That's right. It's what's written on the bridge dedication plaque, though I've never seen anyone take it literally as the class designation of the Enterprise before. But technically, the only reference in TOS canon to the Enterprise as a Constitution-class ship is in a barely (if at all) legible schematic that Scotty studied on a screen in one episode. It was one of those unofficial facts that fans took for granted from the reference sources but wasn't strictly canonical, until TNG referred to Kirk's Enterprise by that class name in "The Naked Now." (The bridge simulator in TWOK referred to it as Enterprise class, though that could've applied specifically to the refit. But Scotty's blueprints in TUC referred to the refit as Constitution class.) Although the Star Trek Concordance called the E a Constellation-class ship by mistake, and so a lot of other sources repeated its error. For some reason involving trademarks or something, Pocket's style guide insists that we write "the Starship Namehere" (or whatever) instead of "the starship Namehere," even though the latter is clearly correct. These days they even do it with words like "battleship" or "warship" when they precede the ship name. (For this reason, I try to avoid having any of my characters actually say "the starship Namehere" under any circumstances.) So maybe some copyeditor did a global search-and-replace from "starship" to "Starship" and it affected Greg's "starship-class" sentence unintentionally.
Nope. It wasn't a typo. I lifted the "Starship-class" business from an old issue of Star Trek: The Magazine published umpteen years ago. Not sure where they got it from; maybe from that plaque Christopher mentioned? And I got Yamata's name from some prior reference source. Can't remember which one. Then again, since we'd only seen Pike's ship once, I had to take some of the subsequent reference sources with a grain of salt. I remember one article that claimed that tricorders didn't exist in Pike's time (since we didn't see them in "The Cage"), but that didn't seem practical to me. Plus, we'd seen them on ENTERPRISE, so . . .
I think that must just be the company's preference, weird as it is? I just dug through the USPTO's trademark search engine, and I can't find any live trademarks in the US from anyone involved in Star Trek on anything involving the term "starship". A lot of companies unrelated to CBS Studios or Star Trek, but nothing from them.
With regard to the clustering of most stories around "The Cage", it might be nice to see Pike's last mission, maybe with tech terms from WNMHGB?
Re: Cyprians in Ishmael: You called it. Page 154. Spock is shooting pool (which he finds "ridiculously easy") in a 19th century San Francisco gambling hall, and . . .
The OED lists both (and in fact, under "Cyprian" lists "Cypriot" as one of the definitions). There aren't many later citations of the "from Cyprus" sense of "Cyprian" after 1900; I wonder if usage now favors "Cypriot" because of the connotations "Cyprian" picked up. Some quick googling doesn't really turn up anything explaining whether there's a preference.
It would make sense, though; that's also why the adjectival form of "Venus" shifted from "Venereal" to "Venusian", after all.
Actually it would be "Venerean" in that context, but yes, the similarity to "venereal" was the reason it fell out of favor. (Same deal as mercurial/Mercurian, martial/Martian, or jovial/Jovian. Which suggests that Earthlings should properly be called Terrestrians rather than Terrans.) "Cytherean" was also proposed as a "clean" alternative to Venerean, one that would be more linguistically valid than "Venusian," but it never caught on. And TNG used the near-identical "Cytherian" for the Big Giant Head alien from "The Nth Degree."
Kevin Ryan's two Errand of... TOS trilogies also use the whole "Starship Class"-thing, from what I recall, claiming that there were only twelve such Enterprise-type vessels in existence at the time, etc., based on the bridge plaque.
Huh. I have learned this year I don't know nearly as much Trek minutiae as I thought I did. I would never have guessed this was so. Thanks for enlightening!
That's interesting; I thought you had another intention with that reference. I took the Starship-class thing as faulty intel on the Klingon's part. The general boasted about the Empire's accurate intelligence about Starfleet and, through his "identification" of the Starship-class, the reader can infer that his information is less than perfect. At least, that was my take on the scene before reading this post.
I looked it up. The "Starship-class" business was from the Sept 2001 issue of STAR TREK: THE MAGAZINE, p. 32. To quote: "At the time, Starfleet referred to it as a Starship-class vessel, although it was subsequently known as a member of the Constitution class."
For the record, here's a screengrab of the original dedication plaque on TOS that gives it as "Starship-class". And here's a clearer image of the prop itself from "The Official Starship Collection", a UK partwork magazine devoted to diecast models of Trek ships.
I liked it. Felt like a MUCH better executed version of some of the themes behind "Suddenly Human". Loved everything that happened on the enterprise, the debate on where she should go and the dialogue therein. Only thing I wasn't a fan of was the sheer speed of anger on the planet, and N1's reluctance to leave in the face of this given it was clear their presence was doing nothing.
Just posted my review. Rather enjoyed this one! Greg Cox, you definitely nail the feel of this period of time. Lasers, hyperdrive, and Space Ship Enterprise were all very welcome and made me feel like I was watching the crew from "The Cage." Very much enjoyed!
Glad you liked it! FYI: It's no secret that Number One returns in my next, next TOS book, LEGACIES, BOOK I: CAPTAIN TO CAPTAIN, due out this summer.
I have to admit that I may have visually passed over references to "Star Fleet" (as opposed to "Starfleet"). However, it should be noted that Commodore Decker seems to use the former in "Doomsday Machine". Perhaps he's just one of those guys who uses the terminology as it was when he came into the service.
The "Star Fleet" rendering was being used into the '70s in things like the Star Fleet Technical Manual and Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual, as well as being the spelling used in The Star Trek Concordance. I think Blish used "Starfleet" (assuming the later editions I have didn't change it), and Foster did as well. I don't think the one-word spelling was standardized onscreen until TMP, though.