posted
A few days ago I found a guy selling some old 1970s-vintage fanzines online. One of them, to my utter delight (I squealed with glee like the little geek that I truly am ) was T-Negative #27 from April of 1975, published by one Ruth Berman out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In case you don't know, this is the document that contains Greg Jein's original article on the Constitution-class registry numbers.
The article runs from the bottom half of the first page to midway through the second column of the last page.
This is a pretty damn cool find, to me anyways. The original source of the infamous non-sequential registry scheme. As you can see, Jein himself readily admitted that it was a little on the shaky side, but his research is impressive and his compilation is articulate and convincing. No wonder Trimble and Okuda believed him.
It's pretty interesting to find out that the Eagle, Endeavor, and Essex originally had references in the scripts of "Journey to Babel" and "Amok Time." (And, as a futher side note, that the Exeter from "The Omega Glory" was originally to be the U.S.S. Agentina, the S.S. Beagle from "Bread and Circuses" was to be the U.S.S. Lord Nelson, and the Defiant from "The Tholian Web" was to be the U.S.S. Scimitar.)
And how about that display? He alleges that it comes from Scene 44 of "Space Seed." (I don't know if it's there or not, but I think it *is* the one that Scotty was looking at in "The Trouble With Tribbles.") It's doubly cool because A) it gives us a canonical reference for the use of the term Constitution-class from within TOS itself, something that has long been thought not to exist, and B) it gives us a DIAGRAM of the TOS phaser banks! Awesome!
Yes, I know. I am a truly mighty monkey.
-MMoM
P.S. This is my little present to y'all before I go on vacation for a week. I'll see if the accolades are still flying when I return...
[ April 27, 2003, 12:43 PM: Message edited by: The Mighty Monkey of Mim ]
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posted
Good... GOD! I've just downloaded these images to read, but from even the quickest glance suggests this is a great source of info.
Very, very nice find!
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posted
Interesting. Unless I overlooked something, this article does not claim, that all vessels on the chart were Constitution-class vessels. So, who did really come up up with this crappy theory??
-------------------- "Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon
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quote:Originally posted by Spike: Unless I overlooked something, this article does not claim, that all vessels on the chart were Constitution-class vessels. So, who did really make up this crap?
Well, actually it does. You've got to remember that at this point (as during TOS) the term "Starship" very specifically referred to the Constitution-class. (Obviously, that's been modified through the years, but in this context that's what it meant.)
-MMoM
P.S.
Looks like Jein couldn't find anything more about the Kongo than I could.
Can somebody make a screencap of that display from "The Trouble With Tribbles," and also check to see if it was in "Space Seed?"
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim:
quote:Originally posted by Spike: Unless I overlooked something, this article does not claim, that all vessels on the chart were Constitution-class vessels. So, who did really make up this crap?
Well, actually it does.
But look at page 5. Only the starships with NCC-17xx-registries got a MK IX designation. Or is he implying that there are Constitution-classes MK I through X?
-------------------- "Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon
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posted
So where exactly did he get the numbers for the Farragut, Horney, Kongo, Lafayette, Potemkin, Tashik-Sotra, Valiant, or Yorktown?
And I wonder if I should change my numbers for the Eagle and Endeavour now.
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
-Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney, LeMans
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quote:Originally posted by Spike: But look at page 5. Only the starships with NCC-17xx-registries got a MK IX designation. Or is he implying that there are Constitution-classes MK I through X?
quote:Originally posted by The359: So where exactly did he get the numbers for the Farragut, Horney, Kongo, Lafayette, Potemkin, Tashik-Sotra, Valiant, or Yorktown?
That big list at the top of the second column on the the last page is NOT Jein's. It was part of Ruth Berman's note that comes after the asterisk before the last paragraph of the first column on that same page.
quote:And I wonder if I should change my numbers for the Eagle and Endeavour now.
I don't know about that, since Okuda used NCC-1895 and NCC-956 for them on the Operation Retrieve chart from TUC.
-MMoM
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Well I don't think that Operation: Retrieve numbers have been completely confirmed either.
Another question. Were the numbers on the chart confirmed to be the same ones on Jein's list? He says that he guessed on them, so he might have been wrong.
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
-Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney, LeMans
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posted
The only one that hasn't seemed to be right is NCC-1631, which *looks* like NCC-1831 in DVD caps. (See here.) But Jein said he had access to an actual film clip of the scene, which might possibly have been even clearer, so I don't know. Maybe it really *is* NCC-1631...
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posted
Actually, that's a show-through of the illustration on the cover page. In the true fanfic tradition, it's Spock and Chapel groping each other while McCoy looks on, astonished...
-MMoM
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: The only one that hasn't seemed to be right is NCC-1631, which *looks* like NCC-1831 in DVD caps.
I don't see how it can be 1631. In the DVD cap there's a definite dimpling of the number on the left side. If it were a 6, the left side would be straight and would only be dimpled on the left if it were an 8. I can only see that it can be NCC-1831.
posted
GREAT STUFF!!! Greg Tyler of www.trekplace.com also has a copy of #27 but refused to post it until he got the ok from Greg Jein.
Jein's scheme, as he readily admits, is completely hairbrained and can be pretty much ignored except where it has been canonized by inclusion in onscreen graphics. Of course, inclusion in the encyclopedia cannot be considered as any real evidence either way.
Next, Mim you have to track down these film clips. They have higher resolution than DVDs, so may be more amenable to image enhancement. Does anyone have any original scripts either?
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posted
This just occurred to me, but we finally have explanations for the Franz Joseph names of the starships for registries -1712 through -1727. (Or at least, I'd never known where they came from before.) It also suggests that the name Excelsior has more of a history with the writers than we'd thought.
Dunno if anyone else has already done this, but I figured I'd type up the ship lists for reference. (I hope this isn't considered problematic because of copyright; after all, it's been posted online already, and I'm just saving people transcribing work. )
quote:USS Constitution NCC-1700 Constitution USS Constellation NCC-1017 Constitution USS Defiant NCC-1764 Constitution USS Eagle NCC-1685 Constitution USS Endeavour NCC-1718 Constitution USS Enterprise NCC-1701 Constitution USS Essex NCC-1697 Constitution USS Excalibur NCC-1664 Constitution USS Exeter NCC-1672 Constitution USS Farragut NCC-1647 Constitution USS Hood NCC-1703 Constitution USS Hornet NCC-1868 Constitution USS Intrepid NCC-1631 Constitution USS Kongo NCC-1732 Constitution USS LaFayette NCC-1866 Constitution USS Lexington NCC-1709 Constitution USS Potemkin NCC-1702 Constitution USS Republic NCC-1371 Constitution USS Tashik-Sotra NCC-1865 Constitution USS Valiant NCC-1623 Constitution USS Yorktown NCC-1717 Constitution
USS Excalibur and USS Endeavour -- two other ships at Altair III. ("Amok Time") USS Essex and USS Eagle -- two ships near Babel. ("Journey to Babel")
USS Argentina (became Exeter in "The Omega Glory") USS Lord Nelson (became Beagle in "Bread and Circuses") USS Scimitar (became Defiant in "The Tholian Web")
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if the Intrepid is 1831, then why aren't the others 1894, 1897, and 1885? They certainly look like the same digit as the Intrepid.
I still also do not include the Valiant as a Constitution class, since it doesn't fit the timeline or anything.
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
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![[Wink]](wink.gif)
) was T-Negative #27 from April of 1975, published by one Ruth Berman out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In case you don't know, this is the document that contains Greg Jein's original article on the Constitution-class registry numbers.![[Cool]](cool.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
I've just downloaded these images to read, but from even the quickest glance suggests this is a great source of info.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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