posted
The creators of the show have said that it doesn't mean anything, from a production standpoint. I believe Roddenbury made it up by adding a second "C" to the "NC" found in the registry of his plane. Now... in the Star Trek universe, it could very well be an acronym for something... but they've never said it on screen.
Naval Construction Contract sounds darn good to me... but it's never been confirmed.
posted
Though I should have been thinking about the ideal Greek state, or the best way to raise kids, or some such nonsense, I instead spent the last hour or so thinking about this. Hooray!
Anyway, reasons why NCC does not stand for Naval Construction Contract, and is indeed not an acronym at all.
1.) I find it aesthetically offensive.
2.) Number of times the word naval has been used to describe anything in Star Trek, much less Starfleet proper: 0.
3.) Number of Joseph speculations that have been adopted by Trek proper: maybe three. Probably less. And, of course, none of them actually important, in the grand scheme of things. You've got part of a ship design onscreen, and a couple names and registries.
4.) I think that an alternate explanation, namely that the (letter)(letter)(letter) registry system is a code fits the facts better. Consider: NCC, NX, NAR, NSP, NFT, NGL. While one could noodle around trying to create acronyms for each one, it strikes me as far more reasonable, under the proposed scheme, to simply identify what they have in common. All these ships belonged to the Federation or to Federation. Thus, it seems to me we can say that, whatever it may or may not mean, the N means "registered in the UFP." Active duty Starfleet ships all have CC attached, so it seems reasonable to say that this is what the CC means. The X, of course, appears to denote an experimental Federation ship. As for the GL, FT, SP, AR, and so on, we don't have many examples of each from which to derive anything conclusive, but we know that all of them were civilian ships.
As for the ships that have had registries that started with some other letter, (B and Y spring to mind) these would seem to be ships registered with other governments. So why would one alien world have a registration system that lined up so nicely with another? Well, we see something similar with vehicles that frequently travel from state to state, or country to country.
So, whereas Joseph's system imposes an unsupported registry framework on Star Trek, the one I've described is derived organically from it. It also benefits from not being 30 years out of date. This, of course, is not his fault. But it is, nevertheless, the case.
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posted
meh. your opinion is hardly definitive proof.
then again, neither is mine. i believe the trekkie handbook says that when an impasse such as this is reached, its time to masturbate.
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posted
done.
now heres a few more thoughts on the matter:
why would there be a correlation between the military registration system and its civilian equivalent. in real life, the navy has its own registry systems based on ship type/number, and civilian/commercial boat registrations are wildly different.
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posted
Personally I agree with the code theory, it creates the least amount of problems. Besides, "Naval" just doesn't sound right.
As for why a military code would be connected with a non-military one, that's simple; Starfleet isn't a purely military organisation, it is primarily a scientific and exploratory agency. Remember that in trek the lines between the armed forces and the scientific community are considerably more blurred than they are today, so it's quite conceivable that all federation agencies have a unified registry system.
posted
YLT - wasn't that supposed to be Yridian Light Transport!! (I suppose it looks different in the original Yridinese, and there is just a direct translation by the UT.
IKC - Imperial Klingon Cruiser? weren't there two types of these pre-fixes for Klingon Ships? Was the IKS?
NCC - invented by Matt Jefferies by taking the NC of US craft and adding another C. As it happened the Soviet prefix was CCC. So it was a nice joining of the two.
If N = FederatioN then we can do away with Naval.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
The only YLT was indeed attached to a Yridian ship, but, for reasons I've already gone into, while having the Y reflect "Yridian" is ok by me, having the whole thing be an abbreviation is no good. (Keep in mind that I'm not, like, serious about any of this. I mean, I think that, in "real" Star Trek, whatever that might be, the things aren't acronyms, but it isn't like it really matters one way or another. I scare myself sometimes.)
Also, I think you're confusing registries with a...you know, I do not know what they are called. Anyway, the name of the ship is the USS Enterprise, while the registry is NCC-1701-E. The USS stands for something, presumably. United Star Ship, according to Kirk, I think. Perhaps something like United (Federation of Planets) Star Ship. IKC or IKS do indeed stand for Imperial Klingon Cruiser/Ship. But these aren't related to the registry prefixes (which Klingon ships don't seem to have, or at least don't have Federation-style ones, whereas our Yridian ship did. Curious? Yes. But: I would guess that only ships which are going to be doing a great deal of travel within the Federation need their registration authority to assign them a UFP-compatible registry prefix. Presumably merchant ships from the Empire which do business across the border have one.)
An official Romulan abbreviation showed up in late-DS9 okudagrams, but I don't recall what it was, or what some of the ideas for what it might stand for are. IRW, or something?
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quote:Originally posted by Sol System: An official Romulan abbreviation showed up in late-DS9 okudagrams, but I don't recall what it was, or what some of the ideas for what it might stand for are. IRW, or something?
One would assume, Imperial Romulan Warbird!?! Of course it could be nothing.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Mr. Mandel seems to think so, though I haven't the slightest clue why. Timo?
If the Yridian ship was registered in the UFP, though, it should start with an N. NSP, for instance, I think, was how the registry for the T'Pau, a Vulcan ship, began. So, perhaps, each member world gets its own two letter code. At that rate, the UFP would have enough space to quadruple in size before worrying about adding another letter.
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