posted
Just an aside about the Excelsior's three-year mission. Am I the only one that thinks it was just a three-year-long background project that overlapped a genuine exploration and contact mission? Cataloguing gaseous anomalies is really lame and unbefitting such a ship. Also, the Enterprise-A also apparently did some cataloguing; maybe it was a fleet-wide "mission." All starships capable run some specific sensor sweeps of any planets encountered and send the data back to Starfleet Science. The ships still have their real missions ongoing as usual. Sulu didn't seem to be heading home for a refit in TUC or anything...
posted
It seems to me to be just as likely that the ASDB had come up with this great new design they called the Excelsior class, and then decided to test transwarp on it, rather than the other way around. In that case, while the failure of the transwarp project would require an (extensive?) refit of the Excelsior herself, the soundness of the design wouldn't be effected, nor would the construction of other ships in the class be delayed for any great period of time.
In "Evolution," Data makes the (not entirely believable) claim that no Starfleet computer has experienced a complete system failure in 79 years, which, as pointed out, would put the event in 2287.
Of course, just a season before we see a computer failure on the Yamato that seems complete enough. But I guess Data is not counting crashes due to Iconian infowar weaponry.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Cataloguing gaseous anomalies is really lame and unbefitting such a ship.
Until you consider WHERE they were doing this work. A Klingon commander might not mind darting over the border to raid a science-ship, but might think twice about messing with Excelsior.
posted
The ST6 novelisation suggests that Excelsior's principal excuse to be in the area was this legitimate mission - and that ONLY that powerful a ship could be assigned to such a volatile part of the galaxy. I can dig that - plus, Excelsior and crew would doubtless be tapped for the usual Starfleet gigs in the area, diplomatic or otherwise. Sorta close to the Enterprise-D's adventures in the latter seasons; little exploration, but lots of fun within explored but not sovereign territory, and with a legitimate "scientific" reason to be there.
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: It seems to me to be just as likely that the ASDB had come up with this great new design they called the Excelsior class, and then decided to test transwarp on it, rather than the other way around. In that case, while the failure of the transwarp project would require an (extensive?) refit of the Excelsior herself, the soundness of the design wouldn't be effected, nor would the construction of other ships in the class be delayed for any great period of time.
I've always figured that if the Excelsior's Transwarp Drive was as radical a development as most of the characters seemed to think (Scotty excepted), then it would probably require some pretty extensive special developments. It seems unlikely that they could just flip a switch to change the ship from transwarp to regular warp... just how many components would need to be swapped out to make the ship a truly reliable standard vessel?
I suppose that Starfleet could have started production on some other Excelsiors while the Experiment was in progress, but that seems awfully conceited and wasteful to start full production on an unproven design. When the Experiment was ultimately cancelled (whenever), they would've had to halt production on any ships then in work, rip out some of its guts and start again. Refitting one prototype to new standards is believable. I don't think so for more than one. (Sidebar: was there any definitive proof of a second Excelsior-class ship hanging out in Spacedock in one of the movies?)
Also, from the dialogue I always got the impression that the name "The Great Experiment" was synonomyous with the Excelsior -- meaning that there were no other testbed ships.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
But the experiment could just be transwarp drive, and as I said I think it just as likely that the Excelsior was designed, and then chosen as the testbed for the transwarp project. As far as how extensive a refit would be required to rework the Excelsior, all we really have to go on is external features, and those changes are minor. A new bridge. A tweaked impulse deck.
Whatever design innovations the transwarp project required, they obviously weren't so tied to the design of the ship that the Excelsior class became useless when the project failed. Just the opposite, it would seem. Furthermore, I'd imagine that the Excelsior was not the first transwarp testbed, but rather the first time the experiment was carried out on a "real" ship, as opposed to some specialized unmanned test vehicle.
Of course, to some extent, this whole issue arises because financial considerations warrented the extensive reuse of the Excelsior model. If we consider Star Trek III alone on its own merits, then yes, it's possible that the entire Excelsior design was specifically tied to transwarp. But since we know that in "reality" the Excelsior class goes on to become the backbone of Starfleet, it would seem, to me anyway, that the designers had more in mind.
Were I to come up with a timeline, it would be something like this: Late TOS: Starfleet starts looking for a successor to the venerable but aged Constitution class. As a stopgap measure, they decide to undertake a massive refit project. Meanwhile, a number of designs gets turned in, one of which will eventually become the Excelsior. (I suppose maybe this should all happen earlier than "late TOS," but work with me here.)
+ a few years: Another Starfleet project, this one seeking to boost warp drive performance, moves into its final stages, and starts looking around for an active duty ship on which to carry out the final tests. Well, over in another branch of the fleet you've got this brand new class just receiving the green light. All its systems are fresh and new. Why not use one of those? Heck, why not use the class ship? We'll just have to mess about with engineering a bit, and make room in the nacelles for our Fancy Technical Equipment.
Something like that is a possibility, is all I'm saying, and seeming just as likely a one.
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posted
Multiple Trek (and especially Voyager) episodes suggest that transwarp, slipstream and other faster-than-typical warp technology rarely requires large refits to existing hardware. While the Borg transwarp coil was obviously nano-cool stuff that the Federation couldn't hope to replicate, even in its infancy the theory behind Federation transwarp could be a relatively small number of distributed adjustments to an existing frame and warp engine core. coils, or power systems. From that perspective one could assume that transwarp was retrofitted into the Excelsior design, then retrofitted right back out when it proved unfeasible.
posted
Good point there Sol. Another point in that vein is the ship's registry number -- it's extremely unlikely that only 300 ships have been launched in the past 40 years, given the rate beforehand. (Yeah yeah, that's all up for debate... )
The thing is though, that the Excelsior was also the class prototype. And why wouldn't there be more Excelsiors around by the time of TWOK or TFF?
To borrow a metaphor, I've figured that when the transwarp project failed, Starfleet decided to make lemonades out of the lemon that the Excelsior was...
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: ...it's my view that NO new Excelsiors were built until the design was refitted as a conventional warp vessel and the prototype was awarded active status, circa 2290. (A full 7 years after TVH.)
-MMoM
Just checkin' the math. I believe TVH occurred in 2286, one year after WOK and SFS. 2290-2286= 4 years, not 7.
posted
Kind of a sidebar here, but I always thought the scene in STVI where Enterprise just happens to have "all that equipment for studying gaseous anomalies" was intended for the Excelsior crew. When you watch the movie there's zero mention of Enterprise charting anything except Shatner's waistline until that moment and the scene seems kind od added in rathevr than part of the original screenplay. Just my opinion here though.
As to Sulu not getting the immeadiate promotion to Captain: He probably took some time off to be with his daughter (she would have been a little kid back then)....or mabye Sulu love intrest was Admiral Nakimura's (sp?) daughter and daddy held him back.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
Regarding late build Constitutions; I seam to recall that someone here had positively identified several NCC-2xxx range registries assigned to Constitution-Class silhouettes seen on the Operation Retrieve chart in TUC. I don't have time to dig up the thread at the moment but this is what my ship list says was on the OR chart.
quote: U.S.S. EAGLE NCC-956 OBERTH-CLASS
U.S.S. SCOVIL NCC-1598 OBERTH-CLASS
U.S.S. ENDEAVOUR NCC-1895 OBERTH-CLASS
U.S.S. SPRINGFIELD NCC-1963 CONSTITUTION-CLASS
U.S.S. CHALLENGER NCC-2032 EXCELSIOR-CLASS
U.S.S. AHWAHNEE NCC-2048 CONSTITUTION-CLASS
U.S.S. POTEMKIN NCC- >UNW< CONSTITUTION-CLASS
If this is correct then there were late build Constitutions AND new Excelsiors running around in 2293.
posted
Apparently, the first script of ST VI is available for reading online somewhere, and it states that at one point, Kirk mentions that the entire fleet is assigned this "gaseous anomalies" expedition or something to that sort.
But, regardless of this, taken just from the movie, that line Uhura states always does feel out of place (not to mention Doctor McCoy working on a torpedo).
Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:but I always thought the scene in STVI where Enterprise just happens to have "all that equipment for studying gaseous anomalies" was intended for the Excelsior crew.
No, there was a cut scene (I believe it was filmed, but I'm not certain) where the Klingon contingent on Enterprise is taken for a tour, and Gorkon remarks on the impressive specialized equipment for "studying gaseous anomalies" (or someting along those lines). I always had the impression that the study was fleet wide, and not limited to Excelsior.
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