TMP Refit - Why?

[Avro Arrow]

When I was goofing around with an informational Trek website over a decade ago I assumed the Miranda class went through an up grade too

You're not the only one to think this... some of the Star Trek novelists assumed the same thing. David Mack's Vanguard novel Harbinger had a pre-refit Miranda-class USS Bombay. And I'm not as sure about this one, but I think one of the old DC comics had a similar pre-refit Miranda-class USS Oxford. (Although I don't think the class of the Oxford was identified by name in the comic.)

 

[Nerys Myk]

When you compare the pilot Enterprise to the series Enterprise the ship probably had a slight refit or at least an upgrade to the bridge and nacelles.

 

[Praetor]

As for the Excelsiors and Mirandas not being refitted: Maybe Starfleet engine tech was relatively unchanged for a few decades. When the Ambassadors entered service it was such a hug leap forward, that the older ships couldn't be upgraded to the new engines.

Interesting notion. I'd long thought the opposite, that the technology had remained so unchanged that it allowed them to remain viable (and that for whatever reason, Starfleet didn't need many/any Constitutions to remain so long.) Your theory may actually make more sense. We never really did see one of the older ships keep up with the newer.

Well the ship was already a legend, from a PR stand point do you want to mothball a legend? or use it for target practice?

The WWII carrier Enterprise was unceremoniously scrapped, despite being one of only three pre-war carriers to survive and receiving 20 battle stars, more than any other American ship in the war. (In fact, she was the most decorated U.S. ship ever.) She even received a British Admiralty Pennant, the only ship outside the Royal Navy to receive one in the 400 years since its creation. There was desire to turn her into a museum, but the money just wasn't there.

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You're not the only one to think this... some of the Star Trek novelists assumed the same thing. David Mack's Vanguard novel Harbinger had a pre-refit Miranda-class USS Bombay. And I'm not as sure about this one, but I think one of the old DC comics had a similar pre-refit Miranda-class USS Oxford. (Although I don't think the class of the Oxford was identified by name in the comic.)

Ah yes, the Oxford, Kirk's first command. I enjoyed that story arc. I believe Kirk referred to her as a light cruiser.

 

[Garrovick]

A fairly obvious reason would be to circumvent the treaty with the Klingons. It's rather inevitable that such a treaty would have clauses on how many ships of a given type the two sides could have, and so forth. Pretending that an essentially all-new ship is a "refit" would no doubt allow Starfleet to exploit a loophole of some sort! Or, refitting could be for real, as Starfleet just plain wouldn't be allowed to build another heavy cruiser from keel up and would just have to make the best of the ships it already had - until the right moment came to break the treaty and start the war. Starfleet would feel much happier about starting the war with refitted rather than unrefitted ships...

Timo Saloniemi

This is somewhat similar to what happened with the US Navy after the Washington Treaty was signed between the major naval powers of the time in 1922... Prior to the treaty the US was building and commissioning roughly one new battleship a year, but this treaty but the brakes on that in order to avoid a global naval arms race. The US Navy couldn't build any new battleships (and had to decommission or stop construction on a few), but they could refit existing ones. So, during the late 1920s and the 1930's, they ended up refitting a lot of their older battleships, and many of them ended up with a very different external appearance afterwards. The treaty ended up getting discarded during the buildup to WW2 when it became clear that refitting ships wasn't going to cut it any more because the presumed enemy powers were building bigger and heavier ships.