Connie - TOS canon nomenclature

[Ithekro]

However there are kind of ludicrous things going on when it comes to the use of "starship" and warp drives. "Starship" seems to be something grand by the way it is used in Kirk's time. Yet there has been warp capable ships before this, and ships that have warp drive that are not called starships. Merik's vessel for one. So "starship" was something special back then. Maybe due to the ship's size, or make just its high warp speeds compared to the older Warp 5 or even Warp 7 ships from the last century. USS Enterprise being at least a Warp 8 ship, as that was where Scotty started getting uncomfortable. But it could push it, and was able to get to Warp 14.1 at least for a movement on its own power. Thus she probably has a Warp 10 engine like the NX-class has a Warp 5 engine, but rarely could got up to Warp 5.

The other ludicrous thing is the idea that the Romulans did not have faster-than-light drives in the 2260s. That makes absolutely no sense in context to everything we know about them even in the episode. We know that Earth fought a war with Romulus around a hundred years prior to the episode. There were lots of casualties and the weapons were relatively primitive (compared to USS Enterprise). Now, how would the Romulans and humans have fought a war in the Romulans did not have faster-than-light drives? If the humans found Romulus and the Romulans decided to fight them off, the humans could just as easily warp out and leave. No reason for a neutral zone, no observation stations of anything. Because were are they going to go? At sublight speeds it would take years to get to the nearest star system, and probably centuries or more to get to Earth. You can't fight an interstellar war effectively without faster than light drives. Even the long lived Romulans and Vulcans would require generational ships to fight a war. They aren't a threat, just leave them alone.

But if they have faster-than-light drives, than not only are they a threat, but they can get to Earth held space and fight an interstellar war. So that Bird of Prey had to have had a faster-than-light drive of some sort. Maybe not a warp drive, but something. Though it may not have been viable with the cloaking device on due to the power needed to stay cloaked, or a known problem with being detectable at ftl speeds while cloaked.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I have seen the original trilogy dozens of times, thanks for asking. And thanks to both of you for just providing an illustration what I mean by "inaccurate research".

Nothing inaccurate about it. It's just the difference between what happened onscreen and what happened in your head.

Fact # 1: "It's a period of civil war" - As a military commander Vader's actions will result in casualties. Nothing to write home about, IMHO.

So you're fine with murdering POWs? Murdering unarmed civilians and junk dealers? That wasn't a stray bomb or accident, they were executed. You're fine with torturing prisoners and using them as test subjects for potentially fatal freezing procedures? You're fine with him murdering his underlings left and right? You're fine with him cutting off his son's hand and trying to murder him? Jesus, dude.

Fact # 2: Vader didn't blew up Alderaan, Governor Tarkin ordered its destruction. Did Vader approve? Look at he scene where Tarkin is just about to voice this despisable idea and Vader apparently senses it. This is one of the few times his had jerked (body language) apparently being astonished himself that Tarkin would choose innocent civilians as a target like ]Butcher Harris[ before him.

Vader didn't personally give the order, but he was the only person of equivalent or near equivalent "rank" (outside the official chain of command, but as the Emperor's right hand man) to Tarkin in the room --and also the closest thing Tarkin had to a friend-- who could have voiced an objection and he did not. He was also capable of stopping Tarkin and anyone else in the room with the Force choke you're apparently fine with, in combination with his lightsaber skills. He also oversaw (at least partially) construction and defense of both death stars. There's no way he wouldn't be tried on war crimes for his actions.

Fact # 3: One could argue that Vader's son killed more people than Vader himself, from the Trek BBS: ]http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=9689029&postcount=39[

Wait a minute, you make apologist excuse after excuse for the genocidal maniac, but draw the line at his son destroying a valid military target in time of war and in defense of yet another planet (actually a moon this time) that was about to be blown up?

Fine, I'll use a less drastic example. According to Ben Kenobi the Jedi knights were he guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. According to the retcon of the sequels the Jedi never cared about justice (freeing slaves).

That's not a retcon, it's pointing out the hypocrisy and corruption of the Republic and their Jedi policemen. Just because Obi-Wan (who's no stranger to bending the truth, manipulating people, and depicting things "from a certain point of view" in the OT) had an idealized vision of his time as a Jedi doesn't mean he was right or telling the whole truth.

But still, it's interesting that you continually make excuses for all the villain's actions while seeing nothing but the worst in the actions of the (often flawed and hypocritical) heroes.

 

[Ithekro]

One thing about the registry numbers is that there hasn't been a canon explanation about them at all. This leaves them open for interpretation. Some things make sense, and some things do not.

In history, registry numbers can change on a ship, but as far as I know they don't add letters to them just because they refit the ship. If the ship type changes, they sometimes change its number to fit the other types numbering pattern. Several heavy cruisers had their numbers changed when they were refitted into being guided missile cruiser with no guns.

Mind you that the idea of a heavy and light cruiser were completely dependent on the size of the guns they mounted. There were a lot of light cruisers that were heavier than heavy cruisers, because they were armed with the lighter guns...just lots of them, on a bigger hull, with more armor. The United States built treaty (up to 10,000 tons) heavy cruisers in the 1920s and 1930s armed with 8 inch guns (between 8 and 10 guns each). Then more treaties happened, and the United States switched to building treaty (up to 10,000 tons) light cruisers in the 1930s to the Second World War (at which point they started building both heavy and light cruiser above 10,000 tons). The light cruisers were armed with 6 inch guns as was required by definition of the treaty. They carried 12 to 15 of these guns, which could rapid fire, and thus throw more metal at range than the 8 inch gun armed heavy cruisers. The 8 inch guns only had the advantage of more armor penetration at that point, and against most thing, that wasn't important anymore.

A guided missile cruiser was at first, a cruiser armed with missiles and no guns. From that point until the 1970s and 1980s, missile cruisers were defensive weapons, since the missiles were anti-air only. They did add light guns back on them because missile were not short range, and they needed something the shoot at other ships and boats. It wasn't until the Harpoon and later Tomahawk missiles were added that missile cruisers and missile destroyers had offensive missiles.

Mind you that before the Washington Treaty there were light cruisers. These were ships that were cruisers, meaning they could operate on their own for extended period of time. There were light, meaning almost no armor. Their job was scouting for the fleets of battleships and armored cruisers, act as commerce raiders, or leading destroyer flotilla in place of destroyer leaders. Armored Cruiser were just that. A cruiser that was armored like a battleship. They could also scout for the battleships, but were in general not fast enough to be effective lone scouts. They were good for duties like a battleship without the need for a battleship to be present...unless it faced a battleship from an enemy (armored cruisers were replaced by battlecruisers in the 1910s, which were then replaced by the treaty cruiser in the 1920s due to the Washington treaty limiting capital ship production). There was also the protected cruiser, which was like the light cruiser, save it has some armor protection to the vital parts, just not nearly as much as an armored cruiser. Usually only deck armor.

In the 23rd century, the Constitution-class is generally listed as a heavy cruiser. What does that mean? We don't rightly know. This implies there is or was a light cruiser when the ship was ordered. Or at least a defining feature to set them apart even if there aren't any in the fleet. But what feature(s)? Are heavy cruisers 'Starships' but light cruisers are not? Are light cruisers also starships? What about Destroyers and Scouts? What about Dreadnaught? What does that mean in context any ships in the Federation?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Khan said he studied the manuals of various starships and obviously the Constitution Class is one of these.

So, if Khan's reading up on starship technical manuals, and the Enterprise is starship class, how is Khan not reading up on technical manuals for the class of ship that the Enterprise is?

For reference [source]:

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.

[...]

SPOCK: I note he's making considerable use of our technical library.

[...]

KHAN: I've been reading up on starships, but they have one luxury not mentioned in the manuals.
MARLA: I don't understand.
KHAN: A beautiful woman. My name is Khan. Please sit and entertain me.

[...]

SPOCK: Impossible. Intruder control systems inoperative. Mister Khan was very thorough in his study of our tech manuals.

[...]

KHAN: If I understood your manuals, that's an overload in progress. Your ship flares up like an exploding sun within minutes.

It seems sufficiently clear that Khan read technical manuals pertaining to the type of ship that the Enterprise is, anyway, and that he specifically intended to read technical manuals applicable to the Enterprise in particular (as befitting someone who intends to take over the ship, as Nerys Myk succinctly put it), even if he did read technical manuals on other vessels too.

If there's more than one class of starship, why can't the Enterprise be Constitution-class? To say that the Enterprise being Constitution-class is an impossibility is to say that there can be only one class of starship. That is, unless there is somehow a distinction between being a starship and being a ship of the starship class, which would seem like an absurd system of nomenclature.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Fact # 2: Vader didn't blew up Alderaan, Governor Tarkin ordered its destruction. Did Vader approve? Look at he scene where Tarkin is just about to voice this despisable idea and Vader apparently senses it. This is one of the few times his had jerked (body language) apparently being astonished himself that Tarkin would choose innocent civilians as a target like ]Butcher Harris[ before him.

Time stamp for Vader jerking or dialog when it happens? There are two scenes that you could be referring to. One is the "Set your course for Alderaan" scene (during which Tarkin unambiguously implies in front of Vader that he intends to test the station in the Alderaan system), and the other is the "We have no weapons" scene. If I've seen Star Wars (1977) once, I've seen it literally a thousand times, so I'm somewhat interested in catching this little wrinkle that I've somehow missed all those times.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Time stamp for Vader jerking...

Star Whores: Sexisode IV - A New Grope beginning at 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 13 seconds.

Wait, what were we talking about?

 

[Mytran]

You're saying we should hold as sacred some scribbles on a piece of paper but ignore other scribbles on the same exact piece of paper. You're desperately trying to tap dance around much that doesn't agree with your ideas about the subject.

The bit of paper with the "17th ship, first of her class" you mean? I'm not sure where the contradicition is on that diagram, could you expand please? The 17-01 notion is a neat little idea that (as you mentioned) doesn't really get back the list of ships in Court Martial with the explicit listing of NCC-1700 (whatever the name of that ship that might be - and its in a very low state of construction, apparently). Out of curiosity, do we know if it was Matt Jefferies who designed the chart?

I'm referring to the name finding corresponence from August 1967 where D.C. Fontana mentioned "Starship Class" and Bob Justman (co-creator and continuity guru) replied with "Enterprise Starship Class". Apparently a courteous and subtle correction. The "Enterprise-class" quote is in one of the texts, written by Whitfield with or without Gene Roddenberry. But since both share the credits it must have had Roddenberry's approval. YMMV.

Is this in TMOST? It's been a while since I read it, so I don't recall. Certainly at the time, "Enterprise Starship Class" seems to have been in vogue for our hero ship.

 

[Maurice]

Tarkin ordered Alderaan's destruction, not Vader.

 

[{ Emilia }]

 

[F. King Daniel]

Whatever the original intent might have been, the classic TV series Enterprise is a Constitution-class starship. It's been said on air, seen in on-screen graphics and written in a thousand novels, technical manuals and blueprint packs.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I think there was a time of transition where "Starship", "Enterprise" and "Constitution" were all being used as the class name. Plus given the flexibility of English they could be used in various ways. You can say Enterprise class starship and mean ships of the same class as the Enterprise and not "Enterprise class".


I also don't think Justman was correcting Fontana in that memo, since it was directed to Gene, DC was just a cc.

Here's something to set some heads spinning. What if the TOS-R people had replaced some of the guest Connies with other ship designs?

What if the Constellation looked like this:

Or a couple of the ships in the M-5 wargames looked like this:

Registry problems solved, yes?

 

[Mytran]

Whatever the original intent might have been, the classic TV series Enterprise is a Constitution-class starship. It's been said on air, seen in on-screen graphics and written in a thousand novels, technical manuals and blueprint packs.

Are we counting the novels and technical novels as canon now then? Those things can be more full of errors and inconsistencies than the TV series on its worst day! Well I suppose we could go for a "majority rules" result, but the thread asks about canon, doesn't it?

The traditional approach to canon is that only onscreen events can be categorically said to have "happened" (within the fictional universe, of course). The term "consitution class" is not mentioned until TNG. The details on the phaser array diagram are not visible during its only appearance, TTWT (and what is Khan looking at exactly?). Only by viewing behind-the-scene information can we actually discern what is written there.

​

Does that make it viable? Maybe, but then equal weight (at least) should also be given to the "Starship Class" and "Enterprise Class" plaques, since they are onscreen too, and readable in their own right. And if we're bringing in one backstage source, should we also include the series bible and development information (memos etc) as well? Unfortunately, using such material leads to inevitable contradictions (due to the constant developmental nature of television) so sooner or later something has to dropped. And yet, onscreen "canon" remains, specifically "USS ENTERPRISE STARSHIP CLASS". And yes, given the size of the lettering on the plaque I have no doubt that this was created to be seen by the audience, should the camera get close enough or pan past it (exactly what happened in TCM, the very first episode filmed).

I think there was a time of transition where "Starship", "Enterprise" and "Constitution" were all being used as the class name. Plus given the flexibility of English they could be used in various ways. You can say Enterprise class starship and mean ships of the same class as the Enterprise and not "Enterprise class".

It's quite possible that there was no definitive class name applied until decades after TOS. A "starship" during TOS was a very special vessel and the very title carried considerable prestige amongst other personel in the fleet and even the merchant service. We know that there were at least two variants on the design (or three, if you include IAMD's Defiant being the 1500' giant the MSD shows it to be). So, a ship of the "starship" class would have a certain minimum level of firepower, durability, capacity etc but one would not neccessily look exactly like the other (the configuration of saucer, tube and nacelles would be similar though). The four extra starships in TUC's wargames were exactly like the Enterprise of course, but for all we know it could be just those five).

Any one of the variants could be known at the shipyards as Constitution Class, Ti-Ho Class, or even Enterprise Class (matching up with the aforementioned memo as well as ST2). But the crew of any one of those vessels would consider that they served on a starship, nothing less.

In ST6 Scotty is seen looking at a paper picture of a Constitution Class Enterprise. It would seem that by this point the Admiralty had decided to adopt a different naming nomenclature, doubtless because the name "starship" had been slapped on too many vessels (and the situation would further degrade until even Runabouts had the title). The day of a "starship" being something special had gone.

Now for the registry situation - something addressed often is the unusually high registry numbers, even within TOS. Were there really that many ships manufactured, lost and destroyed?

But what do the last two digits (for the TOS era) represent then?

NCC-1664 USS Excalibur destroyed by the M-5 computer > NCC-1764 USS Defiant considered lost/destroyed in Tholian interphase > NCC-1864 USS Reliant.

It would appear that the last two digits are merely a (naval) contact code which ships can "inherit".

Thus the class leaders could be an NCC-1701 (USS Enterprise), NCC-602 (USS Oberth) or else.

Other threads on this board (and elsewhere) have suggested a non-linear assignment of registry number. Given the lack of information on the show it is perfectly feasible. It also means your enemies can't so easily guess the size of your fleet by simply reading a registration number.
But what of the famous "17"?

...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

or

My suggestion was that the numbers, instead of cruiser type 16, cruiser 17 type, cruiser type 18, is to have the system be shipyard/star system based. This provides information about where it was built and who registered the vessel. The 1700s are registered in the Sol system (both Enterprise (NCC-1701) and Defiant (NCC-1764) were built in the Sol system). The 1600s would be built and registered in another Federation world with a shipyard. The 1000s someplace else.

This theory probably has the most flexibility, while not running into conflict with any of the known facts. It also avoids what I realised today is a major security issue with the Jefferies system - specificially, that enemies could know the age (and thus strength) of a vessel based solely on the first 2 digits of its registry. Any 17-style vessels are going to be the same as any other that you've seen, ditto for the 16's and so on. If every shipyard builds several types of ship (and why wouldn't they, offshoot technology makes for economic efficiency etc) then Captain Klingon is going to have to try an awful lot harder to get intel than simply read the numbers emblazoned on the hull.

​

A final thought on the NCC-1700 featured in Court-Martial. It's very low on the "complete" scale, barely 10%. Is it possible that all "00" digits are assigned to experimental testbed ships? That would gel with the Excelsior, too.


BTW, for anyone who's interesting, this old thread covers much of the same ground but branches into some other areas of interest, with some great links too!

 

[BillJ]

Good post. I don't mind discussing these subjects with folks that realize we're discussing a TV show and much of this stuff isn't about disrespecting the creators of the material.

A final thought on the NCC-1700 featured in Court-Martial. It's very low on the "complete" scale, barely 10%. Is it possible that all "00" digits are assigned to experimental testbed ships? That would gel with the Excelsior, too.

This only works if we assume that Starbase 11 is a starship construction facility and is constructing all these starships at the same time. Including the Enterprise, which is on the list (fourth from bottom). I think what we're looking at is a repair/resupply chart.

Or am I misreading what you're getting at here?

 

[Mytran]

Assuming that the chart shows the overall health of the various ships, 10% is a very low score! So I wondered if the 1700 was in a state of having been stripped down in preparation for the next experimental tech.

Of course, if the chart merely shows the progress of each repair schedule, my point is moot

 

[BillJ]

Assuming that the chart shows the overall health of the various ships, 10% is a very low score! So I wondered if the 1700 was in a state of having been stripped down in preparation for the next experimental tech.

Poor "NCC-1700" may have just come from a Klingon ass-whuppin'!

 

[Set Harth]

Fine, I'll use a less drastic example. According to Ben Kenobi the Jedi knights were he guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. According to the retcon of the sequels the Jedi never cared about justice (freeing slaves).

Read what you wrote again. "In the Old Republic". Do those words mean anything? Can they be thrown under the bus as soon as they become inconvenient?

Tatooine is not in the Republic. The Jedi do not have jurisdiction there.

Amazingly, they're not actually trying to impose their will on the entire galaxy! That would be the other guys.

 

[Ithekro]

I was assuming that was progress in the repair work, regardless of how damaged the ship was. NCC-1700 keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the list, this has less progress on repairs or refit as the engineers and other workers keep getting pulled to other starships.

She could have been heavily damaged and they are considering scrapping her and using her parts for the other starships. Or she could be in for a major refit and it is taking a long time. Or she's in for some sort of cleaning that takes time. Or whatever it is that needs repair is something they can put off in favor of the other ships. Maybe NCC-1700 is also going through a crew rotation, so it isn't needed to got back out into space as quickly as the other starships, so it gets bumped lower on the list because the need to get her out isn't as high as the others.


Another question related to the Constitution-class and its naming. When USS Enterprise gets her massive reconstruction from 2271-2273, some sources rename her to Enterprise-class, but later she's called Constitution-class. That is not quite the question though. The question would be, how many of the class were left? Did they build new ships with this refit design or where they all refits of older ships? This gets important by the time the Enterprise-A enters the scene. Both for her introduction and her seemingly early retirement.

USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) has been more or less pinned down to having been launch/commissioned in 2245. (some tech sources having it as early as 2220 without altering the years presented much, unlike FASA which has it as 2188, but had those numbers before the timeline was "set" in TNG based on Data informing the universe that they present day was 2364 at the end of the first season). It is not a new ship when Kirk commands it. Thus the number 1701 was assigned In the 2240s to a starship. Go forward forty years. USS Excelsior is being launched in the mid-2280s with the hull number 2000. A logical assumption is that Starfleet has built (or at least ordered) about 300 ships in the last 40 years. This isn't entirely without reason of course. But that isn't the point.

The point is that in those 40 years, one assumes all the starships like Enterprise would have been built. She is 1701. Defiant is 1764. But other ships have lower numbers. Either they were built prior to Enterprise, or something is up. Enterprise is always assumed to be on of the earliest of the class, based on several designers being brought onto the ship in Kirk's time, and the low number of ships for the type as Kirks comments on there only being 12 like it seem more a thing of pride rather than an admission that there are only 12 like her left (meaning others have been lost in the last 20 plus years and this is all that's left). She's still considered the pride of the fleet despite her age. In naval circles, unless there is a treaty in place, or you have only been designing ships similar to one type, will a 20 year old ship be considered the pride of the fleet. The battleships of the 1930s were 10 to 20 years old with the first replacements being finished in the 1940s. The cruisers, as far as I know were not the pride of the navy (I could be wrong), they were new though, but also were in classes of two ships each that were similar to the previous class of two ships, but not the same enough to be the same class. Today the Nimitz-class carriers go back to 1975 and the last one of ten was completed in 2009. These are the pride of the fleet and the first of the next class of ship will not be completed until 2016, and be similar in a lot of ways to the previous Nimitz-class.

But what track does the Constitution-class take? Slow construction over 40 years with Enterprises at both ends? Blocks of similarly designed ships reclassed based on one of the designs (Constitution-class). New ships built for every major refit style (this seem to follow in Franz Joseph's book, the Ships of the Star Fleet style books, and FASA's RPG style impressions of what the Enterprise went though.) Were all the original 13 ships destroyed (the 12 prior to Enterprise's refit and then Enterprise herself over Genesis)? Did any survive? What was the Enterprise-A? Were there any more of those ships left aside from it as the Excelsior and Miranda-class started to take over?

How old is the Miranda-class relative to the Constitution? Reliant is slightly over halfway, number wise, between Enterprise and Excelsior. But we have sightings of 1800s hulls in the 2260s (half way, roughly, between the launch of Enterprise and Excelsior).

So many things we don't know. Also I may be rambling from one thought to the next.

 

[J.T.B.]

Considering the longevity of Star Trek vessels - what happened in the TOS era to older "cruiser designs" that no longer qualified as starships or destroyers? A downgrade to "scout class" and/or science vessel? In this ]thread[ I examined the possibility that the Oberth Class might actually be a much older (and original starship) design from the late 22nd or early 23rd Century. To my own surprise a couple of fans weighed in and stated that they had felt the same. Apparently examples of the 5th and 6th Federation cruiser design series, IMHO.

Well how about that. Two vessels that seemingly don't fit the Jeffries "series" scheme must really just be "downgraded" old cruisers. That's reaching.

In history, registry numbers can change on a ship, but as far as I know they don't add letters to them just because they refit the ship. If the ship type changes, they sometimes change its number to fit the other types numbering pattern. Several heavy cruisers had their numbers changed when they were refitted into being guided missile cruiser with no guns.

A difference here is hull numbers seem much more straightforward than the NCC numbers. With just a little background information an observer understands that, for instance, DDG-79 is a different type of ship from CVN-79, that CVN aircraft carriers are different from CV carriers, and that CVN-79 is newer than CVN-65. There are exceptions and aberrations, but they can be easily understood with a little context. Likewise US military aircraft designations. There are a lot of exceptions and the number series have re-started, but it is fairly easy to grasp that a C-5 is completely different from an F-5, that a B-52G is a development subsequent to the B-52C, and so on.

The NCC numbers seem more like product serial numbers, or automobile license plate numbers, or FAA N-numbers. They are in some kind of series and there is some kind of system to it, but an observer really has to have a "master list" to make sense of it. Some blocks of numbers may be reserved for later, some may be skipped entirely, some may be re-started, for reasons which make perfect bureaucratic sense but are not readily apparent or intuitive to an outside observer. While it does allow for something like 1700 being the first ship of a series, it is also may appear quite random.

But people don't like random, they like to have a logical system that's understandable and explainable. So various and quite elaborate systems are devised to try and fit the numbers into some cogent scheme. But at least as early as "Court Martial," the people in positions to decide went with the NCC prefix only, and it was carried over to every ship. If different prefixes had been used for different types, something more readily understandable might have come about.

On the same subject, my question has always been: If they are all NCC numbers (apart from a few experimental prototypes), wouldn't "NCC" be fairly useless information and be dropped? Like Kirk does in "Court Martial": "United starship Republic, number one three seven one." Yet "NCC" is clearly spoken in the TMP radio chatter.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Here's something to set some heads spinning. What if the TOS-R people had replaced some of the guest Connies with other ship designs?

What if the Constellation looked like this:

Or a couple of the ships in the M-5 wargames looked like this:

I'm all for this! The only reason every ship in TOS is of the same class is because they had one design (and model) to work with. Why can't TOS-R or someone else update the actual ships (instead of the really cheap/bad CG job that was done).

 

[Mytran]

I agree. TOS-R already screwed up the shuttlebay miniature work and the set sequences, not to mention the Ion Pod and a bizarre insistance of 2-D ship placement (I'm looking you, Enterprise Incident). To do all that and not add some starship variety seems just plain lazy

I previously mentioned an old 2012 thread - much of this post from it seems rather relevant to the current discussion:

I think events went sorta like this-

1. When Jefferies came up with that "1701" number, he retconned a decision made purely on visibility as being indicative of the first ship built in the seventeenth group of starships. So, when conceived, Enterprise was the class vessel. At least to Jefferies.

2. Along comes "Doomsday Machine". For whatever reason- convenience, visibility, distinctiveness, etc- the ship scripted as being "Enterprise type" is numbered "1017" and named "Constellation". This is the first ship seen onscreen that looks like Enterprise.

3. Later, a graphic of an Enterprise ship's phaser is needed. Whoever puts the thing together remembers that they've established some ship as having a lower number than Enterprise, probably because the obvious problems with a "1017" number were discussed and still on his mind. He misremembers the lower numbered, "1017" ship Constellation as Constitution and puts that name on the graphic.

4. By the time Trimble is putting together her book, we have a Constellation with the lowest number, but a graphic hinting all these Enterprise-type ships are Constitution class. So we end up with fans making sense of the mess as Constitution being the prototype and class vessel (00), Enterprise being the first produced after the prototype (01), and Constellation being an older ship uprated to Constitution standards (1017).

5. Later, an attempt is made to make things right when TMP introduces the brand new, first of her type, rebuilt Enterprise. Probert, Cole and Kimble call this new class "Enterprise class" in an attempt to get back to what was originally intended back in 1964 and to recognize the entirely new nature of the design.

6. But even later, different artists try to "fix" the "mistakes" of the TWoK bridge simulator plaque and the TMP blueprints by identifying a ship looking like the rebuilt Enterprise as once again... Constitution class.

7. BUT this TMP-looking ship is ACTUALLY 1701-A. Some fans (like me) make sense of this new mess by saying that the rebuilt 1701 is Enterprise class but that 1701-A is Constitution class. Either because the class name was changed after the loss of 1701, or because 1701-A was an outwardly similar but inwardly different class.

8. In any event, if you want to go strictly by what was seen onscreen, the TOS Enterprise is "Constitution class" as established in later series, and "Star Ship Class" as established on the dedication plaque seen in the episodes. The TMP Enterprise is "Enterprise class" per the bridge simulator in TWoK, and the new 1701-A is "Constitution class" per the blueprints seen in ST VI. The only apparent contradiction is "Constitution" versus "Star Ship" class for the original ship. And that can easily be resolved by saying that "Star Ship" either represents a later, select subset of Constitution class ships (perhaps the 5YM ships?), or that "Star Ship" is an earlier designation, perhaps implying the ships were named for famous starships or indicating a broader "type" category as has been argued here. In any event, within the context of strictly TOS it is correct to call Enterprise a "Star Ship class" vessel. But within the broader context of the later series it is correct to also call her (and Defiant) "Constitution class" vessels.

Points 3 & 4 are a bit too speculative for my liking, but the rest sounds very believable - fans trying to do the right thing with limited information and drawing a slightly off conclusion.

Besides, re-reading this reminded me that it's not until the E-A that the label "constitution class" is visibly slapped on the old girl, a ship which (as Ithekro's thoughts illustrate) we now nothing of the history or construction of.
So, when Picard sees this ship in The Naked Now

(click for full size)
...and calls it "constitution Class" he is quite correct. With TNG-R they replaced the graphic:

(click for full size)
Now I've not seen TNG-R but is this really how it appears in the episode - a crystal clear cut&paste over the existing soft focus graphics? Unbelieveable, if so.

However, the sharp focus nicely emphasises that this is not the Enterprise we in TOS, despite the "1701" on the nacelle. The shape of the engineering hull, the windows on the dorsal, the lower saucer edge are all NOT what we saw on the weekly TV show. Although it may well be the elusive Constituion Class we've been looking for!