They couldn't do some last minute kitbashing? It was an AMT model, I doubt they ever planned on using it again.
Constellation NCC-1017 Question
- Thread starter MapleJack
- Start date
The TOS staff was very small and already crunching budgets. It's very possible that they did not have time to do another 'class' for the Constellation (or many other ships) suitable for FX shots. They didn't have time to remake the Romulan Cruiser, after all, and it took them two years to make a Klingon Cruiser...
^ But it was only a model. Just a piece of plastic. They could have taken maybe ten seconds to swap some bits around.
And indeed many of the TOS ships look like the result of such an effort, even when they aren't based on a preexisting kit...
It's a curious case of skimping on imagination. One is tempted to think that some sort of a philosophy was chaining the people involved. Say, that Starfleet indeed only operates a dozen starships, total, and that the current generation of those is perfectly uniform. (Which as such makes little sense, because the writers did think that there had been starships before Kirk's time, and that there'd continue to be those after Kirk's time. What happened to the oldtimers and the whippersnappers?)
Timo Saloniemi
It's a curious case of skimping on imagination. One is tempted to think that some sort of a philosophy was chaining the people involved. Say, that Starfleet indeed only operates a dozen starships, total, and that the current generation of those is perfectly uniform. (Which as such makes little sense, because the writers did think that there had been starships before Kirk's time, and that there'd continue to be those after Kirk's time. What happened to the oldtimers and the whippersnappers?)
Timo Saloniemi
Take it from someone who does kitbashing of his own: it's easier and less time-consuming just to build the model as it was meant to be built, instead of trying to come up with some different design when it wasn't necessary to do so.
Plus, even for a model kit, the shots of the Constellation were closeups (instead of, per se, the DS9 kitbashes which were in the far background). Fiddling with the parts and putting them in places where they weren't designed to go would have made the model less believable-looking as a filming miniature.
Or, maybe kitbashing was simply an unfamiliar concept to them.
There weren't any attempts at another Starfleet design by Jefferies. But if there had been the main difference most likely would have been the nacelles. Jefferies was unhappy with the final nacelle design for the Enterprise, but hadn't had the time to come up with something better before the models were started. The next time he got a chance to apply himself to a design was with the Klingon Battle Cruiser (it is interesting that Wah Chang designed the Romulan Bird of Prey rather than Jefferies), which got most of the ideas he had been playing with since designing the Enterprise. And when Roddenberry asked him to revisit the Enterprise for Phase II, he finally got to apply those ideas to the Enterprise (which is why the Phase II Enterprise nacelles resemble the Klingon nacelles).
I don't know of any direct instructions not to make alternative designs, but throughout much of TOS other vessels were often talked about rather than shown. They went two seasons without showing a Klingon ship and we never saw the Gorn vessel, so they might have felt that it was best to leave these to the viewer's imagination (and it also helped with the budget). It seemed more likely that no one put any energy into playing with ideas for another design during production.
But yeah, I'd love to see even rough sketches of the ships not seen done by the production artists of TOS at the time that they were dealing with the stories. It would be interesting to know what they envisioned was being talked about in dialog.
After playing with the image a bit, yeah, that is 1685.
As for that 1864, as much as I play around with the pic, that's what I keep coming up with, so we've got a major flaw in Jein's estimate, at the very least, since we now have the Reliant showing up on that chart.
What we need is some kind soul with the Blu-Rays to isolate that part of the chart (best view is when Commodore Stone is checking the computer extract), really zoom in on that puppy, and get us a screencap.
It was supposed to be a heavily damaged and smashed ship to begin with! Messing with the pieces could hardly make it look worse...
I was talking about the AMT model kit, not the Tholian filming miniature. Adding nacelles to the Tholian ship is not kitbashing per se.
You're welcome to think what you want. I'm just telling you the reasons why I think it wasn't feasible.
They added parts from one model to another model. I would definitely consider that kitbashing.
Not quite. They built custom-made nacelles and struts; they didn't take them from another model. Just like when they added custom-made parts to the Excelsior to turn it into the Ent-B. That's not the same thing as kitbashing IMHO. I was referring to taking the parts that the AMT model already had and rearranging them in a different location. But if you want to argue semantics, then fine, it's a kitbash.
You can tell exactly which line on that chart his eyes are focused on???
When he says the line about Intreprid he's looking right at NCC-1631 on the chart. It's also the only ship on the chart marked as complete. (It even has the completion mark shown, though it's not in shot at the following sample
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Starbase11_chart.jpg
Wow, that's impressive.
Not really. What struck me about the scene was how blatant that particular take was, even a little forced. Commodore Stone very pointedly looked at that line before calling it in. Now, if it was scripted like that or not is open to question (I never got the script to THAT episode), but the shot seems oddly deliberately.
Some thoughts on this thread...
1: For all we know, "Unit XY-75847" could've been Starfleet's codename for Cyrano Jones, out spying for the Federation. There's no conclusive indication as to what that "unit" could be, whether you propose it be a ship, a station, or Maxwell Smart talking into his shoe phone for that matter. It could even be a codename for a workstation at a nearby starbase, where some tech is supposed to man a decoding station and report to an intel network.
2: Just because Stone looked at his wall roster doesn't mean he consulted it to see the specific status of the Intrepid. He could have been thinking about the status of several starships at once, and maybe the Intrepid was not even listed on that roster. Also: we never saw any kind of dock in all of TOS.
3: If you go strictly by the "on screen" canon content of TOS and nothing else, there was only one type of Federation starship-of-the-line: the Starship Class. "Constitution Class" was visually noted on a display screen, but no character ever spoke the name "Constitution" or expressly mentioned any kind of ship class nomenclature.
4: The only Federation starship-of-the-line configuration shown in TOS was the saucer-and-cigars arrangement we identify as the Enterprise and her sisterships Constellation, Excalibur, Potemkin, Lexington, Hood, Exeter and Defiant. It is fairly easy to retcon these ships as all being members of the Constitution class, if you accept the conception of starships being members of a starship class named Constitution. There is no express spoken reference by Kirk or any other characters in TOS to this concept.
5: it has been noted that more than one model has been used to represent the Starship Enterprise in TOS, and that the models used are not all physically identical. We can retcon from TMP that the Enterprise had undergone multiple refits/repairs over the years, thus explaining significant changes in her appearance. It has also been noted by other posters in different threads on TrekBBS that the AMT model used to depict the 1017 Constellation used in "The Doomsday Machine" appears to have some differences with the other aforementioned Enterprise models. (Color me surprised!
)
Could it be that, if we accept that there is such a thing as a starship class (possibly called Constitution), and that Enterprise, Exeter, Lexington, Excalibur, Hood, Potemkin, and Defiant are all designated members of this group for whatever organizational reason (possibly sharing the same design, but not conclusive), and perhaps Intrepid, Constellation and Republic could all be similarly configured starships-of-the-line, but that these three were refit from an earlier, less-advanced class of starship?
If the registry numbers have anything even remotely to do with when a ship was built, obviously 1017 Constellation and 1371 Republic could be refits from some earlier class. Perhaps the same could be said of 1631 Intrepid as well. It would not seem to be out of the question that these three vessels, and possibly others in TOS, could have been built in an era predating the Constitution. They could also have been refit/rebuilt/recycled to become "Connies" in the mid-2260s.
1: For all we know, "Unit XY-75847" could've been Starfleet's codename for Cyrano Jones, out spying for the Federation. There's no conclusive indication as to what that "unit" could be, whether you propose it be a ship, a station, or Maxwell Smart talking into his shoe phone for that matter. It could even be a codename for a workstation at a nearby starbase, where some tech is supposed to man a decoding station and report to an intel network.
2: Just because Stone looked at his wall roster doesn't mean he consulted it to see the specific status of the Intrepid. He could have been thinking about the status of several starships at once, and maybe the Intrepid was not even listed on that roster. Also: we never saw any kind of dock in all of TOS.
3: If you go strictly by the "on screen" canon content of TOS and nothing else, there was only one type of Federation starship-of-the-line: the Starship Class. "Constitution Class" was visually noted on a display screen, but no character ever spoke the name "Constitution" or expressly mentioned any kind of ship class nomenclature.
4: The only Federation starship-of-the-line configuration shown in TOS was the saucer-and-cigars arrangement we identify as the Enterprise and her sisterships Constellation, Excalibur, Potemkin, Lexington, Hood, Exeter and Defiant. It is fairly easy to retcon these ships as all being members of the Constitution class, if you accept the conception of starships being members of a starship class named Constitution. There is no express spoken reference by Kirk or any other characters in TOS to this concept.
5: it has been noted that more than one model has been used to represent the Starship Enterprise in TOS, and that the models used are not all physically identical. We can retcon from TMP that the Enterprise had undergone multiple refits/repairs over the years, thus explaining significant changes in her appearance. It has also been noted by other posters in different threads on TrekBBS that the AMT model used to depict the 1017 Constellation used in "The Doomsday Machine" appears to have some differences with the other aforementioned Enterprise models. (Color me surprised!
)Could it be that, if we accept that there is such a thing as a starship class (possibly called Constitution), and that Enterprise, Exeter, Lexington, Excalibur, Hood, Potemkin, and Defiant are all designated members of this group for whatever organizational reason (possibly sharing the same design, but not conclusive), and perhaps Intrepid, Constellation and Republic could all be similarly configured starships-of-the-line, but that these three were refit from an earlier, less-advanced class of starship?
If the registry numbers have anything even remotely to do with when a ship was built, obviously 1017 Constellation and 1371 Republic could be refits from some earlier class. Perhaps the same could be said of 1631 Intrepid as well. It would not seem to be out of the question that these three vessels, and possibly others in TOS, could have been built in an era predating the Constitution. They could also have been refit/rebuilt/recycled to become "Connies" in the mid-2260s.
I'd rather go with Occam's Razor.
1. It's been shown a multitude of times that ships from the same class can look different (i.e. Excelsior vs. Ent-B, Reliant vs. Lantree vs. Saratoga, Ent-D vs. Venture, etc.). Why is it so hard for people to accept that the Constellation and the Enterprise are the same class of ship just because there were a few minute differences between the filming model and the model kit?
2. Just because the Constellation's registry is 1017, why is there a need to justify it being a different class or a refit of an older class, when we don't even know the class ship's registry? As Shaw pointed out, there is zero canonical evidence that the U.S.S. Constitution's registry is 1700. For all we know, the registry is NCC-900.
3. Or perhaps registries simply aren't fine-pointedly chronological.
1. It's been shown a multitude of times that ships from the same class can look different (i.e. Excelsior vs. Ent-B, Reliant vs. Lantree vs. Saratoga, Ent-D vs. Venture, etc.). Why is it so hard for people to accept that the Constellation and the Enterprise are the same class of ship just because there were a few minute differences between the filming model and the model kit?
2. Just because the Constellation's registry is 1017, why is there a need to justify it being a different class or a refit of an older class, when we don't even know the class ship's registry? As Shaw pointed out, there is zero canonical evidence that the U.S.S. Constitution's registry is 1700. For all we know, the registry is NCC-900.
3. Or perhaps registries simply aren't fine-pointedly chronological.
Of course, these could be taken together to indicate that every starship-of-the-line is by designation Starship class, and within that class there exist things like Constitution class and Saladin class.
OTOH, it's perfectly okay to speak of battleship-class vessels as an umbrella term for "proper" battleships, dreadnoughts, armored ships and battle cruisers.
Or of town-class ships if all of them are named after towns. Perhaps all of the ships in this particular class were named after previous starships? Of course, the many Town classes or Tribal classes or County classes or Duke classes in Royal Navy have been sort of "informal", not engraved into dedication plaques even if regularly referred to in written material.
Then again, we did hear of starship Archon, and we have no reason to think she was of the same design as the hero ship; indeed, the point of the drama was that she was an older vessel. We also heard of the Intrepid, a starship with a different crew count from the hero ship. There wasn't any particular effort to establish that Starfleet is devoid of competing starship designs, really. There was just the budgetary limitation preventing the showing of competing types.
We do have this from "Doomsday Machine":
But it takes a special kind of mind to read that as indicating that there is only one allowed shape for starships during that episode. "Configuration" can cover a wide range of variants. Just consider the obvious aesthetic-technological commonality between Kirk and Khan's ships in ST2... Their common configuration sets them well apart from the various alien vessels of the era.
Timo Saloniemi
Yes and no. On the surface, it's silly and redundant. But in the TOS setting, it can work. Merrick has a line in "Bread and Circuses", when talking with the Proconsul about Kirk, that goes something like "Not just a spaceship but a starship, a very special vessel". I know the quote isn't exact but you get the point.
