Well, the navy used the same khakis and dungarees for decades, the same 1911 and M-14. In the last few years, though, we've changed guns and uniforms - oh, lord, have we blown money hand-over-fist on ill-advised, unthinking uniform changes... Reasonable question. No idea why, though. Most reasonable interpretation, but Timo's correct that it "t'ain't neccessarily so". And that's the sort of thing the Encyclopedia did all too often.
Which is a great source of purely TOS-internal confusion, because the word "starship" was used to denote ships other than Enterprise lookalikes, too - say, the ancient Archon. This is consistent with how the word gets used later and "earlier" (ENT), so there's certainly a "broader Trek" reason to ignore the idea that Starship Class would uniquely identify Kirk's ship and her sisters. But a "narrow TOS" reason also already exists. Unless we assume the Archon was of the same design, and Starfleet hasn't come up with anything new for a century. Timo Saloniemi
And Mericus' on-screen differentiation between the generic "Spaceship" and "Starship" terms in "Bread and Circuses" further muddied those waters...
Good point about the Archon. So maybe we just chalk the dedication plaque up to an early detail that wasn't pinned down well in the backstage world, and ignore it.
After reviewing the episode again, Picard orders O'Brien to transport "the two crewmen" to the Enterprise. This is before the ship explodes or any escape pods have been jettisoned. This seems to indicate that the Arcos only had two crewmembers to begin with. Nobody says anything about other crew, or that these two men are the only survivors. Speculate all you want, but just going by the episode itself, that's what it implies. I think Okuda knew exactly what he was doing. In the episode, Stone is looking exactly at the registry 1631 right before he makes the comment about bumping the Intrepid in favor of the Enterprise. That's why Jein assumed that 1631 was the Intrepid's registry, that's why Okuda backed that assumption up in the Encyclopedia, and why TOS-R seems to show another Connie next to the Enterprise with the registry NCC-163X. While I agree, I'm not so much irritated that they made the Intrepid a Connie, if only because in "The Immunity Syndrome" it was stated that she had exactly the same number of crew as the Enterprise, sort of reinforcing that it was the same type of ship. What really annoyed me was deciding to make older ships such as the Republic and the Farragut Connies too, just to fill out that list.
Something's always bothered me about this scene in "Court Martial" (that many folks here keep referring to). If there are 10 starships at this base under repair, and if Greg Jein's (and possibly Mike Okuda's) assertion is that these are all Constitution class Heavy Cruisers, and there are only "12 like her [the Enterprise] in the fleet" according to Kirk in "All Our Yesterdays", would it really make logistical sense to have all of Starfleet's big eggs all in the same basket in varying levels of inoperative dis-assembly and repair? What if the Klingons decided to come calling right at that very moment? Starfleet back then didn't appear to be quite as plentiful with regard to ships or ship types. I find it hard to believe that the entire rest of Federation territory was only being patrolled by only 2 large-scale "Starship"-class vessels.
While not the most likely explanation, the chart COULD be a sort of "fleet readiness" graphic denoting the condition of each of the currently active Constitution-class ships, regardless of where they were. Or alternatively, it could be the "% Complete" of the REVIEW of ship status at that time - maybe they're doing an annual checkup of the status of each active ship, and that graphic simply notes how far along each ship is in its exhaustive "annual physical". As luck would have it, the Enterprise was at a Starbase and could be further along its reporting because it could take advantage of all the local resources. If all those ships were NOT Constitutions, perhaps they were all ships in the local fleet or task force assigned to the area and the Commodore was simply asking everyone to report on their ships' conditions, and the graphic showed how far along each ship was in doing so. Obviously he'll have to use stronger language on USS Constitution herself, she's a tardy girl. I'm actually sorta liking this idea, since it wouldn't mean that HALF OF THE SHIPS there were pretty heavily damaged! Mark
No, it doesn't make sense at all. I know this is retroactive, but ST '09 showed at least five different classes of ship that predated the Constitution class, so it's not like Starfleet didn't have all kinds of other ships besides the "big twelve." So if we just took that chart at face value, it seems that nine ships were docked at that starbase undergoing various repairs when the Enterprise arrived there. I'm not sure why people just can't accept that, or feel the need to come up with convoluted explanations for what that chart supposedly shows. But that's just me, I guess. I'm more of an Occam's Razor type of guy. Maybe one of those ships (the Intrepid) was another Connie, and Kirk knew that the base could have the facilities to repair his ship because of that. But that doesn't mean that all the other ships were Connies too. BTW, it's funny how my post about the 24th century conjectural classes has suddenly had a subject change to this
There are some points that I agree while others I do not. Such as the kitbashes, while you my not agree with them, they are still there and some are really nice. Personally, I love the Yeager and Challengers. I believe that the Ambassador-class design era should have a similar amount of cruisers, frigates, support ships that are using similar technology. The Renaissance, Mediterranean, Apollo, Hokule'a, Wambundu, Merced, essentially all the 10000s to 49000 classes. The 50000 would be what the US Navy calls technological insertion vessels to test out the new tech. Classes with the range of 6000 to 9000 can be of similar for the Ambassador Tech Group. I would say in the 2360s, that would be the Novas and the Bradburys in relation to the Sovereign. However, you have a nicely researched group of articles and I would love to see more stuff from various members of this forum in like a Star Trek version of Sea Classics or Warships International.
Well, let me be a little clearer about my feelings for them. First, all seven kitbashes made for BoBW (including the Challenger) are legitimate classes. I just pointed out that in the first edition of the Encyclopedia, some were considered conjectural until we eventually uncovered their designs. For the DS9 kitbashes however, the only ones reliably seen on screen were the Yeager, Centaur, and Curry (and possibly the Raging Queen). While I do believe that they are ship classes of their own, I didn't think they were related to the conjectural classes. While I so, so want that to be true as well, the visual evidence I used for the essay doesn't seem to support that. I would have loved nothing better than to have had a CGI model of the Ambassador instead of the Excelsior, and create all manner of kitbashed designs based on it. That's a good idea. Thanks for bringing it up. Although I would think that registries under 9999 would be TMP-era ships. Agreed. That's why I concluded that the Bradbury was similar to the Sovereign and Nova classes.