An obvious thought that, for some reason, never really occured to me: did the Reliant have a dedication plaque in TWOK? (Did the Enterprise even have one? Or was that a thing that was re-introduced with the -A in TFF?) It would be interesting to find out what it says, regarding the ship's class. As the term "Miranda" was an invention of TNG (I guess it popped up for the first time on the Brattain's plaque?), I was wondering if there was any official or semi-official class designation for the ship in the days before the first edition of the Encyclopedia canonized Miranda-class (I know that "Avenger-class" was fairly popular, but I have no idea where that originated).
Nope, no dedication plaques in the first four movies. I've had trouble figuring out where to even mount them if you wanted to retcon them in. The walls are all sloped in, and the alcove leading to the lift doors is too narrow unless you put the plaque at head-level. I'm also opposed to the TUC options of mounting it next to the viewscreen, or above the screen on the ceiling. The best I can think of is to attach some sort of mount to the wall next to the turbolift alcove so it can sit vertically. Why not, there was enough other blocky crap glued to the walls post-TWOK. Mr. Scott's guide had a conjectural dedication plaque for the Enterprise-A. It was basically the TOS plaque (complete with "Starship Class"), with an extra line for "United Federation of Planets" below "San Francisco, Calif" and "... To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before — From the Starfleet Charter" in smaller type at the bottom.
Yeah, the dedication plaque thing really started with TNG. Besides the obvious Enterprise-D, in the first season the two plaques made were for the Tsiolkovsky and the Stargazer. For the former, the plaque was made before the VFX department decided to reuse the Grissom movie model (which at the time was labeled "U.S.S. Copernicus NCC-640"), so the name "Oberth class," while probably meant to represent a newer design based on its 5XXXX registry, ended up being the class name for the Grissom-type ships. For the Stargazer, the plaque stated that the ship was Constitution class because that was what the VFX guys were planning to use until Greg Jein built a new model. As for the "Miranda" class: the term was indeed first used for the Brattain's dedication plaque. However, like the Tsiolkovsky, I've often wondered if the plaque came first, and the Miranda class was meant to be a newer design, since 21166 was super-high at the time for Reliant-type registries.
Technically plaques started with TOS, though the one featured on the bridge of the 1701, was about as bare-bones as it gets. It's pretty clear, based on the registry and the stardates of some of the plaques that both Mirandas and Oberths were being built well into the early or mid 24th century. Perhaps plaques, or at least ones with detail fell out of favor for a while, but started to make a comeback by the late 2280's/2290's, as the Excelsior, and the 1701-A and B all had detailed plaques (the B having the most, as they started listing people's names with that one, as they did with TNG-era plaques). Edited to add: BTW, the Saratoga (the one Sisko was on) definitely had a plaque too. You can see it for a split second in "Emissary" right after the Vulcan captain dies. You can't read any of the details, but according to the Okudas on Facebook, the quote was "If you build it, they will come.", which not only ties in nicely to Sisko's love of baseball, but also works as a theme for the show itself.
Well, yes, I know it technically started with TOS. I figured that went without saying. Only if registries are 100% chronological. And even if that were the case, why would there be a huge gap in production between both the Oberth class (6XX and 5XXXX) and Miranda class (1XXX and 3XXXX)? Another plaque whose information I'd sorely like to see.
There is one plaque I would have liked to seen was the one for the Enterprise-C. It appeared in a darkened corner on the starship's bridge.
There's no indication that there is, and in fact there were a couple of ships seen on screen with registries in between, such as the Oberth class Yosemite (NCC-19002) in "Realm of Fear" and the Miranda-class USS Antares (NCC-9844) in "Favor the Bold" True. I wonder what happened to the one-shot plaques after an episode was shot. My fear is the trash bin, but my hope is that they would've been saved by one of the production people, and either kept for themselves or given to someone associated with the episode. One of the many decorations for the 602 Club in "First Flight" was a mission patch for the Earth-Saturn probe which included DC Fontana's name as a member of the crew. After the episode, Mike Okuda sent her a copy of the patch as a gift.
Reservation of a large block at a time, with a new block reserved after one block's exhausted? That is, registries are chronological within a class, and the registry tells you approximately when the block was reserved, but they aren't chronological in a general overall sense. Granted, this doesn't cover interwoven registry values, but perhaps registry block reservation just isn't necessarily contiguous for some reason.
Why shouldn't there be big gaps in the production of any given ship type, though? Today, a certain type of military aircraft sees production matching the specific orders of customers. Then the machinery is dismantled for being too costly to maintain, and further production batches become impossible. This does not apply to shipbuilding, though: there is no comparable highly type-specific machinery involved, and sales of a given type may well take place years or decades apart. In the bright future, the question of maintaining the machinery should be of ever-lesser relevance. The design of the Miranda might get outdated in thirty years, but within that time there could be distinct batches (and 10,000 NCC units per decade seems to be the going rate anyway). The design of the Oberth, not involved in a military rat race, might stay current for centuries. Constant production would make less sense than on-demand production if lead times are on the order of mere years and possibly even less - the demand involved would be in the form of major strategic shifts, acquisition of new territory, etc. and a bit of a wait would be affordable. Timo Saloniemi
Because it doesn't make sense to me that Starfleet would take two random ship designs from the mid-to-late 23rd century, and suddenly start producing them again during the late 24th, when other more advanced designs were being produced. It's like the Ford Motor Company all of a sudden deciding that it's going to bring back the Model T while at the same time producing new cars for 2016.
But the issue here was the 20,000-30,000 unit gap in Miranda registries, and the implications of assuming that registries have chronological connotations. There's no sign of a century-long gap there - the high-registry Mirandas may just as well come from the first decades of the 24th century. Nothing wrong with a gap of mere two or three decades. Possible dates on dedication plaques are a completely separate issue. But this does not affect the Miranda class: the only high-registered plaque-bearer (and indeed the only one known to even have a plaque in the first place, apart from the DS9 Saratoga whose plaque text is not available to us) has an unrecognizable stardate in the 22000 range, establishing nothing about the gap between the commissioning of this ship (the Brattain, that is) and the termination of the last four-digit Miranda production run. Timo Saloniemi
While it's true that we've only been given a small sample of both the Oberth and Miranda's registry numbers (i.e. for all I know there were registries for both classes in the 1XXXX, 2XXXX, 3XXXX, 4XXXX and 5XXXX range), I'm extrapolating based on what I saw. I'm more of a "batch" system of registries guy than a "chronological" registry guy, which explains why registries for the older Excelsior class (4XXXX) were higher than the newer Ambassador class (2XXXX). We don't start seeing "TNG-style" ships (i.e. designs based on the Enterprise-D) until we get to the late 5XXXX registries and above. At this point however, it seems that registries start getting more chronological than ever. So maybe there was a change over to a new system once the newer ship/tech designs appeared. The one thing that throws a monkey wrench into the works was the launch date of the Brattain: 2345. While the ship's 21166 registry can be explained away with a batch system, I have a hard time believing that Starfleet built a brand-new Miranda only 20 years before building the Enterprise-D, especially since in 20 years the Brattain's crew only numbered 35. Why build such a large ship for only 35 people? (Personally, I think the Brattain, and the Miranda class in general, based on the dedication plaque, was supposed to be a newer, smaller ship design, but the budget forced the VFX department to reuse the Reliant model. But that's just speculation on my part.)
In the United States Navy, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have been in production since 1988 with the largest gap in the production line being between 2012 and 2015 when it was decided to restart the line as the destroyer type was cheaper to build than the Zumwalt-class destroyers, and no other replacement had been designed. However their hull number are still sequential since there are no other destroyers in production during this period (DDG-51 USS Arleigh Burke to the presently awarded contract for DDG-126 USS Louis H. Wilson, Jr.) So this class type has been in production for about three decades, with only a three year pause, plus there are a few ships world wide that are based on the design. The production schedule suggests the design will be in production for at least another decade, and if the projected replacement does not pan out, potentially two decades with the last ones finished in the mid-late 2030s. Or even three decades if they are still being built into the 2040s due to them being faster to build than their replacements and the Navy needing to replace the Ticonderoga-class cruisers with something when they retire just to keep the carriers protected. The projected replacement will be in development until around 2030 since the technology intended for the design is expensive and the power plant needed to power the newer weapons is hefty. The difference between the US Navy and Starfleet in this case is that Starfleet uses the hull numbers for everything, and the NCC-18xx era starships could be very old (considering NCC-1701 was old when TOS started) while obviously the second seen USS Saratoga would have to have been built sometime after the Whale Song crisis (TVH) and the NCC-1701-A come from someplace, Starfleet might build some ships for long periods of time, with different "Flights" or refit versions. The Excelsior-class might take up a swath of the hull numbers, than break for the next Flight of Mirandas, followed by some Rigel-class ships, than more Excelsiors, followed by some Constellations, and so on.
I would suggest that if we didn't see a dedication plaque, it doesn't mean a ship didn't have one. Must they all be displayed on the bridge near the turbo lift alcove? Perhaps the Reliant had hers in the officers mess. Others might be on the rec deck so the whole crew can admire it. TMP rec deck had the Enterprise shrine, I can imagine the plaque around an area like that. Other possibilities.
Yeah, but this thread was asking about if they had one made in real life, I think, not if the ship had one in-universe or not. If there was a manufactured prop that we could use as a potential information resource.
Perhaps the classic movie Enterprise, the Reliant and others had dedication plaques, just not on the bridge? I'm pretty sure we've seen a plaque or two on a TNG guest ship somewhere other than the bridge set. The big lounge from TMP or the smaller, forward-facing one of STV would be good possibilities.
There would appear to be a change or two in the stardate system, too, perhaps even coinciding with the registry scheme change. A bold new era with symbolic changes all across the board? Umm, what launch date? The plaque supposedly doesn't feature any such year, nor is there dialogue to that end. There's a stardate there, but we know from "Dark Page" and the like that stardates in the 20,000 range cannot be systematically connected to Gregorian dates. The Constitution class Enterprise apparently was built for "just" 207 people despite "actually" accommodating/requiring 430 to 500. It may not be a major issue to assign a crew of seven to a certain ship so that they can set up a largely automated infraviolet futuroscope for a good shot, even when the same ship later allows a crew of eighty to set camp next to an astrophysical bonanza and spend months poking it with every instrument known to Federation science. Nor is it a chore to send an idle warship to perform scientific studies or resupply a colony with a skeleton crew - indeed, those obscure TNG Okudagrams would have us believe that this is the most common mode of employment for the biggest warship designs of the era... Probably the Okudas held high hopes for every guest starship in TNG being a new design, and practically never ever got their wish. The Phoenix fortunately notwithstanding. Timo Saloniemi
The plaque gives the commissioning date as stardate 22519.5, which translates to the year 2345 using the TNG scale. I would assume that by the time "Night Terrors" was set, the TNG stardate system has been in use for some time and the plaque reflected that. Or else the plaque was made before the system changed and it was never updated. Either way, I'm going with the numbers shown and the known way to translate those numbers based on the TNG system. The thing is, by using the Reliant model, the saucer section alone would account for the majority (if not the total) volume of living quarters on the ship (if the Reliant's saucer was anything like the Constitution's). That's major overkill with only 35 people aboard. This is similar to the Lantree's 26 crewmembers, but in that case it was clear that the Lantree was a much older ship (at least 75 years) that had been converted into a large cargo vessel for its second life. Not so with the Brattain. I remember having a conversation with Doug Drexler about this on his blog. Apparently the TNG producers would have a conniption fit whenever there was a need for a new studio model. As a matter of fact, they didn't even want a new model built for the Enterprise-C in "Yesterday's Enterprise." Okuda mentioned that they might have had to use the Enterprise-A or the Excelsior for the ship (whether this meant that the script would have to be changed to make the ship the Ent-A or B, or whether the models would be modified to represent a more advanced ship, I don't know.)
^ Makes you wonder how they managed to make so many different models for the Wolf 359 wreckage. It was mostly kitbashing, but they were still new configurations.
Isn't this assuming that any change in stardate system is a full replacement rather than an interpolation formula applied during some timespan to smoothly transition between system A and system B? Because that would seem to me to be a much more rational way of transitioning from one system to another in practice to avoid double-dating concerns and date collisions. Edit: Wait, I feel like I've said this before in a past thread and Timo had a good argument why that's not necessarily the more rational choice. I guess I'll find out shortly.