posted
Now that I really think about it, there is a large grouping of starship classes that had to be assigned to either fleets we didint see or rearguard/ planetary defense actions.
Lots of classes of a later vintage than the Ambassador were never shown: the Springfield, Freedom, New Orleans, Apollo, Challenger, Niagra, Chyenne, Sydney (the perfect troop transport),Renaissance, Excelsior "B" variants and Norway were not shown in fleet action and that means that hundreds of starships were busy doing something else in the majoe engagments that were shown. ...on the other hand, we never knew the composition of the Seventh Fleet or the fleet that destroyed the Dominion's shipyards.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
Any o you guys got a list of all the Ambassador class ships known? I lost the link to MMM's site and I aint seen hin around these parts lately....
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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NCC 10521 USS Ambassador NCC 10532 USS Horatio (NCC 1701-C USS Enterprise) NCC 26136 USS Zhukov NCC 26198 USS Valdemar NCC 26510 USS Yamaguchi NCC 26517 USS Excalibur NCC 26531 USS Exeter NCC 26632 USS Gandhi NCC 26849 USS Adelphi
Dunno if it's complete... But lookit the ratio of 10xxx numbers!
posted
...Plus, out of all those Ambassadors, the only one we KNOW was active in TNG's time was the Horatio -- and that one bit the dust in "Conspiracy."
It's quite possible that the early Ambassadors were decommissioned, and the second batch (the 26's) are on their last leg...
-------------------- “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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posted
The Excalibur was part of the Tachyon sensor net in Redemption pt.II, I believe.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
I know that... but their active status says nothing about their condition. The Zhukov was on simple ferrying duty, the Excalibur was a shoo-in for Picard's fleet, and the Valdemar could have just been there to make things look more impressive alongside the Enterprise (which was one of the other ships sent to the border).
That's all speculation, of course... all I was saying originally was that the new ones are STILL relatively old (older than some of the Mirandas and most Excelsiors).
-------------------- “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
Personally, I'm convinced that the Excalibur was at Wolf 359. Despite the awful logic, it is consistent with other VGR episodes to have drones from that event found traipsing around the Delta Quadrant.
It would also explain why the Excalibur had so little crew in "Redemption" -- it had been in drydock for a full year getting repaired. And most of the crew had probably either abandoned ship or been assimilated before that.
Not sure how well that theory could hold up, but it's worth a shot...
-------------------- “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
Well, there's absolutely no evidence to say that every single Borg incident involved a starship called Enterprise or Voyager. The Excalibur's alleged independent encounter could just as easily be separate from everything else.
posted
Regarding the on-screen dissapearance of the Ambassador-class I had read that the actual filming model of the Ambassador was damaged and subsequently "mothballed". I'll look for the reference to justify this claim of mine.
Now I know this doesn't give the VFX companies a big excuse on not being able to reproduce a digital model of the Ambassador. I think that whoever "wrote" or directed the Dominion battle sequences must have either not put enough thought into them or just got lazy and decided to use whatever digital models they had instead of making new models for "older" starfleet ships (ambassador, niagra, etc) and including them alongside the "newer" well-known vessels (galaxy, nebula, norway, steamrunner, akira, excelsior,etc).
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Well we could probably write volumes coming up with a reasonable fiction explanation for the no-appearance of the Ambassor-class in the fleet sequences of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. One of the reasons that I was thinking of is that members of the class were being used on other fronts of the war. Doesn't Ross command the eighth fleet? So you begin to wonder which ships constitute fleets 1-7. or if there are even more than 8 fleets and what ship classes constitute these fleets.
Because early in the war the characters talk about heavy ship losses, Bashir in particular, perhaps the Ambassador-class ships didn't fare very well in their engagements and were destroyed.
I think that the idea that the Yamaguichi/Enterprise-C minature was damaged could very well be the reason why we didn't see it. Also time and budget constraints always seem to effect which things we see in an episode. We would also probably be remarking about how "cheesy" the Niagara, Springfield, and Challenger-class models look if they ever appeared again in a Trek episode. By the way, I was surprised at the number and quality of the space battles we did see during the run of DS9 because of the expense of special effects.
Maybe another reason why we didn't see the Ambassador-class was just simply for a dramatic or storytelling reason. You cannot very well say in dialogue that the war is not going well for the Federation, ship losses are high, and that most of the Federation's ship building facitilities are damaged and incapable of replacing the ships that have been lost, and then show a fleet composed entirely of "contemporary" and powerful explorer classes or ships-of-the-line.
I think that it makes the Federation's plight much more desperate worrisome if you add several ancient Miranda-class and Excelsior-class vessels, and kitbash variants of the Constitution and Excelsior classes, and deploy them as frontline warships in the fleet.
If we had seen the Eighth Fleet composed of more "contemporary" and powerful starship classes, may be we would be writing threads asking why did Sisko need to act the way he did "In the Pale Moonlight" to get the Romulans to commit themselves to the Dominion war effort?
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
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posted
THEY WERE BEHIND THE CAMERA SPACE IS BIG
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It could also be the design team thought the Ambassador was too close in its appearance to the Galaxy class.
It's a shame they couldn't make up new designs and designate those as the rarely seen TNG classes of Niagra and the like...on the other, I'm sure someone would argue that they violated continuity then...
I liked the fleet scenes of DS9, though, and it was quite fun to watch Excelsiors rolling across asteroid fields with Mirandas. The downside is that we've got certain viewers who took the pretty explosions to mean that the older vessels "suck." Ah well.
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