Ship continuity.

[WarpFactorZ]

But both of those are new in TOS movie era. Just like the Oberth. Or that's what I choose to believe. So in DS9 they're hundredish-year-old designs (which is already stretching it) not 150-year-old ones.

Have you ever seen a retrofitted building? They can be more than 50 years old, but are redone in such a way as to look (and be!) completely modernized and contemporary inside. This is likely what happens to starships over time (in fact: we SAW it happen to the Enterprise -- don't tell me it didn't happen!).

 

[Longinus]

(in fact: we SAW it happen to the Enterprise -- don't tell me it didn't happen!).

And it ended up looking radically different, and the updated version of the class was still decommissioned before TNG.

 

[BillJ]

Another point for those of us in the rebuilt/refitted older Discovery camp is that, apparently, the engineering bay is of the same generation as that of an ancient class-J flying deathtrap.

Or the Crossfield-class is redesignated as a Class-J sometime in the next few years.

 

[Ronald Held]

Why not use 100 year designs but built with state of the art materials and systems?

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Why not use 100 year designs but built with state of the art materials and systems?

Exactly my point with the Oberth, Excelsior & Miranda classes in the 24th century. No reason other than the showrunners generally want to introduce new designs to set their show apart from the previous ones.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Exactly my point with the Oberth, Excelsior & Miranda classes in the 24th century. No reason other than the showrunners generally want to introduce new designs to set their show apart from the previous ones.

But they didn't introduce new designs with those. They kitbashed a lot in later seasons, sure, but the point of reusing the TOS movie era ships was because of cost savings.

 

[Longinus]

Why not use 100 year designs but built with state of the art materials and systems?

So where I can buy a T-Ford with capabilities of a modern car?

 

[Spot261]

So where I can buy a T-Ford with capabilities of a modern car?

Probably an unfair analogy given the Model T was more closely equivalent to the Phoenixs' early warp capable successors than it was to a Miranda class.

Might make more sense to ask about a mid 80's car with capabilities to match those of a modern vehicle, of which there were plenty. The difference since has been in terms of refinement rather than quantum leaps in maturing the fundamental technology.

 

[Spot261]

there have been attempts to unify all the NCC-numbers in a Grand Theory, but the authors have usually ended up drawing madly on the walls of their cells, sometimes with their bare, bloody fingers

That's really what happened to Spock.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

But they didn't introduce new designs with those. They kitbashed a lot in later seasons, sure, but the point of reusing the TOS movie era ships was because of cost savings.

Too true. The ongoing argument is more about why SF would keep using a 100 year old designs though. Still, once CGI became more common, they could have rendered new ships for late DS9, but continued using Mirandas and Excelsiors.

 

[Longinus]

Might make more sense to ask about a mid 80's car with capabilities to match those of a modern vehicle, of which there were plenty. The difference since has been in terms of refinement rather than quantum leaps in maturing the fundamental technology.

But that is less than forty years of difference. Some people were arguing that Oberth class would be in service for 150 years. That I just can't buy. I can accept it being pretty much brand design in ST:III and an ancient relic in TNG era. That might be plausible with the upgrades. There is no reason to stretch the credulity any more than is necessary. Perhaps in TOS era small science ships have three digit registries while larger ships have four digit ones? To me that is way more plausible explanation than to invent fifty ears of service life to explain a low registry.

 

[Tyr]

But that is less than forty years of difference. Some people were arguing that Oberth class would be in service for 150 years. That I just can't buy. I can accept it being pretty much brand design in ST:III and an ancient relic in TNG era. That might be plausible with the upgrades. There is no reason to stretch the credulity any more than is necessary. Perhaps in TOS era small science ships have three digit registries while larger ships have four digit ones? To me that is way more plausible explanation than to invent fifty ears of service life to explain a low registry.

Just look at the B52 bomber. Maiden flight in 1952, planned to stay in service until 2044. There were and will be extensive updates and upgrades, but overall the plane looks mostly the same as in the 1950s.

 

[Longinus]

Just look at the B52 bomber. Maiden flight in 1952, planned to stay in service until 2044. There were and will be extensive updates and upgrades, but overall the plane looks mostly the same as in the 1950s.

Right. So a bit less than Oberth's age using my estimates and way less than 150 years claimed by some.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Right. So a bit less than Oberth's age using my estimates and way less than 150 years claimed by some.

Longevity of 20th/21st century tech is not that of 23rd/24th century tech.

 

[Longinus]

Longevity of 20th/21st century tech is not that of 23rd/24th century tech.

So why there are no Constitution class ships in service by TNG era?

 

[Tyr]

So why there are no Constitution class ships in service by TNG era?

There was a Constitution engineering hull and a saucer visible when the Enterprise D flew through the debris field after the battle of Wolf 359. And maybe there were not as many Connies left as other ship classes from the 23rd century? Even the Klingons still used K'tingas during "The way of the warrior".

 

[David cgc]

Too true. The ongoing argument is more about why SF would keep using a 100 year old designs though. Still, once CGI became more common, they could have rendered new ships for late DS9, but continued using Mirandas and Excelsiors.

I imagine a big part of that was fitting in with the older VFX techniques. It'd be weird for there to be fleet shots full of Mirandas and Excelsiors (and Galaxies and Nebulas) because they were done with physical models, and suddenly they've all disappeared when the actual battle starts, and it's just the Defiant and a bunch of Akiras and Sabers.

It's kind of funny that the cost incentives go the other way, now; with different CG pipelines and software, it can be just as much work reusing an old design as making a new one, so now, rather than seeing a bunch of hundred-year-old ships and very few contemporary designs because those were the models that were available, we're not seeing 23rd century designs you'd expect to be around in Discovery because it'd require just as much effort to make a Kelvin-family ship as a new one, and the current people in charge don't think it'd be as delightful as I do.

So why there are no Constitution class ships in service by TNG era?

ILM hated the TMP studio model. As for why they didn't start showing up after the transition to CG, I don't think I ever saw anyone say, specifically. Could be they were busy, so they focused on making CG models of the ships they'd already established as being around in DS9, Mirandas, Excelsiors, Nebulas, and Galaxies (though no CG Oberths or Ambassadors), and the ones they inherited from First Contact, and never got around to filling out the CG fleet. Or someone upstairs might've felt the same way about the Constitution as the Sovereign, that it was a movie-only ship.

Logically, we probably should've seen more Constitutions aside from a couple wrecks, and I imagine they were out there, along with the Ambassadors, the Oberths, and the BoBW ships, because the TNG-era shows established a big fleet with a lot of design longevity. Like I was saying before, it's possible the Kurtzman-era shows will end up going big the other way, and every show will have an unreasonably unique set of ships, even when it'd make sense for them to cross over, because there isn't the economic incentive to make use of existing resources.

 

[Dukhat]

The main problem with the Oberth (as opposed to the Miranda and Excelsior classes) is that they are seemingly still producing them in the TNG era. The Tsiolkovsky's dedication plaque stated that it was commissioned a year before the Enterprise-D (Although there's a story behind that; see below). That's really stretching credibility when other more advanced starship classes were being designed and constructed at the same time. That's why Ford isn't currently building Model-T's with 2019 engines alongside 2019 Mustangs: because it's not even remotely practical to do something like that.

The problem stems from the real-world side of things. When TNG was in pre-production, the decision was made not to build other new Starfleet ship models other than the Enterprise-D because they didn't want to waste money building expensive studio models if the show bombed and got cancelled. A short-sighted view, but understandable budget-wise. So every guest starship ended up being a TMP-era movie model (even the Stargazer was going to be a Constitution class until Jein built a new model for it, but even the new model was a TMP-era design.) For the most part these movie models were implied to be older ships that had been relegated to secondary duties like transporting VIPs to the Enterprise, cargo/transports, science vessels, etc. and most of them had very low registry numbers that correlated with their apparent age. But because in the very first instance where an Oberth class ship was shown in TNG, the Art Department made a dedication plaque thinking the Tsiolkovsky was going to be a new design, but the VFX department ended up using the Grissom model, which by in-universe standards was almost a century-old design. So the high 5XXXX registries stuck with an old ship design, the discrepancy of which continued to carry over each time the Grissom model was used to represent a guest ship and therefore gave the impression that this class was still being produced 100+ years after the fact.

I would even argue that the class name "Oberth" that was written on the Tsiolkovsky's dedication plaque was never actually meant to represent the Grissom-type ship, and was retconned later after "The Naked Now."

 

[Unicron]

there have been attempts to unify all the NCC-numbers in a Grand Theory, but the authors have usually ended up drawing madly on the walls of their cells, sometimes with their bare, bloody fingers

Yep. I generally have liked the idea of a "batch" system for a given class, in which the ship numbers are generally sequential but the class number is not necessarily sequential in relation to other designs. So, for example, the Excelsiors might have started with a series 2000 set of registries but this doesn't necessarily mean Excelsior was the 2000th ship to be commissioned. This also means that different classes might have similar series numbers (heavy cruisers of the Constitution design family and frigates of the Miranda design family each having 1800s, for example) but are filling different fleet operations.

Certainly, this system isn't flawless and it's a bit trickier to reconcile numbers that don't fit the main sequence, or if Starfleet commissions a design but only builds half of the original build order. I can think of ways to potentially reconcile such numbers, but it depends on the context.

I seem to recall that, in rewatching eps of Babylon 5 recently, there was a similar issue with some of the Earth Alliance ship models. Almost all, if not all, of the scant uses of the Nova class dreadnought model seen have the same name (the EAS Schwartzkopf) even though several such vessels were seen in the Minbari War era and likely intended to be separate ships since they were often destroyed at different parts of the war. Same with some of the destroyers during the Earth Civil War arc, as some of the Clark loyalist fleet disabled at Mars had the same names as ships which had defected to Sheridan's side. While this might technically be true of certain ships (which were stated to have only joined the rebels to act as spies), it's easy to see from a production standpoint that it was easier to simply not mess with the names.

 

[Blue Squadron]

The whole raft of debates around registry numbers and class names can, honestly, descend into to such utter fanwank sometimes. Sorry to be so blunt but it's true.

It's a *@%$#!* TV show FFS. Sometimes the production staff are very conscious of previously established continuity and do their best to follow the in-universe "facts," "history," or "traditions"...

...and sometimes they really, really are completely disinterested and are only concerned with the needs of their own story arc or individual script.

The inconsistencies range from fairly minor, which can be gently retconned with a bit of fan-cannon, to glaringly inexplicable, which no amount of fan mental gymnastics can hope to explain. The truth is that, in many ways, fans from the TNG-era were largely spoilt by the fact that the production arrangements behind the scenes allowed folks like the Okudas and Rick Sternbach to keep tabs on the bigger-picture continuity in a way that just wasn't usual for a TV show. These were people who were already fans and who knew and worked with Gene Roddenberry; perhaps it's not surprising that they strove to maintain such a phenomenal level of internal consistency.

This led to a significant expectation that this level of detail was the "norm" for Star Trek. Perhaps we just got used to it whereas the hard truth is that even this carefully crafted canon house of cards could, however, still be knocked askew by the whim of the writers when they felt it was necessary. We are now an entire generation on from the death of Gene Roddenberry and the Class of 2019 show staff are not those who started with the Class of 1989 staff.

To be fair, I have absolutely NO doubt that there really are genuine Trek fans in the production staff and I, personally, have no major problems with the perceived need to update the visuals for a new generation of viewers. They are addressing many aspects of Trek history, some of them very sensitively, but it's clear that, even allowing for the visual re-boot, they will adapt Trek lore when they need to. In that respect, ship registry numbers and the tradition of naming a ship class after the lead ship are pretty small fry.

We have no absolute confirmation that there is no USS Crossfield or why the Disco registry number is 1031 -- neither of these has been directly pertinent to any of the episode stories so far, so there's no real reason why these details should have been artificially shoe-horned into any particular script, other than for pure fan-service and, even if they are written, there is no guarantee that such lines will make it to the final broadcast cut of an episode.