I'm working on a starship related project and part of it entails me coming up with a list of starships/stations which are non-canon, but which are so "official", so widely known and accepted, that they may as well be. I'm thinking things like: Sean Tourangeau's Luna Class Mark Rademaker's Vesta Class Doug Drexler's New Deep Space 9 The Klingon Qang Class Vanguard Station Masao Okazaki's Archer Class Mark Rademaker's Full Circle Fleet Doug Drexler's refit NX Class TOS-era Miranda Class Ptolemy Class Saladin Class Federation Class Cheyenne Class New Orleans Class Niagara Class Springfield Class Challenger Class Freedom Class Am I missing anything else that is widely known and basically "official" in every way except having appeared onscreen? Perhaps something non-Federation? I'll also be posting this in the Fan Art Forum. Thanks for any help or suggestions.
The designs for those ships are canon, as they were seen on displays in TWOK and TSFS. However, since the names were not mentioned or seen, we can't canonically link them to the designs. We also cannot know if those designs are based on actual ships, as we never saw any ships with those designs on screen. The designs are canon, though. Same deal. There were six ships (not including the Nebula class Melbourne, whose class name was canonized in "The Wounded") seen in the Wolf 359 graveyard, so the designs are canon even if there were no names associated with them in dialogue. The above names for the ship classes are official though, having been established in a licensed Trek publication.
I don't know how "widely known and accepted" it is, but how about the Klingon "D4" originally designed for ENT's "Unexpected"? It's made a number of appearances in SotL calendar images.
That's the exact kind of thing I'm looking for. Famous origin, used in multiple publications. I may add that to the list. I am actually just trying to develop a list of the most important/my favorite starships from all the series and Treklit. Someday when technology, money, and space in my house allow, (inspired by my childhood love of the Star Trek Micro-Machines) I would love to 3-D print around 150 starships in 1/5000 scale. My main problem now is that I want them to be full color, which I understand limits the material they can be 3D printed in. Otherwise I could have them professionally painted but then the price becomes even more of an issue. Someday all the stars will align and I'll be able to actually do it, bit by bit, but for now I just want to make the perfect list of all the "best" Star Trek ships and what size they would be at 1/5000 scale.
Thought I'd posted this earlier, but the Churchill and the Bonaventure might be good candidates. As would the Phobos and the Copernicus.
If we're counting designs that made it into the SOTL calendar series, there is also the Spirit, Onimaru, and New Atlantic classes.
A good list of the ships in the calendars would be nice. I don't even know what most of the newer ones are.
Actually that one is canon. In TMP if you listen closely to the comm chatter during the Epsilon 9 establishing scene you can hear a female voice say "Epsilon 9 this is dreadnought Entente calling. NCC-2120 calling comm station Epsilon 9 come in.". If you look in the Star Fleet Technical Manual that ship is listed (second column, fourth down in names list) as a Federation class. I remember reading somewhere that the Franz Joseph's stuff was originally considered canon, hence why his plans were used on displays in the first three movies and at least three* of his ships get name checked in TMP, but Roddenberry threw a hissy fit and made up his "official design rules" to de-canon them. Though since they appeared on screen they are still technically canon. *Columbia NCC-621, Revere NCC-595, Entente NCC-2120
^^ Someone will no doubt point out that dreadnought Entente and her hull number is canon, but the class that FJ assigned her to is not, since that is not mentioned.
Roddenberry only had one "official" rule which was that the nacelles had to be paired. He assumed that it was a necessity to create a stable warping just like a helicopter needed several rotors to control each other's torque, but as Gene was not an engineer he never formally developed this in an engineering fashion and we've seen ships that don't follow this rule, so one could always choose to ignore it IMO. Andrew Probert developed the other "rules" like LOS between nacelles during the production of TMP, since it was planned at one stage to have energy passing between the nacelles. I'm not in the camp that says Roddenberry deliberately screwed FJ myself, though I do understand some of that perception and I think those works, along with many other tie-ins, became victims of the 80s crackdown on tie-ins being canonical, if only loosely, so that the live-action entries would set the standards.
I'm sure somebody will. I'll point out instead that the distinct three-nacelled silhouette of the Federation class is the only one from the old tech manual not seen on a computer display screen in the TOS movies. Not that the other SFTM ships would have been seen in such a way as to associate them with class names let alone individual ship names, either... Timo Saloniemi
Sorry I mentioned the comm chatter from TMP and Franz Joseph's technical manual. I forgot, even thought his plans and three of his ship names were used onscreen, counting any of his ship designs and names as canon is a big no-no. I also forgot, even though the Constellation proves otherwise, ship registry numbers must adhere to a rigid sequential numbering system.
I am pointing it out because we have canon dialog of a starship past 2000 more than 10 years before NCC-2000 is even being tested as an NX. The way I've been thinking of it, that means the 20xx ship had been sloted for Earth earlier once the transwarp project or the new larger successor to the Constitutions was put into the budget. But another star system got the 21xx ship numbers because they ran over on their previous numbers for Starfleet. Thus whatever ships got NCC-21xx were built somewhere other than Earth.
On the other hand, the Excelsior 2000s may well have been ordered prior to the Federation 2100s, but since the 2100s were using well established technology, they went together quite quickly, while the experimental nature of Excelsior demanded much much more time. It could have been on the boards for 15 years or more before finally being realized as a functional vessel. I just now thought of an idea that I kinda like: Suppose they authorized the 2000s and the 2100s at the same time as two classes of ships which were meant to have similar capabilities. The 2000 series would be there to be the next generation bigger/faster/stronger class and operate much more efficiently than the current generation, but they knew that it would take a long time so they authorized the 2100 series to do roughly the same thing, using well-known extant technology, which won't be nearly as efficient as what's on the drawing board, but can be built next year. This would make the Dreadnaughts a stop-gap between the concept of the Excelsior and the realization of it. It would also explain why there were evidently so few dreadnaughts (just one mentioned on-screen) but so many Excelsiors over the years. Let's not forget that Sternbach's TNG Technical Manual tells us that the E-D took something like 20 years to put together. On the other hand, FJ already gives us an Excelsior, a Bonhomme Richard-class Heavy Cruiser NCC-1718, though there is no NCC-2000 anywhere listed... However, if you go with the Mastercom idea that most of the FJ ships were authorized but never actually built, then maybe NCC-1718 was one of those that ended up on the chopping block, but the name ended up being applied to previously unnamed experimental platform NX-2000. --Alex
The other alternative is that the older USS Excelsior was lost in the line of duty prior to the NX-2000 project's ship being launched. The new ship was renamed Excelsior from whatever it had been named. The original name was lost to time due to the closed doors approach for the "Great Experiment". Thus the class being the Excelsior-class rather than its orginal name. (The Audacious-class aircraft carriers of Great Britian are an example. The lead ship was named Audacious until about two months prior to launch, when was renamed after a ship lost in the war...HMS Eagle. There was never a carrier named Audacious in that class after that point. Just Eagle and Ark Royal. Neither of which had those names when layed down. It was Audacious and Irresistable. Yet they are still called Audacious-class carriers, not Eagle-class carriers.)