Starbase 11 registry chart

[Henoch]

In universe, Starfleet was both refitting older ships and launching new ships, simultaneously and continuously over the last several years. Hence, the disorder in registry numbers. Stone's list showed the status 10 Star Ships in service at that time (Stardate 2947.3), while the "list" was increased to 12 in TIY (Stardate 3113.2). The Starship fleet increased by two ships in the ~166 stardates or about 2 months. Maybe Kirk was including ships in drydock nearing (re)launch, too. If Starfleet was in a rebuilding program, then I can see Starfleet bringing on-line two or more Starships per year.

Was the fleet of starships nigh destroyed during some Klingon war a few years before the TOS, and we are seeing the regrowth of the starship fleet during TOS? (Kirk got promoted and medals for something big.)

Is Starfleet dragging old ships (Constellation, Republic, other 1600 number ships) out of mothballs and refitting them to boaster the fleet? Reagan dragged four battleships out of mothballs and refitted them to boaster the US Navy to meet their 600 ship goal.

Taking old battleships out of mothballs and pressing them back into service is "the quickest and most cost-effective way to get more . . . naval muscle to sea in the mid-1980s," according to Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr., who is bent on creating a 600-ship fleet to challenge the Soviet Union's burgeoning naval might.

Using my "strike-through" technique:

Taking old Starbattleships out of mothballs and pressing them back into service is "the quickest and most cost-effective way to get more . . . naval starfleet muscle to sea space in the mid-19802260s," according to Navy Starfleet Secretary John F. Lehman Jr., who is bent on creating a 600-ship fleet to challenge the KlingonSoviet Union's burgeoning naval space fleet might.​

YMMV.

 

[BK613]

In universe, Starfleet was both refitting older ships and launching new ships, simultaneously and continuously over the last several years. Hence, the disorder in registry numbers. Stone's list showed the status 10 Star Ships in service at that time (Stardate 2947.3), while the "list" was increased to 12 in TIY (Stardate 3113.2). The Starship fleet increased by two ships in the ~166 stardates or about 2 months. Maybe Kirk was including ships in drydock nearing (re)launch, too. If Starfleet was in a rebuilding program, then I can see Starfleet bringing on-line two or more Starships per year.

Was the fleet of starships nigh destroyed during some Klingon war a few years before the TOS, and we are seeing the regrowth of the starship fleet during TOS? (Kirk got promoted and medals for something big.)

Is Starfleet dragging old ships (Constellation, Republic, other 1600 number ships) out of mothballs and refitting them to boaster the fleet? Reagan dragged four battleships out of mothballs and refitted them to boaster the US Navy to meet their 600 ship goal.

Using my "strike-through" technique:

Taking old Starbattleships out of mothballs and pressing them back into service is "the quickest and most cost-effective way to get more . . . naval starfleet muscle to sea space in the mid-19802260s," according to Navy Starfleet Secretary John F. Lehman Jr., who is bent on creating a 600-ship fleet to challenge the KlingonSoviet Union's burgeoning naval space fleet might.​

YMMV.

While I think that Starfleet sometimes drags ships out of mothballs in times of crisis*, the more likely explanation is that older vessels just operate along side newer ones. Like how some Essex-class carriers operated into the 1970s, some Midway-class carriers lasted into the 80s and 90s and how Forrestal-class and Kitty Hawk-class carriers operated along side Nimitz-class carriers for decades. And now Nimitz-class carriers will operate along side Ford-class carriers until the Nimitzs too are retired.

*(it's part of my 'headcanon' that ships with too high a registry number for their class are ships that have been recommissioned but their original names have already been passed on to newer vessels. Thereby necessitating a new name and number)

 

[yotsuya]

According to Jefferies, 1701 was the first ship so there would be no 1700. 1700 is on that list. So whoever made that list was NOT following Jefferies numbering plan. Also, Jefferies was imagining the Enterprise as the newest and best in the fleet, so there should not be any numbers higher than the 17XX series on that list. A lot changed between when Jefferies picked the number and production got into full swing. Typical of group creative projects, some ideas get trampled all over and this was one of them. And Roddenberry was well know for listening to an idea behind something and then doing his own thing. Constellation should have been 1710... that would have been enough of a difference... or they could have made the numbers like they did the name. Instead, every time they needed a ship they got creative. The TNG and DS9 production did the same thing. They picked a registry for the Hood when they did Encounter at Farpoint, but years later they picked a new one because the first one had been forgotten. So I take no stock in Jefferies idea other than how the number was created. The production moved beyond that and Starship class of TOS became the Constitution Class and Enterprise became the second, no the first, ship of the class. And Jefferies is responsible for the Class name and this change because of the phaser diagram he made that says Constitution Class on it. It makes little sense that Scotty would be looking at something old, and with 1700 being a valid registry, it only makes sense that someone decided that the Constitution Class Phaser made the Enterprise that class.

AMT agreed and made the Fleet decals (before FJ had printed anything). They and FJ used the list from TMOST. Both omitted Defiant (it wasn't on that list).

To me, every piece of the puzzle shows that Jefferies original numbering system didn't last into production and that even he was in on the Enterprise being in the Constitution Class and not the first ship of the 17th design as he'd originally conceived of the number. I definitely don't see any indication anywhere that his system was even known about until he was interviewed many years later. The timeline of when the AMT decals were put out, Jein crafted his article, and when the Booklet of General Plans and Star Feet Technical Manual were published indicate that the decals were changed first, then Jein created his article about the same time FJ was finalizing his plans and before the Technical Manual. 1975 saw the AMT kit retooled (the fleet decals sheet predates the retool), Jein's article published in April, and the Booklet of General Plans was published in May (A limited first printing of 500 was done in April 1974 making it the first licensed published list of names and registry numbers). All three lists stem from the list of selected names in TMOST (and runner's up in Jein's case). Other lists came out over the years and not all of Jein's number made it to canon (the ships that appear in the remastered TOS follow his, but several ships that don't appear there have numbers very different, such as Potempkin and Kongo). And Jein couldn't see that the one he linked to intrepid was 1831, not 1631. To this day a lot of people don't agree on some of the registry numbers.

But Jein has the links between registry and names that make the most sense for what we are given. I was dubious at first, but the more I look at it, the more I see that we can't escape it. The only variation I see that could make sense is that the first two digits separate the class and while they look the same (and would all be called Starships), only the 17XX are Constitution Class. But there are plenty of other explanations that fit with what Jein came up with. But clinging to jefferies early idea about the numbers doesn't really fit with what we see happening in the production and definitely doesn't fit with later productions.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

I disagree. Without other evidence to the contrary, I believe whoever made that chart made those specific registry numbers for a reason, rather than the Constellation’s number which was made because they just rearranged the numbers from the model kit in an effort to be as different from the Enterprise’s as possible. I choose to believe that the reason was that they were trying to adhere to Jefferies’ scheme.

The usual goal here is to search for the simplest possible explanation that fits the latest canon evidence, otherwise it becomes a matter of trying to find that original member of the art department, their colleagues or whatever papers they may have left behind describing that pure intent, which may easily have little to do with the current state of the canon.

I’m saying that regardless of what may have been intended, the words “star ship” as used in the 2260s suggest the kind of vessel that generally looks like Kirk’s (the odd widget may vary) and takes a crew of 430, probably with a “starship class” plaque on the bridge. TOS-R retroactively confirms this to an extent. If you include secondary lore, they’re all Constitution-class whatever the registry number and also Kirk’s dozen, but the canon itself doesn’t go that far.

So if we stick to just the canon, you could imagine hundreds of ships that look like Kirk’s and a few of those at the starbase, with maybe one or two that are part of older starship classes, but they would not all be Constitution-class. If you include secondary lore, then maybe Kirk’s dozen were at a stopover to install a piece of engineering Starbase 11 specializes in, or maybe they weren’t in fact all there: we don’t know for certain. At some point we must pause this discussion and wait for more evidence, similar to that provided by TOS-R, but the outline has certainly become clearer over the years.

 

[yotsuya]

It is muddied by what they did with registry numbers later. The early Excelsior Class registries are 2000, 2541, and 2544 (Excelsior, Hood, and Repulse). That fits with the ecclectic 16XX 17XX and 18XX on the Star Base 11 list. So Canon has really adopted what Jein did with that list (though not his extra registires) and we also have Constitution Class that have 20XX registries (two of them) in Star Trek VI. And such an ecclectic method really works well with the production where you want a ship for a story but don't want to have to research what the registry should be every time. They only had to keep track of what they used (and even then they didn't get it right every time).

Clinging to Jefferies numbering scheme seems to be clinging to calling it the Yorktown instead of Enterprise. Because that is when in the production it happened. By the time the model got in front of the camera, the ship was 947 feet long with a crew of 430 and it was no longer the first ship of the 17th design. The 1701 was just a number and they freely filled that chart with a bunch of numbers without bothering to create a meaning to them. Jein's list just happens to fit, and as he said in his write up back in 1975, he can poke more holes in it than anyone. But time made his list (at least of the seen ships) canon. And also gave a number to Constitution, though that is not explicitly linked it canon, it can be reasonably inferred.

 

[Rowenaster]

In universe, Starfleet was both refitting older ships and launching new ships, simultaneously and continuously over the last several years.

[SNIP]

Is Starfleet dragging old ships (Constellation, Republic, other 1600 number ships) out of mothballs and refitting them to bolster the fleet?

This implies that ships with anomalous (and canonical, according to Memory Alpha!) NCC's, like Constellation NCC-1017, Republic NCC-1371, and USS Eagle NCC-956 (established in TNG) were all built along Constitution-class lines (hence refittable to that class) and furthermore built years if not decades before Constitution herself! I'm just having trouble buying that, which is why I came up with the wartime obfuscation scheme, which some find implausible, but I want to remind you that the Klingon Empire and the Federation are not close and interconnected the way things are in this modern era. It really does hearken back to the World War/Cold War era, when a successful long-distance telephone connection wasn't guaranteed! Or the steam age, when it took months to cross the ocean to the other shore! That very level of disconnection makes WWII/Cold War-esque ruses such as I describe more plausible.

Note that said wartime obfuscation explains not just the numbers themselves, but the simultaneous designation of "Starship-class" and "Constution-class" for the same vessels. Look into the story of how the armored vehicle we know today as a "tank" got that name! That's where my inspiration was.

I was trying to set things up to explain why the so-called "class ship" has a hull number significantly higher than most of it's consorts, which is the opposite of what common sense would dictate! I know the production factors that led up to these numbers, I'm trying to work in-universe (Holmesian rather than Doylian) to justify/explain them.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

My theory about the wonky NCC's -- The Four Years War. The first of the intentionally-vaguely-named "starship" class were wartime builds, but there was a problem: Klingon agents had penetrated certain logistics offices, to better target new ships (Alec Peters fans will additionally say they didn't want to be surprised a second time after the Ares-class). In order to disguise the number of new "starships" being built, roughly half of them were given NCC's that had been allocated for older ship classes but never actually used. The tactic worked! Ships in the "official" NCC range tended to be located and destroyed, unfinished and uncommissioned, in the shipyards. Only ships with disguised NCC's, or late builds like the 1700+ series tended to survive to commissioning.

Oh, and as far as I'm concerned, Constitution isn't NCC-1700. It's NCC-1685. Revisiting the Greg Jein interpretation of the TOS Starbase 11 list, and removing ships with other canonical numbers that don't appear on that list, gives me room to give Connie a slightly lower number. Jein's reverse-alpha list ordering works if we give 1700 to Bonhomme Richard. Can't give 1708 to Endeavour or Defiant, pick your own name in the right part of the alphabet.

This implies that ships with anomalous (and canonical, according to Memory Alpha!) NCC's, like Constellation NCC-1017, Republic NCC-1371, and USS Eagle NCC-956 (established in TNG) were all built along Constitution-class lines (hence refittable to that class) and furthermore built years if not decades before Constitution herself! I'm just having trouble buying that, which is why I came up with the wartime obfuscation scheme, which some find implausible, but I want to remind you that the Klingon Empire and the Federation are not close and interconnected the way things are in this modern era. It really does hearken back to the World War/Cold War era, when a successful long-distance telephone connection wasn't guaranteed! Or the steam age, when it took months to cross the ocean to the other shore! That very level of disconnection makes WWII/Cold War-esque ruses such as I describe more plausible.

Note that said wartime obfuscation explains not just the numbers themselves, but the simultaneous designation of "Starship-class" and "Constution-class" for the same vessels. Look into the story of how the armored vehicle we know today as a "tank" got that name! That's where my inspiration was.

I was trying to set things up to explain why the so-called "class ship" has a hull number significantly higher than most of it's consorts, which is the opposite of what common sense would dictate! I know the production factors that led up to these numbers, I'm trying to work in-universe (Holmesian rather than Doylian) to justify/explain them.

Great ideas, and novel to me, as well. Welcome to the board, @Rowenaster.

I'd say that a kind of hybrid idea might be workable also. For example, suppose that there really was an NCC-1017 Constellation of some older, pre-Starship/Constitution-class, and that a new Constellation of Starship/Constitution-class was built and secretly substituted for it by reusing the old registry number. It would be like the NCC-1701-A/B/C/D/E situation, but without the letter (and without the publicity of a new launch). The purpose of this practice would have been to surprise the enemy by getting them to confuse new ships with ships that they had already seen. We could even imagine that part of the peace treaties that were signed involved committing the Federation not to engage in such subterfuge in the future, and the letters on the end of some registry numbers provided appropriate differentiation (according to interstellar law).

Regarding the Republic, there's nothing in "Court Martial" or any other episode as far as I know that requires it to be Constitution-class.

 

[yotsuya]

I like the idea that the number had gone unused and when the Constitution proved that the new design was successful, they wanted more than they had originally ordered and repurposed some old registry numbers. An alternate idea is that, like Enterprise later, they reused an old name and registry of a famous ship. They just hadn't put a -A on it like they did with Enterprise. Plenty of explanations for why half of the known ships have a lower registry than Constitution and Enterprise. No need to assume they are actually older ships. That really doesn't make much sense to me.

 

[aridas sofia]

Everyone has their own idea of what is going on with those NCC numbers, and in a way, that is great. The mystery of it adds to the interest. That being said, after many takes at it over the years in various publications, I finally sat down several years ago to do a version that sought to reconcile what FJ, Jefferies and various other production staff came up with and the modern assertion of haphazardness.


THUS-
Constellation* 1017 "The Doomsday Machine"

Constitution* 1700 "The Trouble with Tribbles"

Enterprise* 1701 "The Man Trap"

Farragut* 1702 "Obsession"

Lexington* 1703 "The Ultimate Computer"

Yorktown* 1704 "Obsession"

Excalibur* 1705 "The Ultimate Computer"

Exeter* 1706 "The Omega Glory"

Hood* 1707 "The Ultimate Computer"

Intrepid 1708 (trials, replaces 1631) "The Immunity Syndrome"

Defiant* 1709 "The Tholian Web"

Kongo* 1710 TMoST Fontana memo

Potemkin* 1711 "The Ultimate Computer"

Bonhomme Richard 1712 (building, canceled, destroyed, lost, or decommissioned)

Monitor 1713 (building, canceled, destroyed, lost, or decommissioned)

Hornet 1714 (building, canceled, destroyed, lost, or decommissioned)

Merrimac 1715 (building, canceled, destroyed, lost, or decommissioned)

Endeavor 1716 (building) “Amok Time” (script)

Scimitar 1717 (building)

Excelsior 1718 (trials>commissioned) "Court Martial"

Eagle 1719 (replaces 1685) (building)


Republic 1371 (not Constitution class)

Valiant destroyed (1623, not 1709. Not Constitution class)

* designates the iconic “twelve like her” at the moment Kirk makes the comment during “Tomorrow is Yesterday”

So, the “Commodore Stone NCC Chart” ends up being a mix of current Constitution class heavy cruisers and earlier cruisers (some of which are in the process of decommissioning to be replaced by Connies with the same name).

NCC-1709 Defiant

NCC-1631 Intrepid (being decommissioned)

NCC-1703 Lexington

NCC-1672 Saratoga

NCC-1664 El Dorado

NCC-1697 Essex

NCC-1701 Enterprise

NCC-1718 Excelsior (trials)

NCC-1685 Eagle (being decommissioned)

NCC-1700 Constitution

As for which ship came first - Constellation, Constitution, or Enterprise - to the extent that it matters, Constellation would be a refit from another class and a testbed, Constitution would be the prototype and lag behind Enterprise because it was the production testbed. Constitution is the class. Enterprise is the first launched. Voilà. Done and done.

 

[yotsuya]

Everyone has their own idea of what is going on with those NCC numbers, and in a way, that is great. The mystery of it adds to the interest. That being said, after many takes at it over the years in various publications, I finally sat down several years ago to do a version that sought to reconcile what FJ, Jefferies and various other production staff came up with and the modern assertion of haphazardness.


THUS-
Constellation* 1017 "The Doomsday Machine"

Constitution* 1700 "The Trouble with Tribbles"

Enterprise* 1701 "The Man Trap"

Farragut* 1702 "Obsession"

Lexington* 1703 "The Ultimate Computer"

Yorktown* 1704 "Obsession"

Excalibur* 1705 "The Ultimate Computer"

Exeter* 1706 "The Omega Glory"

Hood* 1707 "The Ultimate Computer"

Intrepid 1708 (trials, replaces 1631) "The Immunity Syndrome"

Defiant* 1709 "The Tholian Web"

Kongo* 1710 TMoST Fontana memo

Potemkin* 1711 "The Ultimate Computer"

Bonhomme Richard 1712 (building, canceled, destroyed, lost, or decommissioned)

Monitor 1713 (building, canceled, destroyed, lost, or decommissioned)

Hornet 1714 (building, canceled, destroyed, lost, or decommissioned)

Merrimac 1715 (building, canceled, destroyed, lost, or decommissioned)

Endeavor 1716 (building) “Amok Time” (script)

Scimitar 1717 (building)

Excelsior 1718 (trials>commissioned) "Court Martial"

Eagle 1719 (replaces 1685) (building)


Republic 1371 (not Constitution class)

Valiant destroyed (1623, not 1709. Not Constitution class)

* designates the iconic “twelve like her” at the moment Kirk makes the comment during “Tomorrow is Yesterday”

So, the “Commodore Stone NCC Chart” ends up being a mix of current Constitution class heavy cruisers and earlier cruisers (some of which are in the process of decommissioning to be replaced by Connies with the same name).

NCC-1709 Defiant

NCC-1631 Intrepid (being decommissioned)

NCC-1703 Lexington

NCC-1672 Saratoga

NCC-1664 El Dorado

NCC-1697 Essex

NCC-1701 Enterprise

NCC-1718 Excelsior (trials)

NCC-1685 Eagle (being decommissioned)

NCC-1700 Constitution

As for which ship came first - Constellation, Constitution, or Enterprise - to the extent that it matters, Constellation would be a refit from another class and a testbed, Constitution would be the prototype and lag behind Enterprise because it was the production testbed. Constitution is the class. Enterprise is the first launched. Voilà. Done and done.

Boeing did that with the 747. There were two test airframes that were built first but did not get delivered until later. And the very first airframe was never sold to anyone. So the first plane in service was like the 5th one constructed. Though for my way of thinking, especially with how the ships are numbered in the Remastered HD version, I think the Navy way of doing things is a better example. There was an entire class of pre WWII submarines that was ordered with the intent of being a new design, but they continued with the previous successful design.

 

[Rowenaster]

I'd argue that the "clumping" idea does not hold psychological water here: in absence of other factors, we shouldn't aim for narrow ranges of numbers, but rather tackle this list as a series of random numbers created for the purpose of being random numbers, with certain border conditions.

I would counterargue that the numbers aren't just random, that there IS an underlying pattern -- classes (or subclasses) of ships, built in sequence. So clumping actually makes more sense than "random for the sake of randomness, LOL". Modern writing may be pure chaos, or even deliberate chaos, but back in the day, they actually put thought into things -- even if they didn't necessarily SHARE the full thoughts or process behind them. With computing in its infancy, there wasn't any such thing as a reliable random number generator. With Dungeons and Dragons in its infancy as a niche hobby, polyhedral dice (which would be needed for random percentile/decimal number generation) were rare, and not found in the hands of anyone over the age of 12, certainly not Hollywood writers! That's what is leaving us scratching our heads, decades later, trying to reconstruct the process.

 

[Rowenaster]

Everyone has their own idea of what is going on with those NCC numbers, and in a way, that is great. The mystery of it adds to the interest. That being said, after many takes at it over the years in various publications, I finally sat down several years ago to do a version that sought to reconcile what FJ, Jefferies and various other production staff came up with and the modern assertion of haphazardness.

So, the TL;DR version is that you assert that anything having an unambiguous 16XX NCC is not a Connie? And that when in doubt, arguable 16 vs. 18 should be 18? That is one way to get around it, I suppose. It does make a certain amount of sense, more sense than the "EVERYTHING is a Connie" aesthetic semi-forced on us by the production limitations of the day. But I'm not sure I want to adopt that, because I don't like having 18XX Connies. Yes, that is nothing more than personal preference, but that doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

So, Aridas's asserttion isn't too terribly different from my assertion that 18XX NCC's were NOT given to Connies, but to Mirandas (or other classes). Eagle can't be 1685, because Memory Alpha assigns it, canonically, as Constitution-class and NCC-956. A ridiculously low NCC, but it was "on screen" in TNG, so that's what it is. One benefit of my thinking that Constitution should be 1685 instead of 1700 is that if you assume that all of the Starbase 11 arguably-18XX number are actually 16XX, it brings the 18XX numbers close to the Connie clump if not inside of it (e.g. Essex=1697 instead of 1897).

But to my sensibilities, there should be other classes, particularly smaller vessels, and the smaller ones should be far more numerous than the heavies.

However dodgy, my explanation embraces the "outside the clump" numbers, takes into account clumps for admittedly non-canonical ships like the Ares-class, and the really out-there ones for Connies (like NCC 956 for Eagle!), and how ships of the class ended up with NCC numbers smaller than the class ship, rather than trying to force all Connies to have numbers 1700+.

 

[Henoch]

and how ships of the class ended up with NCC numbers smaller than the class ship, rather than trying to force all Connies to have numbers 1700+.

I think this reasoning has merit. For example, USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77, launched 2006) is an USS Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (CVN-68, launched 1972). Even though the Bush is a different sub-class, Nimitz-class aircraft carriers were under construction for over 32 years. Applied logic to Star Trek: USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) is an Constitution-class starship (NCC-16xx), maybe a number off the list assuming the Constitution was still on the active starship list. I assume the Enterprise was part of the class of ship in Tyler's comment in the Cage, "And you won't believe how fast you can get back. Well the time barrier's been broken. Our new ships can..." The "new ships" are bracketed at 13 to 31 years before The Menagerie. If we believe the Enterprise was built in 2245 (21 years before the episode), then the Constitution could have been new built right before the Enterprise (suggesting the 1700 number), or up to 10 years before the Enterprise (suggesting an older number). Guess a production rate and its production start date before the Enterprise (e.g. 4 per year at 4 years gives a 1685 number; or 2 per year at 2 years gives a 1697 number).

 

[Timo]

Regarding the Eagle - no, she's not canonically a Constitution class ship.

There is no TNG Okudagram stating so, nor any other onscreen source that would connect the names Eagle and Constitution. All we have is the chart from ST6:TUC where a number of starships are given a name and a registry, and then represented by a silhouette that, at the limits of resolution, looks vaguely like a Constitution but is actually significantly smaller - only about half the size.

So all the visual evidence we have actually suggests a non-Constitution, and all auditory evidence is mum on an Eagle even existing.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[yotsuya]

We have to keep in mind what the producers where doing at the time. Starfleet had a limited number of "Star ships". The board on the wall in that episodes says Star Ship. The term is the telling thing to determine what type of ships those numbers belong to. It is not smaller, less significant designs, it is the big ones. The ones like Enterprise. They may have intended there to be several slightly different designs, like the Kitty Hawk, Enterprise, and John F. Kennedy were considered different classes (even though they were pretty much the same basic design). That is one reason I prefer the original FX where you can see that the Constellation was slightly different (the AMT Enterprise was too distant to see that it shared the same differences, and the 33 inch and 4 inch models were also used in shots where the detail differences are not as visible) from the 11 foot model of the Enterprise. But since they were all supposed to be the same design, the ships have gotten all lumped into the Constitution Class and the HD FX shots are all the same model.

I'm sticking to a single class of ships that 20 years after the first was launched, are the pride of Starfleet and number roughly 12. And for some reason most of them were being worked on at the same time. It could be some emergency recall type repair/refit/upgrade that needed to be done pronto. Maybe something Scotty already did in the field so the Enterprise just needed the repair and went to the front of the line.

But I see the validity of multiple classes of ships. But they would all be top of the line. No other types of ships. In a modern US Navy setting they would all be front line Carriers. Different classes, but all the same type of ship. That would still fit with the limitation TOS puts on the use of "Star ship".

 

[Henoch]

And for some reason most of them were being worked on at the same time.

The chart only said, "Star Ship Status, % Complete", nothing to do with repair work. I read "Status" as the ship's current readiness (summary of supplies and/or power/fuel reserves) status of all Starships in Starfleet, not just at Starbase 11. The Intrepid is assumed to be the ship shown as 100% complete with an extra green bar next it showing it is ready for deployment. Coincidentally, the Intrepid was at Starbase getting resupplied at Starbase 11 and hence its work crews are now available to the Enterprise. The only ship we know is on the chart is the Enterprise NCC-1701 which shows at 83% "complete" be that supplies, power, fuel, etc.

 

[Mytran]

...for some reason most of them were being worked on at the same time. It could be some emergency recall type repair/refit/upgrade that needed to be done pronto. Maybe something Scotty already did in the field so the Enterprise just needed the repair and went to the front of the line.

Or maybe it was the Engineering section upgrade (including the change from S1 to S2 Engine Room) that Enterprise herself underwent just prior to the events of Metamorphosis (production order).

 

[Henoch]

Or maybe it was the Engineering section upgrade (including the change from S1 to S2 Engine Room) that Enterprise herself underwent just prior to the events of Metamorphosis (production order).

Nah, Court Martial was production order #15. Much too early to support Meta production order #31. Besides, the engine room was essentially the same at the end of season one (last seen in Space Seed, production order #23).

 

[Mytran]

Nah, Court Martial was production order #15. Much too early to support Meta production order #31. Besides, the engine room was essentially the same at the end of season one (last seen in Space Seed, production order #23).

Yes, I meant that those other starships had the upgrade somewhat earlier than the Enterprise did

 

[Dukhat]

Regarding the Eagle - no, she's not canonically a Constitution class ship.

There is no TNG Okudagram stating so, nor any other onscreen source that would connect the names Eagle and Constitution. All we have is the chart from ST6:TUC where a number of starships are given a name and a registry, and then represented by a silhouette that, at the limits of resolution, looks vaguely like a Constitution but is actually significantly smaller - only about half the size.

So all the visual evidence we have actually suggests a non-Constitution, and all auditory evidence is mum on an Eagle even existing.

I’m fine with the ship existing (and its registry number) since it’s shown on the chart, even if the chart wasn’t clearly seen in the film. What I’m not fine with is the designation of Constitution class, since as you say it was only shown as a Connie silhouette (of which every ship shown on that chart had, minus the Excelsior, and in different sizes to boot.) I find it hard to take those silhouettes at face value, since it’s highly unlikely that every single ship participating in Operation Retrieve was the same class (or even more preposterous, that there is another class of ship identical to the Constitution class but scaled down to half the size.) I believe those silhouettes were just generic placeholders and the ships on that chart were multiple types of classes.