--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

1) Where has it ever been said that Oberths are unarmed? In fact, when have we even seen them in a fight?

2) How do you know the Shepard is an Oberth?

3) The last digit of the registry on the Nebula-Melbourne is unreadible (which is why I created a topic giving the idea that TPTB may have put the model in to represent the wreckage of the Bellerephon, who's registry has the same first 4 digits as the Melbourne).

4) It is utterly IMPOSSIBLE to read ANYTHING off the Nebula-Melbourne in either episodes, no matter how great your TV or VCR is...

5) Since when does the Pegasus and Crazy Horse HAVE to be a Cheyenne Class? Just because the Pegasus had a graphic with 4 nacelles, it simply MUST be a Cheyenne? We discussed this, and an idea popped up that the representation may be for a new form of nacelle OR for halves of the nacelles. And the Crazy Horse could be whatever class TPTB wanted it to be, yet they used Excelsior, so the Crazy Horse IS an Excelsior.

6) Of course they don't put seperate registries and names on all the models, because they weren't going to do anything except sit there and look destroyed! They weren't meant to be read! I mean, seriously, do you want us to put U.S.S. Alka-Selsior on our starship lists just because they didn't want to put a REAL name on there?

7) The plaque from the World Tour not only has a lot of mistakes, but it also isn't created by anyone we know who actually weighs any influence on the Trek universe. If you add the plaque to the Trek Universe, you might as well add every single Trek-related publication known to exist.

8) From an earlier post, you said "ILM can do no wrong". Trust me, anyone can do no wrong. There is only 1 Excelsior in Spacedock in Star Trek IV, the good ol' NX-2000.

9) The Reliant's sensors may have been damaged worse then Enterprises. Khan probably didn't want to put power to sensors, so he concetrated on what he would need to kill Kirk.

10) God no.....it's done......

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"No, 3 & 6 are mandatory, so you only have to do them if you want"

2) Behind-the-scenes info for ST IV.

3) Even though the small nacelles are visible on the Melbourne wreck, and the Bellerophon had a blatant wedge?

4) I didn't say I could. I just said that now that I knew what I was looking for, I could spot it easily. And, that were we dealing with film stock instead of the resolution limitations of both the videotape the footage was filmed on, AND later recorded on, as well as the limitations of conventional television resolution... it WOULD be legible.

5) *wank wank wank* As if TPTB actually made a well-researched decision in either of those cases. If they had, they would have almost CERTAINLY used different names for the ships in question. In both cases, it was determined that the VFX budget couldn't handle building a proper filming miniature of a Cheyenne-class ship, but not before the groundwork was laid in the episode. In the case of the Crazy Horse, they just went with the stock "random-Excelsior-rendezvousing-with-the-Enterprise" footage, and in the case of the Pegasus, the Ambassador miniature had been mislaid, and the most convenient one at hand was the venerable Oberth (this from conversations on the subject with Mike). And in the end, it wasn't deemed important enough to go back and fix the stuff in the principle photography footage that used the Cheyenne-class-derived references. Not even with overdubbing in the case of the relatively-easy-to-fudge Crazy Horse. Like the Constitution-to-Constellation fix in "The Battle". So we end up with an Excelsior with a registry far higher than Mike intended Excelsiors to have. Rather than say "we made a VFX decision that contradicted what I said earlier", he just quietly changed the entries and listings for the Crazy Horse from Cheyenne-class (Encyclopedia Vol. 1) to Excelsior-class (everything since) without changing the never-actually-seen registry. *grump*

6) They put names and registries on all the models they actually BUILT for the scene (Buran, Chekov, Melbourne, Kyushu, Ahwahnee, Princeton, Firebrand). They just didn't do anything to modify the various study models they tossed in to pad the background.

7) How does it have a lot of mistakes? If you add those ships to the ones we already knew, we end up with 42 total, which fits amazingly well. I also don't know WHO created the plaque for the World Tour. But I'll make a point to ask Mike the next time I talk to him if he knows, unless one of you guys can tell me.

8) Maybe yes, maybe no. It's irrelevent to this thread, and impossible to resolve without actually talking to the VFX crew.

9) Good point, but we have no real way of knowing either way. But considering neither the bridge sensor dome nor the main sensor array on the bottom of the saucer were actually hit, I doubt it.

10) Zuh...?

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

Bernd sent me a few months ago this picture of the Nebula-Melbourne.
And after zooming the pic of the model on his site you can read a "3".

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"Second star to the right, and then straight on till morning."

[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited February 12, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Fitz (edited February 12, 2001).]

Sure, we saw a ship broadside to the spacedoors, and sure, the ship was at such an angle that we couldn't easily read the NX-2000 on her hull. And I agree there's no reason to specifically claim that Starfleet didn't have two or three Excelsiors in its arsenal at that time.

But wouldn't the spacedock have several doors? At least four of them, probably, or if the exterior views do not support this, then three or two. That would easily account for the observed orientation of the supposedly powerless ship.

As for the Melbournes, either we have to accept two identically registered and named ships (since the two models both were thus labeled), or then ignore one set of registries. If we choose the latter option, the Nebula registry is easier to twist into something else because a) that's what the Encyclopedia wants us to do and b) that registry was NEVER seen completely intact on screen, while the Excelsior registry was seen for a brief moment.

So switching the last number of the Nebula into an 8 should be easy (the ventral side was never onscreen and even the actual model number could be reinterpreted because of all the damage). Switching the name would require more effort, though, since it was relatively undamaged - happily, it could not be resolved in the episode, and I very, very much doubt even a DVD would show it more clearly. So USS Wellhorne (NCC-62048) it is.

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"No, 3 & 6 are mandatory, so you only have to do them if you want"

I just watched BoBW pt. 1.

The Excelsior is not specificly said to be the Excelsior. Shit. Now the Melbourne is an Excelsior theory looks more plausable to me, except for one thing (Hanson on the older-style bridge, presumably the Excelsior, which is then sorta-identified to be the Melbourne, by the pause given...)

ARGH!!!

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.27 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with four eps posted)
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"Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!"
-Forum Member Who Shall Be Nameless. 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001

Oh. Jeff? We've only had one reference to a ship named Excelsior in current era, and that was on Deep Space Nine. If you want to get technical, that footage was of the Enterprise rendezvousing with the Hood, which was originally filmed for "Encounter at Farpoint" and used for every "Enterprise rendezvousing with a ship (always an Excelsior-class for some reason)" shot since. Point is, it wasn't referred to AT ALL in either episode. Nor was the Melbourne referred to as Hanson's flagship during the battle. Nothing wrong with him commanding things from the bridge of his Excelsior -- whatever she was named. And after "Emissary", we went back and read all sorts of new meaning into pre-existing reaction shots of Shelby and Riker to the carnage. At the time, the only reason for the pause before Shelby said "the Melbourne" and Riker's following downcast gaze was because both of them knew that was supposed to be Riker's ship and there may be a good chance that if he'd accepted command, he'd be out there dead along with his ship. Revisionist history makes me ill.

--Jonah

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"It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."

Because, ultimately, their intention was to create a good hour of TV, and not to please the three obsessive fanboys in the world who actually give a fuck about numbers on a model.

Television production is hectic. You spend your time on things that matter.

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"...screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!" - Omega.

Irony ensues.

Legato: "Hi Mike, we're gonna redo the Wolf 359 fight, you know, the Borg one - do you remember what ships you used back in 'BoBW'?"

Okuda: "Sure, here's the list of names. I'll dig up model details when I have time."

Legato goes to do his storyboards, and phones Okuda again.

Legato: "This is gonna be big. Here we cut up this USS Melbourne in a close-up, so that people finally see what happened to the ship Riker turned down."

Okuda: "Cool. Here are the models, stored ever since TNG."

Legato: "What? The Melbourne is a dinky kitbash? We can't film THAT!"

Okuda: "Okay, no prob, use one of the bigger models for that Melbourne close-up - it's easy enough to change the name of this little Nebula class thing to, uh, USS Bellerephon, and the rego can be changed easily, too. I'll just swap the last digit or something. Yeah, she's gonna be NCC-62408 now. I like to keep these things nice and orderly, you know."

So Legato goes to film a scene where a Melbourne of Excelsior class is cut up, but his notes now also read "USS Bellerophon, Nebula class, NCC-62048 - present in battle", and the photographer goes "Nebula class, what was that... Oh, yeah, THIS box! Hmm, it's big all right. Currently named the Sutherland. Greg! Paint this over and rig it up for shots, willya?"

Another version:

Legato: "Mike, I need a list of ships present at Wolf 359. Joe, round up the models used in 'BoBW'. Hmm, Melbourne... I'll use that one in a close-up."

Legato: "Thanks, Joe. Oops, the Melbourne model isn't good enough for us - I say we use this big Excelsior model in the close-up instead. Dig that model up, Bob."

And the team goes to film the part of the storyboard that still says "USS Melbourne (NCC-62403) gets cut up in a close-up", and starts by asking the modelmaker to repaint the name of the Excelsior ship... Even though Legato no longer really wanted the close-up ship to be the Melbourne, he forgot to say he DIDN'T want it to be.

There are plenty of other likely scenarios that would similarly involve Paramount employees who are also Trek fans and somewhat obsessive about details, yet still manage to get it all wrong. And then there are the even more likely scenarios where not everybody involved is a fanatical Trekkie...

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Star Trek: Legacy

First, the Hood is identified by name in both "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Tin-Man" and seen both times to be an Excelsior.

In DS9, the Lakota is clearly also an Excelsior.

How many Excelsiors does Starfleet have, anyway?

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.27 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with four eps posted)
***
"Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!"
-Forum Member Who Shall Be Nameless. 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001

Shouldn't this thread be locked and succeded? "The next, next round"?

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Here lies a toppled god,
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.

To be fair, there were a couple of times where the Enterprise was seen flying along with an Ambassador. One of the Barclay episodes, I think.

Although TNG does seem to show that Starfleet as about 5 billion Excelsiors.

There's no good reason to say that Starfleet didn't have a couple of Excelsiors by STIV? Or that Starfleet was leaning towards Excelsior's at the time? Buh? STIV was about 3 months after STIII. In STIII, the Excelsior was quite clearly a prototype. Not just a new-class, like the Galaxy was, but a "great experiment". I'd say that Starfleet would have waited to see if it was successful before building any others.

And to whoever said that Future Imperfect "WAS season 3, thank you!". It's season 4.