The Constellation's registry number

[Wingsley]

Added note:

Greg Jein's article would seem to add Eagle, Endeavour, Essex and Kongo to this roster.

A Federation with less than two-dozen "Star Ship Class" vessels in total is interesting, but far from plausible when you consider that all ships have Earth-derived names and this doesn't fit Kirk's "twelve like it in the fleet" brag very easily anyway.

[CorporalCaptain]

One more time.

TNG established the Enterprise as Constitution-class while the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself was executive producer.

Case closed.

[blssdwlf]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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Alright, excellent. My point was that if you could somehow make out or otherwise glean what the Defiant plaque says in TTW, it's going to have "USS Enterprise" staring you in the face, anyway.

I understood your point, but on that same note, if we could get close to the four starships facing down the Enterprise in "The Ultimate Computer", they'd all say USS Enterprise as well The production people were probably aware of this and filmed it in such a way that the plaque visible in "The Tholian Web" was present but unreadable. That would allow for say a mythical Season 4 TOS episode to revisit the Defiant and extra budget to make a Defiant plaque to say whatever they wanted on it.

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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And, thanks, GSchnitzer, for the history lesson. I was aware of everything, except the contents of the Space Seed script.

Yes, GSchnitzer's references to the scripts are always insightful. Still, since it is just the Work In Progress and not the final Finished Work it is hard to square away with the readable "Starship Class" plaque on the Enterprise bridge that persisted for three seasons. You'd think by Season 3 someone could've just replaced it with a cheap "Constitution Class" plaque.

Oh - and let's not forget "The Wrath of Khan" establishing the movie Enterprise as Enterprise Class.

Overall... the evidence leaves plenty of room to consider the TOS Enterprise starting off as Starship Class (think HMS Dreadnought), becoming the Enterprise Class in the early movies and then being folded into the Constitution Class umbrella by "The Undiscovered Country" that is recorded in the future 24th century history books.

@Wingsley - Not all ships are "starships" according to TOS. Even having antimatter nacelles doesn't qualify since Merik's ship from "Breads and Circuses" had them and wasn't a starship command.

[MarsWeeps]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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Alright, excellent. My point was that if you could somehow make out or otherwise glean what the Defiant plaque says in TTW, it's going to have "USS Enterprise" staring you in the face, anyway.

Yes, but in the context of the show, it will say USS Defiant.

Just like Spock's viewer, we all know that if we were to actually look inside it on the bridge set, we would probably just see some light bulbs, but in the context of the show, we would see some type of sensor data.

[CorporalCaptain]

MarsWeeps wrote:

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Yes, but in the context of the show, it will say USS Defiant.

Just like Spock's viewer, we all know that if we were to actually look inside it on the bridge set, we would probably just see some light bulbs, but in the context of the show, we would see some type of sensor data.

Of course. But that doesn't somehow render any of the other purposefully illegible text somehow immune from being something else in the context of the show, either.

[MarsWeeps]

blssdwlf wrote:

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Oh - and let's not forget "The Wrath of Khan" establishing the movie Enterprise as Enterprise Class.

How so?

[blssdwlf]

MarsWeeps wrote:

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How so?

Another pesky plaque. When Spock greets Kirk after the opening simulator test.

"Mark IV Simulator, Enterprise Class"

[MarsWeeps]

blssdwlf wrote:

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Another pesky plaque. When Spock greets Kirk after the opening simulator test.

"Mark IV Simulator, Enterprise Class"

You must mean the one below? I can easily explain. The simulator itself is an Enterprise Class simulator. Since Enterprise was probably the first ship to be refit into TMP design, they needed something to simulate the refit bridge, so they called the simulator "Enterprise class."

They couldn't call it a Constitution class simulator because that particular simulator was designed like the TOS bridge.

How's that for reaching?

[CorporalCaptain]

Yeah, I seem to recall at least some non-canon sources referring to the Enterprise-class refit.

[blssdwlf]

MarsWeeps wrote:

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How's that for reaching?

LOL.

"Which ship class are we simulating on today?"
"Constitution Class."
"Uhm, which one sir?"
"Enterprise Class."
"Cool, I never could get use to all the colors and sounds on the Starship Class version."

[Robert Comsol]

BillJ wrote:

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Damn Greg, you just completely destroyed Robert Comsol.

Really? He just rehashed an old argument to which I had already replied last Christmas in the "N.C.C." thread.

Fact: Apparently there do exist starships of a "Constitution Class" but there is no evidence that Enterprise belongs to these.
On the contrary, Matt Jefferies' statement that the Enterprise was "the first bird, the first in the series" strongly suggests she is the class leader of the "Enterprise Class" and "Enterprise Class" is mentioned twice in the original Making of Star Trek (no mentioning of a "Constitution Class" but mentioning that USS Constitution was one of the last names considered as a name for a starship!).

Since there are starships whose prefix begins with "16" and according to Jefferies these would be the 16th design series, add to this Greg Jein (and TOS-R) identified these to look identical to the Enterprise (possibly after some kind of refit) there's no good reason not to assume these belong to the actual "Constitution Class".

Where things get muddled are the movies. For ST II Nicholas Meyer considered the refit Enterprise to belong to the "Enterprise Class" (simulator sign) while the Enterprise in ST VI belonged to the "Constitution Class" (Scotty's "blueprint").

If "Constitution Class" became a colloquialism for starships of similar designs in later times, I have no problems with corresponding remarks from Captain Picard in "Relics".

However, I do have problems when the TOS Enterprise is referred to as "Constitution Class" as if it were an established fact - which it isn't, especially in light of the original creator's (Matt Jefferies) and producers' (e.g. Bob Justman and Gene Roddenberry - since the MoST bears his name on the cover, too, the content is authorized by G.R.) intentions and from a strictly TOS point of view.

If you feel a fan fiction author like Franz Joseph understood these things better than the actual people who made Star Trek (strange, nobody complains that TOS-R didn't use Joseph's "17XX exclusive" starship numbering), so be it.

Bob

[BillJ]

Yet none of what you have listed deals with the fact that the Constitution-class nomenclature goes back as early as the first draft of the episode "Space Seed".

And, once again, Roddenberry was executive producer of The Naked Now which clearly identifies the ship as Constitution-class.

The Naked Now wrote:

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RIKER: Captain, I believe we've have the answer to what happened over there.
PICARD: (reading the screen) The Constitution class Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk commanding.

[blssdwlf]

In-universe, Picard's info for "Constitution Class" at the time in the 24th century is correct. Also, in-universe, the "Starship Class" plaque on the TOS Enterprise in the 23rd century is also correct.

For a real life example, take USS Boston (CA-69). Today, most sources will say she's a Baltimore Class ship and that is true because she was commissioned as one in 1943. But in the 1950s, she became the lead ship in her own class as she was re-classified as a Guided Missile Cruiser and even got her own designation (CAG-1). There would have been "only two like her (USS Canberra)". In the late 60's, she was re-classified back to a Heavy Attack Cruiser and also got back her original ship registry, CA-69.

If you were to ask about the USS Boston in the late 50s, you would've been told, "Boston Class." Today, "Baltimore Class" would suffice.

Edit: And regarding Picard's info: "Captain James T. Kirk" leaves out "Admiral James T. Kirk". Again, this suggests that the info on the Enterprise and Kirk omitted information or only showed the final disposition of ship and crew...

BillJ wrote:

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Yet none of what you have listed deals with the fact that the Constitution-class nomenclature goes back as early as the first draft of the episode "Space Seed".

And, once again, Roddenberry was executive producer of The Naked Now which clearly identifies the ship as Constitution-class.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

"Starship class" is set dressing. It's never been said in such a way as to mean class and not type. "Constitution-class" is canonical, not necessarily the original intent of Matt Jefferies, but so what? It's not like they stole his work. He got paid and frankly, I don't think he much would have cared if they kept his scribbled-in-margins notes about "17th cruiser type" etc.

I'm not sure how this has become the big deal it has.

[blssdwlf]

King Daniel wrote:

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"Starship class" is set dressing. It's never been said in such a way as to mean class and not type. "Constitution-class" is canonical,

That's silly. Both appeared on the shows and both are canonical. If it isn't a "big deal", why weigh in?

Edit: Why it's silly: You are picking which class you consider is "canonical" and so is Bob and other posters. Pot and kettle and all that stuff.