The Oberth-class in ENT, TOS, and VAN

[MatthiasRussell]

I know this is more Trek-tech but I didn't know if anyone remembers them popping up in any TOS books or would expect them in future 22nd and 23rd century literature.

In the Enterprise books we see Daedaleus class ships with registry numbers such as NCC-76, 173, and 189. Later in Vanguard, we see NCC-470 and the ship is considered extremely old.

In STIII, we see the Oberth class USS Grissom NCC-638.

So when did the Oberths enter service? Should we expect to see them in upcoming Enterprise books? Would you expect to see them more frequently in the TOS and Vanguard books?

 

[Christopher]

It's generally best not to take numbers in Star Trek too literally, since there usually isn't a lot of systematic or consistent thought put into them. All indications aside from the registry number are that the Oberth is a product of the TOS movie era. I suppose there's nothing about the exterior design of the ship which rules out the possibility that it's an earlier class that got completely rebuilt inside to movie-era specs, but there's no evidence to suggest that's the case beyond a single number.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

It just seems that ship gets forgotten a lot. I think it was a pretty cool and original design. I found it an interesting creative choose that Daedalus ships were used in SCE and VAN but not the Oberth.

I'm a huge ship fan, they helped inspire me to become an aerospace engineer. I don't know how much ship selection goes into the writer's creative process. I've only been able to talk to Peter David about it and he indicated ship selection wasn't important to him.

 

[Christopher]

It just seems that ship gets forgotten a lot. I think it was a pretty cool and original design. I found it an interesting creative choose that Daedalus ships were used in SCE and VAN but not the Oberth.

Well, we know from "Power Play" that Daedalus-class ships were in use in the late 22nd century, and that they're therefore a pre-TOS design. There is no reason to believe the Oberth is a pre-TOS design aside from its low registry number, and as I said, there's no real consistency to the numbers in Trek, with so many different people coming up with numbering schemes for reasons of their own. It was probably the ILM art staff who decided to stick that low number on the Grissom, and we don't know what their thinking was behind it or how it compares to the thinking of the TNG/DS9/VGR/ENT staffs on starship numbering schemes.

 

[BrotherBenny]

The Oberth clearly has a similar design lineage to the Daedalus-class ships, so if you take the Daedalus-class as early Federation patrol ships, patrolling the new Federation border from Romulans and Klingons, replacing the experimental NX-class design, the Oberths could easily be early Federation science ships for planetary surveys and such.

Nothing to say either way.

 

[Christopher]

The Oberth clearly has a similar design lineage to the Daedalus-class ships...

"Clearly?" I can't see what you're talking about at all. Daedalus ships are basic shapes, spheres and cylinders, a primitive (in the geometric sense) antecedent of the familiar Starfleet main hull/engineering hull/nacelles configuration. The Oberth class is a more radical and streamlined variation, with the nacelles integrated with the saucer and a catamaran-like lower hull hanging from the nacelle pylons with no other connection to the main hull (and seriously, is it even possible to get from one hull to the other without beaming or spacewalking?).

 

[MatthiasRussell]

Daedalus show much more primitive lines than the Connies whereas the Oberth does look more streamlined/advanced. I also agree numbers got screwed up a lot going back to the Constellation numbers being a scrabble of the numbers that came with a model's decal sheet but don't think the Grissom registry was necessarily a mistake or stretch of artistic license. So, Christopher, you would shy away from using the Oberth in future ENT and TOS era novels?

Excellent points as usual, Christopher.

 

[Christopher]

I also agree numbers got screwed up a lot going back to the Constellation numbers being a scrabble of the numbers that came with a model's decal sheet but don't think the Grissom registry was necessarily a mistake or stretch of artistic license.

It can't be called a mistake or artistic license, because that's getting the sequence of events backward. TSFS was made years before TNG's art department arrived at whatever assumptions they based their starship numbering on. You can't say that they mistakenly or intentionally disregarded "rules" that didn't even exist yet. It's just the consequence of different ST productions being made by unconnected groups of people making independent choices. We pretend that all those disparate productions made by different people represent a single reality, but we mustn't fall into the trap of believing there actually is some single unified vision behind it all. Sometimes we just have to remember that Star Trek is a hodgepodge of different productions from different teams who bring their own distinct interpretations.

So, Christopher, you would shy away from using the Oberth in future ENT and TOS era novels?

The idea that they might've existed in the ENT era is frankly a ridiculous thing to extrapolate from only a single low number, when absolutely everything else we know about the ship suggests a much later origin. On the other hand, I can't rule out the possibility that the ship we saw in TSFS was a modernized refit of a class that had been around contemporaneously with TOS, but I have no evidence to that effect. If I did need a scout ship in a TOS-era story, I'd probably look for one that's been established to exist in that period. Something like the Archer class from Vanguard would seem more period-appropriate.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

I do loooooooooooove that Archer class. Drexler did an incredible job on that one and Mack described it excellently in book 3. I especially like how Mack names ships of the class after historical/mythological archers.

 

[Christopher]

^The credit for the Archer class's design goes to Masao Okazaki, who also designed the Vanguard starbase.

 

[William Leisner]

FWIW, in my mind, the Annapolis-class starships mentioned in A Less Perfect Union were that universe's Oberth class, given a more military and less scientifically related name (as befitted that timeline).

 

[Timo]

The OP brought up the point that a specific Daedalus had the registry NCC-470. However, it should be pointed out that supposedly SCE dragged that relic out of mothballs and refitted it for their own purposes. For all we know, the ship was both renamed and re-registered in that process, and no Daedalus originally carried a registry above NCC-190.

It would stand to reason that the early Starfleet would feature fewer ships than the later ones, and that the "progress" from NCC-189 to NCC-638 would take much longer than the "progress" from NCC-638 to NCC-2000. The registries could be more or less sequentially applied, then. Although there's no particular requirement for them to be applied in that manner, of course.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MatthiasRussell]

^ Excellent points. A recommissioning makes sense, as it even could for the high numbered Mirandas (but I think we put that topic to bed).

 

[MatthiasRussell]

^The credit for the Archer class's design goes to Masao Okazaki, who also designed the Vanguard starbase.

Thanks for the clarification. Excellent work, Mr Okazaki and kudos to Drexler and Mack for making it come alive.

Christopher, would you happen to know of a link where Okazaki lays out his sketches and creative process?

 

[Csalem]

^The credit for the Archer class's design goes to Masao Okazaki, who also designed the Vanguard starbase.

Thanks for the clarification. Excellent work, Mr Okazaki and kudos to Drexler and Mack for making it come alive.

Christopher, would you happen to know of a link where Okazaki lays out his sketches and creative process?

His website is here:
http://www.starfleet-museum.org/

 

[BrotherBenny]

Christopher, I was thinking more of the Olympus-class I think, which seemed to have an Oberth-style hull with the Daedalus-class sphere, but there's no reason that the Oberth could not have been designed by a Vulcan, Andorian, or Tellarite with the proviso that they keep the basic Starfleet design tenets. The Defiant-class starships are a compact and fairly radical design difference to the majority of other classes. Perhaps it was what was needed at the time.

I see no issue in having the Oberth come in perhaps the late twenty-second century or early twenty-third as pure science ships, but expanding their mission profiles as time went on.

 

[Christopher]

But there's no evidence in favor of it either. We've seen it as a design in use between the 2280s and 2360s. Granted that some starship classes have a long lifespan, but we don't see any 24th-century use of ship designs predating the 2280s. There are no Connies or Daedaluses or whatever class the Kelvin was in use in the 24th century, only later classes. So the preponderance of evidence is that the Oberth class is from the late 23rd century. There is no actual evidence to suggest otherwise, just unfounded conjecture. It would be strange if the Oberth were so old a class.

 

[BrotherBenny]

What if the prototype was made in the late 22nd/early 23rd but failed its shakedown and was mothballed until better tech came along. Then Starfleet pulled the ship out of mothballs, upgraded the tech inside and put it into the production?

 

[Christopher]

^Why bother to conjecture that at all? Because of a single 3-digit number? What's the point?

 

[BrotherBenny]

^Why bother to conjecture that at all? Because of a single 3-digit number? What's the point?

Because we can?

Seriously though, I like the challenge of coming with bizarre explanations for equally bizarre loopholes. Keeps me from going crazy.