Judging by the existing data on Memory Alpha and Ex Astris Scientia, this may be new information, so I thought I'd pass it along just in case. Eric Alba's other photos are interesting as well.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Yeah, I'd seen this guy's pic site years ago. Those are pics of Bill George's model before they relabeled it the Pasteur for AGT and added the caduceus to make it a medical ship (but gave a nod to the original name by making it the class name).
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
So, it would appear that the name on the model was originally Olympic and when they decided to use it as the Pasteur (name specified by the script) they changed the name but not the number. This would seem to be why Okuda decided to redesignate the class as Olympic instead of Hope as seen on an early version of the dedication plaque, which also had the last digit of the registry changed to an 8.
Posted by Boris (Member # 713) on :
I wonder if 59825 was Bill George's registry number for the Olympic, which Okuda changed to 59828 for the Pasteur's plaque, in order to preserve the original name-number mapping, but there wasn't enough incentive to renumber the miniature during post-production, since the viewer would never see the original name. The Encyclopedia would've kept Okuda's intended number. If the registry number isn't visible onscreen, it would be nice if the Pasteur could be numbered 59828 and the Olympic 59825.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Well, 59825 is what we see on screen for the Pasteur, so 59825 it is. I would guess that the original registry was George's idea and was already on the model when he loaned it to the TNG art/VFX department, since he probably didn't indend the ship to be 20 years newer than the Enterprise-D when he originally built it. I would also guess that if Lauritson couldn't get George's model, they'd have had to build a new one which probably would have been more futuristic looking and have a much higher registry.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
We don't really have to guess about it. Those photos show that NCC-58925 (not 59825 as you've both mistyped) was indeed the number George already had on the model before it was relabeled as the Pasteur for use in AGT.
When the model was relabled, not only was the name changed but so were other details as well, including the addition of caducei to comply with the script's specification of "the 24th century equivalent of Red Cross markings," so it's not like they didn't have the opportunity to change the number if they'd wanted to. There was no reason to alter the number because it didn't conflict with anything in the script, nor did it conflict with the Olympic's number because the Olympic was an invention of George which was never seen or even mentioned onscreen. (Calling the ship "Olympic-class" on the dedication plaque was simply an homage to the model's original name, much as the Defiant's original dedication plaque called it "Valiant-class" in homage to pre-production plans to have Valiant as the name of the ship.)
As for the dedication plaque, the only version we've seen in any legible quality gives the Pasteur's class as Hope and its registry number as NCC-58928. However, according to Okuda himself in the notes for the Pasteur's Encyclopedia entry, this was an "early version" of the plaque, and he's the one who made the damn thing so there's no reason not to take his word for it. For all we know, he changed it right after the interview in which we saw it. The final version is visible in the episode but not legible.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
phht. Like Mike Okuda knows anything about Star Trek.