Connie - TOS canon nomenclature

[J.T.B.]

@ J.T.B.

I don't need to assume what the first two registry digits stand for, because the creator of the Enterprise, Walter Matt Jefferies made that obvious in his TOS pre-production sketch, IMHO:

http://www.trekcore.com/specials/albums/sketches/STTOS_Sketch_EnterpriseConcept17Cruiser.jpg


And for the context of TOS and into the first films it works perfectly (Constellation notwithstanding, plausible rationalizations possible):

17th design series - Enterprise Class
18th design series - Miranda Class
19h design series - Soyuz Class
20th design series - Excelsior Class

That was obviously written before anyone knew that "NCC plus number" would be applied to all types of Starfleet ships. You bring in the movies as support, but the movies prove it wrong: The NCC 1700s can't mean the 17th cruiser design because a 500 was a scout (Revere) and a 600 was a science vessel (Grissom).

Was "J-class" shown on any display? If not, maybe Mendez was using a common 'nickname' for the class. Perhaps it was a "Jester class", or a "Jackal class," or a "Juan-Carlos class," or a "Juniper class," or a "Jiffy-Pop class," etc.....

Or it could be a class of ships whose names all began with J like the British J-class destroyers (Jackal, Jaguar, Javelin, Juno etc).

 

[Nerys Myk]

I read it about 40 years ago. How exactly does that relate to common practices of TV production? We are talking about a TV show, right?

I have no problems whatsoever if the original creators for whatever reasons make a premise change. It's their baby, their prerogative and privilege. The problem I'm having - obviously - is the apparent prominent methodology many Star Trek fans apply defining canon, i.e. it's not the revision (usually by others than the original creators) that requires rationalization (and can often be attributed to lackluster research efforts or bias or worse) but the original premise that has been altered.

The dystopian world of 1984 describes how people are systematically deprived of their knowledge of history by having that history constantly rewritten and altered. Captain Kirk is a kind of hero. Who's to say that the next production in "our" fictional universe doesn't turn him into a despicable child killer (that's what happened with Darth Vader): "The new supersedes the old"

Thus, considering Star Trek promotes utopian ethics, applying dystopian methodology in our pseudoscientific treknological rationalization efforts somehow doesn't look compatible to say the least.


Regarding the Memory Alpha quote you provided, it has been written by Memory Alpha contributors / fans which is as relevant as Greg Jein's original treatise where the Enterprise became a Constitution Class starship to make his pet theory work.

The phaser schematic remains inconclusive. This is the part these fans use to arrive at their conclusion:

KHAN: Captain, I wonder if I could have something to read during my convalescence. I was once an engineer of sorts. I would be most interested in studying the technical manuals on your vessel.

And here is the scene (featuring the phaser schematic!) these fans prefer to ignore:

KHAN: I've been reading up on starships, but they have one luxury not mentioned in the manuals.

Khan is studying more than just the manual of the Enterprise, he is reading the manuals of other starships as well (obviously including the Constitution Class).

And how do we know that Enterprise doesn't belong to the Constitution Class? Because the creators refer in The Making of Star Trek - written after "Space Seed" - twice to the "Enterprise [Starship] Class" and not to a "Constitution Class".

Repeat after me: Its A TV Show. New people are hired and their ideas will take precedence over the old people. When Gene Coon came in he changed or ignored some of the ideas of his predecessors. Should Coon's ideas be dismissed?

Jefferies did some great design work on the series, but his job was art director and production designer, so his notes on the ship's class or registry aren't quite the same as the producers or writers, especially pre-production notes. At best they were suggestions.

(The sound of treknologists sharpening stakes and gathering firewood with shouts of "burn the heretic!")

I would guess that it was Matt Jefferies who's department designed the graphics calling the Enterprise a Constitution class ship. That would be an actual production drawing done a request/need of the writers and producers, yes? Shouldn't that trump everything else? Could Jefferies change his mind?

I am curious, when you mention TMOST, are you referring to what Whitfield wrote or quotes from the "creators"?

No none is rewriting history here. Were talking about the evolution of a TV show not the grinding boot of totalitarianism stamping out the history they disapprove of.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

The dystopian world of 1984 describes how people are systematically deprived of their knowledge of history by having that history constantly rewritten and altered. Captain Kirk is a kind of hero. Who's to say that the next production in "our" fictional universe doesn't turn him into a despicable child killer (that's what happened with Darth Vader): "The new supersedes the old"

I'm with you. I really hated Vader's disgusting character assassination by having him kill the Younglings in the Jedi Temple in Revenge of the Sith.

Up until then Anakin/Vader was still a big, lovable lunkhead who had only choked a bunch of minions and POWs to death, burned some unarmed elderly farmers and junk dealing Munchkins to a crisp, tortured prisoners (including his daughter and her boyfriend, but it's okay because he didn't know it was his daughter at the time), cut off his son's hand and tried to murder him, turned people into popsicles, killed countless teddy bears, murdered a village of nomads... and I'm forgetting something... Oh yeah, blew up a planet full of hundreds of millions of innocent people because a couple of them were Rebels. You know, that ole' chestnut.

However, if we use your method of extending minor background references into major changes, Bail Organa and his wife were biologically childless, which clearly must mean no one on Alderaan could have kids, which means Anakin never murdered children before RotS, thus preserving his flawless reputation for self-restraint and fairness until that upstart usurper George Lucas savagely mischaracterized Vader at the end of the Prequels. Problem solved.

 

[BillJ]

The dystopian world of 1984 describes how people are systematically deprived of their knowledge of history by having that history constantly rewritten and altered. Captain Kirk is a kind of hero. Who's to say that the next production in "our" fictional universe doesn't turn him into a despicable child killer (that's what happened with Darth Vader): "The new supersedes the old"

I'm with you. I really hated Vader's disgusting character assassination by having him kill the Younglings in the Jedi Temple in Revenge of the Sith.

Up until then Anakin/Vader was still a big, lovable lunkhead who had only choked a bunch of minions and POWs to death, burned some unarmed elderly farmers and junk dealing Munchkins to a crisp, tortured prisoners (including his daughter and her boyfriend, but it's okay because he didn't know it was his daughter at the time), cut off his son's hand and tried to murder him, turned people into popsicles, killed countless teddy bears, murdered a village of nomads... and I'm forgetting something... Oh yeah, blew up a planet full of hundreds of millions of innocent people because a couple of them were Rebels. You know, that ole' chestnut.

However, if we use your method of extending minor background references into major changes, Bail Organa and his wife were biologically childless, which clearly must mean no one on Alderaan could have kids, which means Anakin never murdered children before RotS, thus preserving his flawless reputation for self-restraint and fairness until that upstart usurper George Lucas savagely mischaracterized Vader at the end of the Prequels. Problem solved.

I missed this originally:

Who's to say that the next production in "our" fictional universe doesn't turn him into a despicable child killer (that's what happened with Darth Vader)

What the fuck? I can't believe someone actually wrote this. Have you not seen the rest of the Star Wars films, Robert Comsol? You literally just took the argument to the lunatic fringe.

 

[Mudd]

So you have a problem with Greg Jein supposedly being the one that changed the class of the Enterprise but no issue with David Carson saying that "Yesterday's Enterprise" is an alternate timeline?

Seems like there is no rhyme or reason to how you judge information beyond how it fits your pet theories.

In fact there's no standard being applied there other than whether he likes an idea or not. It's pretty blatant.

 

[sojourner]

I like how he picks and chooses which retcons are acceptable.

 

[Wingsley]

There is something to be said about the possibility that U.S.S. Constitution could have an NCC of something other than 1700. Could be 1600. Could be 1680.

It is also possible that Constitution, as the class ship, started out as NX-1492-A (or whatever) as a rebuild from some other previous class of cruiser. Think of it this way: the previous cruiser design may have been an earlier generational step in the evolution that became the Constitution-class vessel we see in TOS. Instead of building an entirely new vessel from scratch, it is possible that Constitution was an older ship that was partially refit with new components (engines, or bridge module, or new sensor-packages; whatever) that were tested in space so that the test results could be used to further improve the design spec before it was finalized. As Constitution was refit again and again with more components to be tested, the ship would gradually morph into a prototype-spec for the coming new class of cruiser we see in TOS.

As for Starship Exeter being shown as NCC-1672 in the remastered "The Omega Glory", it could be said that, like Constitution, Exeter was refit from a previous class of cruiser to become a Connie a la TMP. Same can be said for Republic and Constellation. TMP seems to suggest that starships not only can be refit, but are probably refit quite often. Maybe recycling old components is part of the Federation's design ethos, or, more likely, old components are analyzed after being torn out but before rejuvenation. This would make sense if the Federation wants to make standardized parts that are designed to last.

 

[CrazyMatt]

Repeat after me: Its A TV Show. New people are hired and their ideas will take precedence over the old people. When Gene Coon came in he changed or ignored some of the ideas of his predecessors.

I would guess that it was Matt Jefferies who's department designed the graphics calling the Enterprise a Constitution class ship. That would be an actual production drawing done a request/need of the writers and producers, yes? Shouldn't that trump everything else? Could Jefferies change his mind?

No none is rewriting history here.

From what I've read of the man, I'd bet if he were alive, Gene Coon would be laughing his @$$ off at this thread. But the thread also makes the case that we all love the show so much many of us feel the need to rationalize aspects for things that were obviously pulled straight from the production team's respective behinds!

At its most basic level, Star Trek is marvelous entertainment. How easily many of us--myself included--forget that.

 

[Mytran]

Repeat after me: Its A TV Show. New people are hired and their ideas will take precedence over the old people. When Gene Coon came in he changed or ignored some of the ideas of his predecessors.

Quite true, out here in the real world. But in Trekland, both the new and the old ideas exist alongside reach other. Amongst some bickering in this thread, there have been several brilliant theories on how to treat the numbering system, which is marvellous. None are definitively right or wrong, each is simply an interpretation.

For myself, I tend to favour the theories that don't require ignoring the original onscreen canon in order to work.

 

[GSchnitzer]

I guess I understand Matt Jefferies' (undated) idea that the Enterprise was the first ship of the 17th cruiser design. It's a fun idea. He has gone on to say that the Enterprise was 'the first bird" of this ship design. (Presumably NCC-1702 would be the second ship off the assembly line for this series.)

What doesn't make immediate sense to me is trying to determine when the NCC-1700 ship was built. Was it the "0th" ship of this ship design? I know when the first ship is constructed and the second, and even the 45th. But when was the 0th ship constructed? If we adopt Matt Jefferies' (speculative and ultimately abandoned) idea that the NCC number of each ship corresponds to its construction order, all kinds of gymnastics and contortions are required to explain an NCC-1700 vessel. "Well, it was just a placeholder number until its final NCC number could be assigned--and if there are multiple ships being constructed simultaneously but which aren't yet formally pressed into service, all those ships would have the number 1700 assigned."

The idea that the Enterprise is not a Constitution-class ship seems to be premised on the notion that such "format change" (if we can even call it that) was concocted by some lesser tier of people besides Jefferies, Justman, Roddenberry, and Stephen E. Whitfield. Many people thought that such a Constitution-class decision wasn't even made by production staffers; it was something Greg Jein and/or Franz Joseph Schnaubelt (and to a lesser degree Bjo Trimble) cooked up--pulling the idea out of their asses.

In truth, of course, they had production materials available to them that the average Star Trek fan didn't have. The average fan didn't know that "Constitution-class appeared in the script for "Space Seed"--albeit not in dialogue, so it didn't get much publicity. In the end, the Constitution-class seems to be as important of a Star Trek development as any other decision based on actual production materials. For some, though, it seems to be a case of "Well, although others knew about the original source for the Constitution-class comment, I never knew about it. So I'm going to discount it for some reason. Only the Pantheon of Greats--Matt Jefferies, Gene Roddenberry, Bob Justman and Stephen E. Whitfield--have opinions on the matter that are worthy of consideration--and only then if they didn't change their minds subsequently. I respect these individuals, but I don't respect their prerogative to change their minds, and I don't respect the input of people who were hired by them to make any decisions that ostensibly conflict with their earliest rudimentary thinking."

 

[{ Emilia }]

I don't need to assume what the first two registry digits stand for, because the creator of the Enterprise, Walter Matt Jefferies made that obvious in his TOS pre-production sketch, IMHO:

Why do you assume that any of the later writers, producers or artist ever gave a fuck about this sketch or even looked at it?

The bottom line is these people were trying to create enjoyable television. They didn't really care about "canon" if it got in the way.

It's not like there was any serious consistency in that regard. The fact that Kirk's Enterprise was 1701(-A) didn't keep them from randomly inventing an NX designation just to have Archer's Enterprise get the same number. They do whatever feels or looks right enough without causing too much hassle.

Trying to create a consistent canon where due to the realities of tv and movie production there simply isn't one seems like a pretty bizarre waste of time.

 

[plynch]

Nice correct use of "prerogative," GSchnitzer. (Most get that wrong.) I'm not surprised, given the thoroughness of your cogent posts!

 

[BillJ]

I don't need to assume what the first two registry digits stand for, because the creator of the Enterprise, Walter Matt Jefferies made that obvious in his TOS pre-production sketch, IMHO:

I'd say Matt Jefferies was contradicting his own drawing (or someone was). As the ship went through major modifications between the pilot episodes and the series proper, yet was never rechristened as the "1701-A" as shown in the drawing.

 

[GSchnitzer]

Nice correct use of "prerogative," GSchnitzer. (Most get that wrong.) I'm not surprised, given the thoroughness of your cogent posts!

I'll come clean: I spelled it wrong like I always do. But my autocorrect fixed it. But thaks for your nice comment and the vote of confidence.

 

[Mudd]

I don't need to assume what the first two registry digits stand for, because the creator of the Enterprise, Walter Matt Jefferies made that obvious in his TOS pre-production sketch, IMHO:

I'd say Matt Jefferies was contradicting his own drawing (or someone was). As the ship went through major modifications between the pilot episodes and the series proper, yet was never rechristened as the "1701-A" as shown in the drawing.

Yep, it's an error to treat MJ or GR as ultimate authorities on any aspect of Trek continuity or tech. Simply incorrect.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

I didn't know the 1701-A idea went back as far as Jeffries' original sketches! Very interesting. You learn something new every day.

On that note, the TMP Enterprise probably should have been 1701-A...

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I don't need to assume what the first two registry digits stand for, because the creator of the Enterprise, Walter Matt Jefferies made that obvious in his TOS pre-production sketch, IMHO:

I'd say Matt Jefferies was contradicting his own drawing (or someone was). As the ship went through major modifications between the pilot episodes and the series proper, yet was never rechristened as the "1701-A" as shown in the drawing.

That's a good catch, and it's a foregone conclusion that the mandate to rechristen was ignored for TMP. But TMP was Roddenberry's baby, wasn't it. (ninja'd by WarpFactorZ.)

I guess I understand Matt Jefferies' (undated) idea that the Enterprise was the first ship of the 17th cruiser design. It's a fun idea. He has gone on to say that the Enterprise was 'the first bird" of this ship design. (Presumably NCC-1702 would be the second ship off the assembly line for this series.)

What doesn't make immediate sense to me is trying to determine when the NCC-1700 ship was built. Was it the "0th" ship of this ship design? I know when the first ship is constructed and the second, and even the 45th. But when was the 0th ship constructed? If we adopt Matt Jefferies' (speculative and ultimately abandoned) idea that the NCC number of each ship corresponds to its construction order, all kinds of gymnastics and contortions are required to explain an NCC-1700 vessel. "Well, it was just a placeholder number until its final NCC number could be assigned--and if there are multiple ships being constructed simultaneously but which aren't yet formally pressed into service, all those ships would have the number 1700 assigned."

The idea that the Enterprise is not a Constitution-class ship seems to be premised on the notion that such "format change" (if we can even call it that) was concocted by some lesser tier of people besides Jefferies, Justman, Roddenberry, and Stephen E. Whitfield. Many people thought that such a Constitution-class decision wasn't even made by production staffers; it was something Greg Jein and/or Franz Joseph Schnaubelt (and to a lesser degree Bjo Trimble) cooked up--pulling the idea out of their asses.

In truth, of course, they had production materials available to them that the average Star Trek fan didn't have. The average fan didn't know that "Constitution-class appeared in the script for "Space Seed"--albeit not in dialogue, so it didn't get much publicity. In the end, the Constitution-class seems to be as important of a Star Trek development as any other decision based on actual production materials. For some, though, it seems to be a case of "Well, although others knew about the original source for the Constitution-class comment, I never knew about it. So I'm going to discount it for some reason. Only the Pantheon of Greats--Matt Jefferies, Gene Roddenberry, Bob Justman and Stephen E. Whitfield--have opinions on the matter that are worthy of consideration--and only then if they didn't change their minds subsequently. I respect these individuals, but I don't respect their prerogative to change their minds, and I don't respect the input of people who were hired by them to make any decisions that ostensibly conflict with their earliest rudimentary thinking."

That's a nice post, and I've boldfaced parts that I think are key. To hammer the point home about the NCC-1700, for those not in the know, that's the last entry on Commodore Stone's wall chart in the teaser of "Court Martial". A "star ship" [sic; as spelled on the chart] with that number exists in Starfleet, as of mid-first season TOS, which is basically impossible to reconcile with the Jefferies "serial" numbers for the "17th cruiser design". If we must take what we see on screen literally, then the Jefferies serial number scheme can't be in effect by then, for controlling what numbers the production team assigns, assuming it ever was.

Wingsley's post is also nice, in offering explanations for why the NCC numbers seem so random, and which also covers the Constellation, NCC-1017, as has been discussed on the board before.

 

[BillJ]

On that note, the TMP Enterprise probably should have been 1701-A...

I think that was floated somewhere along the road to TMP. But technically, it should have been, at least, the 1701-B. The Enterprise undergoes some major modifications between "The Cage" and the series proper. Including a jump in crew from 203 to 430, which likely means it underwent some major internal modifications. Plus we know there were some major modifications to the exterior between the pilot and series version.

 

[BillJ]

A "star ship" [sic; as spelled on the chart] with that number exists in Starfleet...

The next mind-numbing thread... "Is it 'Starship' or 'Star Ship' Class?"

*ducks and runs*

 

[CorporalCaptain]

A "star ship" [sic; as spelled on the chart] with that number exists in Starfleet...

The next mind-numbing thread... "Is it 'Starship' or 'Star Ship' Class?"

*ducks and runs*

The USS Starship is a star ship???