1701-A
- Thread starter lordsofelsewhen
- Start date
Wedged under the fence out past the warning track, maybe.
We'll just say it is a big ballpark.
If the Refit material is 12 years old and 20% of the ship is the 40 year old Original (40 x .2 is 8 years) then mathematically you have a 20 year old ship. We could assume that is how Starfleet calculates ship age.
Morrow just misspoke. He screwed up. He's a bit too cocky to be competent that guy.
Perhaps a stupid question: What's a Ti-Ho?
A hooker interested in bondage...
No it wasn't. The destroyed saucer and secondary hull were newly filmed for BoBW. There was no stock footage used in the scene.
maybe a misinterpreted spelling of the IJN carrier Taihō, sunk in Battle of the Philippine Sea 1944, English translation Great Phoenix IIRC ...
The A was always a funny one for me - it just felt like they cheaped out a little, giving us the same model with an extra letter slapped on it. If you're going to give us a new Enterprise, give us a new Enterprise. I've said elsewhere on this board, I believe it should have been an Excelsior (either the Excelsior rechristened, or the first regular production ship of the Excelsior class). As it stands though I've always subscribed to the theory that it was in fact the Yorktown rechristened as the Enterprise as a courtesy to Kirk (which I think I read somewhere was Roddenberry's view on it too).
Quite. Same reason we never see the Sovereign in DS9 - I would have liked to have seen a few old Connies doddering about in Picard's time though. Supply runs, border patrols in the arse end of nowhere etc - still out there making a difference, no matter how small. I believe at one point the Stargazer was supposed to have been a Connie, until TPTB nixed it.
Quite. Same reason we never see the Sovereign in DS9 - I would have liked to have seen a few old Connies doddering about in Picard's time though. Supply runs, border patrols in the arse end of nowhere etc - still out there making a difference, no matter how small. I believe at one point the Stargazer was supposed to have been a Connie, until TPTB nixed it.
It had nothing to do with being cheap. The original plan was that the Excelsior would be the crew's new ship, because the VFX personnel hated filming the larger and unwieldy TMP Enterprise model. When those plans ended up changing, there wasn't enough time to design and build a new model for a five-second scene, so they reluctantly went with the old one, not knowing if there'd be any more films after TVH.
Of course, hindsight being 20/20, if they had known that the decision would be made to create TNG after TVH, they could have built a new model for the Enterprise-A and have it be the ship used in TNG. But obviously that didn't happen.
Last edited:
Perhaps. We know from Star Trek III that a Constitution can be operated with only a few people. They can Redemption there way into a much fuller fleet by splitting command personnel out of some of the larger ships onto old museum pieces and junked starliners (i.e. Lieutenant Commander So-and-So of the Excelsior-class Melbourne and a couple of ensigns were assigned to command the retired Constitution-class USS Emden).
Maybe that's why they failed so badly, most of the crews were completely unprepared for how to operate their new ships and unable to muster a coordinated attack. 11,000 people died amongst 40 starships. That's an average of 275 people per ship. Most of the ship classes seen or supposed (Excelsior, Constitution, Galaxy, Miranda) have a crew larger than 275, although I'm not sure if the math is in favor of this theory, given the amount of survivors via ignored escape pods.
Do the math right and you get 275 KIA per ship, out of an average crew of 700 or so. With the newer, bigger ships averaging 1000 to 1200 crew, and the older ones averaging 200 crew or less, it's possible to get 11,000 without is seeming fishy.
Correct. It was newly filmed footage, not stock from STIII.
Bernd Schneider has an excellent discussion of Wolf 359 here, including this picture of what appears to be a Constitution-class secondary hull:
That's the bunny.
Obviously it's ambiguous (we barely see the full model, and it could be intended to be the hull of a ship class we never saw before ala the Soyuz Class). But the model used is clearly and unmistakably the Constitution-Refit, and there's no reason not to assume it belonged to exactly that class.
Since we first see part of the destroyed saucer, and then part of the secondary hull in a different scene, several assumptions can be made:
1. There could have been two Connies.
2. There could have been one Connie that had its saucer ripped off.
3. There could have been either one ship or multiple ships with a saucer and/or secondary hull of the Connie type, but are not actually Connies.
4. The parts and the angles seen of the wreckage resemble Connies or parts of Connies, but aren't actually Connies at all.
My personal assumption: I'm a big fan of Occam's Razor, so AFAIC, there was one Connie at Wolf 359.
However, there's one thing I can state with all certainty: I need more people named Connie in my life.
The status of Constitutions in the 2360s hinges a lot on dialogue from "Relics". Granted, it takes place after any pruning that might have occurred at Wolf 359, but the choice of words is still rather telling.
The facts known from elsewhere: both the TOS and TFS styles carry the Constitution class name, and of the two ships named Enterprise, only one ever looked like the simulation. Also, the E-nil does not survive.
What Picard says seems to completely rule out that the Enterprise (that is, E-A) would be the museum specimen. The phrasing also rules out the E-A having once been a specimen but lost at Wolf 359 - had that happened, Picard would have discussed the heroic loss with Scotty there and then.
What is less absolute is whether the museum specimen is of TOS or TFS type. The odds are that Picard recognizes the century-and-half-old style only because that's the one preserved in the museum, though. And that in turn means that there could in theory be TFS style Constitutions elsewhere (but probably not in the museum, or "there's one" would be needlessly misleading), as those would be irrelevant to Picard's ability to recognize the TOS design...
But then we get down to the next level of interpretation - the spirit of things. If Constitutions of any color were still operational, Picard would be likely to discuss those, rather than dusty museum ships. He knows very well that Scotty served on a TFS-configured ship or two! And if there were just one or two and those were lost at Wolf 359, the discussion would be even more likely to gyrate to that direction.
What is the best explanation for the subject of TFS-style Constitutions being ignored in "Relics"? That they are relatively commonplace? Or that there are none surviving, the last having been lost at Wolf 359? Or even that all were lost aeons ago, and options 3 and 4 above rule supreme?
The "Consoling a drunken vet isn't exact science" explanation of course covers all the bases, but is fundamentally rather unsatisfactory.
Timo Saloniemi
The facts known from elsewhere: both the TOS and TFS styles carry the Constitution class name, and of the two ships named Enterprise, only one ever looked like the simulation. Also, the E-nil does not survive.
What Picard says seems to completely rule out that the Enterprise (that is, E-A) would be the museum specimen. The phrasing also rules out the E-A having once been a specimen but lost at Wolf 359 - had that happened, Picard would have discussed the heroic loss with Scotty there and then.
What is less absolute is whether the museum specimen is of TOS or TFS type. The odds are that Picard recognizes the century-and-half-old style only because that's the one preserved in the museum, though. And that in turn means that there could in theory be TFS style Constitutions elsewhere (but probably not in the museum, or "there's one" would be needlessly misleading), as those would be irrelevant to Picard's ability to recognize the TOS design...
But then we get down to the next level of interpretation - the spirit of things. If Constitutions of any color were still operational, Picard would be likely to discuss those, rather than dusty museum ships. He knows very well that Scotty served on a TFS-configured ship or two! And if there were just one or two and those were lost at Wolf 359, the discussion would be even more likely to gyrate to that direction.
What is the best explanation for the subject of TFS-style Constitutions being ignored in "Relics"? That they are relatively commonplace? Or that there are none surviving, the last having been lost at Wolf 359? Or even that all were lost aeons ago, and options 3 and 4 above rule supreme?
The "Consoling a drunken vet isn't exact science" explanation of course covers all the bases, but is fundamentally rather unsatisfactory.
Timo Saloniemi
Just because one ship is in a museum doesn't mean that there aren't other ships of that class still in active service. Plus, since Picard is clearly looking at a TOS-style Connie when he makes his statement, it can be logically deduced that post-TMP refits and newbuilds, like the Miranda and Constellation classes, stand a good chance of still being around. Heck, the Stargazer was almost a Connie herself if Greg Jein hadn't finished his model in time for shooting.
Between these two quotes, I believe that a pre-refit Starship exhibited in the museum is the answer that satisfies. Whether there are post-refit ships in service is an open question.
On the other, Timo might be on to something:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldi-2v2Y8ys[/yt]
IIRC they also wanted to be able to use existing stock footage in later films.
There's at least one ship from the graveyard scene that I'm aware of, that has a Constitution secondary hull but other parts from other ships. I think it has a saucer and three nacelles from the Galaxy.
Actually, that secondary hull comes from the mold that made the E-C, not the E-nil/A. And the ship is built to a scale that matches that of the E-C hull, too.
http://scottmcgee.org/www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/wolf359/princeton-model.jpg
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/wolf359/princeton-parts.gif
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/niagara.htm
Timo Saloniemi
http://scottmcgee.org/www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/wolf359/princeton-model.jpg
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/wolf359/princeton-parts.gif
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/niagara.htm
Timo Saloniemi
So by the time of Relics, there were no active TOS or refit Constitution class ships in active (Starfleet) service? Sure there is one in the museum at that time.
