Was the Enterprise A actually the Yorktown?

@Avro Arrow

GUT is the acronym for Grand Unified Theory which I feel suits as an analogy for what many fans try to accomplish seeing (a GUT of Star Trek where all series and movies appear to take place in a masterplanned, coherent and continuous universe).

@ Lance

Since the Enterprise-A is obviously a refitted Constitution Class ship, I'm not surprised that refitting an older (i.e. 16th) starship design) turned out more difficult than refitting the 17th starship design.

@ Manticore

Your assumption is not entirely correct, thanks for providing an occasion to speak my mind.

Basically, I'm a supporter of GUT but I despise the methods that are applied to get there, in particular at the expense of the original Star Trek creators ("They didn't know what they were doing").

Since I joined the BBS a year ago I've tried to illustrate at every given opportunity that the contrary is true, that it's not the creators that are to be blamed but the "experts'" lack of vision, imagination, passion and effort to actually figure out what it is the creators had or might have intended.

Rather than to try to rationalize the erroneous and conjectural conclusions that are a result of inadequate research, the original and undiscovered intentions of the creators are second-guessed.

A graphic example is the deck numbering of the TOS Enterprise as suggested in one episode of DS9 and ENT, obviously "inspired" by Franz Joseph.

It's erroneous and illogical and an outstanding result of this aforementioned inadequate research. The creators knew exactly what they were doing when we saw cabins and corridors on Deck 12 and Deck 14 (same goes for "Deck 2" in "The Enterprise Incident"), but it only looks like they were wrong because everybody assumed that Franz Joseph's conjectural deck numbering should be correct.

Bob

 

I think that the 17th design/1st ship model would be cool in a really planned out universe. In the sprawling verse Trek became, it doesn't work.
I figure the Constellation was refitted as a testbed, ala SOTSF, as was the Republic, hence the non-17xx numbers. The 16xx numbers would have been Baton Rouges that were supposed to be decommissioned in favor of 17xx ships that were planned/authorized (the FJTM list), but due to the Four Years War, they blocked that decom, and over time, some of those ships were refit to Constitution specs. For the stories I'm writing, I assumed that the Excalibur was a refit BR, 1664, and the 1705 was not built when it was originally planned. When the 1664 was scrapped after the M-5 incident, the contract for 1705 was dusted off and went into production.
This allows for FJ and Jein's list to coexist in a way that makes sense to me.

 

These are the class and type of ships that were seen and mention on the small and large screen.
1: Valiant type
2: Conestoga type
3: Emmette type
4: Intrepid type
5: Neptune class
6: Delta shape ship
7: NX class
8: Sarajevo type
9: Daedalus class
10: Antares type
11: Soyuz class
12: Oberth class
13: Kelvin type
14: Mayflower type
15: Armstrong class
16: Newton class
17: Constitution class
18: Miranda class
19: Constellation class
20: Excelsior class

 

This is the kind of thing I was thinking about:

Yorktown bridge (unaltered):

http://imageshack.us/f/137/trek4bridgesw0.jpg/

The bridge module used in the next two movies is obviously different, but if we accept that Enterprise-A is a reconditioned Yorktown then the change of bridge modules makes some degree of sense, as Mister Scott and his team have been welding new components over the top of the old ones. The ship seen in TFF is a 'new' ship... from a certain point-of-view.

 

What small and large screens would these please be (except for the more obvious ones beginning at "17")?

Bob

 

Wouldn't all Constitution starships have the same bridge design?

Why ask such a dumb question? Being a Star Trek fan, you should already knew the answer.

 

Being a Trek fan all my life, I've never heard of some of your choices. Why be a jerk? Cite 'em for Bob, since he asked first. I did notice that not all of your choices were from the same universe.

 

Well yes, that was the point. When we see the above bridge in Star Trek IV, the new Enterprise has just been given to Kirk so it's still using the original bridge module from the first three movies. Or, more to the point, it's using the USS Yorktown's bridge module, as the only thing Starfleet has done to modified the ship is to change the decals on the outside. But when we see it in Star Trek V, the same Enterprise has got a brand new bridge design, indicating that a new bridge module has been airlifted in to replace the one used when it was still called Yorktown.

I think it indicates that 'in universe' the Enterprise does change between tbe two movies. Which might further indicate that, whether it was previously the Yorktown or not, the Enterprise that we see at the end of Star Trek IV is at the very least a Constitution Class (refit) ship that had already seen service. Not a brand new build straight out of spacedock. It was modified to a newer spec in the next movie.

 

And thus I must again insist that you are suffering from a lamentable mental ailment. Your claim makes no sense at all, except as a form of delusion.

"What was intended" is a concept that simply does not exist for TOS. One episode says one thing, another says something completely different - naturally enough, as they were written by different people without coordination. If by some accident one episode's ideas aren't contradicted by those of another, then that certainly isn't evidence of some sort of a divine plan. It's a coincidence.

Again I must reiterate that only sick people see patterns where none exist. Or, more exactly, we all see patterns, but most of us are healthy enough to realize they don't exist for real.

Look who's talking. That's not your usual style, Timo, debasing someone like you just did. Are you running out of arguments? [/quote]

Nope - the argument that you are stark raving mad (in this respect) is the only relevant one.

(I do realize it's probably just pretense on your part. Or at least I hope it is. But for the purposes of this discussion, I have to take it dead seriously, of course.)

Now if you see your deeply faulted reasoning for what it is in this specific occasion, perhaps we can get back to arguing about actual facts with the understanding that nonexistent patterns should not enter the discussion.

Now that's a whole different ball game. And I'm certainly game for that. Just stop pretending that the people who made TOS intended any of this. It's us who are responsible for such made-up patterns, especially the more pleasing ones.

Now that's again insanity speaking. "May have intended" is not something you can figure out. It's something you have to invent out of whole cloth, and then retroactively decide that it doesn't exactly contradict what little we know of the intentions of the creators.

Timo Saloniemi

 

First of all, I seriously think you should sit down, take a stress pill and think things over because your tone serves no constructive purpose. Please.

It is my understanding that "canon" is all the information we gather from visual or verbal information and remains canon unless contradicted within the same body of work (i.e. TOS).

There is no TOS episode that contradicts the alphabetic class differentiation for vessels proposed in "The Menagerie" which is in perfect sync with the undisputed alphabetic class differentiation for planets.

However, the fact that Bob Justman replied to D.C. Fontana's "Starship Class" reference with "Enterprise Starship Class" could hint a changed premise, possibly inspired by Gene L. Coon's "Constitution Class". But in this case that's something they established in the middle of Season Two and was not changed thereafter until the end of TOS.

In case you refer to the issue of M/AM reactors aboard Enterprise I'd say you just don't consider the possibility that we were discovering new features of the ship as the series proceeded.

If you have irrefutable proof that "one episode says one thing, another says something completely different" please feel free to provide examples.

I provided all the evidence from the creators (i.e. Jefferies, Justman, Roddenberry/Whitfield) and even in this part of the galaxy 1+1+1 equals 3. IMO, this answers more questions than raising new ones and is therefore the only one I can find pleasing.

Yes, I can. By applying common sense and logic and dispensing the belief in astronomical coincidences:

Deck 12 ("Mudd's Women", "The Enemy Within") - The producers didn't know what they were doing because Kirk's cabin couldn't possibly be on Deck 12 because the saucer has only 11 decks and there's no place for what we saw in the dorsal!

Deck 14 ("Dagger of the Mind") - The producers didn't know what they were doing because the space we saw can't possibly be on Deck 14 because the saucer has only 11 decks and there's no place for what we saw in the dorsal!

Deck 2 ("The Enterprise Incident") - The producers didn't know what they were doing because it would never take a turbo lift that long to travel from the Bridge to the deck below!

The Making of Star Trek makes a clear distinction between 11 main decks and 16 engineering decks. But to match 16 engineering decks with the exterior windows of the engineering hull and have these have the same height as the studio set requires these to run all the way from the bottom of the engineering hull to the top of the dorsal!

It's therefore a logical conclusion that Engineering Deck 1 starts at the dorsal's top and suddenly all the aforementioned deck location references make perfect sense, and even the angle of the outer wall of Kirk's (provisional) cabin on Engineering Deck 12 matches the angle of the exterior hull.

The creators knew exactly what they were doing. But everybody else assumed Franz Joseph's conjectural deck numbering was correct (why?!?) and started to believe that the creators didn't know what they were doing.

Bob

 

Erm, that was basically my point; since we know the television ship was named after the real-life aircraft carrier, perhaps the ship being the only member of her class was also lifted from real-life?

Moving on, I don't for a moment believe that the production team had everything planned out on TOS, nor do I believe that all of the members of the team agreed on everything. I do think certain things were planned, and certain things were left intentionally vague. And, some things that were planned were changed as the show rolled on; consider the various terms used for the agency to which the Enterprise reported: Space Central, the Star Service, UESPA, and the UFP wasn't referred to for some time.

I think that's the problem - it's very difficult to sift through what was planned or not. Certain evidence taken only from TOS will give you one notion, while if you take TOS with the rest of the franchise things might appear another way. So it's understandable that different perspectives would draw different conclusions.

 

Admittedly, some birth pangs in the creation of the show, but seriously nothing worth to write home or rant about, IMHO.

I concur. But that can't possibly be the standard excuse not to make an effort to figure out what they had actually established by the end of TOS (and whether or not that truly contradicts something mentioned earlier).

"The creators of the show never cared and thus never knew", the one thing for which there is rock-solid evidence.” made by somebody "here" in the parallel thread and a recurring theme of ingratitude in several posts and threads throughout the BBS (and the major reason why I joined the BBS in the first place).

There is nothing wrong with appreciating an effort, but there is something seriously wrong when a conjectural and retroactive (i.e. after TOS) effort gets an erroneous canonical status and as a consequence of that makes the original creators look like they didn't care or knew. This is my major issue and criticism of the intoxicating effects of FJ's work in general (but I don't believe it was a deliberate act of FJ).

That's the second time you mention that his work "didn't match perfectly with what's onscreen" which I feel to be a vast exaggeration (no offense) when in fact it's vastly incompatible with what's onscreen.
The only thing that comes close to a perfect match is the command bridge. Already the shuttlebay is only an approximation of the real thing (there...are...two...lights in the observation corridors) and they never walked into any engine room just by exiting a turbo lift.

Bob

@ Avro Arrow

Many thanks for compiling the list, and I learned something new today. But I feel ENT and that other thing to take place in an alternate universe and feel myself incapable of retroactively applying any of this to TOS or the subsequent series. This is one of the reasons.

And a paraphrase of Picard that sums it up: "I will not sacrifice the integrity of TOS. We've made too many compromises already. Too many retreats. They invade our continuity and we fall back. They assimilate the entire canon, and we fall back. Not again! The line must be drawn here, ...this far, no further!"

Maybe Praetor would like to add his paraphrase which fits in the context?

 

I suspect Gene Roddenberry is the one who decided the Enterprise would be a Constitution-class starship (see for example, that FJ and Mike Okuda use the term, and they both consulted with GR yet contradict on everything else). And surely his word overrules Matt Jefferies', or whoever else?

 

First and unless I recall incorrectly "Constitution Class" (for the Enterprise) wasn't noticable until after Gene Roddenberry no longer walked the Earth (i.e, "Relics" and ST VI).

While the passage in The Making of Star Trek referring to "Enterprise Class starships" is not a literal quote from Gene Roddenberry, it's the outcome of the interviews and talks Stephen E. Whitfield conducted with the producers. Because the book lists Whitfield and Roddenberry as authors, everything that's in there must have met with the approval of the Great Bird of the Galaxy.

The Constitution Class (!) blueprints of Franz Joseph suggest Gene Roddenberry had approved but don't carry his signature. It's fair to assume Roddenberry merely tolerated this (hoping he'd still get a share of the profits which never happened).

In contrast the official TMP "new Enterprise [Starship II] Class" blueprints are not only authenticated by Andrew Probert but also approved by Gene Roddenberry - and this time with his signature.

On the other hand, the TMP novelization apparently written by Gene Roddenberry himself, makes an early reference to "Constitution Class", in particular Kirk wondering whether this particular Starship Class would still be a match for the new K'tinga Klingon Battlecruisers.
But this is not evidence that the Enterprise belongs to the Constitution Class. Since we apparently do have a refitted Enterprise Starship II Class (NCC-1701) and a refitted Constitution Starship II Class (NCC-1701-A), this could merely indicate that the Constitution Class had stronger weaponry, shields or whatever.

Interestingly, the only thing we do know for certain about the Constitution Class is that it carried a Mark IX/01 primary long-range phaser, and that Scotty found this interesting enough to study it in detail in "The Trouble With Tribbles".

Bob

 

Just a few things I would add:

1. Sulu was part of the group who directly saved Earth for a second time in TMP and TVH. I think if any group of Starfleet officers could choose their own assignments, it would be them. We don't know how long it took Sulu to get the Excelsior...it could have been as long as the time it took between Star Trek 3 (1984) and Star Trek 6 (1991), but given Sulu's love at first sight for the Excelsior, you can bet that if Commander Sulu simply asked for command of it, he got it, considering his record. In fact, almost any of the TOS crew could have had commands at that point, if they wanted, but most liked to serve with each other, apparently. Not that different from the TNG crew.
2. Styles could have been captain only intended to command the Excelsior during its test runs of the then new transwarp engines, during its time as "the Great Experiment."
3.The Excelsior, as everyone knows, was NX-2000, but by the time Sulu got it, it was NCC-2000. So something was different by the time Sulu was commanding the Excelsior. Apocrypha states that the difference is that the transwarp experiment was a failure, and that the Excelsior was converted to a conventional warp design.

 

The NCC-1700 on that chart was never canonically referred to as the U.S.S. Constitution. The term "Constitution class" was on a diagram though; I believe it was in one of Scotty's technical manuals.

Well, that would have been contradicted by Picard's statement about having a Connie in the Starfleet Museum.

 

We could argue that "12 like it in the fleet" might refer to twelve ships with the same mission and/or mission package as the Enterprise. Doesn't necessarily rule more than 12 Constitution class ships of different mission/mission packages.