the only reason why the Excelsior need be thought of as having been conceived so early is because of the NCC-2120 in TMP. But, as we all know, that number was taken from Franz Joseph, whose registries weren't sequential between classes at all...

-MMoM
 

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Posted by Akira (Member # 850) on :
 
MMM now how would you explane the Oberth Class

IS it an older Design or newer
 

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Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
 
Other than the common image of Col. West with the Operation Retrieve chart, is there a better or clearer version anywhere that shows these silhouettes you guys are talking about?
 

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Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
The Oberth could just me a design influenced by some new Federation member-species and the impact of that culture's technology and design estetic on the fleet.

I always thought the Soyuz was intended to act as a deep space subspace tranciever in unexlored areas where starfleet had not built any yet.
That would explain both the proliferation of antenna arrays on the ship and the reason for their discontunuation ( starfleet reigns in it's rate of expansion as a result of the Kitomer accords and builds subspace permanent trancievers in it's sphere of influence).
All the ideas about the Excelsior are valid, but I'd imagine there was at least one other class testing the same technology at the same time foe objective comparison analsis. Mabye the "other" class encountered design flaws that kept Excelsior in spacedock making refinments and improvements.
THe other class could have been ASDB'd Merced class (looks Excelsior-ish to me) or the four nacelled Excelsior study model that we see in the Qualor II shipyards.
 

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 

quote:

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He says (and I happen to agree) that the Miranda and Soyuz were outgrowths of the Constitution-class refit program, and therefore did not exist in some other form prior to the 2270s. They, and the Constellation are products of the movie era.

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Well we know Sternbach would say this as he has all his own conjectural ships in that Spaceflight Chronology!! - Just because it's old doesn't make - in his eyes - his work invalid.

I don't like the idea of at least the Miranda hanging about - and the Soyuz too I guess, seeing as it was retired so early.
 

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
Sternbach indeed said that the Miranda class was an outgrowth of the refit project. But that doesn't say anything about the Surya class .

I agree with the early beginnings of the Excelsior experiment. Given that the NCC-1700 was launched way back in 2245, the NX-2000 would be somewhere in the early 2260s at the very latest. The Constellation's registry number could be from an unused batch of numbers, or perhaps it evolved from an unused NX-1947 proposal from the 2250s-60s.
 

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
Or we could just dismiss Sternbach's articles as heresey

I can't see the Federation running around with just Connies. What about Kahn's line "One big happy fleet".

I feel there were easily earlier 'unrefit' versions of the Constellation, Oberth, Soyuz, Miranda and possibly even Sydney class.
 

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Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
 
What I don't get is having the entire fleet of the 23rd century being just refitted ships? Well, of what we see of course. How big is the Federation in the 23rd century to have only a dozen or so Connies in the fleet? You have also a difference of 300 or so ships between the USS Constitution and the USS Excelsior with a 40 year gap betwen commissioning dates.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
I don't think that the ENTIRE fleet was refitted... certainly some of them might have been given some kind of face-lift.

I think that in the case of the Constitutions, they decided that the ships were too good to relegate to second fiddle, and gave them upgrades instead.

I think that the Constellation-class was probably originally designed as it is... number 1974 is probably close enough to the year 2270 to let it be built from the keep up using the TMP style. The Miranda-class, on the other hand, probably looked like the TOS Enterprise originally, and was refitted before (or after) TMP along with the Connies.
 

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

quote:

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Originally posted by AndrewR:
I can't see the Federation running around with just Connies. What about Kahn's line "One big happy fleet".

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quote:

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Originally posted by Matrix:
What I don't get is having the entire fleet of the 23rd century being just refitted ships? Well, of what we see of course. How big is the Federation in the 23rd century to have only a dozen or so Connies in the fleet? You have also a difference of 300 or so ships between the USS Constitution and the USS Excelsior with a 40 year gap betwen commissioning dates.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Harry:
What this says is that Transwarp, in this context, means creating a stable wormhole effect. Cute theory.

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quote:

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Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
...The Miranda-class, on the other hand, probably looked like the TOS Enterprise originally, and was refitted before (or after) TMP along with the Connies.

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quote:

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But that theory is basically ignored today -- personally, I think it's silly that they'd automatically switch naming conventions and start calling "transwarp" "warp." It would just be too confusing.

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Why? It's just a different form of warp. At the time they needed to distinguish the two - but after all the ships got implemented with it - why not just go back to calling it warp. "Transwarp" is just "across warp" - so it was probably just a threshold thing. (Don't even THINK about that Voyager episode!)

Maybe Scotty didn't think it could be done. Like some said that the speed of sound or the speed of light couldn't be broken!
 

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Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
 
I suppose it depends too on whether you think that "Time-warp" (as said in "The Cage") was the same as regular warp, or not.
 

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Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
 
I've heard tree theories about Transwarp.
FASA's game suggested that it combined warp engine technology and transporter technology, to 'beam' the ship forward a little.
Somewhere I heard that it was esentially a primative form of the Boerg Transwarp conduit.
A novel (forget which) suggested that transwarp warped space a dimension higher then hyperspace, but was unstable.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
Yes, well, there's also the theory that transwarp involves knocking all the crew out, then turning back the clocks, so they think they got there faster than they did. But, then, I just made that one up. Which means it's only about as valid as, well... anything else.
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Maybe the reason the Excelsior transwarp project was abandoned was when the original test crew all transformed into lizards after their first successful flight. The Federation was so embarrassed about the stupidity of the incident that they cancelled the project and surpressed all records of its existence.


 

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Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
so THAT'S why they needed Sulu and Rand to replace Captain Styles and First Officer Miguel Ferrer!
 

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Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
 
I find it highly unlikely that Rand became the first officer.
 

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Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
yet i believe that is what 'flashback' claimed.. or am i mistaken?

anywho I don't think its so far fetched.. we know that she became an ensign sometime after TMP (within 10 years of her joining Starfleet, according to dialogue), and that she was an officer in TSFS.. confusingly, she wore an enlisted jumpsuit in TVH, but she was and officer again in TUC aboard Excelsior, and the 'Flashback' episode had her wearing a commander pin.. by 2293, when TUC/Flashback took place, she had been an officer for some 17-19 years, more than enough time to recieve a commander's billet.

on the grounds that she stopped screaming at space monsters and asking commanders to look at her legs, that is.
 

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Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
 

quote:

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'Flashback' episode had her wearing a commander pin

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quote:

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Originally posted by Spike:

quote:

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'Flashback' episode had her wearing a commander pin

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That doesn's really count since she wore a Lt. JG pin in TUC. God, I so have to finish my list about uniform errors.

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But yet she wore a Cmdr pin in TSFS and was credited as "Commander Rand" (despite the CPO uniform) in TVH. Of course, that fits with neither TUC nor "Flashback." (The latter had her with a Lt. Cmdr pin, IIRC.) Rand's rank history is about as confusing as O'Brien's...
 

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Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
 

quote:

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But yet she wore a Cmdr pin in TSFS and was credited as "Commander Rand" (despite the CPO uniform) in TVH. Of course, that fits with neither TUC nor "Flashback." Rand's rank history is about as confusing as O'Brien's...

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Yeah. We can choose between:

1.) CPO in TMP -> Cmdr. in TSFS -> ignore CPO uniform in TVH -> ignore Lt. JG pin in TUC

2.) CPO in TMP -> ignore Cmdr. pin in TSFS -> CPO in TVH -> Lt. JG in TUC

I prefer variant 2.

It's also possible that the character in TSFS wasn't Rand, but that doesn't explain her sad look when she saw the Enterprise.

There's also a fourth theory with a demotion from Cmdr. to CPO but that's just silly. I don't know why I even mention that.
 

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Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
also disregarding that she said it took ten years before she was an ensign.. this precludes the TVH from being accurate already, since that was more than 10 years after her last appearance as a non-com.. seeing as she was already appeared and/or credited as commander rand in two previous movies, i think the lt jg is best disregarded.
 

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Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
 

quote:

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she said it took ten years before she was an ensign..

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