Which 12 Constitution class starships in "Tomorrow is Yesterday"?

The other 30 members of the Intrepid's crew were non-Vulcans.

 

HAHAH! The easiest answer! Bravo.

 

It's in a box in my garage if not misplaced in the last moving. I'll have to check.

 

One other thing to consider is that athe only 12 like her in the fleet would only be accurate at the time he made it, some might have been lost (not-mentioned) off screen, new ones been built etc..

 

It's been pointed out on this board before that there are physical differences between the the shooting model used on the show (the one in the Smithsonian) and the AMT model kit used for the Constellation. Differences in dimensions.

Coupled with a radically different NCC number the argument could be made that the Constellation is not the same class ship as the Enterprise.

Kirk almost walked past the auxiliary control room that he was looking for, suggesting that it wasn't in the same place as the ACR on the Enterprise.

 

Where did you get that ratio from?

I've heard this argument before, and I think it's nonsense. Yes, there are minute physical differences, but that's because it's a model kit, not because the differences were created to specifically suggest a different class of ship. It was meant to represent whatever type of ship the Enterprise was. As for the registry, it was what it was because the guy who put it on probably didn't give a crap what the numbers read.

 

^ And also because NCC-1710 would have looked too much like 1701. At least on the TV sets of the day.

 

1) "...not because the differences were created to specifically suggest a different class of ship..."

Apparently true. There was no evident intent to that effect. Or to any other effect, for that matter.

2) "...it was meant to represent whatever type of ship the Enterprise was..."

That's nonsense, too. It was meant to be a starship, is all. It would have cost money to attempt to build a starship that looked different; at the very least, there would have been the risk of having to buy two ATM kits for experimentation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Timo and Dukhat - allow me to clarify my position. In "exact round number" I took that to mean a number rounded off to the nearest 10 - be that 430, 400, 370 or whatever. There are never more than ten whole numbers between a number ending in "0" and another number ending in "0". Hence the odds of 1/10

 

I'm late to the party, today. Allow me to look at some historical facts (from The Making of Star Trek, September 1968).

On August 8, 1967, D.C. Fontana wrote to Gene Roddenberry: "Dear Gene: We have, in the course of a season and a half, established that Star Fleet includes 12 ships of the starship class." ...

One day later Bob Justman wrote back: "Dear Gene: [D.C. Fontana] suggests that we establish the names of the 12 ships of the Enterprise Starship Class." ...

I have always taken Bob Justman's reply as a subtle correction of Fontana's incomplete statement. He probably knew that Matt Jefferies had intended the Enterprise to be "the first bird", "the first in the series" and therefore, IMO, the commissioning plaque says (USS) Enterprise Starship Class.

However, in the chapter "Mission and Men" it says:

The Enterprise is a member of the Starship Class (there are twelve of them) Registry Number NCC-1701. Starship class vessels are the largest and most powerful man-made ships in space. ... The Enterprise-class starships have been in existence ...

I respect the creators' intentions, so it was either "Starship Class", "Enterprise Class" or "Enterprise Starship Class".

That term appeared first on the small print of the primary phaser chematic, intended for "Space Seed" (as one of several starship manuals Khan studied!) and on the screen Scotty studied in "The Trouble With Tribbles".

In TNG that was Picard's reaction to the onscreen display in "The Naked Time" (which could have been the schematic of NCC-1701-A, definitely "Constitution Class" according to ST VI-TUC).

Next, Picard identified the holodeck bridge recreation in "Relics" as one belonging to a Constitution Class starship.

Where it gets interesting is this: After Scotty had specified "NCC-1701" the computer didn't ask for additional details like Pike's NCC-1701, Kirk's NCC-1701, Decker's NCC-1701 or Spock's NCC-1701.

The way I see it, all the computer had to offer was a holodeck bridge recreation of a Constitution Class starship, actually the one in the Starfleet museum. You can instantly spot several details that make it clear that this was not the bridge of Kirk's Enterprise NCC-1701.

According to the "Jefferies Nomenclature" the Enterprise was the first ship of the 17th Federation cruiser design, thus it would follow that all starships with a prefix of "17" belong to the Enterprise Starship Class.

But according to the starship status chart in "Court Martial" we do have starships that have a prefix of "16" which, IMHO, indicates Constitution Starship Class.

Who makes the statement about the crew complement of the Intrepid in "The Immunity Syndrome"? That was Spock, and I for one wouldn't doubt the accuracy of his statement and take it as canon that the Intrepid only had a crew of 400.

Quite possible the explanation is rather simple: Standard crew complement of Constitution Starship Class is 400, standard crew complement of Enterprise Starship Class is 428. YMMV.

Bob

 

What did the kit cost in the 1960's?

A whole 95¢?

"In-universe" I think it holds a lot of water.

 

That was half the SFX budget.

 

The kit originally sold for $2.00 (about $14 in today's dollars).

I know -- I built at least half a dozen. Most of them with droopy nacelles.

 

If logic must apply, you must be correct: How can the Constellation have been a Constitution class ship when it has a lower registry number?

 

Keep in mind Kirk says there are "only twelve ships like (the Enterprise)". He doesn't say there are only "twelve ships exactly the same as the Enterprise." But those twelve ships can all still be the collection of twelve starships even if they have variations in design, however subtle.

Maybe part of Decker's calculus of attacking the planet killer a second time is that the Enterprise was a newer and more capable ship than his own, thereby giving a better chance of success.... or maybe he was just obsessively mad (crazy, even ) and would have attacked if the Enterprise were a rowboat.

 

That's what it looked like to me. The engine room had interesting differences compared to the one of the Enterprise, and then there was this report:

WASHBURN: We made a complete check on structural and control damage, sir. As far as we can tell, something crashed through the deflectors and knocked out the generators. Somehow the antimatter in the warp drive pods has been deactivated.

The Enterprise had antimatter in the warp nacelles ("warp drive pods"?), too, but by Season Three she also seemed to have a third matter-antimatter reactor in the engineering hull ("That Which Survives", "Day of the Dove").

So I believe she was slightly more advanced than the Constellation.

Bob

 

Strictly speaking, why should starships' numbers have to be in order?

We have absolutely no idea what system Starfleet uses to assign numbers to ships. (For all we know, they HAVE no system, and it's basically random.)

 

********

SFAF COMMAND
FROM STARFLEET HEADQUARTERS
TO ALL SHIPYARDS, ALL SECTORS
SD 1016.2

DO NOT ESTABLISH STARFLEET VESSEL REGISTRY NUMBERS THAT ALLOW FOREIGN POWERS TO EXTRAPOLATE OUR OVERALL FLEET STRENGTH BASED SIMPLY ON OBVIOUS VESSEL NUMBERING. OPERATIONS SHALL INSURE THE SAFETY AND INTEGRITY OF FLEET ASSETS. RANDOM VESSEL NUMBERING SHALL BE APPLIED TO ALL VESSELS OF THE FOLLOWING CLASSES:

BDR
NAR
NCC
NX

LEGACY VESSEL REGISTRY NUMBERS PRIOR TO THE EFFECTIVE STARDATE OF THIS INSTRUCTION SHALL NEVERTHELESS BE RETAINED.

END COMMUNICATION

 

Starship registries should be in order because it's logical and convenient. Not that Starfleet must actually do it, as evidenced by the Constellation being NCC-1017 or by how in another century Starfleet vessels are all the way in the 70000s.

 

That's what the fans might say, but Starfleet might have entirely unrelated reasons why it might order its registry numbers a certain way (assuming they are in any order at all).