The TOS producers had clearly established in their writers' guide that there were 12 ships of what they called the starship-class, first of which were commissioned forty years before TOS. It's obvious that in "The Counter Clock Incident", April's age of 75 was calculated by adding 41 years to 34; the episode also establishes he was involved in the ship's construction and commanded the Enterprise for the next twenty-five years.

All twelve ships had names but no registries, aside from the Constellation, Enterprise, and maybe the Constitution (did its registry appear in Khan's sickbay readouts in "Space Seed"?) Later on, I suppose someone assumed that the Constitution was the class ship because of its nice NCC-1700 registry, widely published in Franz Joseph's blueprints. Originally, however, the Enterprise was to be the first ship of the 17th class of vessels because of its -01 registry (Matt Jefferies). This could be where Joseph got the idea to number the ships sequentially (Constellation being an exception).

[ November 20, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]

And then, somewhere along the line, it began to refer to all ships that were capable of independant interstellar travel.

"It takes 430 people to man a starship" (Daystrom, "The Ultimate Computer").

But there was no reason for Okuda to change the 40-year age. The older the ship, the easier it becomes to explain the vastly different style of the movies-era. Let's say that in the TOS era, starships are but a remmant of an earlier age of exploration, no longer worth building in large numbers. These ships and the remote starbases would be out of touch with Earth for months at a time, and always behind as far as technological updates are concerned. In some ways (size? weaponry? speed?) they were top-of-the-line, because they needed to deal with whatever unknown aliens they'd encounter. In other ways, they were inferior.

Back on Earth, however, Starfleet would be building smaller and more modern ships such as Mirandas to deal with the Klingons and Romulans. When the Enterprise returned to Earth, it finally got a chance to upgrade to this new standard. What follows is the militaristic era of the Trek movies as we know it, with Enterprise dealing mostly with troubles rather than exploring space. However, because of its age, the class is always under threat of decommissioning and/or serving as a cadet training vessel.

[ November 20, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]

Think of it like taxonomy... Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species Subspecies

"STARSHIP CLASS" could encompass a whole variety of other classes... including Constitution class, Excelsior Class and Miranda Class.

The named episode gives us the only specific class for a starship in the run of Star Trek: the J Class Starship. By Capt. Kirk's era, this class was old.

That would jibe with most of the canonical data. The "Enterprise class" plaque next to the simulator might be an outdated one, from the days the simulator simulated the bridges of TOS era vessels. The canon references to "Constitution class" are either vague as to which version they refer to (like Picard's line in "Relics"), or specifically referring to the refitted version (like Scotty's picture or the "Naked Now" computer screen).

And of course, "1701" being the first of a class would be consistent with "01" being the first of a class. The Excelsior might usher in a new tradition of registration, or perhaps merely reinforce the old one in that non-operational "pre-prototype" testbeds get the double zero?

Or was there a mention of Constitution class in "Trials and Tribble-ations"? That would rain on my parade a *lot*. Alas.