Anyone have any good reason for ship registry changes?

Hmm, I suppose you might be right about the Enterprise E. I just assume it is the flagship since with the D gone there would have to be a new flagship. Logically, the next Enterprise would be it.

 

Why wait for the E-E to be completed? There would be plenty of already existing ships to assume that role immediately. And no tradition of ships named Enterprise holding the status!

If anything, some other Galaxy class ship would be the natural successor, as that sort of hardware is known to be capable of the task. The Sovereign class would not have demonstrated the capability yet. (And may indeed lack it altogether for all we know.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

Timo,
The real world lineage is in the keeping of the name. Some names get recycled for a while, then fade; some endure. But you're right that the Trek idea of passing those names to better ships isn't real world practice.
As for the flagship thing, that's fanon and writer confusion about what a flagship is. Yes, the D is referred to as such, in the meaning of Starfleet's prime showboat, but it doesn't mean it's an admiral's command ship. Essentially, Pike seems to have commanded a Galaxy Exploration cruiser, Kirk commanded an Independent Duty cruiser (meaning he was available to any command of Starfleet, but patrolled wherever he pleased on his own initiative until such a command called on his services), and Picard did the same with a bigger, showier ship where "explorer" replaced "cruiser" as the designation. So fans and writers tend to assume that at least the 1701-A had that status, and that it must be passed on to any ship named Enterprise-any bloody letter.
My first exposure to wikipedia was reading the article on the USN carrier, and some idiot had edited it to say that after the ship's heroics in WWII, the US Navy had made a regulation declaring that there would always be an Enterprise, and that it would be the flagship of the navy!
On the Fleet Captain issue, I personally like it. One possible justification is that, like Commodore, it no longer refers to an actual rank, but rather to a position. So a Fleet Captain might be what we call a Tycom today (Type Commander). A Tycom doesn't command a ship. They manage all ships of a class. They make the decisions on what changes may be made, when yard periods are needed, what maintenance is required, what materials may be used, etc. If a captain wants a new door in a given location, and the old door replaced with a bulkhead, the Tycom has to approve it, or he's not allowed to make the change. So a captain who gets a Tycom billet is referred to as a Fleet Captain, just as a captain in charge of a squadron is a Commodore.
In my own fiction, I do use the rank as an often bypassed intermediary to flag rank - occasionally someone is made a fleet captain to improve their seniority over their fellows, more often they get it as a sign that they're too much of a cowboy to ever be allowed to make flag rank. Otherwise, the majority of captains either retire or become admirals without ever stopping off as fleet captains. But that's just my take on it.

 

I always thought the Saratoga in STIV and Sisko's were the same ship. Why would they be cranking out new Miranda's in the 24th century? I always just had the impression they were freaking mass produced so much in the 23rd century that they were refitted to lesser roles in the 24th century rather than just retiring a huge number of ships all at once and leaving a void. Transport ships, science vessels and such things though the Dominion war required them putting every hull they could in action.

As for the one from DS9 that was mentioned in You are Cordially Invited, I assumed it was Nebula class too being one of the DS9 clips that episode showed a Nebula docked at the station and members of it's crew were at Dax's party.

 

No real dispute here. But newbuilds would explain why a supposedly hard-working fighting ship (rather than a sedately moving science vessel) hasn't worn down from use in the intervening century, even though age and fatigue supposedly claimed two comparable ships from under Jim Kirk.

The damage was already done with the introduction of the "modern" USS Brattain in TNG, basically. Or to some degree with the reuse of the Excelsior model in the pilot episode, establishing the continuing use of actual, original Kirk-era fighting ships in Picard's days (which at that point might have been intended to be half a century later still, as per Data's "class of '78" remark). Or, in other words, the lamentable tradition of recycling models from the older movies when making the 24th century TV show. "Emissary" was just keeping up the practice by painting new registry numbers on Sisko's ship - but admittedly could have used the ship with the ST4 registry number just as well.

(...A number in some dispute even today, incidentally. Official sources have quoted something like three incorrect numbers for that ship already, instead of the supposedly visually verified NCC-1887.)

The party ship was said in dialogue to be the Sutherland.

In the teaser to "Wrongs Darker than Death or Night", Worf and Dax seem to be saying that the (unseen) Saratoga that was to dock with the station would be another harbinger of wild parties. It seems that the writers got their notes about the designated "party ship" confused... This ship is necessarily a "third" Starfleet Saratoga, as neither of the Miranda class vessels can be assumed to have survived.

The TNG episode "Aquiel" supposedly involves this "third" ship as well. She is not mentioned in dialogue, so the reference apparently merely comes from one of non-narrated diary entries of the titular character. This may not count as "for real", for various reasons.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Well in the case of Kirk's ships, both came back with heavy battle damage. I just assumed Starfleet figured it would be cheaper to build a new ship than to spend resources repairing the old ones. It's one thing to keep a perfectly functional older ship in service, but it's another to spend vast resources repairing it when it suffers heavy damage. This would explain why so many older model ships are still around in the TNG era. I mean heck, the USS Missouri from World War 2 was active in the gulf war, albeit with a refit, so it's possible the Federation could keep their older models around, especially during their soft era of good feelings. Even LaForge said that flying box with warp nacelles, the Jenolen would've been in service today if not for that crash.

I stand corrected on the Sutherland. It's been awhile since I watched DS9 and guess I confused the Sutherland party with the party ship Saratoga in my head. But hey if the writers confused the issue, why can't I too? Thanks.

Either way, yeah... the registry numbers never were too consistent.

 

It's not as if the ST4 Saratoga especially enjoyed her meeting with the Whale Probe, either...

Then again, we don't know everything about the relative ages of the ship designs or individual ships involved. Perhaps none of the Mirandas were refits of 2240s-vintage starships, but brand new things from the 2280s instead, despite sporting registry numbers in a range we already witnessed in the 2260s in that "Court Martial" wall chart?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Back when CVN-65's decommisioning was announced, there was an online petition for the next carrier to be named Enterprise with some people who signed it referring to CVN-65 as the Navy's flagship.

Also of note, the Canadian Coast Guard actually does have a flagship. Read about it here. And there's even a press release about a new flagship here. Although I'm told that since the Canadian Coast Guard is a civilian agency, its use of the term flagship is different than the military one.

Hmm, did I just add fodder to the "is Starfleet military?" debate?

 

S-T-O-P-!-!-! Are you trying to self-destruct the damn ship?!

 

Would Starfleet have sent any ship other than the flagship to escort the Klingon Chancellor in TUC, though?

 

Diplomatic escort in the real world (back when diplomats did not travel by air) was typically by humble scouting cruisers, as such vessels would be faster and cheaper to detach and operate than the bigger combatants.

Besides, Starfleet wasn't sending an escort ship to meet the needs of diplomatic protocol. Starfleet was sending Kirk and his famous cruiser as an insult to Gorkon, understanding that the negotiations would greatly benefit from the Klingons being insulted. (Indeed, the Klingons would probably feel honored by the daring challenge, even if Starfleet just thought that the Kirk-shaped middle finger would give the UFP the psychological upper hand, in addition to being the "Nixon in China" concession to the hawks back home.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

Who's flag? A flagship is the ship a flag officer is embarked on, typically used as a command ship. It is not the "prime showboat" usage civilians have turned it into. Kirk wasn't an admiral anymore, nor a commodore, so there was no flag officer onboard to give the Enterprise flag status.

 

Starfleet in the 24th century does operate ships under the unique"Federation flagship" status, so the question of whether Kirk's E-A would have been one of those is quite valid. A lowly Captain can command one of those, and the status isn't dependent on who is aboard and who is not.

However, we never learned of a clause that would require the leader of the Klingon Empire to be escorted by the UFP flagship and none other... And we did learn that Kirk's ship was sent because Kirk himself needed to be sent. And in an Enterprise to rub it in, even though Starfleet at the time had more impressive ships available as well - at least NCC-2000 (unless she was down for post-Praxis repairs) and her potential sister ships (we see ships of that class with 2000 range registries in TNG), not to mention the smaller but still Constitution-trumping three-nacelle vessels that were glimpsed on computer readouts in the early movies.

Timo Saloniemi