I was a little disappointed in last week's ep. Why build a new ship "out of Constitution parts" and try to claim it's a whole new class? Why not just crash another Connie? Or better yet that single-nacelle one from the premiere?
BTW, guys, that premiere episode means that the single-nacelle design is now canon for Prime. When can we get one?
That's basically every family of ships in Starfleet ever. If you look at the tiered Temporal ships, they use the TOS Connie saucer and nacelles but in different configurations. The Nebula is based on the Galaxy-class, the Centaur is based on an Excelsior and so on.
Fine, then use a different configuration. But we got a pretty good look at the Sombra-class at the end of the episode, and other than the broken pylon, it looked pretty much exactly like the Enterprise.
> @evilmark444 said:
> All of the ships will eventually make it in, though there's usually a 6-18 month delay between when they appear on screen to when they become available in-game. Uniforms are less certain (we still don't have the Disco-Connie or Picard S1 flashback uniforms), but will most likely come in a similar time frame.
>
>
> Yeah, if they wanted it to resemble a Connie without actually being a Connie then they should have made some changes to it, like adding extra nacelles or other details. TNG and DS9 did that all the time with the Miranda.
One problem is that Kirk says there are only 12 Constitution ships in “Tomorrow is Yesterday.” So having more ships that resemble Constitution-classes makes good sense for future story telling. And I do not think Decker’s ship was specified to be a Constitution although it clearly used a Constitution Kit model with the registry numbers changed. One downside of the TOS remastery is it is harder to find those old model shots nowadays.
Agreed - in fact this could actually solves a very old problem with regard to registry numbers. As you say, I don't recall there being anything in canon that specifically identified the USS Constellation as a Constitution-class Starship.
There is Spock's line of: "By configuration a Starship...she appears to be drifting." in TOS S2 - The Doomsday Machine
^^^
And during the original run the 1701's class designation was in fact: "Starship Class".
The "Constitution Class" designation was something that was mentioned in later season production notes, but never stated on screen during TOS. Franz Joseph made use of that "Constitution Class" designation for the 1701 and the ships like it in the Star Trek Technical Manual Circa 1974 - and it was later canonized when it was mentioned as the Class designation in the TOS era feature films.
But bottom line: Spock's line above pretty much indicated the USS Constellation NCC 1017 is a ship of the same class as the USS Enterprise NCC 1701.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,672Community Moderator
Well... nothing on screen, but apparently behind the scenes she was on the list of Connies.
The name of the ship had already been established by the producers at the start of second season of Star Trek: The Original Series, when they composed a definitive fourteen ship list belonging to the Constitution-class, then still referred to as "Starship-class" by them, including the Constellation.
And until they actually just come out and say it... as of right now Constellation is a Connie. Not only that she had a much larger crew than the Peregrine. There is also the added issue that the Peregrine's registry number, if people use that to determine anything other than just unique identification, is NCC-1549, which is a higher number than the Constellation's 1017. The only reason Constellation has such a low registry number is that they just rearranged the registry number off a commercial model kit they used of the USS Enterprise.
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> @evilmark444 said:
> All of the ships will eventually make it in, though there's usually a 6-18 month delay between when they appear on screen to when they become available in-game. Uniforms are less certain (we still don't have the Disco-Connie or Picard S1 flashback uniforms), but will most likely come in a similar time frame.
>
>
> Yeah, if they wanted it to resemble a Connie without actually being a Connie then they should have made some changes to it, like adding extra nacelles or other details. TNG and DS9 did that all the time with the Miranda.
One problem is that Kirk says there are only 12 Constitution ships in “Tomorrow is Yesterday.” So having more ships that resemble Constitution-classes makes good sense for future story telling. And I do not think Decker’s ship was specified to be a Constitution although it clearly used a Constitution Kit model with the registry numbers changed. One downside of the TOS remastery is it is harder to find those old model shots nowadays.
Agreed - in fact this could actually solves a very old problem with regard to registry numbers. As you say, I don't recall there being anything in canon that specifically identified the USS Constellation as a Constitution-class Starship.
There is Spock's line of: "By configuration a Starship...she appears to be drifting." in TOS S2 - The Doomsday Machine
^^^
And during the original run the 1701's class designation was in fact: "Starship Class".
The "Constitution Class" designation was something that was mentioned in later season production notes, but never stated on screen during TOS. Franz Joseph made use of that "Constitution Class" designation for the 1701 and the ships like it in the Star Trek Technical Manual Circa 1974 - and it was later canonized when it was mentioned as the Class designation in the TOS era feature films.
But bottom line: Spock's line above pretty much indicated the USS Constellation NCC 1017 is a ship of the same class as the USS Enterprise NCC 1701.
The problem with that is that "Starship" with a capital 'S' was the codeword for ANY capital ship, not a specific line of ships. Non-capital ships (like destroyers, frigates, and whatnot) would be called either "spaceship" or "starship" with a small 's'.
NBC was concerned that the antiwar sentiment of the time (and it was constantly in the news in the mid to late 1960s) would negatively impact the show if it was associated with the various war series that were under attack, like the acclaimed 12 o'clock High and the laughably inaccurate (it was loosely based on SAS raiding and demolition units but had more American actors and US insignia than UK ones) but popular Rat Patrol as being "too violent" and "promoting war" by many antiwar groups.
They would not allow Roddenberry to call the Enterprise a "battleship"* and only grudgingly allowed "heavy cruiser" (since it did not have the word "battle" in it) and their representative kept vetoing even "heavy cruiser" in dialog when he spotted it (Roddenberry had a very funny story he would tell about the situation at conventions) and insisted that they use "Starship" with a capital 'S' instead.
The "Starship Class" line on the ship's plaque was a different matter, they did not settle on a class name at the time the plaque was made so they put that as a placeholder since no one was likely to be able to read it with the rotten resolution of TV at the time. Unfortunately it is probably where the idea of that capitalized/non-capitalized nonsense came from.
The class name was settled on sometime in the production of first season, it was definitely "Constitution-class" by season one episode 22 since one of the transparencies made for Khan's studies of "modern engineering" was titled:
BASIC SPECIFICATIONS, CONSTITUTION CLASS STAR SHIP
though it ended up being cut and did not appear in the aired episode. It was finally canonized in the second season by a diagram Scotty was reading in The Trouble With Tribbles that was marked:
PRIMARY PHASER L, R
STAR SHIP MK IX/01
CONSTITUTION CLASS
well before they stopped using the silly "capital letter denotes capital ship" nonsense.
Spock's line without the silly restriction would have been "By configuration a capital ship...she appears to be drifting." or perhaps actual size-class names like "battleship", "battlecruiser" or "heavy cruiser". It was especially confusing in Turnabout Intruder with lines like
Your world of Starship captains doesn't admit women.
which was meant to convey the idea that women were relegated to commanding support ships, destroyers, and whatnot (not that they could not be captains at all) and were being denied the more prestigious capital ship postings by that clique of admirals.
*There is evidence that makes it highly likely that Roddenberry based the idea of the Enterprise on a combination of the US Iowa-class fast-battleships and one specific UK fast-battleship, the Queen Elizabeth-class HMS Warsprite which had the same penchant for finding trouble everywhere it went, no matter how routine the mission was supposed to be, that the TOS Enterprise had, even going so far as to call Enterprise "the Grand Old Lady of the fleet" in the series bible, which was Warsprite's nickname.
The name of the ship had already been established by the producers at the start of second season of Star Trek: The Original Series, when they composed a definitive fourteen ship list belonging to the Constitution-class, then still referred to as "Starship-class" by them, including the Constellation.
And until they actually just come out and say it... as of right now Constellation is a Connie. Not only that she had a much larger crew than the Peregrine. There is also the added issue that the Peregrine's registry number, if people use that to determine anything other than just unique identification, is NCC-1549, which is a higher number than the Constellation's 1017. The only reason Constellation has such a low registry number is that they just rearranged the registry number off a commercial model kit they used of the USS Enterprise.
True, it was on that list though it is possible that it was originally an older class that the Constitution-class was developed from and later upgraded and re-classed as a Constitution-class.
The Constellation in The Doomsday Machine did not look that different from a Connie yet according to the hull number (and probably its listing as a "Class VII" instead of a "Class IX" like the other two ships that are explicitly identified as "Constitution Class") it would not have been one.
Besides, why crash a newer model when they presumably had older ones that used enough of the same parts for the purpose? Even if it is a new class instead of an older one there are still possible reasons to use it instead, like if the new class did not turn out to be as useful as expected which made it less valuable than the older but more flexible Constitution class, etc. Or it could have just been what they had available at the time so it was the most expedient solution.
> @evilmark444 said:
> All of the ships will eventually make it in, though there's usually a 6-18 month delay between when they appear on screen to when they become available in-game. Uniforms are less certain (we still don't have the Disco-Connie or Picard S1 flashback uniforms), but will most likely come in a similar time frame.
>
>
> Yeah, if they wanted it to resemble a Connie without actually being a Connie then they should have made some changes to it, like adding extra nacelles or other details. TNG and DS9 did that all the time with the Miranda.
One problem is that Kirk says there are only 12 Constitution ships in “Tomorrow is Yesterday.” So having more ships that resemble Constitution-classes makes good sense for future story telling. And I do not think Decker’s ship was specified to be a Constitution although it clearly used a Constitution Kit model with the registry numbers changed. One downside of the TOS remastery is it is harder to find those old model shots nowadays.
Granted this is all just make believe, so it can in theory be almost anything. But the Star Trek "Starships" the Connie's, have always drawn very very heavily from the US WW2 Carrier Fleet. They modeled a lot of language and organization surrounding the Starships off of those WW2 Carriers. Largely because these were the very clear real life example of a fleet structure for the writers to borrow from. The Carriers were the really cool stuff of the day that those writers grew up fanboying.
And if you take that use of the US Carriers as a touchstone or reference, a lot of the subtler stiff starts to make some sense. And feels less restricting. Kirk refers to 12 Constitutions. Well the Essex's were initially ordered in lots of 12. They ordered 12 of the biggest and best new state of the art carriers. Than the following year they increased the order to another 12. Finally expanding it to 30, with 24 being completed and launched. So Kirk saying there were 12 did not mean that there was not another order coming along behind it.
And the same with the Class VII vs Class IX. Once again calling back to the WW2 and post war Essex Class Carriers. There were 24 of them, and starting almost immediately after WW2 they very rarely ever looked the same. There were a series of Major upgrades/refit/rebuilds that got applied to the ships in a seemingly random order. They all started off with straight wooden decks. And they began getting massive redesigns to give them the newer style angled deck. And some started getting conversions to steel angled decks. So when talking about each carrier along with the Carrier's designation or Hull number any documentation would also indicate what the ships "Revision Level" is. Which rebuilds had the individual ship received. Theoretically that is what the Starfleet Class VII vs Class IX etc probably indicates. Does it have the newer Warp Nacelles? New Bridge? New Sensors?
> @faelon#8433 said: > > So Kirk saying there were 12 did not mean that there was not another order coming along behind it. > > And the same with the Class VII vs Class IX. Once again calling back to the WW2 and post war Essex Class Carriers. There were 24 of them, and starting almost immediately after WW2 they very rarely ever looked the same. There were a series of Major upgrades/refit/rebuilds that got applied to the ships in a seemingly random order. They all started off with straight wooden decks. And they began getting massive redesigns to give them the newer style angled deck. And some started getting conversions to steel angled decks. So when talking about each carrier along with the Carrier's designation or Hull number any documentation would also indicate what the ships "Revision Level" is. Which rebuilds had the individual ship received. Theoretically that is what the Starfleet Class VII vs Class IX etc probably indicates. Does it have the newer Warp Nacelles? New Bridge? New Sensors?
I completely agree with your analogy and agree that was probably the writer’s intent.
But now as things develop we later learn that Kirk is likely the third Captain of the Enterprise. If each preceding Captain had a 5-year tour before Kirk, that would mean the Enterprise is already a whole decade old when he says that. That leads me to believe that the TOS writers also just envisioned a much smaller fleet than we realized it must have been. 12 —soon to be 24 (In another 5 to 10 years?) capital ships really was a sufficient sounding force to patrol the entire Federation boarder.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,672Community Moderator
I completely agree with your analogy and agree that was probably the writer’s intent.
But now as things develop we later learn that Kirk is likely the third Captain of the Enterprise. If each preceding Captain had a 5-year tour before Kirk, that would mean the Enterprise is already a whole decade old when he says that. That leads me to believe that the TOS writers also just envisioned a much smaller fleet than we realized it must have been. 12 —soon to be 24 (In another 5 to 10 years?) capital ships really was a sufficient sounding force to patrol the entire Federation boarder.
Actually... more like 20 years old. The Enterprise was launched in 2245 under the command of Robert April. Pike would later take command, then Kirk in the 2260s.
And honestly... the line about the number of Connies makes more sense if we include the existence of all the ship classes we see in Discovery and Strange New Worlds. The fleet isn't made up of ONLY Connies. If it was only Connies then something is seriously wrong with the universe because that is NOT enough ships for... well... anything.
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Remember: a single Starship is more than sufficient to save or destroy several planets. One Constitution would be sufficient to protect any planet that it could reasonably travel to within a few days or weeks. If the Federation was roughly 1000 planets as Kirk explained in “Metamorphosis,” then that is one Capital ship and an unspecified number of support ships to maintain roughly 83 planets each. If we assume that more likely there were another dozen or two dozen Capital ships within Federation space along with the Constitutions patrol if the frontier, I think that is a much more realistic scope of the TOS Starfleet that the writers envisioned. It seems the Klingons too were not amassing convoys of ships and the odds of encountering any ship much less one ship was rather unlikely. I think we have been indoctrinated by Star Wars and modern CGI to assume you need some massive fleet. But one torpedo at relativistic speed is sufficient to destroy all life on a planet. A Deathstar is just a waste of money.
I guess I need to clarify the line about a torpedo. You only need a mass about the size of a pyramid flying at warp 8 or 9 to cause an apocalyptic event on Earth. A meteor or larger mass traveling much slower would work too. Or something pretty small like an antimatter bomb approaching light speed would work perfectly fine too. Do torpedos travel at warp? I guess not because we can see them and they look pretty slow… But yeah Like shadowfang says below Kirk also says the Enterprise has ways to wipe out all life on the planet. And considering nuclear weapons work fine for that too, we know it really isn’t that hard.
Remember: a single Starship is more than sufficient to save or destroy several planets. One Constitution would be sufficient to protect any planet that it could reasonably travel to within a few days or weeks. If the Federation was roughly 1000 planets as Kirk explained in “Metamorphosis,” then that is one Capital ship and an unspecified number of support ships to maintain roughly 83 planets each. If we assume that more likely there were another dozen or two dozen Capital ships within Federation space along with the Constitutions patrol if the frontier, I think that is a much more realistic scope of the TOS Starfleet that the writers envisioned. It seems the Klingons too were not amassing convoys of ships and the odds of encountering any ship much less one ship was rather unlikely. I think we have been indoctrinated by Star Wars and modern CGI to assume you need some massive fleet. But one torpedo at relativistic speed is sufficient to destroy all life on a planet. A Deathstar is just a waste of money.
The Deathstar is indeed a waste of money if planetary shields aren't fairly common place which they are in Star Wars even Alderaan had one and they were a planet of pacifists. Now the Tarkin doctrine was a waste of money but not for the reasons you think (ISD could already depopulate a planet by itself as long as said planet was unshielded but that strategy is self-defeating in the long run).
First photon torps have never shown the ability to be single shot depopulation weapons even when such ability would have been useful, in the DS9 episode "The Die is Cast" the Romulan/Cardassian fleet didn't use a single ship firing a single torp at high impulse (or a few ships just be sure) but a rather large fleet that bomb the Founder homeworld from orbit.
Second it's not in the character for UFP go "obey or be destroyed" to planet, so the ability to destroy a planet is anyway irrelevant, The Federation wouldn't do it even if they could (or at the very least it wouldn't so common as to define the number of ships they have).
Third no matter how powerful a ship is it can be only in one location at a time and not all threats would be invading enemy warships, lets say a planet at other end of patrol zone is attacked by pirates, now travel times of a day or more even at high warp are not unheard of in Trek even while still within the Federation so by the time your single Connie gets to the system the attack will be over.
Fourth Remember that Constitution class ships in 5 year exploration missions would not be available for local patrols thus you'd have less then 12 ships for patrol work at any given time.
Now I'm not suggesting fleets of hundreds ships per system, more like around 1000 ships of various types spread around UFP and exploration missions and some of those ships would be something like that scout ship Data piloted in Insurrection.
Even the Galactic Empire who had much more resources then UFP typically had no more then 1-2 Light capital ships per system as anti-pirate/anti-rebel patrol.
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The Federation absolutely would destroy a planet - they literally have a General Order devoted to that exact thing.
True but it's not exactly common as we've yet to see it in action or even heard of General Order 24 ever being executed (the order was given twice during TOS but never executed), indeed in the episode in question Scotty's response also suggests it's not something typically used.
My point was that UFP wouldn't use their ability destroy a planet to bully member worlds into blind obedience, it's simply not in their character to do so. Yes General Order 24 exists (or at very least existed during TOS) but it is not something typically used and Starfleet would not define the number of ships they need by the fact said General Order does exist.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,672Community Moderator
GO24 is probably a last resort option.
And I agree that 12 ships is NOWHERE near enough to protect the entire Federation. Now... 12 Constitution Class ships doesn't discount the existence of other ship classes at all. For a superpower the size of the Federation to only have 12 ships total... that would be stupid even in the modern era.
Using todays tech and powers as an example... The United States has a few carriers. But the Carrier is not the end all ship. It is not the ONLY ship. Carriers typically have full battlegroups. And that's not counting any ships like Destroyers and Submarines off on their own patrols. But if someone tries to say that the US only has... lets say 4 Carriers to make up their ENTIRE fleet... that is nowhere near enough to protect the country, let alone deal with external threats of any kind. And frankly a Carrier on pirate duty is kinda overkill.
Same idea with the Connies and other classes of starship in Star Trek. It makes no sense for there to only be 12 ships in the fleet for a territory as large as the Federation. And as established in Discovery, the fleet consists of far more than just Connies. The reason Connies are more well known, besides the obvious DSC came out long after TOS, is because those were highly desirable assignments in universe and the only ship depicted in any on screen media out of universe until Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which introduced the Miranda Class.
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> @rattler2 said: > And I agree that 12 ships is NOWHERE near enough to protect the entire Federation. Now... 12 Constitution Class ships doesn't discount the existence of other ship classes at all. For a superpower the size of the Federation to only have 12 ships total... that would be stupid even in the modern era. > > Using todays tech and powers as an example... The United States has a few carriers.
You are agreeing with yourself, because no one else said that. And for the record the US only has 11 active carriers right now.
Also I don’t think you realize how difficult it would be for the federation to amass ships for a significant battle unless the ships were already together, manned and within travel distance of the destination. It takes two years to get from the center of the Federation to the periphery at maximum warp. So unless the Borg give a two-year warning that they plan on invading, even if you had a million ships evenly distributed throughout the Federation. In a week’s time you could only get maybe about a hundred or so together to stop the Borg. And it would most likely be a rag-tag fleet featuring mainly vessels built a hundred years earlier. Space is that big.
from an economic point of view, building ships to standards makes sense. we have descriptions of the crew sizes, 100 for the peregrine, 200 for Pike's enterprise, 400 for Kirk's the crew size would indicate the role the ship plays.
The peregrine being a scout. probably with specialized scanners and sensors, big enough to take a few hits and fast enough to get out of Dodge.
Pike's Enterprise was built to explore. More weapons for the unknown, more science to chart where they go and analyze what they find.
Kirk's Enterprise was redesigned after the Klingon war, More crew, mostly damage control, security and weapons, and now equipped to go toe to toe with the Klingons.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,672Community Moderator
> @rattler2 said:
> And I agree that 12 ships is NOWHERE near enough to protect the entire Federation. Now... 12 Constitution Class ships doesn't discount the existence of other ship classes at all. For a superpower the size of the Federation to only have 12 ships total... that would be stupid even in the modern era.
>
> Using todays tech and powers as an example... The United States has a few carriers.
You are agreeing with yourself, because no one else said that. And for the record the US only has 11 active carriers right now.
Also I don’t think you realize how difficult it would be for the federation to amass ships for a significant battle unless the ships were already together, manned and within travel distance of the destination. It takes two years to get from the center of the Federation to the periphery at maximum warp. So unless the Borg give a two-year warning that they plan on invading, even if you had a million ships evenly distributed throughout the Federation. In a week’s time you could only get maybe about a hundred or so together to stop the Borg. And it would most likely be a rag-tag fleet featuring mainly vessels built a hundred years earlier. Space is that big.
I think you are misunderstanding me. I was not saying there are only 12 ships, I was saying that is not enough, hence why other ship classes exist. You're making it sound like I agree with only 12 ships existing total. Its the opposite. You NEED more ships to protect that much territory. And you discounted the fact I pointed out we have more than just carriers as well in RL. We have full battlegroups and ships off doing their own things.
The issue really is that in TOS we only saw Connies, and there is dialog talking about the number of Connies, but no reference to any other class of ship. We saw in Discovery that yes the Federation has many classes of ships, and a much larger fleet.
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Prior to TNG, the only indication there were other classes was in TMP, when the comms station were calling to Columbia and Revere, both called scout class. (the n-registry numbers were copied straight from the first Star Trek Tech Manual) Maybe there were other ships shown in TAS, been a long time since I suffered through that.
When we did start seeing different ship classes, we saw different designs. that could have been an admiralty choice. although, as @annemarie30 said, it's cheaper to use the same hull (the US Navy based the Spruance, Kidd and Ticonderoga classes on the same hull)
The Royal Navy used the leander hull for a half dozen types, using common PARTS began to make sense. The Burke destroyers have a different hull, but the engineering is the same, this is show as the miranda, the don't need the larger saucer, or the secondary hull, but the engines anre the same .. Ditto the Nebula vs Galaxy, the role of the nebula did not require the secondary hull, but everything else was the same.
The only time you see drastically different looks is largely due to technology leaps.
The issue really is that in TOS we only saw Connies, and there is dialog talking about the number of Connies, but no reference to any other class of ship. We saw in Discovery that yes the Federation has many classes of ships, and a much larger fleet.
I distinctly remember seeing in a TOS episode a listing of Starships by their registry number, i believe the episode was "Court Martial" in Season 1? (it has been a while since i last saw TOS). So that's incorrect, there are references to other starships in existence at the time.
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And for the record the US only has 11 active carriers right now.
That's eleven active carriers to patrol one country's portion of a single planet. In an interstellar community as active and dangerous as that featured in Star Trek you would need a force of least that size just to patrol a single star system. A possible explanation for the very low number of Constitutions could simply be that they were primarily designed for exploration and not defense though.
Before digital it cost quite a bit to build a totally custom shooting model, the big Enterprise model cost around six thousand dollars which was quite a bit of money back then (equivalent to almost 55,000 today), and the smaller hand-made one was not exactly cheap either (a 33-inch completely unlit one, the one seen in The Cage, was about a tenth the cost, so over five thousand dollars in today's money).
So, while other Federation ship classes were talked about (and some are obviously not Constitution class because they mention things like weaker engines) they, with the exception of the robot freighter that reused the DY-100 model, were never actually shown.
One fact that a lot of people don't know is that there almost wasn't a D7 model. The show did not have the budget to build it though Jefferies had detailed blueprints for the model already, and when he was consulting with AMT about the finishing touches to the Enterprise model kit (and another that he designed, the "Leif Erikson" which was designed back when they thought about using a squadron of smaller, landing-capable ships instead of a big space-only one) he mentioned that he had one for the enemies that probably would never be seen in the show.
That piqued their curiosity enough to have a look at the plans and they swung a deal to produce and sell that model kit too in return for giving the (somewhat bigger for detail reasons) wooden prototype model to the show. That is why there are no lights on the D7 in TOS, it is a solid wooden model, and by the time the plastic production kits that could be lit came out the show was already cancelled (though they probably would have made use of them had there been a fourth season, like they did for the Constellation in The Doomsday Machine).
And for the record the US only has 11 active carriers right now.
That's eleven active carriers to patrol one country's portion of a single planet. In an interstellar community as active and dangerous as that featured in Star Trek you would need a force of least that size just to patrol a single star system. A possible explanation for the very low number of Constitutions could simply be that they were primarily designed for exploration and not defense though.
While they never come out and say it onscreen, the TOS Constitution class is almost exactly the opposite of that according to the series bible, interviews (and panels at conventions) with Roddenberry and Jefferies, and some of the internal memos from the show. It is possible that NuTrek might go a different direction now, but then again consistency with traditional Treks has never been a strong point with them.
The idea for the class was sort of like the one for Seaquest DSV, the ships were fast battleships that were only called "heavy cruisers" to mollify the sensibilities of the Federation Council (not to mention the realworld reason of NBC's reluctance to use the word "battleship" during the height of the anti-war movement) that were built too late in the big war of the 2240s to see much (if any) action that were used for peacetime purposes like exploration and diplomacy rather than tearing down new (and heavily armored with tritanium which would probably be as expensive for Starfleet to cut up as battleship armor is today) ships.
The realworld Iowa class fast battleships were in a similar position (though they were mainly mothballed instead of active), and they were in the news constantly in the mid 1960s as Congress very hotly debated activating them for the Vietnam conflict which is probably where Roddenberry got the idea for the hero ship's background.
There are probably only a dozen or so Constitutions because the Federation does not like building warships and so probably stopped building the especially heavily armored and armed wartime version of whatever that general configuration is called when the contract for them was fulfilled. It is often implied in TOS that it takes two Klingon battlecruisers to take on one Constitution without sabotage, and I imagine the Federation Council would not be comfortable projecting that kind of image very often.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,672Community Moderator
And the funny thing is that the D7 is, as established in Discovery, a younger design than the Connie by about 10 years at least. And the Connie can still lock down a D7 quite easily in single combat, and put up a helluva fight against more than one.
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Prior to TNG, the only indication there were other classes was in TMP, when the comms station were calling to Columbia and Revere, both called scout class. (the n-registry numbers were copied straight from the first Star Trek Tech Manual) Maybe there were other ships shown in TAS, been a long time since I suffered through that.
When we did start seeing different ship classes, we saw different designs. that could have been an admiralty choice. although, as @annemarie30 said, it's cheaper to use the same hull (the US Navy based the Spruance, Kidd and Ticonderoga classes on the same hull)
The Royal Navy used the leander hull for a half dozen types, using common PARTS began to make sense. The Burke destroyers have a different hull, but the engineering is the same, this is show as the miranda, the don't need the larger saucer, or the secondary hull, but the engines anre the same .. Ditto the Nebula vs Galaxy, the role of the nebula did not require the secondary hull, but everything else was the same.
The only time you see drastically different looks is largely due to technology leaps.
TAS did have at least one other Starfleet Capital ship. The USS Bonadventure
It also gave us the Copernicus which would seemingly be a type of TAS era Runabout and the Starfleet Antares class Freighter.
As for other Starfleet ship classes we can't of course forget that Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock each introduced new ones. Miranda, Oberth and Excelsior. At least Miranda's and Oberth's had to have been out there for part of the NCC-1701's journeys. One other thing that casts a great deal of doubt on the whole "Only 12 Starships" bit of lore. In the TOS Episode The Ultimate Computer we get 5 Connie's in the same place at the same time to test out a new AI in a war game. Given the shear size of the Federation how often would you have 5 of their top end deep space vessels in the same place, let alone doing so for something so mundane? Granted I think only the Lexington and Excaliber are clearly Connie's the Potemkin and Hood may be a different class. But I and most others have always assumed they were Connie's.
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There is Spock's line of: "By configuration a Starship...she appears to be drifting." in TOS S2 - The Doomsday Machine
^^^
And during the original run the 1701's class designation was in fact: "Starship Class".
The "Constitution Class" designation was something that was mentioned in later season production notes, but never stated on screen during TOS. Franz Joseph made use of that "Constitution Class" designation for the 1701 and the ships like it in the Star Trek Technical Manual Circa 1974 - and it was later canonized when it was mentioned as the Class designation in the TOS era feature films.
But bottom line: Spock's line above pretty much indicated the USS Constellation NCC 1017 is a ship of the same class as the USS Enterprise NCC 1701.
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https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Constellation_(NCC-1017)
And until they actually just come out and say it... as of right now Constellation is a Connie. Not only that she had a much larger crew than the Peregrine. There is also the added issue that the Peregrine's registry number, if people use that to determine anything other than just unique identification, is NCC-1549, which is a higher number than the Constellation's 1017. The only reason Constellation has such a low registry number is that they just rearranged the registry number off a commercial model kit they used of the USS Enterprise.
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The problem with that is that "Starship" with a capital 'S' was the codeword for ANY capital ship, not a specific line of ships. Non-capital ships (like destroyers, frigates, and whatnot) would be called either "spaceship" or "starship" with a small 's'.
NBC was concerned that the antiwar sentiment of the time (and it was constantly in the news in the mid to late 1960s) would negatively impact the show if it was associated with the various war series that were under attack, like the acclaimed 12 o'clock High and the laughably inaccurate (it was loosely based on SAS raiding and demolition units but had more American actors and US insignia than UK ones) but popular Rat Patrol as being "too violent" and "promoting war" by many antiwar groups.
They would not allow Roddenberry to call the Enterprise a "battleship"* and only grudgingly allowed "heavy cruiser" (since it did not have the word "battle" in it) and their representative kept vetoing even "heavy cruiser" in dialog when he spotted it (Roddenberry had a very funny story he would tell about the situation at conventions) and insisted that they use "Starship" with a capital 'S' instead.
The "Starship Class" line on the ship's plaque was a different matter, they did not settle on a class name at the time the plaque was made so they put that as a placeholder since no one was likely to be able to read it with the rotten resolution of TV at the time. Unfortunately it is probably where the idea of that capitalized/non-capitalized nonsense came from.
The class name was settled on sometime in the production of first season, it was definitely "Constitution-class" by season one episode 22 since one of the transparencies made for Khan's studies of "modern engineering" was titled: though it ended up being cut and did not appear in the aired episode. It was finally canonized in the second season by a diagram Scotty was reading in The Trouble With Tribbles that was marked: well before they stopped using the silly "capital letter denotes capital ship" nonsense.
Spock's line without the silly restriction would have been "By configuration a capital ship...she appears to be drifting." or perhaps actual size-class names like "battleship", "battlecruiser" or "heavy cruiser". It was especially confusing in Turnabout Intruder with lines like which was meant to convey the idea that women were relegated to commanding support ships, destroyers, and whatnot (not that they could not be captains at all) and were being denied the more prestigious capital ship postings by that clique of admirals.
*There is evidence that makes it highly likely that Roddenberry based the idea of the Enterprise on a combination of the US Iowa-class fast-battleships and one specific UK fast-battleship, the Queen Elizabeth-class HMS Warsprite which had the same penchant for finding trouble everywhere it went, no matter how routine the mission was supposed to be, that the TOS Enterprise had, even going so far as to call Enterprise "the Grand Old Lady of the fleet" in the series bible, which was Warsprite's nickname.
True, it was on that list though it is possible that it was originally an older class that the Constitution-class was developed from and later upgraded and re-classed as a Constitution-class.
Granted this is all just make believe, so it can in theory be almost anything. But the Star Trek "Starships" the Connie's, have always drawn very very heavily from the US WW2 Carrier Fleet. They modeled a lot of language and organization surrounding the Starships off of those WW2 Carriers. Largely because these were the very clear real life example of a fleet structure for the writers to borrow from. The Carriers were the really cool stuff of the day that those writers grew up fanboying.
And if you take that use of the US Carriers as a touchstone or reference, a lot of the subtler stiff starts to make some sense. And feels less restricting. Kirk refers to 12 Constitutions. Well the Essex's were initially ordered in lots of 12. They ordered 12 of the biggest and best new state of the art carriers. Than the following year they increased the order to another 12. Finally expanding it to 30, with 24 being completed and launched. So Kirk saying there were 12 did not mean that there was not another order coming along behind it.
And the same with the Class VII vs Class IX. Once again calling back to the WW2 and post war Essex Class Carriers. There were 24 of them, and starting almost immediately after WW2 they very rarely ever looked the same. There were a series of Major upgrades/refit/rebuilds that got applied to the ships in a seemingly random order. They all started off with straight wooden decks. And they began getting massive redesigns to give them the newer style angled deck. And some started getting conversions to steel angled decks. So when talking about each carrier along with the Carrier's designation or Hull number any documentation would also indicate what the ships "Revision Level" is. Which rebuilds had the individual ship received. Theoretically that is what the Starfleet Class VII vs Class IX etc probably indicates. Does it have the newer Warp Nacelles? New Bridge? New Sensors?
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> So Kirk saying there were 12 did not mean that there was not another order coming along behind it.
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> And the same with the Class VII vs Class IX. Once again calling back to the WW2 and post war Essex Class Carriers. There were 24 of them, and starting almost immediately after WW2 they very rarely ever looked the same. There were a series of Major upgrades/refit/rebuilds that got applied to the ships in a seemingly random order. They all started off with straight wooden decks. And they began getting massive redesigns to give them the newer style angled deck. And some started getting conversions to steel angled decks. So when talking about each carrier along with the Carrier's designation or Hull number any documentation would also indicate what the ships "Revision Level" is. Which rebuilds had the individual ship received. Theoretically that is what the Starfleet Class VII vs Class IX etc probably indicates. Does it have the newer Warp Nacelles? New Bridge? New Sensors?
I completely agree with your analogy and agree that was probably the writer’s intent.
But now as things develop we later learn that Kirk is likely the third Captain of the Enterprise. If each preceding Captain had a 5-year tour before Kirk, that would mean the Enterprise is already a whole decade old when he says that. That leads me to believe that the TOS writers also just envisioned a much smaller fleet than we realized it must have been. 12 —soon to be 24 (In another 5 to 10 years?) capital ships really was a sufficient sounding force to patrol the entire Federation boarder.
Actually... more like 20 years old. The Enterprise was launched in 2245 under the command of Robert April. Pike would later take command, then Kirk in the 2260s.
And honestly... the line about the number of Connies makes more sense if we include the existence of all the ship classes we see in Discovery and Strange New Worlds. The fleet isn't made up of ONLY Connies. If it was only Connies then something is seriously wrong with the universe because that is NOT enough ships for... well... anything.
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I guess I need to clarify the line about a torpedo. You only need a mass about the size of a pyramid flying at warp 8 or 9 to cause an apocalyptic event on Earth. A meteor or larger mass traveling much slower would work too. Or something pretty small like an antimatter bomb approaching light speed would work perfectly fine too. Do torpedos travel at warp? I guess not because we can see them and they look pretty slow… But yeah Like shadowfang says below Kirk also says the Enterprise has ways to wipe out all life on the planet. And considering nuclear weapons work fine for that too, we know it really isn’t that hard.
The Deathstar is indeed a waste of money if planetary shields aren't fairly common place which they are in Star Wars even Alderaan had one and they were a planet of pacifists. Now the Tarkin doctrine was a waste of money but not for the reasons you think (ISD could already depopulate a planet by itself as long as said planet was unshielded but that strategy is self-defeating in the long run).
First photon torps have never shown the ability to be single shot depopulation weapons even when such ability would have been useful, in the DS9 episode "The Die is Cast" the Romulan/Cardassian fleet didn't use a single ship firing a single torp at high impulse (or a few ships just be sure) but a rather large fleet that bomb the Founder homeworld from orbit.
Second it's not in the character for UFP go "obey or be destroyed" to planet, so the ability to destroy a planet is anyway irrelevant, The Federation wouldn't do it even if they could (or at the very least it wouldn't so common as to define the number of ships they have).
Third no matter how powerful a ship is it can be only in one location at a time and not all threats would be invading enemy warships, lets say a planet at other end of patrol zone is attacked by pirates, now travel times of a day or more even at high warp are not unheard of in Trek even while still within the Federation so by the time your single Connie gets to the system the attack will be over.
Fourth Remember that Constitution class ships in 5 year exploration missions would not be available for local patrols thus you'd have less then 12 ships for patrol work at any given time.
Now I'm not suggesting fleets of hundreds ships per system, more like around 1000 ships of various types spread around UFP and exploration missions and some of those ships would be something like that scout ship Data piloted in Insurrection.
Even the Galactic Empire who had much more resources then UFP typically had no more then 1-2 Light capital ships per system as anti-pirate/anti-rebel patrol.
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True but it's not exactly common as we've yet to see it in action or even heard of General Order 24 ever being executed (the order was given twice during TOS but never executed), indeed in the episode in question Scotty's response also suggests it's not something typically used.
My point was that UFP wouldn't use their ability destroy a planet to bully member worlds into blind obedience, it's simply not in their character to do so. Yes General Order 24 exists (or at very least existed during TOS) but it is not something typically used and Starfleet would not define the number of ships they need by the fact said General Order does exist.
And I agree that 12 ships is NOWHERE near enough to protect the entire Federation. Now... 12 Constitution Class ships doesn't discount the existence of other ship classes at all. For a superpower the size of the Federation to only have 12 ships total... that would be stupid even in the modern era.
Using todays tech and powers as an example... The United States has a few carriers. But the Carrier is not the end all ship. It is not the ONLY ship. Carriers typically have full battlegroups. And that's not counting any ships like Destroyers and Submarines off on their own patrols. But if someone tries to say that the US only has... lets say 4 Carriers to make up their ENTIRE fleet... that is nowhere near enough to protect the country, let alone deal with external threats of any kind. And frankly a Carrier on pirate duty is kinda overkill.
Same idea with the Connies and other classes of starship in Star Trek. It makes no sense for there to only be 12 ships in the fleet for a territory as large as the Federation. And as established in Discovery, the fleet consists of far more than just Connies. The reason Connies are more well known, besides the obvious DSC came out long after TOS, is because those were highly desirable assignments in universe and the only ship depicted in any on screen media out of universe until Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which introduced the Miranda Class.
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> And I agree that 12 ships is NOWHERE near enough to protect the entire Federation. Now... 12 Constitution Class ships doesn't discount the existence of other ship classes at all. For a superpower the size of the Federation to only have 12 ships total... that would be stupid even in the modern era.
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> Using todays tech and powers as an example... The United States has a few carriers.
You are agreeing with yourself, because no one else said that. And for the record the US only has 11 active carriers right now.
Also I don’t think you realize how difficult it would be for the federation to amass ships for a significant battle unless the ships were already together, manned and within travel distance of the destination. It takes two years to get from the center of the Federation to the periphery at maximum warp. So unless the Borg give a two-year warning that they plan on invading, even if you had a million ships evenly distributed throughout the Federation. In a week’s time you could only get maybe about a hundred or so together to stop the Borg. And it would most likely be a rag-tag fleet featuring mainly vessels built a hundred years earlier. Space is that big.
The peregrine being a scout. probably with specialized scanners and sensors, big enough to take a few hits and fast enough to get out of Dodge.
Pike's Enterprise was built to explore. More weapons for the unknown, more science to chart where they go and analyze what they find.
Kirk's Enterprise was redesigned after the Klingon war, More crew, mostly damage control, security and weapons, and now equipped to go toe to toe with the Klingons.
I think you are misunderstanding me. I was not saying there are only 12 ships, I was saying that is not enough, hence why other ship classes exist. You're making it sound like I agree with only 12 ships existing total. Its the opposite. You NEED more ships to protect that much territory. And you discounted the fact I pointed out we have more than just carriers as well in RL. We have full battlegroups and ships off doing their own things.
The issue really is that in TOS we only saw Connies, and there is dialog talking about the number of Connies, but no reference to any other class of ship. We saw in Discovery that yes the Federation has many classes of ships, and a much larger fleet.
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When we did start seeing different ship classes, we saw different designs. that could have been an admiralty choice. although, as @annemarie30 said, it's cheaper to use the same hull (the US Navy based the Spruance, Kidd and Ticonderoga classes on the same hull)
The Royal Navy used the leander hull for a half dozen types, using common PARTS began to make sense. The Burke destroyers have a different hull, but the engineering is the same, this is show as the miranda, the don't need the larger saucer, or the secondary hull, but the engines anre the same .. Ditto the Nebula vs Galaxy, the role of the nebula did not require the secondary hull, but everything else was the same.
The only time you see drastically different looks is largely due to technology leaps.
I distinctly remember seeing in a TOS episode a listing of Starships by their registry number, i believe the episode was "Court Martial" in Season 1? (it has been a while since i last saw TOS). So that's incorrect, there are references to other starships in existence at the time.
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That's eleven active carriers to patrol one country's portion of a single planet. In an interstellar community as active and dangerous as that featured in Star Trek you would need a force of least that size just to patrol a single star system. A possible explanation for the very low number of Constitutions could simply be that they were primarily designed for exploration and not defense though.
So, while other Federation ship classes were talked about (and some are obviously not Constitution class because they mention things like weaker engines) they, with the exception of the robot freighter that reused the DY-100 model, were never actually shown.
One fact that a lot of people don't know is that there almost wasn't a D7 model. The show did not have the budget to build it though Jefferies had detailed blueprints for the model already, and when he was consulting with AMT about the finishing touches to the Enterprise model kit (and another that he designed, the "Leif Erikson" which was designed back when they thought about using a squadron of smaller, landing-capable ships instead of a big space-only one) he mentioned that he had one for the enemies that probably would never be seen in the show.
That piqued their curiosity enough to have a look at the plans and they swung a deal to produce and sell that model kit too in return for giving the (somewhat bigger for detail reasons) wooden prototype model to the show. That is why there are no lights on the D7 in TOS, it is a solid wooden model, and by the time the plastic production kits that could be lit came out the show was already cancelled (though they probably would have made use of them had there been a fourth season, like they did for the Constellation in The Doomsday Machine).
While they never come out and say it onscreen, the TOS Constitution class is almost exactly the opposite of that according to the series bible, interviews (and panels at conventions) with Roddenberry and Jefferies, and some of the internal memos from the show. It is possible that NuTrek might go a different direction now, but then again consistency with traditional Treks has never been a strong point with them.
The idea for the class was sort of like the one for Seaquest DSV, the ships were fast battleships that were only called "heavy cruisers" to mollify the sensibilities of the Federation Council (not to mention the realworld reason of NBC's reluctance to use the word "battleship" during the height of the anti-war movement) that were built too late in the big war of the 2240s to see much (if any) action that were used for peacetime purposes like exploration and diplomacy rather than tearing down new (and heavily armored with tritanium which would probably be as expensive for Starfleet to cut up as battleship armor is today) ships.
The realworld Iowa class fast battleships were in a similar position (though they were mainly mothballed instead of active), and they were in the news constantly in the mid 1960s as Congress very hotly debated activating them for the Vietnam conflict which is probably where Roddenberry got the idea for the hero ship's background.
There are probably only a dozen or so Constitutions because the Federation does not like building warships and so probably stopped building the especially heavily armored and armed wartime version of whatever that general configuration is called when the contract for them was fulfilled. It is often implied in TOS that it takes two Klingon battlecruisers to take on one Constitution without sabotage, and I imagine the Federation Council would not be comfortable projecting that kind of image very often.
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TAS did have at least one other Starfleet Capital ship. The USS Bonadventure
It also gave us the Copernicus which would seemingly be a type of TAS era Runabout and the Starfleet Antares class Freighter.
As for other Starfleet ship classes we can't of course forget that Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock each introduced new ones. Miranda, Oberth and Excelsior. At least Miranda's and Oberth's had to have been out there for part of the NCC-1701's journeys. One other thing that casts a great deal of doubt on the whole "Only 12 Starships" bit of lore. In the TOS Episode The Ultimate Computer we get 5 Connie's in the same place at the same time to test out a new AI in a war game. Given the shear size of the Federation how often would you have 5 of their top end deep space vessels in the same place, let alone doing so for something so mundane? Granted I think only the Lexington and Excaliber are clearly Connie's the Potemkin and Hood may be a different class. But I and most others have always assumed they were Connie's.