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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Peregrinus: [QB] The notion that all the ships on the "Court Martial" chart were [i]Constitutions[/i] originated with Greg Jein in an article he wrote for the fanzine T-Negative. Where FJ had taken the names of the known [i]Constitutions[/i] and given them 17xx numbers in sequence, Greg applied them all to the wall chart -- based solely on the header "Star Ship Status", taking it as an indicator that all those numbers were for Starship-class vessels. He then removed the known regos (1700 and 1701) and applied the rest of the names in reverse alphabetical order down the list. Purely arbirary... Mike Okuda used a blend of that idea with FASA's use of same. After all, FASA had held their liscense for close to a decade... But his list still operates on the same presumption that they're all [i]Constitutions[/i]. Now I have to get a little expository -- forgive me. We all know Matt Jeffries pretty much pulled 'NCC-1701' out of his ass. But he did spend time later figuring out the significance of those letters and numbers. What he settled on was that 'NCC' represented the heavy cruisers, ships-of-the-line, or -- in Star Trek terminology -- Starship-class vessels. Other prefixes would denote other classes of ships, to be determined later (but he never actually got to that...). The number denoted Starfleet's 17th Starship-class design, and the 01st production hull built after the prototype (1700). It was with this in mind that he created that chart for "Court Martial", with the 16xx regos representing the predacessor Starship class to the [i]Enterprise[/i] (what fandom and the earlier novels eventually called the [i]Baton Rouge[/i]-class), and the lone 18xx rego represented the successor design (remember, the [i]Constitution[/i] class had been around for decades by that point). A few episodes later, the [i]Constellation[/i] screwed everything up because the people over at the model shooting stage hadn't bothered to ask Matt if there was some system to his numbering. They could just as easily have rearranged the numbers into '1710', but were afraid it would look too much like '1701'... and they didn't have the budget to waste on two model kits, just to get the extra decal sheet. Pity... otherwise we might have gotten '1711', '1717', '1770', or '1771'... With a slight redubbing (to be mirrored later on TNG), they could even have given us '1700' and had the ship be the [i]Constitution[/i] herself... That incident could still be rationalized. But later on, FJ displayed an amazing lack of research skills when he didn't even track down Matt Jeffries to help him with his deck plans or Tech Manual. He relied on what few episodes he caught, still photos and slides from Lincoln Enterprises, and "The Making of Star Trek". So from him, we inherited 'NCC' as a blanket prefix for all of Starfleet, with only the vaguest hint of number blocks having something to do with class -- but not much. :rolleyes: --Jonah [/QB][/QUOTE]
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