posted
I'm still diddling out a Class/Mark chart for the contemporary era, so that's the notation I'll be using for this... I'm not a SotSF apologist, but I do note that "Tactical Cruiser" appears there, too.
I understand "Explorer" to indicate the ability to operate completely autonomously for years at a time away from base support and crew rotation. They will be commanded by a Captain skilled in diplomacy in hopes that we have no more "disasterous" first contacts. The Explorers are generally the most massive ships in the fleet, with the possible exception(s) of colonial transports and/or fuel tankers. They differ from Heavy Cruisers in that the Cruisers will be more limited in creature comforts and scientific/analytical ability.
For much of TNG, the Enterprise waffled back and forth between Explorer and Heavy Cruiser (in terms of missions and performance). From late first season on, they hung around Earth an awful lot for a ship that was earlier looking forward to getting out into "the great unexplored mass of the galaxy" beyond Deneb.
When it comes to the Ambassador class, I note the Horatio wasn't seen as anything but debris. The Zhukov and Yamaguchi were the "modified" Ambassadors, and their registries predate the Excalibur, seen to be of the "original" design shared by the Enterprise-C. From this I (admittedly tentatively) conclude they are concurrent designs serving different mission profile needs, and not a case of a design refit like the one the Constitution class went through. I say the same for the Excelsiors.
We know Kirk helped on the Excelsior redesign that led to the Enterprise-B, and that its alterations point toward an improved long-range capability, and expanded long-range sensor capacity (at least that's how I interpret the secondary hull chines flanking the main long range sensor dish). Thus I conclude that that comparitively rare Excelsior variant is an Explorer, probably the first ship so dubbed. Maybe even part of the PR circus surrounding the Enterprise-B's launch...
And as each new Explorer comes along, it bumps the previous front-runner to second-seat status.
Thus in 2380 we have something like:
EXPLORERS Class I/Mark III (Enterprise-D) Class II/Mark II (Enterprise-C) Class III/Mark I (Enterprise-B)
HEAVY CRUISERS Class I/Mark XVII (Sovereign) Class I/Mark XVI (Nebula) Class II/Mark XIV (Akira) Class II/Mark XIII (modified-style Ambassador) Class III/Mark XII (or whatever the Excelsiors are...)
And so on. This is of course incredibly sloppy, and only intended to give a sense of how they might be looked at by Starfleet.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
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quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: ...the Excalibur, seen to be of the "original" design shared by the Enterprise-C...
That's not really true, though. The Excalibur was what the model was first labeled as *after* Greg Jein modified it to its "modern" look for "Redemption" (TNG). The only reason we some shots of it in the ep as an NCC-1701-C style vessel is because they mixed in some stock footage from "Yesterday's Enterprise" with the new footage of the modified model. So the Excalibur is *really* one of the "new" style Ambassadors. (This of course doesn't necessarily mean your theory doesn't work, it just eliminates an onscreen example of it. There's still, of course, the fact that from DS9 we see that the two Excelsior variants are both still in service.)
quote:...We know Kirk helped on the Excelsior redesign that led to the Enterprise-B...
Pardon me, but I can't seem to figure what you mean by this?
-MMoM
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posted
It should be pointed out that "long range tactical cruiser" is the explicit description of the Prometheus provided by the ship's computer.
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posted
Mim: I can't remember if it was in the actual film or the novelization, but Kirk was at least on the team working on the redesign, if not heading it up himself. I don't see what the difficulty is...
Going to watch "Redemption" tonight. Curious about that Excalibur thing. I only remember seeing it in the stock scenes of the Enterprise-C hanging in space next to the Enterprise-D, reused from Yesterday's Enterprise".
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Mim: I can't remember if it was in the actual film or the novelization, but Kirk was at least on the team working on the redesign, if not heading it up himself. I don't see what the difficulty is...
Its not from film, so it certainly cannot be canon, and thats what we tend to be about in here.
quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Going to watch "Redemption" tonight. Curious about that Excalibur thing. I only remember seeing it in the stock scenes of the Enterprise-C hanging in space next to the Enterprise-D, reused from Yesterday's Enterprise".
--Jonah
I think that besides the *old* footage of the Enterprises' hangin' in space -- the *new* footage was when you got the nice ass shot of a handful of vessels leaving the starbase.
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quote:Originally posted by Futurama Guy: Its not from film, so it certainly cannot be canon, and thats what we tend to be about in here.
Checks subject of thread. Hmm.
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Don't suppose anyones considered the possibility that Starfleet ships might have TWO designations- one for scientific capability and one for military?
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posted
Just to throw in my two cents (and forgive me if I'm repeating the words of someone else, for I did not read the entire thread)...
Since 1966, I always considered the term 'starship' to mean any warp-capable exploratory vessel. Starship Class would mean no more than that, as a broad description of vessel type. In cases where more specificity was needed, rather than saying a vessel was both 'Starship Class' (describing its capability) and 'Constitution Class' (describing its hull design), for the sake of expediency, one simply used the designation 'Constitution Class Starship.'
As I understand it, 'U.S.S.' originally was chosen to precede the vessel names because it sounded American, and would be more palatable to the NBC viewing audience. 'United Space Ship' (spoken by Pike) and 'United Star Ship' (spoken by Kirk) were attempts to qualify the designation, awkward though they may have been.
'NCC' was chosen to precede '1701' because 'N' is the designated first fuselage letter for civilian aircraft registered in the United States (as in N6741U, for example), 'C' was chosen by Matt Jeffries for a personal reason I cannot recall, and the final 'C' was added for rhythmic balance.
quote:Originally posted by thelastguardian: 'NCC' was chosen to precede '1701' because 'N' is the designated fuselage letter for civilian aircraft registered in the United States (as in N6741U, for example), 'C' was chosen by Matt Jeffries for a personal reason I cannot recall, and the final 'C' was added for rhythmic balance.
Shane
In the Star Trek Sketch Book Jefferies says that 1701 were chosen for clarity. NC was the US designation on his own plane and that he added an extra C to make it different from Place. It just happened that the Soviet designation was CCC - which was a nice coincidence.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
quote:Originally posted by thelastguardian: 'NCC' was chosen to precede '1701' because 'N' is the designated fuselage letter for civilian aircraft registered in the United States (as in N6741U, for example), 'C' was chosen by Matt Jeffries for a personal reason I cannot recall, and the final 'C' was added for rhythmic balance.
Shane
In the Star Trek Sketch Book Jefferies says that 1701 were chosen for clarity. NC was the US designation on his own plane and that he added an extra C to make it different from planes. It just happened that the Soviet designation was CCC - which was a nice coincidence.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
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