Original 12 Constitution class ships

[Poltargyst]

First of all, I didn't post those drawings here... they are freely available to members of other sites to make use of as they wish, but TrekBBS (represented by members like yourself) is not a site where I plan on sharing my research.

Your last post addressing me was as much of a strawman argument (though better presented) as that of Poltargyst.

You guys seem to think you know everything you need to on the subject of TOS, and I think you have everything you deserve to know on the subject... which I feel puts us in perfect agreement now. Me adding anything else to any discussion at TrekBBS would be a waste of all our valuable time.

I don't see how I even did use a strawman. A strawman is me misrepresenting your position and then knocking down the strawman with my arguments. I just asked you a question...which you never did answer, BTW.

 

[alensatemybuick]

First of all, I didn't post those drawings here...

I posted them, and realizing it may not have been my place to do so, I deleted the links. Of course that was 3 pages back, and they'd likely never be seen by anyone here again regardless.

 

[Forbin]

I doubt they considered the Grissom a battlecruiser.

Who said anything about the Grissom? We're talking about the Enterprise.

 

[BillJ]

Who said anything about the Grissom?

I did. Based on this comment...

The Klingons called her a batllecruiser because that's their mindset. They don't have (as far as we know) exploration ships.

 

[DeepSouthTrekFan]

This thread brings up a very interesting point: Trek has been around long enough, and most of its aspects explored, that the disparities in continuity have become quite glaring. Sometimes it is like comparing apples to lug nuts, to me. I've been a Trekkie since the 70s and I've always attributed the variations to all the fan (professional and amateur) attempts to fill in the gaps. Then when TPTB decided to start connecting dots to give the shows some depth, a lot of ret-conning kicked in. Sometimes you can overlook the gaps if they don't throw you out of the story. Starship registries are cool to pore over, but I've long since given up on them making much sense.

 

[Shawnster]

And yet other times states he is an explorer! Do the two ideologies go hand in hand? I don't think so!
JB

In the early days (and even now) of space exploration, the pioneers used were active military and serving in NASA was part of their careers.

 

[CrazyMatt]

Just speculating here of course.... when Star Trek was being developed, the concept of Starfleet was largely influenced by Army Air Corps guys (Roddenberry mainly and Jeffries, to a lesser degree, in particular) who, consciously or otherwise, developed Starfleet as being analogous to a navy in space.

To an AAC guy, you might well consider a group of ships from the WWII era as simply battleships and say "that's a special kind of ship, there were only twenty of them." Conversely, a Navy guy looking at the same collection of twenty battleships would instead think, "there are two Nevada Class, two Pennsylvania Class, three Idaho Class, four Colorado Class, two North Carolina Class, four Indiana Class and four Iowa Class battleships." So I think in Roddenberry and Jeffries minds, "starship" was a 'class' unto itself just like they may have considered 'battleship' one as well.

I fell into this mindset as well.... "there are only twelve starships and the other eleven are just like the Enterprise!" That's why I was discombobulated by the following log near the beginning of TWOK: "Starship log, stardate 8130.4. Log entry by First Officer Pavel Chekov. Starship Reliant on orbital approach to Ceti Alpha VI, in connection with Project Genesis." I remember thinking "That's not a starship!" as I watched the Reliant orbiting the planet.

 

[Warped9]

The thing that threw me most some years after I started watching was the understanding of the word "starship."

In TOS, and when I first started watching, as an 11 year old, a "starship" was something special as opposed to a "spaceship." This is even referred to in the episode "Bread And Circuses." And for a lot of average viewers, and perhaps even for some sci-fi fans more into film and television SF than literary SF that distinction was totally acceptable.

But later when you grasp that any vehicle designed for interstellar travel between star systems, whether sublight or FTL, is in fact a starship then that designation as used in TOS becomes confusing. Later in the films and other series the term "starship" became more appropriately generic.

My only rationale for as it stands in TOS is that at some point perhaps the term "starship" became romanticized in some fashion and could thus be used to denote a more specific type of interstaller vessel. Later the term fell back into the broader and more general accepted use.


Today we refer to all manner of things by different names even though they are variants of a general kind of device. We refer to tablets, smart phones, MP3 players, laptops and desktops as differnt things when they are all basically computers of some kind or other. The different designations allow us to quickly specify what kind of computer we're talking about at any given time.

Could we classify some of our automated probes (such as the Voyagers) as starships even though they were not designed as such? I would say technically "no" given their interstellar journeys are happenstance and simply not planned for by products of their original intended purpose. That isn't to say that at some point we not might build and launch automated interstellar probes (given advances in propulsion)--those might conceivably be thought of as starships.

Of course, we might narrow our definition by applying the term strictly to manned interstaller vehicles. In that light can we refer to the DY-100 class ships as starships? They weren't intended as such, but Khan and his followers attempted to use one for that purpose anyway. And that doesn't preclude launching manned ships that could travel to other stars even if only at relativistic speeds.

Trek is replete with shuttlecraft that are auxiliary support craft for the larger starships. But just as a tablet is really a variant of computer that we identify with a specific designation than I would say a shuttlecraft capable of FTL travel is essentially a variant of interstallar starship only it's a lot smaller and compact.

 

[Kemaiku]

In TOS, Starfleet encountered a higher degree of ships that were almost entirely sublight or had very limited FTL abilities. Nearly every species fully capable of what would later be thought of as the Warp 5-7 breakthrough had joined them or had gone to war with them.

It was seen as something peculiar or even suspcious to encounter a race with equal or better warp capablility than the Starfleet that they hadn't previously heard of, giving the idea that high power warp drive was something rare and dangerous that not nearly as many species wielded.

For the convenience of storyines in later series, the larger galaxy and need for new species, several hundred of them now possessed full deep space FTL ability.

The Constitution class was "the" Starship that the Federation threw it's resources into to create the fastest ship they could, designed to be a step ahead of anything they ran into (of course, drama, so it wasn't) creating a parallel to the space race, as if that escalated for hundreds of years against each new innovation from not just nations but races.

The Enterprise and her kind where the Saturn V's of their day, which is understandable, given what was happening at the time.

 

[Longinus]

In TOS, and when I first started watching asan 11 year old, a "starship" was something special as opposed to a "spaceship." This is even referred to in the episode "Bread And Circuses." And for a lot of average viewers, and perhaps even for some sci-fi fans more into film and tlevision SF than leterary SF, that distinction was totally acceptable.

Could you elaborate on what was said on the matter on that episode? I really can't remember.

I kinda think the writers themselves soon realised that 'starship' was an awfully generic term to refer a specific class of a spaceship, that's why references to Constitution class were already introduced in (probably illegible) TOS diagrams, and it later became explicitly canon. BTW, was the dedication plaque ever legible on screen in TOS?

 

[Kemaiku]

Is google broken or something?

 

[alensatemybuick]

Is google broken or something?

Arguably, you'd have to know what you were looking for to find it, even with a google search. Your post reminds me of a quote from a Doug Drexler interview in which he noted the difference between Star Trek fans back in the 70s vs nowadays. And so as not to make anyone do a Google search to know what I'm talking about...

The fans of the day were optimistic, creative, go-getters. There was very little of the whining and anger that is common on the boards these days.

from: http://www.trekplace.com/dougdrexler.html

 

[Warped9]

Could you elaborate on what was said on the matter on that episode? I really can't remember.

In the episode "Bread And Circuses" Merick explains to the Proconsul that Kirk commands not just a spaceship, but a starship which is a very special vessel and crew.

 

[Longinus]

In the episode "Bread And Circuses" Merick explains to the Proconsul that Kirk commands not just a spaceship, but a starship which is a very special vessel and crew.

Thank you. That indeed is not compatible with the later usage. However, that doesn't still necessarily mean that only Connies would have been considered 'starships'. The term could easily have encompassed other large or largeish Starfleet vessels, if such existed at the time.

 

[Shawnster]

But it does indicate that "spaceships" could travel through interstellar space, so the distinction had nothing to do with FTL.

 

[Longinus]

But it does indicate that "spaceships" could travel through interstellar space, so the distinction had nothing to do with FTL.

True. Then again, even in TNG era there are warp capable vessels such as shuttles and runabouts are not considered starships.

 

[Kemaiku]

But they were always kept to their own, lower classification.

 

[Avro Arrow]

In the episode "Bread And Circuses" Merick explains to the Proconsul that Kirk commands not just a spaceship, but a starship which is a very special vessel and crew.

But even there, the distinction could just be that Enterprise is a *Starfleet* capital ship, so it's a "very special vessel and crew". Merrick's "spaceship" was a "merchant service" vessel. If all Starfleet capital ships are "starships" (just like in the later shows) then that's just saying that Starfleet has the best equipment and people, and is not at all incongruous with Reliant being identified as a "starship" in TWOK.

 

[Warped9]

In actually a starship has nothing to do with being FTL capable. It has to do with the vessel being designed for interstellar travel regardless of it being FTL or relativistic. They can be of any size and shape and have different roles, but if they're capable of interstellar travel then they are indeed starships.

Merick's vessel was indeed a starship simply because it was a manned vessel designed to travel interstellar distances between starships. The oddity is that he didn't seem to think of it that way.

In "Return Of The Archons" Spock affirms that Landru's beams grabbing the Enterprise are indeed powerful enough to "pull a starship from the sky" just as had happened to the Archon a hundred years prior. The inference does seem that the century old Archon was also considered a starship even it it wasn't of the Starship Class as denoted on the Enterprise's cmmissioning plaque.

I don't know if the commissioning plaque on the bridge was there since "The Cage" but if so it's possible the general thinking on this evolved beyond the first pilot. Even so throughout TOS a "starship" is considered something quite distinct from most everything else we see throughout the series.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I don't see one. But there is a security guy who stands next to the turbolift door the entire episode.