Sounds more like it was something they went with for a few years, during which FASA and Lora Johnson made a ton of Trek manuals and then they changed their minds. I grew up thinking the TOS-era ship was Constitution-class and the movie-era ship Enterprise-class. When I saw STVI and got the Encyclopedia, I thought they were mistakes.
I had this model kit as a kid and i think remember it calling the Refit “American Class”? Does anyone else remember that? Am I misremembering? How would you fit Constitution, Starship, Enterprise, and American into the canon?
The same way Todd Guenther did in his Ships of the Star Fleet. Except he skipped Starship, and back then didn't know yet about the E-A being a Constitution, or he would simply have written her as a Constitution (III), the way he dreamed up Constitution (II) from the Phase II era specs. I don't know where he got America from. The distinctive impulse deck must have been one of the abandoned ideas for the TMP ship, but is this design just a hodgepodge of such alternate detail, or is there a backstory? In terms of canon, Starship Class now applies to at least the Franklin as well, so we can stop treating it as a class name and consider it more a category. Although there's nothing wrong with postulating the existence of USS Starship; much sillier things have been used by real navies for denoting their prestigious war machines. Timo Saloniemi
Marc Bell's Zheng He https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10221478323700910 https://www.artstation.com/artwork/J9Oard
He seems to have taken inspiration from the STO version. It has some of the details that the STO version added.
I finally rewatched the ep recently and that's clearly what is going on, as you can see it clearer as the shot progresses and the angle changes. Despite the claims, we're still yet to see a picture from the ep that actually shows three variants.
I was gonna post a new thread about this but decided instead to just post it on this thread: I wonder how many ships in Starfleet would be designs we would recognize? The newest class of Starfleet ship introduced into a 24th century show prior to "Picard" was the Prometheus-class in Star Trek Voyager, but by now that ship design is 20 years old. Now, the 24th century is FULL of 80, 90, even 100 year old ships in the fleet that are still in service during the TNG/DS9/VOY era, such as the Miranda, Oberth, and Excelsior-classes. My question is, does Starfleet still operate with the "just because something's old doesn't mean you throw it away" mentality? Or are the Galaxy, Intrepid, Defiant and Sovereign class ships a part of a bygone era, all retired and mothballed and replaced by even newer designs?
I mean, Excelsior, Oberth, and Miranda-class starships were still very common into the 2370s, and the TNG Technical Manual says that the Galaxy class was designed to have a 100-year lifespan IIRC. So yeah, I think it's highly probable that there are still plenty of Galaxy, Nebula, Defiant, Intrepid, Akira, Steamrunner, Norway, and Prometheus-class starships operating well into the 2390s. Hell, in real life, the USS Enterprise CVN-65 lasted about 50 years!
It's also a matter of the threat environment evolving. Or mission environment, more generally speaking. In terms of exploration, nothing evolves: the Milky Way has been the same for billions of years. If an Oberth was good for surveying it in the 2280s, she'd probably be fine for surveying it in the 4280s, too. Although quantum leaps in propulsion might result in adoption of new designs there, too, till one gets a comfortable intragalactic drive and can stop evolving. In terms of military opponents, Starfleet may be constantly at war, but there are pronounced lacunae between big conflicts with important neighbors. DSC and TOS both had their share of "violence is a thing of the past" sentiments, so it's quite plausible that ships from the Romulan War surplus stock or their immediate replacements would still linger a century after the fact. The TOS movies conclude with the Klingons ceasing to be a motivator for a military rat race, and when we again join the action in TNG, "violence is a thing of the past" again, and the assorted border wars a footnote that apparently hasn't much affected Starfleet thinking or shipbuilding. We then get the Borg, but there is no observable response in starship development - and no doubt rightly so, because you can't use a weapon against the Borg twice, so something like the Defiant would be wasted effort. And then we get the Dominion War, but don't have a chance to observe the aftermath much, a very brief glimpse in "Endgame" notwithstanding. So PIC is rather free to a) replace everything and say it's a reaction to the Dominion War, with at least half a decade of delay because you can't build starships faster than that, or b) keep things mostly as is, because the Dominion isn't around any longer, and will probably stay away for the next seventy years or so. Timo Saloniemi
NCC-75641? Whatever the registry actually is, this was properly marked up in Starfleet Bold Extended/Millennium.
They seem to have influence from all four founding members in relatively equal amounts. The way it has some sharper angles might be due to Ba’ul and perhaps Cardassian influence.
Fair enough. I suppose STO and Eaglemoss will get a ruling on a registry number from CBS soon enough, right?