It is also possible that few of the class were built or fitted in that way, and by the late 2280s they had all been lost or destroyed, rather than retired. That era seems to have a general increase in the hostility between the Federation and Klingon Empires.
It should be noted that the class appears to be famous. That is, yeah, the silhouette is quite distinct. Yet it's not the glimpse of the vessel on the viewscreen that prompts LaForge to dance and scream "I know this class! I know this class! I wrote a thesis on it, well, almost!" but Worf's mention of the class name. For some reason, LaForge knows that the Soyuz class was retired in the late 2270s. Not "by the end of the 23rd century". Not "about a century ago". But "over eighty years ago", which speaks of intimate knowledge. Picard never indicates quite the same level of knowledge on the arguably famous Constitution class in "Relics" let alone "The Naked Now". Was the entire class built for a famous purpose (say, to repel the Horrendous Space Amoeba of 2274 with those really sharp spikes)? Or did a vessel of that class distinguish herself, possibly beyond what Kirk at his best or Harriman at his worst managed to achieve? I'd sort of favor the former set of explanations, because the class did get retired when other nearly identical designs persisted, and would go on persisting for close to a century. Apparently, the reason to have those spikes went away. Yet we aren't aware of anything specific going away in the 2270s (save for V'Ger which went away even before Starfleet had time to digest the idea that it existed). There's an untold adventure there that makes the Soyuz class live in glory or infamy... Timo Saloniemi
Good point! Admittedly, though, his only known piece of modeling was a sailing ship... And we don't know if that was a hobby or more like a near-lifelong project that he got the urge to finish when rendezvousing with the modern namesake of the ship. O'Brien built ships in bottles as an actual hobby, that is, he supposedly finished numerous bottles (and then supposedly put ships in those, too). No idea whether those were sailing ships or starships - it would be quite a feat to squeeze a saucer in there through the bottleneck! Timo Saloniemi
The Romulan War is way too early. I'm thinking that they could've been around the time of the cold war between the Federation and Klingon Empire. Given the fact that the evidence seems to point at that equipment being sensors, and not weapons, their tactical purpose would've been for reconnaissance purposes. Besides, if they were for offensive purposes, they would've been decommissioned in 2293, at the time that the Federation had to mothball or decommission many of their battle wagons (though I suppose that TUDC didn't exist at the time, but we do have to work with the facts). The Soyuz was obviously armed, unlike the Oberth, so they could fight back if attacked, at least until they could get out of there. I suppose they would've also spied on the Romulans. There is the possibility that their hulls were originally based on the Coventry or Surya (or the actual Miranda if she wasn't a Coventry at the time), which fandom says goes back all the way to as early as 2242. I know that we're working with fan or unofficial sources, but give another 5 or 10 years to develop the Soyuz, and service would start in the late 2240s or early 2250s, just in time to serve in the Four Years War, and giving the Soyuz about a 30 year service span.
I suspect even the Oberth has a phaser or two stashed away behind suitable hatches. Trek lit certainly features armaments, including torpedo launchers on occasion. But yeah, nothing obvious about Oberth weaponry. What might have happened in the late 2270s to outdate the special gear aboard the ships? It could be a change in threat environment (Klingon cloaks no longer vulnerable to those sensors, increased Klingon aggression prevents use of such short-ranged sensors) or on the UFP side of things (better or at least more compact sensors developed), or even something totally unrelated to the conflict participants (galactic subspace weather gets too stormy for the carrier wave type used). It isn't a "big event" mentioned elsewhere in canon, though. And it's unlikely to be a treaty, as Klingons probably wouldn't be in talking terms with the Feds at that time. I'd hesitate to assume "natural" stepping down after a "normal" service span, considering that the near-identical Miranda lives forever. But speculation doesn't get any more definite than this. Timo Saloniemi
I don't see what's obvious about the Oberth-class ships not being armed. Or do you mean that the Soyuz's armaments are obvious while the Oberth's are less so?
The Oberth-class was armed. Two or three of these ships fired phaser beams at the Borg cube in 2373. I think that a science/research ship would have less powerful armament than a frontline ship.
Geordi is an engineer. Picard isn't. It's plausible that La Forge would know more about the technical aspects of starship lineages than Picard would. Kirk thought the Grissom would fire on him in STIII, so it must have had some kind of weaponry.
For all intents and purposes, the Oberth-class starships were the studio's take on Franz Joseph Schnaubelt's Hermes-class scout. Even at the 120-meter size, there must be plenty of potential on a modular vessel such as the Oberth, for swapping out packages for scientific or military applications.
I would guess the Soyus-class were destroyed or lost rather than retired. There may not have been more than half a dozen of them if they are that specialized a starship. If they are for poking around the neutral zones, it is possible that in the 2280s they started to run afoul with the Bird of Prey types the Klingons were using, as well as whatever the Romulans were using at that time. The Romulans would certianly have tried to keep their cloaking technology more advanced than the Klingons, and also try to out pace Federation sensor technology.
Fair enough. Then again, Picard is a historian of sorts, while LaForge doesn't appear to be. LaForge might know how to put together one of those old-fangled spire sensor things, but would he (need to / want to) know when the ship mounting them was retired? I guess there's enough evidence to establish LaForge as being interested in antique engineering, though. It seemed he could put together Cochrane's historical warp rig blindfolded, if you pardon the expression. (Indeed, perhaps the Borg lured him to the past for the express purpose of building the first-ever Earth warp vessel and thus making the UFP emerge and invent all those nice assimilable goodies, including Cochrane's very own warp drive?) That would fit well with the idea that the class is famous despite being but a modification of another. If built in very low numbers, she'd have better odds at standing out, but also of bowing out... Timo Saloniemi
So, First Contact is a self sustaining time loop that is reliant on knowledge from its future to create its own past? That's an interesting take on events. Presumably, without LaForge's help, the warp ship would never have worked in the first place! Seems a bit odd for the Borg to sacrifice their Queen for though, unless there is more to their dastardly plan that just never got put into effect...
The thing is, with time travel technology, an opponent ought to be invincible by definition - so what we witness in ST:FC should be a Borg victory, not matter how it looks like to our heroes. And we know the Queen can be reborn at will, out of a stock of two standard body types; losing one body (and its experiences, as it's not connected to the wider Collective when in the past) might not be much of a sacrifice. Hard to tell whether LaForge created something out of nothing (through multiple iterations, of which we only saw one of the later, "sufficient" ones), or merely helped out Cochrane with tech that actually worked to begin with. Timo Saloniemi
I would suppose that if the Soyuz-class starship were truly "famous", it was more likely due to something its class members were responsible for in terms of accomplishment. Could the Soyuz have been a kind of TOS/TMP-era analogue to the SR-71 Blackbirds of the Cold War era? Or could they have been special research vessels that were collectively responsible for making some historic deep-space discovery? We'll probably never know, but the possibilities are as endless of the STAR TREK Universe itself. I tend to think she was not a warship, though.
What I mean is that there weren't any apparent phaser banks, let alone torpedo tubes. Find me one phaser bank on the Grissom's model (or any of her relabeled kin for that matter). I sure haven't found any. It almost seems that the Oberth class wasn't armed to begin with, and was only armed later. Either that, or we just can't see them (which would appear to be the case anyways).
We really need to get our hands on one of those original Okudagram MSD's. They would go a long way to providing insight into Soyuz's true mission. I'm totally good with "eating crow" if the spires turn out to be massive LR sensor arrays and not weapons turrets, but we really don't know with absolute 100% canonical on-screen certainty. I don't recall seeing any of those things in Christie's auction pages and there's no indication that the Bozeman will be included in Eaglemoss' official ships line, sadly. Has ANYONE seen the real deal?