Original 12 Constitution class ships

By TUC-R, I meant "The Ultimate Computer," remastered. Only one sentence in my post discusses TOS-R. The rest applies to TOS pre-remastered, as I said.

So, again, how many starbases were definitively shown in pre-remastered TOS? Enough to conclude that the space station in "The Ultimate Computer" was not some or all of a starbase?

 

An intriguing thread. Whitfield's "Making of..." was my guiding light back in the 70s playing Trek with my AMT starship model, imagining the other ships he listed (Exeter, Excalibur, Lexington, Yorktown, Potemkin, Republic, Hood, Constitution, Kongo, Constellation, Farragut, Valiant, and Intrepid) as elsewhere having their own adventures. The galaxy was a frontier with sparsely scattered starships exploring or keeping the peace with other civilizations. Now, the Trek universe is a bit crowded, but t I guess that's natural from a storytelling standpoint. These discussions, as they hearken back to Trek's beginnings, help keep fresh the vision of adventure beyond the known.

 

Just a thought that seems to get missed in discussion of that "dozen like her" comment is that not only does it disregard those ships destroyed, decommissioned, etc, but also those not yet built. For all we know there may have only been 12/13 at that point but we have no way of definitively ruling out a rolling production run with more in the works. Given the preponderance of the admittedly cheaper Miranda /Reliant classes it doesn't seem all that unreasonable to speculated gross figures considerably higher, especially given the Constitutions seeming success as a class.

 

^^ Agreed. "Twelve like her" leaves room for interpretation. Maybe the original plan was to eventually have twelve in operation (because they likely weren't all built at the exact same time), but plans and situations change over time.

I prefer to think there were "twelve like her" at that particular time.

 

Well, this is weird thread. There were twelve Constitution class ships in the Starfleet at the time, and they were the best ships. We saw quite many of them in the show. The end of story.

Oh, and people are way too obsessed about the registries. They don't make sense and were never intended to make sense. If you are postulating existence of several totally different yet identical looking starship classes to make the registries sequential, you're gone off the deep end.

 

By my count, we saw eight of them...

Enterprise
Constellation - "The Doomsday Machine"
Exeter - "The Omega Glory"
Defiant - "The Tholian Web"
Lexington - "The Ultimate Computer"
Excalibur - "The Ultimate Computer"
Potemkin - "The Ultimate Computer"
Hood - "The Ultimate Computer"

I do think there is some debate over whether or not the Constellation was actually a Constitution class starship.

 

Why?

 

Because some people's absurd obsession with sequential registries. They rather imagine a number of identical looking ship classes than accept that Starfleet registries are not sequential.

 

Actually, no. It has to do with the fact they used an AMT model for the Constellation that has some differences from the Enterprise.

But thank for trying to speak for others.

 

So the AMT model kit built to represent the Enterprise, a Constitution class ship, does not represent a Constitution class ship. Okay...

 

I hate when people are obtuse just for the sake of being obtuse.

 

Constitution
Constellation
Eagle
Enterprise
Farragut
Lexington
Yorktown
Excalibur
Defiant
Intrepid
Exeter
Potempkin or Hood (not sure)

 

Potemkin and Hood both appear in "The Ultimate Computer".

 

Okay, both.

 

Yep. The three-footer had differences from the 11-footer, and details of the 11 footer changed from shot to shot, and the Enterprise herself was represented by an AMT kit in Tribbles, and no one's going to argue it's a different ship class from itself. The AMT kit as the Constellation was meant to be another starship just like the Enterprise, and its inconsistencies matter as little as all the different versions of the Enterprise seen in a single episode.

 

If one went the Jefferies route, Constellation would be of the 10th cruiser designs class while Enterprise is of the 17th cruiser designs class. While this might make sense, it would also mean that Constellation was refitted to 17th cruiser design specifications. Or the difference between these two are relatively small after multiple refits over the decades.

I prefer the idea that the hull had a more useful purpose is showing where the ship was from originally rather than just be the number of ships build by Starfleet. Seemingly every Starfleet ship is NCC-something, so there is no difference in class types within the fleet for the numbers. So maybe use the first digit or two to show the origin of the starship between all the various member worlds of the Federation. Many of which had shipyards and fleets prior to joining the Federation.

Like say the 1700s are Earth built ships and the 1600s are Vulcan built ships, while the 1000s are Andorian built ships. Something like that. It would give the numbers some meaning, otherwise there would be no reason to put something like NCC-1701 on a the hull at all. A naval vessel would just have 1701 on the hull with possibly a small letter if it could be confused with another ship in the fleet that also had the hull number 1701. Airplaces have longer registry numbers to show country of origin and if it is military or civilian in origin.

 

We actually never saw the hull number on any other ships in TOS other than the Enterprise and Constellation so nothing was established on the show about the numbers meaning anything, Jefferies intentions notwithstanding.

 

Are you saying there was a USS Constitution mentioned in the series, Phase, or are you just using that as a heading? Because I don't remember such a ship being mentioned!
JB