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Build date of the original U.S.S. Enterprise
- Thread starter Shark
- Start date
Yeah, I rewatched the episode after I posted the thread(A damning offense with this crowd, obviously) and got some of the dates wrong (Fucking deal with it, cunts).
We generally go by what is explicit on screen and since there's nothing stated on screen for the 2245 date so often given in Trek lit, so I still think that shit should be discarded. And I don't hear a god damn plausible reason why it shouldn't be.
We generally go by what is explicit on screen and since there's nothing stated on screen for the 2245 date so often given in Trek lit, so I still think that shit should be discarded. And I don't hear a god damn plausible reason why it shouldn't be.
I think the age dialog is do with the wear and tair usage of the ship inspike that it's actually 40 years old. We have to think that the ship had been through at lease 3 or 4 upgrands and refits. Which may had lasted as long as two years each.
We don't know how long she was setting in space dock until Kirk took command. Also, we don't know the exact date that she transfer over to starfleet academy. Being use as a cadit traning vessel wouldn't cost any wear and tair, all she would been doing mostly, is traveling through the solar system.
We don't know how long she was setting in space dock until Kirk took command. Also, we don't know the exact date that she transfer over to starfleet academy. Being use as a cadit traning vessel wouldn't cost any wear and tair, all she would been doing mostly, is traveling through the solar system.
Dial this back now. I generally don't like to put on my mod hat most of the time, but if I see this again it'll be an infraction.
Well, your post was all about the dates, after all, so it seems only helpful for other posters to provide you with more accurate information.
At any rate, what you're neglecting (although at least one poster has mentioned it) is the final episode of TAS, "The Counter-Clock Incident," in which it's explicitly stated that the Enterprise's first captain was Robert April, and that for the past 20 years he has served as a Federation ambassador. If we make the not-unreasonable assumptions that the episode comes relatively close to the end of the FYM (which ended in 2270, as made explicit years later in "Q2") and that April commanded a FYM of his own before handing the ship over to Pike, then you get 2270 minus 25, which is... 2245.
OTOH, we have every reason to believe that five-year missions are a thing that sets Kirk apart from most everybody else, as in ST:TMP. Most skippers would never perform a "mission" - they would have tours of duty of varying lengths, seldom involving multi-year assignments to the wild frontier (which is why Kirk is uniquely qualified among the captains on Earth when V'Ger comes, despite the handicap that he isn't even a captain!).
April could have served for 21 years for all we know, followed by Pike doing two three-month stints, between which the incredibly famous Captain Smith performed feats that forever immortalized the name Enterprise...
...As a hopeless ship only fit for rookies on no-return missions to beyond the Galactic Barrier, perhaps. But the thing is, we can't use tours of duty to establish a launch date, other than noting that the ship was launched in "The Cage" already, establishing the "no later than 2255'ish" limit (depending on how we interpret TOS and its individual episodes and season as fitting into the five-year mission that ends in 2270).
Timo Saloniemi
April could have served for 21 years for all we know, followed by Pike doing two three-month stints, between which the incredibly famous Captain Smith performed feats that forever immortalized the name Enterprise...
...As a hopeless ship only fit for rookies on no-return missions to beyond the Galactic Barrier, perhaps. But the thing is, we can't use tours of duty to establish a launch date, other than noting that the ship was launched in "The Cage" already, establishing the "no later than 2255'ish" limit (depending on how we interpret TOS and its individual episodes and season as fitting into the five-year mission that ends in 2270).
Timo Saloniemi
there is a really nice star trek novel pre TOS. pike/april and kirks daddy go take the just completed enterprise out on a maiden test flight and end up destroying some space pirates. Its set before kirk is even born.
And I think the story mentioned a 20 year period from start to finish of building the ship due to technological issues.
Also I thought the battle of Axanar happened right when the first constitution class was being built..
And I think the story mentioned a 20 year period from start to finish of building the ship due to technological issues.
Also I thought the battle of Axanar happened right when the first constitution class was being built..
The dates are fudgeable. There once was a fandom understanding of Kirk's ship having been launched about 40 years before TOS; for various reasons, that later mutated into just 20 years before TOS, which is exactly why Diane Carey pulls that "got delayed by two decades" stunt in her novel (Final Frontier, with a sequel Best Destiny).
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
No, that only happened in Prelude To Axanar. Alec Peters has stated on various occasions that he used the non-established dates of pre-TOS events to include the Enterprise in his story.
Got this directly from the end of Vol. 10 of the Federation Spaceflight Chronology (which came out in 2007). Though the author's language is a bit pointed (don't mean to start an argument by posting this), his research is thorough.......
Those of you who swear by the Prime Two timeline (Okuda chronology) are probably going to be rather upset by my listing an “early” launch date of 2223 for the Enterprise. Whatever it is you’re going to say, whatever arguments you’re going to drop in my email to “convince” me that 2245 is the “correct” launch date isn’t going to work. My dating is based on what’s shown on screen in TOS and TAS as well as the original TOS pre- production documents. James Dixon argues the point well for the so-called “early date” in his musings on the subject, and I’ve had several interesting discussions myself with Aridas Sofia, Bernard Guigand of Treknografix, and many others on the subject. At the risk of spoiling Dixon’s excellent dissertation, here’s how I came to the conclusion that an “early” date of 2223 worked for my Prime One timeline:
Those of you who swear by the Prime Two timeline (Okuda chronology) are probably going to be rather upset by my listing an “early” launch date of 2223 for the Enterprise. Whatever it is you’re going to say, whatever arguments you’re going to drop in my email to “convince” me that 2245 is the “correct” launch date isn’t going to work. My dating is based on what’s shown on screen in TOS and TAS as well as the original TOS pre- production documents. James Dixon argues the point well for the so-called “early date” in his musings on the subject, and I’ve had several interesting discussions myself with Aridas Sofia, Bernard Guigand of Treknografix, and many others on the subject. At the risk of spoiling Dixon’s excellent dissertation, here’s how I came to the conclusion that an “early” date of 2223 worked for my Prime One timeline:
- 1) Almost all major fandom works (prior to Okuda’s slipshod timestream meddling and with the notable exception of the efforts of TREK magazine) give the dates for TOS as 2260-2265. The basis for this is Chuck Graham’s original 1974 fandom timeline from The Menagerie fanzine and reprinted, used, and elaborated upon by Geofferey Mandel in all of his old fandom publications (Star Fleet Handbook, USS Enterprise Officer’s Manual, Star Trek Maps, et al). It was derived from extensive analysis of on-screen evidence from both TOS and TAS (read Dixon for the dirty details). Since this document is based on an updated and corrected version of that timeline then it too uses the 2260-2265 dates for TOS.
- 2) Several pre-production TOS documents exist (one of which was reprinted in The Making of STAR TREK by Stephen Whitfield) that give an approximate age of 40 years for the Enterprise at the time Kirk took command. A number of “old school” TREK fans appear to interpret this literally, which is from where the 2221 date comes. Since the first season of TOS roughly corresponds to the year 2261 per the Graham/Mandel timeline, then
-
2261 – 40 = 2221.
I interpret this 40-year figure as an approximate date based on information from other sources. Still, I’ll be the first to agree that 2221 is the earliest possible date for the launch of the Enterprise. It probably happened a little later than that and apparently did so based on my interpretation of the available evidence.
3) The reason why I do not accept 2221 – or Okuda’s 2245, for that matter – as the Enterprise launch date is based on the following:- a) The established “fact” that at age 30 or 31 (given your source) James T. Kirk was the youngest starship captain in Star Fleet history. This is backed up by both on-screen evidence (TOS “The Deadly Years,” for starters) and the majority of licensed and unlicensed STAR TREK works. Before him was Christopher Pike, his predecessor, at age 33 (per Mandel’s EOM).
- b) We know that Robert April was the first captain of the Enterprise per TAS (“The Counter-Clock Incident”). Even Okuda has conceded this point.
- c) There is considerable on-screen evidence in TOS, TAS, the original franchise movies, and even into TNG, DS9, and VOY that the mid- to-late 30s age range is fairly common for Star Fleet starship commanders. Younger candidates (such as Kirk and Pike) are sometimes accepted based on demonstrated exceptional command ability. I could cite many examples, but I’ll choose a well-known one. TNG’s William Riker was offered command of the Melbourne at age 31 for the very reason stated above. He turned it down, of course, and stayed as Picard’s executive officer or several more years. The fact that he was offered it at all, though, given his youth, serves to prove my point.
- d) Based on all of the above, Robert April couldn’t have been any younger than 34 (or a late 33, possibly) when he became the first captain of the Enterprise. If he had been any younger then April would have been the youngest starship captain in Star Fleet history prior to Kirk, not Pike. The subject of April’s age is never mentioned when he briefly discusses taking command with Kirk in TAS (“The Counter-Clock Incident”), so it’s probably safe to say he was in that median age group favored by Star Fleet for initial starship command. An age of 34 falls within this median range. The original TOS production documents say that April was “about 34” when he was envisioned as commanding the Enterprise.
e) Robert April was 75 years old when he visited the Enterprise in TAS (“The Counter- Clock Incident”). Kirk states April’s age onscreen as part of his log entry. Bouncing his retirement age (75) against the earliest age he assumed command (34) of a brand new starship Enterprise ...
75 – 34 = 41
...which means Robert April took command of the Enterprise 41 years prior to the events depicted in TAS. This happens to agree with the approximate 40-year figure given in the TOS pre-production documents. The 40-year figure was taken into account by both the writers and producers of TAS per their own account; hence its consistency with the TOS evidence. Now, we know that the Graham/Mandel timeline puts TAS in 2264, so April’s visit to his former command at age 75 also took place in 2264. One last bit of math left to do ...
2264 – 41 = 2223
... and that’s how I got 2223 as the launch date for the Enterprise.
...Isn't that actually Dixon himself praising Dixon under one of his many aliases?
Anyway, it doesn't sound dramatically satisfying to think that all Starfleet skippers, or at least all Enterprise ones, should closely skirt Kirk's "record" for least experience when first assigned a command. Why should April assume command in his early thirties, as opposed to his late forties? Why try and diminish Kirk's record of youth (an urban myth if there ever was one, of course)?
Whether NCC-1701 was built to be a significant ship (one of the biggest in the Fleet in her day, as one perhaps thought) or an insignificant one (one of the tiniest, as it now seems), burdening her with the additional oddity or exception of having all her skippers be first-timers at the job sounds artificial to the extreme...
Timo Saloniemi
Anyway, it doesn't sound dramatically satisfying to think that all Starfleet skippers, or at least all Enterprise ones, should closely skirt Kirk's "record" for least experience when first assigned a command. Why should April assume command in his early thirties, as opposed to his late forties? Why try and diminish Kirk's record of youth (an urban myth if there ever was one, of course)?
Whether NCC-1701 was built to be a significant ship (one of the biggest in the Fleet in her day, as one perhaps thought) or an insignificant one (one of the tiniest, as it now seems), burdening her with the additional oddity or exception of having all her skippers be first-timers at the job sounds artificial to the extreme...
Timo Saloniemi
Indeed - am not sure I buy into all that either, but of all the various 'theories' floating around out there, that author explains his in the most detail. Either way, I don't think it makes much difference (even if you want to expand this to include the build/launch date of the Constitution class as a whole).
We might want to decide first whether the loss rate witnessed in TOS was exceptional or average. A class a dozen ships strong would not stay a dozen strong for long at the TOS average of one total loss per year - establishing either that the class had been much larger earlier on and Starfleet was okay with the impending exhaustion of ships, or that there was an ongoing casualty replacement program in which NCC-1701 may have been a "midlife" or even "late" rather than "early" replacement.
Neither approach gives us a handle on when NCC-1701 might have been launched. Both just serve to show that absent very solid direct evidence, we cannot hope to find such a handle.
We could engage in Dixonesque math here, though: if Starfleet really loses a Constitution every year on the average, and the lowest known registry is 1017 and the highest 1764, then the first ship might have been launched around the time of Henry VIII....
Timo Saloniemi
Neither approach gives us a handle on when NCC-1701 might have been launched. Both just serve to show that absent very solid direct evidence, we cannot hope to find such a handle.
We could engage in Dixonesque math here, though: if Starfleet really loses a Constitution every year on the average, and the lowest known registry is 1017 and the highest 1764, then the first ship might have been launched around the time of Henry VIII....
Timo Saloniemi
Probably.
Dixon loves tearing apart any timeline theories he doesn't personally endorse, but never forget that his timeline basically boils down to Spock estimating the age of a piano.
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It would be interesting to list all the evidence - including production documents - through TAS. We've never seen what kind of notes went back and forth about Robert April for the writer of The Counterclock Incident, but the math employed in that episode is pretty damned consistent with a literal reading of Poe in TMoST. Which Fontana as showrunner on TAS seemed perfectly fine accepting, and she'd been there from the start of TOS. And of course, there is whatever input Roddenberry had with Poe on TMoST and Fontana with TAS. In other words, a later calculation may have been deemed in order once Star Trek lingered in film into the late-1980s, but what was the understanding when the 5YM was being filmed on TOS and TAS? I've always been content with the bits of information that added up to people in the 1960s and 1970s, looking at the example of a US Navy with Iowa-class battleships that famously were being recommissioned during the Vietnam war and thus stretching their lives to 30+ (and eventually nearly 50) years, thinking that 40 years was fine. By the 1980s, and apparently feeling the need to make a refit Enterprise not be 60+ years old, the numbers were reworked. But during the making of the two series in question, I feel pretty confident the people doing the deciding were working on the assumption of a ship that was launched in the 2020s.
Finally, on the premise of Dixon's timeline- the relevant lines from "Miri" stating that the environment reflects "approximately 1960" Earth and that the piano is "about 300 years" old is significant in that it is the very first place where the series pretty explicitly dates itself. Sure, it goes on later to contradict that date with "Space Seed" and "Squire of Gothos", wandering from 200 to 700+ years from the mid-1960s, but that mid-23rd century figure from "Miri" is the one that is corroborated in Poe's book, thus seeming to indicate that was the working assumption and that the other dates were mistakes. And of course, that's what Roddenberry settled on in TMP and later, explicitly, in S1 TNG - a dating that was remarkably close to the Chuck Graham dating from 1974 that James Dixon later adopted. So, I'd give Dixon a bye on the stupidity of basing a million pages of timeline on a stupid piano. He seems to have been right.
Finally, on the premise of Dixon's timeline- the relevant lines from "Miri" stating that the environment reflects "approximately 1960" Earth and that the piano is "about 300 years" old is significant in that it is the very first place where the series pretty explicitly dates itself. Sure, it goes on later to contradict that date with "Space Seed" and "Squire of Gothos", wandering from 200 to 700+ years from the mid-1960s, but that mid-23rd century figure from "Miri" is the one that is corroborated in Poe's book, thus seeming to indicate that was the working assumption and that the other dates were mistakes. And of course, that's what Roddenberry settled on in TMP and later, explicitly, in S1 TNG - a dating that was remarkably close to the Chuck Graham dating from 1974 that James Dixon later adopted. So, I'd give Dixon a bye on the stupidity of basing a million pages of timeline on a stupid piano. He seems to have been right.
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...Although the in-universe rationale for Spock having been right is a quest unto itself. Was the piano brand new when the civilization collapsed (much of the furniture did appear to be - noveau middleclass)? How does Spock know about pianos (he does know a lot about Brahms' piano works)? Or did he use a tricorder when we weren't looking (a wise precaution when entering a building)? If he did, why use it on the piano specifically (largest lump of organic matter)? Etc.
Why did Roddenberry settle on "300 years past airdate sharp" for TMP? Because that's what the fans believed was true already? Because he remembered a line from "Miri" and chose it over competing lines because of X? Do we know?
Timo Saloniemi
Why did Roddenberry settle on "300 years past airdate sharp" for TMP? Because that's what the fans believed was true already? Because he remembered a line from "Miri" and chose it over competing lines because of X? Do we know?
Timo Saloniemi
In "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" Scotty is excited to meet one of the Enterprise's designers, Lawrence Marvick. Marvick is still a fairly young guy (according to Memory Alpha, the actor was in his early 40s), so that certainly lends credence to the Enterprise only being 20 years old at the time of TOS.
Ships cost.
Ship's computer can be replaced and weapons upgraded with no excessive expence, but build a new ship every 10-20 years.....
I think starfleet ships must last 50 years or so to amortise the effort to design and build it.
Ship's computer can be replaced and weapons upgraded with no excessive expence, but build a new ship every 10-20 years.....
I think starfleet ships must last 50 years or so to amortise the effort to design and build it.
Yeah, that one's a sticker. You can
1) say it didn't mean what they said it meant (he designed the CURRENT components - which is not what the writer's meant)
2) ignore it
3) use it as a data point.
I have a problem with 3 because this fellow isn't regarded as some kind of Daystom-ish wunderkind. So it kind of ignores even what had been on screen as far as the Enterprise having been in space for a while.
Oh, a variation of 2 is to shrug and say "Season 3". (*RUNS*)
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