Why The Huge Gap Between TMP & WOK?

[Captain Clark Terrell]

As I understand it, the mistake largely came about because of the assumption that the Enterprise was new in TOS season one. I always kind of took it to be a script error we're supposed to replace with the correct number. Besides, the point of the line (the Enterprise is past retirement age) is works regardless of the number used.

Which raises another issue I've been wondering about. How extensive was Scotty's planned refit supposed to be? He told Kirk--perhaps somewhat in jest--that he could cram eight weeks' worth of work into two, but that doesn't explain what sort of repairs he had in mind had he been allowed to go ahead with them. It's unlikely the ship would have gotten another pre-TMP makeover, but surely a few weeks would have been enough time to update her main computer and replace her phaser-scorched hull plating.

 

[WebLurker]

Which raises another issue I've been wondering about. How extensive was Scotty's planned refit supposed to be? He told Kirk--perhaps somewhat in jest--that he could cram eight weeks' worth of work into two, but that doesn't explain what sort of repairs he had in mind had he been allowed to go ahead with them. It's unlikely the ship would have gotten another pre-TMP makeover, but surely a few weeks would have been enough time to update her main computer and replace her phaser-scorched hull plating.

I remember that there was a scene where Scotty gives the eight weeks-in-two repair estimate, but which movie was that in?

 

[Tomalak]

It was longer than that. The Okudachron puts The Voyage Home in 2286, though that doesn't make much sense since it's only 3 months after TWOK/TSFS, which were in 2285 (and Kirk's birthday is generally presumed to align with Shatner's, March 22). The Undiscovered Country and the Generations prologue were in 2293. So there were 7-8 years between the launch of the E-A and that of the E-B. Not very much, but certainly a lot more than "a year or two."

Sorry, I was saying the gap between the end of TUC and the Enterprise-B's launch was a year or two. As you say, it's even less than that with both taking place in 2293. Clearly the Enterprise-B was nearly ready the launch during the events of TUC, which clearly points to the intended retirement of the ship as well as Kirk and at least some of his crew. It was always going to be the final mission of the Enterprise-A.

His closing log is clearly figurative, "this ship" meaning the Enterprise legacy, not the specific vessel he's sitting on. If he knows there's a successor sitting in dry-dock, this is even more apparent.

 

[Tomalak]

I remember that there was a scene where Scotty gives the eight weeks-in-two repair estimate, but which movie was that in?

TSFS. And it's clearly a joke! In his opening log Kirk states most of the damage is repaired anyway, so it would only be some superficial repairs of damaged and scorched hull plating, and repairing the starboard photon launcher. In any case the Enterprise isn't defeated by Kruge because of damage, but because Scotty's rudimentary automation system couldn't handle combat. With a full crew, it likely wouldn't have been an issue.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Half-assed attempt at an in-universe explanation for Morrow's line: Maybe Starfleet was using a grading system based on the expected amount of wear and tear on a ship over time. He was saying that the Enterprise had put on 20 years' worth of wear and tear since the TMP refit. So it wasn't really the years, it was the mileage.

Obviously they did build more along the lines of the refit, since the E-A had to be a pre-existing ship that was renamed. And we have evidence for several others -- two more were glimpsed in Spacedock at the end of TVH, several were indicated on the Operation Retrieve graphic in the home-video version of TUC, and the wreckage of at least one was seen at Wolf 359 in "The Best of Both Worlds" (proving that they weren't entirely abandoned in the 24th century).

That seems to assume that they were new-builds, rather than refits.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Even more half-assed explanation. Coming off a long rest on Risa, Morrow was talking in Risan years, which are about 1.9 human years.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Even more half-assed explanation. Coming off a long rest on Risa, Morrow was talking in Risan years, which are about 1.9 human years.

 

[Tomalak]

Fair point actually. We're basing all these Enterprise dates off Earth years, but that's not the standard for all Federation worlds is it? That was the whole point of stardates. DS9 had a twenty-six hour day, presumably in line with Bajor. Maybe Morrow is talking in Alpha Centauran years, or Martian years?

 

[locutus101]

Fair point actually. We're basing all these Enterprise dates off Earth years, but that's not the standard for all Federation worlds is it? That was the whole point of stardates. DS9 had a twenty-six hour day, presumably in line with Bajor. Maybe Morrow is talking in Alpha Centauran years, or Martian years?

Or maybe he made a mistake.*

*Kira said that to Weyoun about his gods.

 

[Christopher]

His closing log is clearly figurative, "this ship" meaning the Enterprise legacy, not the specific vessel he's sitting on. If he knows there's a successor sitting in dry-dock, this is even more apparent.

But the writers of The Undiscovered Country had no idea that the completely different creative team that wrote Generations three years later would make the decision to replace the E-A with a new ship. So at the time TUC was made, the line was not intended to be figurative. That's a rationalization of a later retcon.

Honestly, I don't know why GEN's writers made the choice to have the launch of the B happen in the same year as the retirement of the A. Since the movie was made 3 years later, why not set the prologue 3 years later?

Half-assed attempt at an in-universe explanation for Morrow's line: Maybe Starfleet was using a grading system based on the expected amount of wear and tear on a ship over time. He was saying that the Enterprise had put on 20 years' worth of wear and tear since the TMP refit. So it wasn't really the years, it was the mileage.

I don't understand this effort to contort logic to the breaking point in order to force Morrow's line to be accurate at all costs. It's so much simpler if he's just wrong. Real people are wrong all the time. They make mistakes. They forget things. They have mental hiccups and say one thing when they mean another. Sometimes they just lie, to themselves or to others. So trying to force every last spoken word to be objectively correct is unrealistic. We should allow fictional characters to be as fallible and error-prone as real people are.

That seems to assume that they were new-builds, rather than refits.

Not assumption, deduction. There is canonical evidence for significantly more than 12 Constitution-class ships, as shown in the Memory Alpha articles I linked to before. There are more than two decades between "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and TUC, and zero reason to believe that Starfleet didn't build more ships in such a significant span of time. In fact, given the heavy attrition of original-design Connies in TOS, I don't think there are enough of them left to account for all the refit Connies seen in the movie era and after. So the most probable hypothesis is that they continued building new Connies. The assumption that they didn't seems arbitrary and unsubstantiated to me. Why wouldn't they?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I don't understand this effort to contort logic to the breaking point in order to force Morrow's line to be accurate at all costs.

He said "half-assed," so it's clearly not one of those efforts.

 

[locutus101]

But the writers of The Undiscovered Country had no idea that the completely different creative team that wrote Generations three years later would make the decision to replace the E-A with a new ship. So at the time TUC was made, the line was not intended to be figurative. That's a rationalization of a later retcon....

Yeah, that's pretty much how I see it.

 

[Tomalak]

But the writers of The Undiscovered Country had no idea that the completely different creative team that wrote Generations three years later would make the decision to replace the E-A with a new ship. So at the time TUC was made, the line was not intended to be figurative. That's a rationalization of a later retcon.

No, even at the time it's figurative, as it was clearly signposting TNG. The giveaway is "where no man... Where no one has gone before."

In-universe it's about the Enterprise-B, IRL it's about TNG.

 

[Christopher]

Either way, the whole thing about "decommissioning the crew" was conceptually sloppy and best not dwelt on too much. I mean, how nonsensical is it to retire them all at the same time when they're at different ages and different stages of their careers? It was unrealistically twisting the in-story situation to fit the real-life situation.

 

[locutus101]

Either way, the whole thing about "decommissioning the crew" was conceptually sloppy and best not dwelt on too much. I mean, how nonsensical is it to retire them all at the same time when they're at different ages and different stages of their careers? It was unrealistically twisting the in-story situation to fit the real-life situation.

I found that bizarre too. Chekov for example was a lot younger than Kirk.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

Either way, the whole thing about "decommissioning the crew" was conceptually sloppy and best not dwelt on too much. I mean, how nonsensical is it to retire them all at the same time when they're at different ages and different stages of their careers? It was unrealistically twisting the in-story situation to fit the real-life situation.

Especially since most of them did not retire, at least as far as the novels--some of them being yours--are concerned. Only Kirk and Scotty completely left Starfleet behind.

 

[locutus101]

Especially since most of them did not retire, at least as far as the novels--some of them being yours--are concerned. Only Kirk and Scotty completely left Starfleet behind.

And kirk ended in the nexus only to emerge 80 years later and get killed immediately after. As for scotty he spent all this time in a transporter buffer.

 

[Christopher]

Especially since most of them did not retire, at least as far as the novels--some of them being yours--are concerned. Only Kirk and Scotty completely left Starfleet behind.

Well, Spock did eventually leave Starfleet to become an ambassador, but Vulcan's Forge put that event a few years after TUC.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Half-assed attempt at an in-universe explanation for Morrow's line: Maybe Starfleet was using a grading system based on the expected amount of wear and tear on a ship over time. He was saying that the Enterprise had put on 20 years' worth of wear and tear since the TMP refit. So it wasn't really the years, it was the mileage.

Who came up with that grading system, Admiral Indiana Jones?

 

[The Old Mixer]

They didn't name a shuttle after him for nothing.