USS Copernicus, NCC-640 or 623?

[Unicron]

I like that idea too, as Mastercom did something similar with the 1800 series cruisers (Tikopai class). They had originally been envisioned as refits/upgrades of the basic Constitution class during the TOS era, as seen in FJ's work, but owing to various delays and other designs did not actually see service until the movie era with more advanced technology than had originally been planned.

[Timo]

Something like that might also explain why NCC-602 and (possibly) NCC-623 aren't Monoceros or Cygnus class vessels.

Alas, ST:TMP tells us that the Cygnus class wasn't "approved but infinitely delayed" - at least one of the bird-named ships was completed by the early or mid-2270s, as USS Columbia is mentioned, her FJ registry explicit. But there are no onscreen references to the Monoceros class or its individual ships, so perhaps that class was never built and early Oberths were constructed instead in this registry range? (This would also remove the annoyance of USS Aries which appears to be contemporary to the very different scoutship of the same name from TAS "Eye of the Beholder"...)

Timo Saloniemi

[Basill]

Timo wrote:

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Something like that might also explain why NCC-602 and (possibly) NCC-623 aren't Monoceros or Cygnus class vessels.

Alas, ST:TMP tells us that the Cygnus class wasn't "approved but infinitely delayed" - at least one of the bird-named ships was completed by the early or mid-2270s, as USS Columbia is mentioned, her FJ registry explicit. But there are no onscreen references to the Monoceros class or its individual ships, so perhaps that class was never built and early Oberths were constructed instead in this registry range? (This would also remove the annoyance of USS Aries which appears to be contemporary to the very different scoutship of the same name from TAS "Eye of the Beholder"...)

Timo Saloniemi

The vessel from "Eye of the Beholder" was Ariel not Aries. Close but different banana.

Interesting theory though.

[Timo]

Ah, right - it's the Last Unicorn Games USS Aries rather than a canon ship that I had to juggle when creating my Grand Unified Spreadsheet of starship names and registries. My bad.

The idea of the Oberth class taking the place of the Monoceros class in actual Starfleet procurement suffers from an aesthetic shortcoming: Okuda wants the class ship for Oberth to be NCC-602 while FJ wanted his subclass to start with NCC-601. Neither used a double-zero registry, though, thus eroding our confidence in a truly "blockwise" system of registries. That is, it seems FJ starts out Monoceros at NCC-601 because the previous class concluded at NCC-600, whereas "block allocation" might more logically result in something like NCC-700 for the Monoceros.

That is, unless this "Mk VIIA" scout really isn't all that distinct from the basic "Mk VII" and for that reason doesn't warrant a new registry batch.

Timo Saloniemi

[Ian Keldon]

Timo wrote:

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Oookay... Apparently, the Blu-Ray reworking of "The Naked Now" gives us a new registry number for the Oberth class model seen on screen there, one matching the five-digit number seen on said ship's dedication plaque. That is, the earlier three-digit number is now gone (from all but one overlooked scene).

Trekcore now has caps from all of "The Naked Now" online, and the "corrected" NCC# for Tsiolkovsky ONLY appears in one scene (where the Enterprise puts a tractor beam on her) with both ships shown in profile. In all the other scenes (3/4 aft views), the 640 number is clearly visible).

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x...now_hd_054.jpg (early scene)

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x...now_hd_337.jpg (corrected scene)

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x...now_hd_487.jpg (later scene)

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x...now_hd_496.jpg (last scene)

Looks like the FX team got lazy and only touched up the "most visible" shot.

[Timo]

Indeed. I'd like to start believing in "USS Tsiolkovsky, NCC-640" from now on, then, when it's evident that the five-digit registry number is invisible in most of the redone scenes - even in the dedication plaque shots, which remain off focus and completely unreadable save for the ship's name (mis)spelled in Cyrillics.

Timo Saloniemi

[Dukhat]

Timo wrote:

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Indeed. I'd like to start believing in "USS Tsiolkovsky, NCC-640" from now on...

And I'd like to start believing that as well. Unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that because of the original disconnect between the Art Department (Okuda, who presumably created the plaque thinking the Tsiolkovsky was going to be a new ship) and the VFX department (who used the Grissom/Copernicus model and re-registered it according to what a 23rd century ship of that class would have logically been labeled), most future Oberths seen in TNG now sported 5XXXX registries and were essentially in continuous production for at least 80 years, when that was not the original intention.

[Andru]

Ian Keldon wrote:

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Looks like the FX team got lazy and only touched up the "most visible" shot.

Which is very fortunate, or we wouldn't have found out about the real registry on the model.

Perhaps they even botched the job on purpose, so that fans could argue about the 'real' registry of the Tsiolkovsky for the rest of eternity!

[Ian Keldon]

Dukhat wrote:

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most future Oberths seen in TNG now sported 5XXXX registries and were essentially in continuous production for at least 80 years, when that was not the original intention.

I wouldn't say continuous production. I think those later ships were simply later "batches". It might have been decades between batches of ships like Oberths who generally served in lower risk missions that didn't stress their capabilities all that much.

[Dukhat]

^While I agree in principle with the batch theory (which explains things like the gap in time between the prototypes of such ships as the Excelsior and Ambassador classes and the mass-production of said classes if we take registry numbers into account), I just can't accept this with the Oberth.

The Grissom was operating in 2285. The class ship Oberth NCC-602 must have been built even before this. The Pegasus was commissioned in 2358, and the Tsiolkovsky was commissioned in 2363. That's 73 years at the least between these two batches, and more than 78 years at the most. Whether there were other batches between these times or not is irrelevant: Why would an old outdated design suddenly get a resurgence of newbuilds 75+ years after its introduction, when newer, more advanced designs were being manufactured at the same time? That's like the Ford Motor Company all of a sudden deciding to build Model-T's along with their new Mustangs, Focuses, and F-150s.

[Boris]

Why isn't the NX-01 significantly less advanced than ships from the TNG era?

[Dukhat]

Is the NX class still being produced in the TNG era?

[Boris]

No, but it could've easily passed for a new design, and the Klingon battlecruiser from ENT did retain an identical exterior in the VOY era. The producers' requirement to keep Star Trek mostly the same, as well as some budget constraints here and there, simply resulted in a similar sort of "technological stasis" that is used to explain why the Star Wars galaxy had very similar technology 25,000 years ago. Yes, there is some new technology in Star Trek, but nothing radically new. As a result, Starfleet may view starship exteriors as a set of architectural shapes, some of them repeated by tradition over generations, rather than designs driven strictly by functional requirements. The interior can change, but the exterior doesn't matter as much.

[throwback]

The Heart of Gold, a starship mentioned in a LCARS display in "Conspiracy", has a registry of NCC-42. If registries are chronological, this starship would have to be commissioned in the mid-21st century. However, another starship from the same episode torpedoes that hypothesis. The Tycho has the highest known canonical number with NCC-85103, and this starship was active in 2364. Up to now, I, and I think a few others, thought a starship with that registry would appear after Nemesis. Nope, there it is in 2364. It's Entente all over again. Sometimes I wish that we didn't know about the starships from "Conspiracy" for they confuse matters more. I don't know how to explain the HoG.

[matthunter]

throwback wrote:

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The Heart of Gold, a starship mentioned in a LCARS display in "Conspiracy", has a registry of NCC-42. If registries are chronological, this starship would have to be commissioned in the mid-21st century. ... I don't know how to explain the HoG.

It does sound quite improbable.