"NCC-1701" never said onscreen?
- Thread starter NTRPRZ
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I don't think it was meant as a joke. The phrase "half-Vulcan science officer" wouldn't have sounded as forced or strange to the producers in 1966 as it sounds to us today. Vulcan wasn't even established as a Federation member until "Errand of Mercy" -- and the Federation wasn't even mentioned for the first time until "Arena." The text of the file Mendez reads from refers to the Enterprise as an "Earthship," not a Federation vessel. So if they were still assuming that the E was an Earth/human vessel, then the fact that its science officer was half-alien would've been seen as anomalous enough to be worthy of comment. Particularly since, at the time, Spock was the only nonhuman Starfleet officer who had yet been seen in the series. So no, it wasn't meant as a joke, because it didn't look the same way to them that it looks to us decades later, when we take the nonhuman members of Starfleet for granted.
Yes.
The Enterprises are the only Starfleet ships that reuse the same registry number but with sequential letters added at the end. Every other ship in the 24th century which had a namesake in the 23rd had a different number. And in the case of the Defiant, they really couldn't reuse the registry NCC-1764 since in The Tholian Web the ship had no visible registry number. The number was created for the Defiant when it was seen in Enterprise's In a Mirror Darkly and was later inserted into the remastered version of The Tholian Web.
People tend to forget that Star Trek did not spring fully formed from the brow of Zeus.
^Although the second time the Yamato appeared, its registry had been retconned to NCC-71807. Apparently they had second thoughts about using the letter affixes for ships other than the Enterprise.
Not just that, but it would appear highly significant that (half of) Spock comes from a species of telepaths, and the threat at Talos is telepathic in nature!
Ever since the TOS movie era, yes, this seems to be the case.
In ENT, though, it probably means eXploring rather than eXperimental. It would make zero sense for Archer's ship to be the first-ever experimental starship in UESF service (-01, remember?), but we have plenty of reason to think that Archer's ship was the first-ever exploring starship in UESF service.
...Only on a computerized log downloaded from a ship suffering from fatal software problems, though.
(The saucer was stenciled with some customized number as well, admittedly - something like 71808 - but that was never evident from the screenshots originally, and it's nearly impossible to make out in the redone material, too.)
Timo Saloniemi
Which has been changed again on the CGI'd explosion in TNG-R.
^The number in "Contagion" is NCC-71806. And it's not CGI. TNG-R was able to reuse the original FX film elements, compositing them with greater clarity. The only things they replaced with CG were video-animated elements like planets and energy beams. The animation of the saucer's disintegration may have been digitally upgraded, but the saucer itself would still be the original miniature. So the number hasn't been changed from what was originally on the miniature, it's just more clearly visible.
Which means it may have made more sense for the TMP Enterprise to be NCC-1701-A, the letter denoting that it was a major refit of the same ship (Which I believe was a concept suggested by Matt Jefferies, if memory serves.
Seeing the Enterprise wrecked in TSFS was an emotional experience for some fans, including me. And I think a large part of it was because we identified it as being the same ship (extensively refit) as the TOS Enterprise so many of us really liked.
If it had been an actual wholly new vessel with a new number (such as NCC-1800) it's loss might not have carried the same emotional impact simply because the new ship wouldn't have had the same emotional connection as the original.
I liken it to the loss of the E-D. I felt absolutely nothing when they destroyed the E-D. Partly because I was never a big TNG fan, but also because they never romanticized the E-D the way they had the TOS E. Indeed while I recall hushed silence when the ship was lost in TSFS in contrast I actually heard cheers over the spectacle of the E-D crashing.
If it had been an actual wholly new vessel with a new number (such as NCC-1800) it's loss might not have carried the same emotional impact simply because the new ship wouldn't have had the same emotional connection as the original.
I liken it to the loss of the E-D. I felt absolutely nothing when they destroyed the E-D. Partly because I was never a big TNG fan, but also because they never romanticized the E-D the way they had the TOS E. Indeed while I recall hushed silence when the ship was lost in TSFS in contrast I actually heard cheers over the spectacle of the E-D crashing.
Agreed, though it probably goes clear back to the "Court Martial" chart with all those "NCC" numbers lined up. But, unfortunately, having "NCC" for all vessels (apart from a few experimentals) means it really doesn't convey any information that would be useful to most observers. In real life for instance, if you read about USS Truxtun DD-229, even if you don't know all the "code," you could still tell it was a newer vessel than USS Truxtun DD-14, and a completely different type from USS Truxtun APD-98, or USS Truxtun DLGN-35, or USS Truxtun DDG-103. But if they are all NCC-something, you'd have to have a copy of the "master list" to get any more meaningful information from the number than you'd get from the name alone.
It would only be comparable if the "dash A" were applied uniformly to all vessels with the same refit upgrades, reconfiguration or whatever. Which I suppose could be the case but there's no evidence of it.
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Except it sounds like they do that because the ship is serving a different role after the refit, where as the Enterprise is doing the same stuff it just has a new look while doing it.
We really don't know what role it was going to serve once its shakedown was complete. At least, nothing was mentioned that I could remember?
I was merely recounting how the Navy has done things. Did I suggest what the Enterprise registry should be?
The end of TVH seems reasonable as a special case. That ship was apparently created (or recreated) as a favor to Kirk and his crew. The nostalgia factor applies. I can see the same thing in the case of Sisko and the Defiant. But otherwise I agree. Applying letters to successive ships that otherwise have no connection to each other makes no sense.
NCC-1701-A was a Christmas present: TO JIM, LOVE STARFLEET.
Impossible. You don't build a starship overnight. It takes years. They would've had to rename an existing ship.
And in that case, the nostalgia comes from the name. The number serves a completely different, functional purpose, to identify the ship as a unique entity independently of its name. The number goes with the physical object itself, not with the word used to describe it. If you rename a ship, it keeps the same number it had before, so that it's still identified as the same physical object for the records.
Here's some stuff from http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-A)#Background_information about the NCC-1701-A:
There could have been half a dozen refitted Constitutions available, all deemed too outdated for active service, until one was ordered to be donated to Kirk and superficially patched up for the job, possibly in a matter of weeks.
She wouldn't become a worthy instrument for Starfleet, but she would become a worthy gift for Kirk - and there it would matter that she looked as much like Kirk's old ship as possible. So she'd get the same name and the same registry, until some bureaucrat steps in and says "you can't have two different ships under the same registry - it will wreck our System". Thus the A is added as a compromise.
Everything about the process would be subordinate to making Kirk happy (within budgetary limits and the limits of Starfleet's patience with the mutineer), until the adding of the A. The earlier registry, the earlier crew, the earlier role in Starfleet would all be erased, these being of no worth to anybody. There would be no need for continuity there, not even in record-keeping, except in the most abstract of senses: the number painted on the hull would be accompanied by an archives ID, and when the former changed, the latter would be appended with a note about the change, but that would be it.
Timo Saloniemi
She wouldn't become a worthy instrument for Starfleet, but she would become a worthy gift for Kirk - and there it would matter that she looked as much like Kirk's old ship as possible. So she'd get the same name and the same registry, until some bureaucrat steps in and says "you can't have two different ships under the same registry - it will wreck our System". Thus the A is added as a compromise.
Everything about the process would be subordinate to making Kirk happy (within budgetary limits and the limits of Starfleet's patience with the mutineer), until the adding of the A. The earlier registry, the earlier crew, the earlier role in Starfleet would all be erased, these being of no worth to anybody. There would be no need for continuity there, not even in record-keeping, except in the most abstract of senses: the number painted on the hull would be accompanied by an archives ID, and when the former changed, the latter would be appended with a note about the change, but that would be it.
Timo Saloniemi
