Man Trap Versus Turnabout Intruder

[MAGolding]

Fair enough. Hornblower's frigate, The Lydia, was a 36-gun vessel. So a fifth-rate vessel. A heavy cruiser is two notches down from a battleship so it's a third-rate vessel.

So the Enterprise isn't a second-rate vessel. It's at best a third rate vessel! That should be hauled as garbage.

You are mixing up 18th and early 19th centery terminology with 20th century teminology.

The word battleship is short for line-of-battle-ship, another term for ship-of-the-line. So Hornblower era ships-of-the-line were the equivalents of 20th century battleships. All Hornblower era ships--of-the-line. Including first, second, and third rates.

You called the Enterprise a second rate ship in the Hornblower era analogy, and so you called it a ship-of-the-line, which is the same as a line-of-battle-ship, wihich was the Horblower era equivalent of a battleship. Thus you called the Enterprise a battleship in the Hornblower era analogy.

It is true that in the 20th century analogy the Enterprise is described as the equivalent of a 20th century heavy cruiser which is 2 steps down from a 20th century battleship. It is also true that when the Enterprise was described as a heavy cruiser analog when a heavy cruiser was the most powerful big gun ship in the US navy. The only ships with more power in the US navy were missile submarines and aircraft carriers.

Missile submarines and aircraft carriers have no function in space warfare. There obviously won't be any missile submarine or aircraft carrier analogs in space warfare. So the 1960s US navel vessels that were the top of the line and most powerful in any form of naval warfare which has an possible analogy in hypothetical space warfare were
the cruisers, with the heavy cruisers the very top.

So describing the Enterprise as a 1960s heavy cruiser equivalent is more or less the same as describing it as a 1940s Iowa class or Yamato class battleship equivalent, the most powerful type of its era.

 

[Kor]

On the topic of flagships from a couple pages back... in TNG, "flagship" seems to mean the Enterprise-D is the best or most prestigious ship in the fleet, or something vague like that (would it have been in charge in multi-ship engagements, or something?). And then JJTrek used the word similarly. But I thought that in real-world naval usage, a flagship was a ship used by a flag officer (an Admiral). Depending on whether Commodores are flag officers or not, the Enterprise could possibly have been considered Decker's flagship in the brief period when he assumed command.

Kor

 

[Mytran]

I just had a new idea about 4:50 AM EST 09-28-2021.

Mabe the Salt Vampire arrived on the planet with no way of leaving - crashing, being deliberately marooned, running out of fuel, sufferent a long distance transporter malfunction, etc. - sometime after the Craters arrived, and could sense the Craters telepathically at a distance. And it could sense that Robert was very misanthrophic and would probably kill any unscheduled human visitor, while Nancy was extremely xenophobic and would probably kill any non human visitor. But they both deamed of someday finding a survivor of the lost M-113 ciivlization.

So the salt vampire introduced itself to them as the last survivor of the M-113 civilization and told them whatever they wished to hear about what it had been like and what happened to it. And eventually Nancy was alone with the salt vampire, and perhaps desired to see Leonard McCoy again, and perhaps the creature changed its illusion to McCoy for a second, and she realized it was a fraud, and it could read her intention of getting a phaser and killing it.

So it used its hypnosis to paralize Nancy and drain her salt, and perhaps felt the thrill of predation for the first time. And then it probably impersonated Nancy for a while, claiming that the native had left, until Robert found out somehow but didn't decide to kill it.

This is a great idea and answers a lot of the odd questions presented in the episode as it stands.
In the satirical podcast show "The Ensigns' Logs" they interpret that the creature uses salt as a narcotic rather than a food source - a notion not incompatible with your own theory

 

[Neopeius]

You are mixing up 18th and early 19th centery terminology with 20th century teminology.

The word battleship is short for line-of-battle-ship, another term for ship-of-the-line. So Hornblower era ships-of-the-line were the equivalents of 20th century battleships. All Hornblower era ships--of-the-line. Including first, second, and third rates.

You called the Enterprise a second rate ship in the Hornblower era analogy, and so you called it a ship-of-the-line, which is the same as a line-of-battle-ship, wihich was the Horblower era equivalent of a battleship. Thus you called the Enterprise a battleship in the Hornblower era analogy.

It is true that in the 20th century analogy the Enterprise is described as the equivalent of a 20th century heavy cruiser which is 2 steps down from a 20th century battleship. It is also true that when the Enterprise was described as a heavy cruiser analog when a heavy cruiser was the most powerful big gun ship in the US navy. The only ships with more power in the US navy were missile submarines and aircraft carriers.

Missile submarines and aircraft carriers have no function in space warfare. There obviously won't be any missile submarine or aircraft carrier analogs in space warfare. So the 1960s US navel vessels that were the top of the line and most powerful in any form of naval warfare which has an possible analogy in hypothetical space warfare were
the cruisers, with the heavy cruisers the very top.

So describing the Enterprise as a 1960s heavy cruiser equivalent is more or less the same as describing it as a 1940s Iowa class or Yamato class battleship equivalent, the most powerful type of its era.

I'm going to back up and define my terms. We have the danger of talking past each other, particularly if one of us starts ascribing intent to the other.

I said "second rate" casually, probably too casually, and I apologize for the ensuing confusion (since rate back then, as you noted, refers to guns mounted and down to third rate is a ship of the line).

I meant "Not a ship of the line" in the Hornblower sense. i.e. filling the same role as a frigate, which is not a ship of the line. If the Enterprise is analogous to the Lydia, it's not a ship of the line.

The reason I brought in the discussion of 20th Century heavy cruisers was as it seems to be reinforcement of the view of the Enterprise as frigate/not ship-of-the-line/not battleship. Yes, in the 1960s, battleships were largely scrapped and cruisers (missile and AA) were the biggest non-carrier vessels in the USN (though saying there won't be carriers or missile submarines in the Trekiverse is not a statement supported by evidence: what are Romulan Warbirds if not missile/attack submarine analogs, and we don't know if there are/aren't fighter craft equivalent in Trek -- certainly shuttlecraft are FTL, and Star Fleet Battles (not canon, I know) introduced carriers for all races. And in any event, carriers ruled the roost by the 1960s -- no one in the 60s would be thinking of a cruiser as the queen of the fleet, even if they thought there would be no carrier analogs in the future).

In any event, the Heavy Cruiser largely doesn't exist in the 1960s. It is a ship that had its heyday in the 1920s-1940s. And in that era, the CA was definitely not a ship of the line equivalent. It was a scout, a commerce raider, a small-vessel hunter -- a third class vessel compared to battleships and battlecruisers (and panzerschiffe, which one could call heavy cruisers, but were dubbed "pocket battleships" for a reason). The Enterprise being a Heavy Cruiser suggests that there are battleships and perhaps other larger vessels in the Federation fleet. Certainly TAS made that assumption, and Franz Josef followed suit.

Anyway, I bring these points up because we don't know what the Enterprise's role vis. a. vis. the Federation fleet is. Could it be a battleship equivalent? Certainly The Ultimate Computer suggests that they operate in fleet actions... but so did the three ships that chased down the Graf Spee.

But if Hornblower be the model, then the Enterprise is a frigate, not a ship of the line. If the class Heavy Cruiser is any indication, then the Enterprise is not a battleship (the modern ship of the line).

That's what I meant by second rate.

 

[Neopeius]

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Salt_vampire

That's interesting. Looks like the creature made a comeback specifically in Lower Decks (I haven't watched it -- is it canon? Is it parody?)

As for the one Trelane had, I'm not sure if the appearance of the suit means Trelane actually had an M113 salt monster (any more than Lieutenant Leslie had two twin brothers). And even if it is an M113 salt monster, we don't know how old the thing is (everything else was "900 years" out of date...)

 

[fireproof78]

is it canon? Is it parody?)

Yes, to both.

 

[Maurice]

I just had a new idea about 4:50 AM EST 09-28-2021.

You can’t even say “early this morning” without getting technical.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

So the Enterprise isn't a second-rate vessel. It's at best a third rate vessel! That should be hauled as garbage.

We don't know canonically what, if any, type of Federation vessel in the TOS-era had more phaser emplacements than the Constitution/Starship class.

 

[dupersuper]

nowhere near "Space Seed" yet where he's barking mad!

???????

Picard not knowing of him means nothing. He's not the sort of person Picard would admire, liking adventure, not condemning species to death because it would break the Prime Directive. Janeway and Sisko knew of Kirk.

Picard knew of him: he recognized him in Generations.

 

[Timo]

...After having run into at least two things specific to Kirk's adventures: his "The Naked Time" adversary and his chief engineer.

(Whether he even knew Kirk's chief sawbones had been aboard his ship in "Encounter at Farpoint", we can't readily tell. But his "Kirk who?" moment comes in an adventure after that one, in "The Naked Now".)

We don't know canonically what, if any, type of Federation vessel in the TOS-era had more phaser emplacements than the Constitution/Starship class.

Or invisible torpedo emplacemens, even though the Discovery sure gives her a run for her credits...

It might be telling that in the era of explicit ball turrets, the Excelsior gets (way) more of them, instead of just bigger. Age of sail rather than WWII echoes there.

Oh, and as for flagships, the JJTrek one seemed to be built for the role, so the title there would probably be analogous to command ship today (even though today's command ships tend not to be combat-capable by themselves). But a flag officer taking command of a ship doesn't necessarily make that his or her flagship: the act of "breaking his or her flag", i.e. letting it fly to signal the flag officer's presence, would. And interestingly enough, Mendez might do that very thing in "The Menagerie" (watch the back wall of the briefing room)!

Also, Mendez need not have taken command of the Enterprise there as such, and indeed typically flagships have their own separate commanding officers. I just wonder whether Wesley was one in "The Ultimate Computer", or whether there was a separate skipper for his ship and what we saw was the Flag Bridge with, a higher-backrest command chair and all...

Trek and TOS does many a funny thing with naval practice, but keeping it close to the age of Nelson is not a particularly difficult endeavor of interpetation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[dupersuper]

...After having run into at least two things specific to Kirk's adventures: his "The Naked Time" adversary and his chief engineer.

(Whether he even knew Kirk's chief sawbones had been aboard his ship in "Encounter at Farpoint", we can't readily tell. But his "Kirk who?" moment comes in an adventure after that one, in "The Naked Now".)

As far as I recall, he just reads off the info including the captain, with no reaction either way.

 

[Timo]

Which is the bit that makes it dubious that he'd treat Kirk as the Second Coming like some others do. The image of the Enterprise is big on that screen, and yet there is nothing to indicate recognition.

Picard casually saying "the Constitution class Enterprise. Ah, Captain James T. Kirk commanding, I presume?" would mean he is not just aware of Kirk but is making reasonable assumptions (even if we now, against precedent, know that Pike was a celebrity commander, too, making it to an all-time-top-ten list and all). Him reading the text off the screen sends the exact opposite message.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Commishsleer]

Now the Enterprise-D is the flagship of the TNG era. However to me is not that much of an upgrade on TOS Enterprise. Its like an 80 year upgrade double the size and just fancier panels. Its not a battleship or anything. If the Enterprise-D is the best in the fleet and TOS Enterprise isn't then in 80 years they've presumably just got rid of those better unseen ships in the TOS era.

Hey Loki from Charon has heard of TOs Enterprise (unless he was lying) so random aliens have heard of it. So semi-famous then.

 

[Neopeius]

We don't know canonically what, if any, type of Federation vessel in the TOS-era had more phaser emplacements than the Constitution/Starship class.

That's absolutely true. I'm just saying what we do know suggests the Enterprise and the twelve like her in the fleet are unlikely to be the biggest ships in Starfleet.

References to "Hornblower" (a very popular book series at the time) and "Heavy Cruiser" are in the original Trek Writer's Guide, and they clearly informed the writers' decisions.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That's absolutely true. I'm just saying what we do know suggests the Enterprise and the twelve like her in the fleet are unlikely to be the biggest ships in Starfleet.

References to "Hornblower" (a very popular book series at the time) and "Heavy Cruiser" are in the original Trek Writer's Guide, and they clearly informed the writers' decisions.

I'm glad you brought the Writers Guide up. If we're going by that, it says [THE STAR TREK GUIDE, 3rd revision, page 7]:

The U.S.S. Enterprise [...] is the largest and most modern type vessel in the Starfleet Service.​

That sounds rather top-of-the-line to me. While not canon, it certainly represents intent.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Real-world, the Enterprise was designated a "heavy cruiser," rather than a battleship, because Roddenberry did not want battleships in the fleet of a peaceful Federation, and didn't want a space war series. In-universe, Kirk's Enterprise was a heavy cruiser on a "5-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

The term "flagship" has, to the best of my recollection, never been used correctly in canonical Star Trek. It means a vessel -- whether it's a PT boat, a destroyer, a cruiser, a battleship, or an aircraft carrier -- from which a flag officer exercises field command over a group of vessels: an attack force, a battle group, a task force, a convoy, or a fleet. The concept of a flagship appeared many times: Commodore Wesley commanding the attack force to test M5, from the Lexington; Admiral Necheyev aboard Picard's Enterprise; technically, even when Commodore Decker commandeered Kirk's Enterprise. But we never, to the best of my recollection, had a case in which the word and the concept were used together.

To quote The Overlook Illustrated Dictionary of Nautical Terms, a flagship is

. . . the ship in which the commanding admiral sails; in the Merchant Marine, the ship commanded by the senior captain, who is often known as the commodore.

I have toured a number of decommissioned naval vessels, among them the battleships USS Missouri, in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and USS Iowa, in San Pedro, California, and most frequently, the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, in Alameda. My recollections about the Missouri and the Iowa are a bit fuzzy in this regard, but I know for a fact that the Hornet has a separate "flag bridge," from which an admiral would command a battle group or task force, presumably so that the ship's CO and the admiral would not get in each other's way.

 

[Neopeius]

I'm glad you brought the Writers Guide up. If we're going by that, it says [THE STAR TREK GUIDE, 3rd revision, page 7]:

The U.S.S. Enterprise [...] is the largest and most modern type vessel in the Starfleet Service.​

That sounds rather top-of-the-line to me. While not canon, it certainly represents intent.

Oh, thank you for that! My guide is missing page 7. That's interesting -- they changed it from Heavy Cruiser in the original pitch to "Starship" right?

Real-world, the Enterprise was designated a "heavy cruiser," rather than a battleship, because Roddenberry did not want battleships in the fleet of a peaceful Federation, and didn't want a space war series. In-universe, Kirk's Enterprise was a heavy cruiser on a "5-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Do you have a citation for the "no battleships" intent? If indeed there are no battleships (anymore?) and everything is cruisers now, then that accommodates the Enterprise being the biggest and newest. It also leaves room for the Dreadnought when it shows up in TAS and Franz Josef -- apparently we needed bigger ships again.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

No citation, that I'm aware of, but I think it came up in Whitfield's TMOST.

And no actual dreadnought (as envisioned by FJS) appeared in TAS, except in ADF's adaptation (and even there, ADF described it as a class that was never built because all that firepower was never needed). Onscreen, the balloon in "The Practical Joker" was simply a much larger version of the Enterprise. And there is no doubt in my mind that FJS's dreadnought was a major factor in Roddenberry's edict about no ships with an odd number of nacelles.

 

[Neopeius]

No citation, that I'm aware of, but I think it came up in Whitfield's TMOST.

And no actual dreadnought (as envisioned by FJS) appeared in TAS, except in ADF's adaptation (and even there, ADF described it as a class that was never built because all that firepower was never needed). Onscreen, the balloon in "The Practical Joker" was simply a much larger version of the Enterprise. And there is no doubt in my mind that FJS's dreadnought was a major factor in Roddenberry's edict about no ships with an odd number of nacelles.

Looking at TMOST, in the outline, it just says "Cruiser". Did any writer's guide ever say "heavy cruiser"?

In the beginning of the chapter on the Enterprise, it says unequivocally that the Enterprise is the largest man-made vessel in space. The 3rd revision of the Writer's Guide (where it calls the Enterprise in the "Starship" class) says it's the biggest ship in Star Fleet. In both TMOST and the original outline, the Enterprise weighs 190,000 in gross tonnage.

Interestingly, in Mudd's Women (one of the earliest scripts), Scotty describes the Enterprise as comprising "almost a million gross tons".

But perhaps Space Scottish tons are .5 gross tons...

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

"The Man Trap" is a well thought out episode. The character bits are really well done and I really appreciate that the "monster" isn't one. It's an animal trying to survive.

Agreed; I always appreciated how the main cast were both sensitive to each other, but snapped when things were getting out of control with no answers. Early Kirk could be very short-tempered (with the 1st of two times he threatens to have someone's "skin" for non-compliance, the other being "Mudd's Women"), and that was a wise way to play the character. He's a leader, not everyone's pal.

I love the "early series weirdness" in this one.

Establishing the feel of a "final frontier" where it was not overpopulated by 30,000 ships barrel-rolling around every planet. Instead, the 1701 was really on its own (most of the time), and problems had the edge of the mysterious / dangerous (also felt in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Charlie X",, "The Naked Time", "The Corbomite Maneuver", "Miri", "Dagger of the Mind" and "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" among other episodes). Just one of the many reasons TOS' 1st season is the best in the franchise. No other ST series' debut season ever reached that level of quality.