posted
How many of you actually believe that Starfleet has only 12 ships or 12 ships like the Enteprrise? How many of you believe that Starfleet possessed ships looking similar to the Constitution class?
I find it very illogical for Starfleet have so little ships in the 23rd century and so many by the time of the Dominion War.
To me I like the ships from Sotf personally. if there was other classes besides the Connies, they would the Sotf not Fandom or other designs.
How do you feel on this?
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posted
Nobody believes there were only 12 ships in TOS, just 12 Connies. (And even that only around the time of "Tomorrow is Yesterday") Of course there were other ships of different designs.
-MMoM
[ March 15, 2002, 08:21: Message edited by: The Mighty Monkey of Mim ]
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posted
Kirk said that there were only twelve like her in the fleet. This has been interpreted in four ways:
1. Kirk was talking rubbish, as he often seemed to be doing. So we ignore him as we often do.
2. There were only 12 ships of the same capabilities as the Enterprise, all other ships were noticeable smaller and less capable. This is the interpretation taken during the production of TOS.
3. There were only twleve ships of the exact same configuration as the Enterprise. Other heavy cruisers, possibly looking quite similar may exist. This is the interpretation taken in the classic Star Fleet Technical Manual.
4. There were only twelve ships of the general configuration of the Enterprise, i.e. what we now call the Constitution class. Other ships would have different configurations but could be of similar capability (e.g. a TOS Miranda). This seems to be the favoured approach of modern fandom.
I find 2 to be too restrictive. So I tend to a view that's something of a combination of 1, 3 and 4. When Kirk made that statement most of the initial batch of Constitutions were still in service and some of the second batch (Bonhomme Richard sub-class) had entered service. For a total of somewhere between one and two dozen, with only about a dozen being exact sister ships of the Enterprise.
quote:To me I like the ships from Sotf personally. if there was other classes besides the Connies, they would the Sotf not Fandom or other designs.
Huh? Can you reword that last sentence? SotSF is fandom.
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posted
I've always interpretted it as something very close to number 4. There were only 12 Connies in service at the time Kirk said that, but many other ships of other classes existed and were in service.
I do, however, believe that the Constitution class was very close to the state of the art at that point in time, though. Now...the Enterprise was a couple of decades old during TOS, IIRC, so there would certainly be a couple of more advanced classes in service as well. I don't think that ship design and production was probably as advanced as it is in the 24thg century, though...so there probably weren't more than a couple classes higher up than the Connie.
posted
Sorry I meant FASA. FAS has the worst (but original, hardly no kitbashes) designs for a Federation starships.
I feel that Kirk meant there was 12 Connies like the Enterprise but there are the other two sub-classes but not like the Enterprise. And of course smaller and larger ships than the Connie (battleships, destroyers, patrol ships, scouts, science ships, explorers, escorts, transports, battlecruisers, and so on)
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Amasov Prime
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posted
Twelve Constitutions during TOS, but no one ever told why they were all listed at the Starbase 12 wallchart.
Seriously, was it just Okuda's idea to say all ships on that wallchart were Constitutions? It seems a bit strange. Why should they have all 12 starships docked at the same time at that base (or, if the display didn't say they were currently docked there, why do they send all 12 ships for repairs to the same base?)? Stocker mentioned the Intrepid (which became the Independence in the german translation, I think we had this before), but if we just take one of the 1700-registries or the Encyclpedia-registry of the ship, we could still say the rest were other vessels, Hermeses, Federations, Auroras and so on. I personally like the idea because it adds some diversity to the TOS-universe.
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posted
I recently revamped that part of my starship list, too. I decided the idea of matching the "Court Martial" list to the list of Constitution names was actually rather silly.
As for the 12-ships line... I'd say a combination of options 2 and 4. The twelve ships are twelve Constitutions, and they're the most advanced ships in the fleet.
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The notion that all the ships on the "Court Martial" chart were Constitutions originated with Greg Jein in an article he wrote for the fanzine T-Negative. Where FJ had taken the names of the known Constitutions 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 Constitutions.
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 Enterprise (what fandom and the earlier novels eventually called the Baton Rouge-class), and the lone 18xx rego represented the successor design (remember, the Constitution class had been around for decades by that point).
A few episodes later, the Constellation 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 Constitution 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.
--Jonah
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posted
We know from "The Menagerie" that there are other starship classes. In this example, we hear a reference to a 'Class J starship'.
In "The Doomsday Machine", Spock says the USS Constellation has a 'starship configuration'. This may indicate that classes of starships could have similiar appearance or modules (primary hull, secondary hull, nacelles, pylons). If the latter, then there could exist the possilbility of a multitude of varing ship designs.
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In "The Doomsday Machine", Spock says the USS Constellation has a 'starship configuration'. This may indicate that classes of starships could have similiar appearance or modules (primary hull, secondary hull, nacelles, pylons). If the latter, then there could exist the possilbility of a multitude of varing ship designs.
The "Starship configuration" line and the "Starship Class" on the plaque are what I'm talking about in reguards to the "Antares class" - see associated thread.
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posted
I'd just like to point out (at the risk of severe flogging) that while the Okudaic registry scheme may not make a tremendous amount of sense, it *is* most likely the scheme Paramount would use if we ever hear or see more of any of the old Connies...
So it's far from valueless.
-MMoM
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Amasov Prime
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posted
Do you really think they would return to the Constitutions? Remember, this is not longer Roddenberry's universe. If the NX-01 makes a time travel to the mid-23rd century, Starfleet already has a fleet of Galaxys and Excelsiors and Defiants. Not to mention Borg drones and quantum torpedos. With the speed of evolution we see on enterprise (not one year out in space and allready nominated for at least 10 nobel-prizes in different categories, according to their technical logs. From transportes to forcefields and torpedos, there's nothing that can't be developed on board by a hand full of Starfleet technicans. They let Scotty look like an idiot. Really. )
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Well, dialogue messed things up as well...IIRC, Kirk said in Court Martial that he'd served on the "United Star Ship Republic number 1417" (or some such). The point being that the number WASN'T a 1700-series number but WAS on a "Starship" (a Connie).
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To answer the original question: having only the twelve starships would be totally inconsistent with the realism and believability that the TOS producers were constantly pushing. Of course there were more ships, and "The Making of Star Trek" confirms it -- Kirk is said in his bio in "The Making of Star Trek" to have commanded a destroyer, IIRC, before the Enterprise.
The only problem is that we haven't seen them, whereas later series would regularily show different ships such as Mirandas or Excelsiors. Why? Because at this point of time, the Connies are the only starships, that is, the only ships capable of exploring and patroling space; the only ships that would be seen in the far reaches of the galaxy. Even in TAS, where the cheaper cartoon format could've easily allowed new classes of starships equivalent to the Enterprise, none were shown to my knowledge.
Sure, the term was loosened up even during TOS, but its original meaning is nevertheless supported in a few episodes, notably "The Ultimate Computer" where Daystrom notes that "it takes 430 people to man a starship."
However, this doesn't necessarily mean that there were no starships before Kirk's time -- perhaps, in the old days, there would only be one starship class at a time: NX-class during 2150s, Daedalus class during the 2160s, Constitution-class during 2260s, then the Excelsior-class as the next step (which is why the Constitutions were supposed to retire in Star Trek III). As older classes failed to retire, becoming more and more durable, people abandoned the starship-class term and adopted the more specific class names. It's also possible that new types of missions required different configurations of starships, and that the terminology was loosened up, as I've already suggested.
[ March 17, 2002, 21:16: Message edited by: Boris ]
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quote:Originally posted by darkwing_duck1: Well, dialogue messed things up as well...IIRC, Kirk said in Court Martial that he'd served on the "United Star Ship Republic number 1417" (or some such). The point being that the number WASN'T a 1700-series number but WAS on a "Starship" (a Connie).
Well dialogue never mentioned the Republic to be a Connie, but only a "star ship". And even then I don't think it was their intention that all "star ships" were Connies.
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