Did Starfleet discontinue building Galaxy-class?

[Timo]

The Defiant was unofficially a war-ship. It was designed with battle in mind and to practically match large ships in terms of firepower.

Actually, we only know she was specifically built to help defeat the Borg. This might call for special weapons rather than sheer firepower, and might in fact put the ship at a disadvantage against conventional starships. This episode merely proves the disadvantage was not crippling...

If you recall, Voyager essentially behaved like a downsized Galaxy class.

Well, every starship does, including the Defiant and the runabouts.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Indeed.
We know that the Defiant was designed with the idea of fighting and defeating the Borg - of course one would probably have to output a large amount of power through the modified weapons so you can actually deliver crippling blows faster - but this only goes to show that SF was able to make smaller ships like the Defiant as powerful as larger ships (not more so) by sacrificing certain amenities for the crew (of which, the Defiant has none, and the Intrepid can get away with some because of it's larger size).

To that end, the Defiant (much like the Intrepid) was essentially on-par with larger ships in terms of firepower (it was mentioned to be 'overpowered' for it's size - which can also mean that packing capital ships power generation/output into smaller ships was unconventional practice for SF - but seems to be the direction it went to post Wolf 359).

 

[anh165]

IMO, the Defiant was just an unimaginative Millennium falcon knock-off to appease young boys into watching the show which was flagging, to the Trekker, it did not 'trek' as you cannot trek with a space station and the modern viewer (in the mid 1990's sort of way) wanted clean politically correct violence over mystery and adventure.

There is nothing special about the Defiant, other than it having hero ship status that beats the bad guy of the week. The Klingons and Romulans been building small combat vessels for centuries and why aren't we seeing them shooting down larger federation ships on a regular basis if we were to use the technical reasoning behind what makes the Defiant a ship killer?

It is all good for fanboys dreaming up cool and macho in-universe reasons to justify why their so called 'warship' can beat anything, and beat some old overrated 23rd century barge , I just look at the blinking obvious thing - that is the show's frugal and unimaginative use of an old ship as the selected villain of the week just to make the millennium falcon knock-off look cool.

 

[Knight Templar]

IMO, the Defiant was just an unimaginative Millennium falcon knock-off to appease young boys into watching the show which was flagging, to the Trekker, it did not 'trek' as you cannot trek with a space station and the modern viewer (in the mid 1990's sort of way) wanted clean politically correct violence over mystery and adventure.

There is nothing special about the Defiant, other than it having hero ship status that beats the bad guy of the week. The Klingons and Romulans been building small combat vessels for centuries and why aren't we seeing them shooting down larger federation ships on a regular basis if we were to use the technical reasoning behind what makes the Defiant a ship killer?

It is all good for fanboys dreaming up cool and macho in-universe reasons to justify why their so called 'warship' can beat anything, and beat some old overrated 23rd century barge , I just look at the blinking obvious thing - that is the show's frugal and unimaginative use of an old ship as the selected villain of the week just to make the millennium falcon knock-off look cool.

One huge reason the Defiant was introduced to Deep Space Nine was that the Runabout sets were a major problem to shoot scenes in due to their confined nature.

Also for dramatic reasons as it was unreasonable with the Dominion being introduced for the DS9 crew to sit around on the station awaiting an assault.

Someone back in the day (during the series) said the Defiant was clearly something akin to a "pocket battleship with full thickness armor", harkening back to the German pocket battleships of World War II.

The German pocket battleships were basically battlecruiser class weapons on a heavy cruiser hull. A few very big guns on a relatively small hull. Now, pocket battleships (like battlecruisers) were not heavily armored, which is why the point about the Defiant having "full thickness armor" being relevant.

It was always clear to me that the reason Starfleet did not build small warships like the Klingons was that they never accepted the high fatality rates associated with them. But with the coming of the Borg, and the tendency of the Borg to focus on one target at a time, it makes more sense to churn out dozens of Defiants which could swarm a Borg ship en masse.

 

[Search4]

Back to the topic... there's no canon evidence, of course, but the idea of using the Galaxy class as long-range family-friendly explorers seems reasonable to me. "mobile starbase". The question is whether Starfleet is targeting such missions.

 

[Knight Templar]

Back to the topic... there's no canon evidence, of course, but the idea of using the Galaxy class as long-range family-friendly explorers seems reasonable to me. "mobile starbase". The question is whether Starfleet is targeting such missions.

Not canon either but in one of the ST:TNG novels Captain Picard mentions that families of crew members were specifically added to the Galaxy class to cause captains of the ships to be reluctant to take them into combat situations.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Back to the topic... there's no canon evidence, of course, but the idea of using the Galaxy class as long-range family-friendly explorers seems reasonable to me. "mobile starbase". The question is whether Starfleet is targeting such missions.

Not canon either but in one of the ST:TNG novels Captain Picard mentions that families of crew members were specifically added to the Galaxy class to cause captains of the ships to be reluctant to take them into combat situations.

The canonical way to get around that was for those captains to evacuate passengers and other non-combat personnel to the saucer section, detach it, and then go into combat situations in the stardrive section.

 

[Knight Templar]

Back to the topic... there's no canon evidence, of course, but the idea of using the Galaxy class as long-range family-friendly explorers seems reasonable to me. "mobile starbase". The question is whether Starfleet is targeting such missions.

Not canon either but in one of the ST:TNG novels Captain Picard mentions that families of crew members were specifically added to the Galaxy class to cause captains of the ships to be reluctant to take them into combat situations.

The canonical way to get around that was for those captains to evacuate passengers and other non-combat personnel to the saucer section, detach it, and then go into combat situations in the stardrive section.

That is one of those instances of "capability without practicality".

Like American aircraft carriers being able to launch and land aircraft at the same time. It can be done but it isn't practical and thus is rare at best.

Because as we saw of Star Trek, most combat situations (aside from a real war like the one with the Dominion) can't be predicted. If you can't predict and choose your battles the entire "detach the saucer" thing is pointless.

At any rate, we know from behind the scene material that the "detachable saucer" concept was only used when an earlier "detachable battleship" idea became impractical for dramatic reasons.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Not canon either but in one of the ST:TNG novels Captain Picard mentions that families of crew members were specifically added to the Galaxy class to cause captains of the ships to be reluctant to take them into combat situations.

The canonical way to get around that was for those captains to evacuate passengers and other non-combat personnel to the saucer section, detach it, and then go into combat situations in the stardrive section.

That is one of those instances of "capability without practicality".

Like American aircraft carriers being able to launch and land aircraft at the same time. It can be done but it isn't practical and thus is rare at best.

Because as we saw of Star Trek, most combat situations (aside from a real war like the one with the Dominion) can't be predicted. If you can't predict and choose your battles the entire "detach the saucer" thing is pointless.

Actually, it would indeed be used in a "choose your battle" situation (and likely intended for no other situation). In instances in which that is not the case, then it would be no different if a frontier starbase or colony was suddenly attacked.

 

[Knight Templar]

The canonical way to get around that was for those captains to evacuate passengers and other non-combat personnel to the saucer section, detach it, and then go into combat situations in the stardrive section.

That is one of those instances of "capability without practicality".

Like American aircraft carriers being able to launch and land aircraft at the same time. It can be done but it isn't practical and thus is rare at best.

Because as we saw of Star Trek, most combat situations (aside from a real war like the one with the Dominion) can't be predicted. If you can't predict and choose your battles the entire "detach the saucer" thing is pointless.

Actually, it would indeed be used in a "choose your battle" situation (and likely intended for no other situation). In instances in which that is not the case, then it would be no different if a frontier starbase or colony was suddenly attacked.

In all likelihood though, despite what we see sometimes, most colonies and starbases are deliberately located in minimal threat locations if possible (or at least out of obvious lines of fire).

Most colonies dangers would likely be internal ones.

Likewise, planet bound colonies and planet bound starbases have obvious "flight to safety" options.

 

[C.E. Evans]

That is one of those instances of "capability without practicality".

Like American aircraft carriers being able to launch and land aircraft at the same time. It can be done but it isn't practical and thus is rare at best.

Because as we saw of Star Trek, most combat situations (aside from a real war like the one with the Dominion) can't be predicted. If you can't predict and choose your battles the entire "detach the saucer" thing is pointless.

Actually, it would indeed be used in a "choose your battle" situation (and likely intended for no other situation). In instances in which that is not the case, then it would be no different if a frontier starbase or colony was suddenly attacked.

In all likelihood though, despite what we see sometimes, most colonies and starbases are deliberately located in minimal threat locations if possible (or at least out of obvious lines of fire).

Most colonies dangers would likely be internal ones.

Seems like quite a few colonies and outposts in Trek found themselves at attacked (if not outright destroyed) by hostile forces. A number of them with no survivors.

 

[Knight Templar]

Actually, it would indeed be used in a "choose your battle" situation (and likely intended for no other situation). In instances in which that is not the case, then it would be no different if a frontier starbase or colony was suddenly attacked.

In all likelihood though, despite what we see sometimes, most colonies and starbases are deliberately located in minimal threat locations if possible (or at least out of obvious lines of fire).

Most colonies dangers would likely be internal ones.

Seems like quite a few colonies and outposts in Trek found themselves at attacked (if not outright destroyed) by hostile forces. A number of them with no survivors.

Yes.

But were the located in what was thought to be safe locations?

Cestus III for example. Prior to its destruction, no one had even heard of the Gorn. Much less that they were hostile or were likely to attack. The sole survivor (that we know of) said flat out that they never expected any kind of attack.

Spock later says that aside from some "scattered transmissions" nothing is known of the region regarding other races.

 

[MacLeod]

IMO, the Defiant was just an unimaginative Millennium falcon knock-off to appease young boys into watching the show which was flagging, to the Trekker, it did not 'trek' as you cannot trek with a space station and the modern viewer (in the mid 1990's sort of way) wanted clean politically correct violence over mystery and adventure.

There is nothing special about the Defiant, other than it having hero ship status that beats the bad guy of the week. The Klingons and Romulans been building small combat vessels for centuries and why aren't we seeing them shooting down larger federation ships on a regular basis if we were to use the technical reasoning behind what makes the Defiant a ship killer?

It is all good for fanboys dreaming up cool and macho in-universe reasons to justify why their so called 'warship' can beat anything, and beat some old overrated 23rd century barge , I just look at the blinking obvious thing - that is the show's frugal and unimaginative use of an old ship as the selected villain of the week just to make the millennium falcon knock-off look cool.

Want viewers want is quality entertainment, whether that be political (The West Wing), Mystery, Adventure etc..

Also Star Trek isn't just about 'Trekking to strange new worlds'.

As for why the Klingon's don't build smaller combat vessels like the Defiant, or why theres can't compete.

1.>Federation ships have better shields.

2.>They don't have the technology to do so.

3.>Lack of neccessary resources (i.e materials needed to fabricate those parts are scarce in the regions they control)

I'm sure I could come up with others if I gave it some more thought

So the USS Voyager, which could beat ships which easily outclassed it wasn't to make it look cool?

 

[Knight Templar]

[ it wasn't to make it look cool?

To me, Voyager looked horrendous. Like a forward heavy childs toy.

 

[C.E. Evans]

In all likelihood though, despite what we see sometimes, most colonies and starbases are deliberately located in minimal threat locations if possible (or at least out of obvious lines of fire).

Most colonies dangers would likely be internal ones.

Seems like quite a few colonies and outposts in Trek found themselves at attacked (if not outright destroyed) by hostile forces. A number of them with no survivors.

Yes.

But were the located in what was thought to be safe locations?

Some were located along the Neutral Zone--not exactly the safest place in the Galaxy. But in the end, is any place in the final frontier truly safe? Not even Earth has gone without being attacked. Heck, Vulcan wound up even being destroyed in one reality.

 

[Gagarin]

^Obviously those were intended to be near the border to be bases.

As far as the colonies, well, that's the frontier for you. Eventually you end up homesteading in dangerous places - hedging your bets.

 

[anh165]

Want viewers want is quality entertainment, whether that be political (The West Wing), Mystery, Adventure etc..

Also Star Trek isn't just about 'Trekking to strange new worlds'.

So what is it about??? You saying Star Trek has actually become greater from Gene Roddenberry's concept of humans growing by exploration, adventure and learning of the universe to the repeated use of spaceships shooting purple and green alien space ships week in week out?

As for why the Klingon's don't build smaller combat vessels like the Defiant, or why theres can't compete.

1.>Federation ships have better shields.

2.>They don't have the technology to do so.

3.>Lack of neccessary resources (i.e materials needed to fabricate those parts are scarce in the regions they control)

I'm sure I could come up with others if I gave it some more thought

So the USS Voyager, which could beat ships which easily outclassed it wasn't to make it look cool?

Are you 15 years old or something? The point is they could have used *anything* as the hero ship to beat the alien bad guys in each episode, and come up with some silly technical "canon" reason why it could.

And there lies the problem ..... you can't just make up some theory like "Federation ships have better shields" to cover up the why a small Federation ship is mysteriously more dangerous than any larger ship in the ST universe, especially when the Klingon's who are a race who thrive on war been making small war ships since the TMP era.

So what this simply boils down to is the Defiant wins and beats anything because the ST DS9 producers wanted a hero ship that they think looks cool. Stuff that shoots things appeals to boys who aren't interested in sci-fi, they just want to see things get blown up.

 

[anh165]

One huge reason the Defiant was introduced to Deep Space Nine was that the Runabout sets were a major problem to shoot scenes in due to their confined nature.

Also for dramatic reasons as it was unreasonable with the Dominion being introduced for the DS9 crew to sit around on the station awaiting an assault.

Someone back in the day (during the series) said the Defiant was clearly something akin to a "pocket battleship with full thickness armor", harkening back to the German pocket battleships of World War II.

The German pocket battleships were basically battlecruiser class weapons on a heavy cruiser hull. A few very big guns on a relatively small hull. Now, pocket battleships (like battlecruisers) were not heavily armored, which is why the point about the Defiant having "full thickness armor" being relevant.

It was always clear to me that the reason Starfleet did not build small warships like the Klingons was that they never accepted the high fatality rates associated with them. But with the coming of the Borg, and the tendency of the Borg to focus on one target at a time, it makes more sense to churn out dozens of Defiants which could swarm a Borg ship en masse.

Starfleet always suffered serious threats, some even more potential harm greater than the Borg ever could inflict. The problem with the Borg is that they were dumbed down to the proverbial lumbering giant of the franchise - so they it could be 'shot' down by our little so called heroes.

Outwitting, out-reasoning your enemies isn't the way to beat the so-called Omnipotent baddy - let's just spam it with small laser-shootin fighter craft like they do in Star wars!


This allows the perfect excuse for producers to come up with wizzy little spacecrafts to excite boys like McLeod and Ian.

The human race in the TOS era was supposed to be a huge step away from what we know and what we understand as a society and race. The TNG era was also a huge step forward from what the human race (Federation) were in the TOS era - should Starfleet or the Federation be able to deal with problems without having to shoot at it?? Have the human race not learned and grown beyond 20th century methods of conflict resolution of building craft with big guns. Why is it in the scene of the late 24th century do you need to see crappy unoriginal looking space ships that do nothing but shoot aliens every week?

The Enterprise - be this the TOS Connie class or the Galaxy class wasn't about shooting things to look cool. It was about bringing us into the unknown (or whatever the writers believed would be of interest) and allowing our human heroes to face and deal with the unexpected.

 

[MacLeod]

Want viewers want is quality entertainment, whether that be political (The West Wing), Mystery, Adventure etc..

Also Star Trek isn't just about 'Trekking to strange new worlds'.

So what is it about??? You saying Star Trek has actually become greater from Gene Roddenberry's concept of humans growing by exploration, adventure and learning of the universe to the repeated use of spaceships shooting purple and green alien space ships week in week out?

As for why the Klingon's don't build smaller combat vessels like the Defiant, or why theres can't compete.

1.>Federation ships have better shields.

2.>They don't have the technology to do so.

3.>Lack of neccessary resources (i.e materials needed to fabricate those parts are scarce in the regions they control)

I'm sure I could come up with others if I gave it some more thought

So the USS Voyager, which could beat ships which easily outclassed it wasn't to make it look cool?

Are you 15 years old or something? The point is they could have used *anything* as the hero ship to beat the alien bad guys in each episode, and come up with some silly technical "canon" reason why it could.

And there lies the problem ..... you can't just make up some theory like "Federation ships have better shields" to cover up the why a small Federation ship is mysteriously more dangerous than any larger ship in the ST universe, especially when the Klingon's who are a race who thrive on war been making small war ships since the TMP era.

So what this simply boils down to is the Defiant wins and beats anything because the ST DS9 producers wanted a hero ship that they think looks cool. Stuff that shoots things appeals to boys who aren't interested in sci-fi, they just want to see things get blown up.

That same argument works not just for the Defiant but for the Enterprise's and Voyager.

 

[MatthiasRussell]

As Christopher point out in the Galaxy Class thread in the tek lit board, the Galaxy class was designed to be a research vessel, not a front line ship. I can see them still being useful as mobile research stations for many years but I always found their being placed in Dominion line battles as silly. As for whether or not it is a safe place for a family, as was said, any location on the frontier or even on core worlds may not be safe. In some cases, having your children on a Galaxy class would be safer than on a starbase.

Galaxies are still used often in Trek lit but I can't see Galaxies having a large production run.