Some interesting things to point out here. First, this display isn't exactly the same as the chart shown in Starlog magazine whose information was supposedly taken from this actual onscreen display, and consequently listed as such in the Encyclopedia. The Ajax is shown to be an Excelsior class ship here, not an Apollo class, and its registry is different. The first sector number is different. And the biggie: The Zhukov NCC-62136 is listed as a Rigel class ship. The amazing thing about this info is that it was created before the Enterprise-C studio model would get refurbished and relabeled with "Zhukov NCC-62136" later in the season. So apparently someone thought this model was supposed to be a Rigel class ship. It was only later that someone else (Okuda maybe) started giving the model much lower 2XXXX registries, perhaps to alleviate this flub?
I still can't believe that I never noticed this before. It's like the "How Riker sits down in a chair" thing all over again.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
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Well....hmm. If you are one of the folks that considers the Constitution refit to be a separate class (Enterprise class), than an Ambassador refit as significant as the Zhukov's as a separate class (Rigel class) isn't so far fetched.
-------------------- I haul cardboard and cardboard accessories
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quote:Originally posted by Fabrux: Well....hmm. If you are one of the folks that considers the Constitution refit to be a separate class (Enterprise class), than an Ambassador refit as significant as the Zhukov's as a separate class (Rigel class) isn't so far fetched.
Or that it's not an Ambassador class refit at all, but a completely separate class that just happens to share amazingly similar design attributes (i.e. the Miranda vs. Soyuz, non-canon Saladin vs. Hermes). So in effect the Enterprise-C and the Excalibur (Ent-C stock footage) were Ambassador class, but the Zhukov and Yamaguchi were Rigel class ships.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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posted
Good lord, Dukkhie. You're starting to sound like Bob Comsol in that New Orleans thread on TrekBBS.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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^All kidding aside, I'm far more concerned that this was the real reason why Okuda ended up making the Ambassador class registries so low.
Originally I thought (and Okuda implied) that the Ambassador registries were always supposed to be 2XXXX, and that the Zhukov's registry on the model was just a labeling error. Now, that doesn't seem to be quite the case. It looks more like someone labeled the model according to the info from the "Brothers" ship chart, either thinking the model was going to represent the Rigel class, or just making a retcon like what Gaurdian2000 suggested. But since the model is in fact an Ambassador class ship, Okuda thought the 62136 registry was too high, and inverted the first and second numbers to "fix" it (i.e. if the registry would have been 64136, he would have made it 46136). Because of this precedent, he decided that all Ambassadors should have a 2XXXX registry, which never made any sense to me. It's just like the snafu with the Tsiolkovsky's registry ultimately making other Oberths get the same super-high 5XXXX reg.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
I can't remember the precise timeline, but is it possible that, back in first season, the ship we now know as the Ambassador was the Rigel and the Probert concept that appeared on the briefing room wall was the true Ambassador class (and with an even lower 10xxx registry number)? Once "Yesterday's Enterprise" happened, they eventually merged into the same class since they were so similar. It's a theory anyway...
Never understood why the Oberths started getting high registries, considering all indications show it was an older design, both by its simplistic and under-detailed TOS-like surface and low 3-digit registries seen in the TOS movies.
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quote:Originally posted by 137th Gebirg: I can't remember the precise timeline, but is it possible that, back in first season, the ship we now know as the Ambassador was the Rigel and the Probert concept that appeared on the briefing room wall was the true Ambassador class (and with an even lower 10xxx registry number)? Once "Yesterday's Enterprise" happened, they eventually merged into the same class since they were so similar. It's a theory anyway...
Not really, because in the first season Sternbach's design for the ship didn't yet exist. Contrary to my joke OP, I don't thing there was ever supposed to be a canon design or model built to represent the Rigel class. I think someone just labeled the model with the Zhukov's name and registry from that chart without even thinking about the class designation.
quote:Never understood why the Oberths started getting high registries, considering all indications show it was an older design, both by its simplistic and under-detailed TOS-like surface and low 3-digit registries seen in the TOS movies.
I wrote an essay speculating about this, but the short version is that when Okuda made the Tsiolkovsky dedication plaque during preproduction for "The Naked Now," he was assuming the ship would be a new model; that's why the registry was so high and the launch date only one year before the Enterprise-D. However, the VFX guys opted instead to reuse the Grissom model, which was unchanged from its appearance as the Copernicus NCC-640 from STIV. So even though the info on the plaque didn't make sense with the eventual model used, Okuda went with it and continued giving Oberths high registries later on in TNG. So one old class of ship (the Oberth) suddenly gets super-high registries, while a newer class (the Ambassador) ends up with super-low registries for essentially the same reason.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Okuda and the work he's done for Star Trek, and he's a really nice guy who's given us a lot of great information. But that aside, a lot of his decisions regarding starship registries really don't make a whole lot of sense to me.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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Yeah, I chalk it up to the near-impossible task of maintaining continuity across a massive mythos that is rivaled in scope only by Star Wars, and perhaps Dr. Who. Keeping it all straight for so long becomes less possible as the years rolled on.
Probably the sole reason for rebooting Trek the way they did, to expunge some of the flotsam that bogged down general storytelling.
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