My ordering is:TOS. TMP. then Cage.
Constitution Class 24th Century Question
- Thread starter Jeffmw078
- Start date
Now, here are 2 ideas I'd like to see on-screen. We're so used to seeing a Federation/Starfleet ship and it being Federation/Starfleet. It would definitely make for an interesting feeling watching an episode, seeing a Connie show up and see a bunch of Naussicans or something.
Well, if those Xhosa/Norkova Antares class freighters and Deneva class freighters are any indication, Starfleet does sell their extremely old ships to aliens.
Shatner wrote this fate for the Enterprise A in “Ashes of Eden”. The ship was stripped of virtually all the tech and sold to a private government that Kirk and Scotty ended up working for.
I don't really see Starfleet realistically doing that. Other than the damage caused by the battle with Chang's BoP, there was nothing wrong with the ship. There was no reason why Starfleet couldn't have recommissioned it under a different name and registry, much less any reason why they would strip it and sell it to an alien government. The ship wasn't that old.
Unless, of course, she was. For all we know, she was actually significantly older than NCC-1701, having originally been NCC-1018 or whatever.
But brand new ships went to the breakers after WWI and WWII in droves, sometimes straight off the slipways. Making peace with the Klingons might have the exact same effect on Starfleet, despite its pretenses that its warships are in fact peaceships.
Timo Saloniemi
But brand new ships went to the breakers after WWI and WWII in droves, sometimes straight off the slipways. Making peace with the Klingons might have the exact same effect on Starfleet, despite its pretenses that its warships are in fact peaceships.
Timo Saloniemi
That wouldn’t matter. If the ship had been refit from the TOS version like the first Enterprise was, Starfleet would have considered it to be practically a new ship. And it’s doubtful that it would have been refit any earlier than the first Enterprise was in the 2270’s. So essentially the ship would only have been around 20 years old by TUC. But I think the intent was that the ship was a newbuild anyway.
I would think, being the Enterprise, it would be placed in a museum after being decommissioned.
That's another distinct possibility.
Then again, the Enterprise wasn't turned into a museum after WWII. (And in-universe, Picard speaks of "one" Constitution being a museum piece, and that one supposedly has the TOS bridge. Of course, he could be spinning the facts a bit to make Scotty feel at ease, and OTOH the E-A could have had a TOS bridge fitted for the benefit of the elementary school tours even if she never sported one during her service life.)
Would a TMP-style refit really zero-hour a starship? Or does the "almost completely new" only refer to the fact that veterans no longer can comprehend the modern systems installed? Hard to tell. We hear of warp cores getting fatigued with hard use, but do starship hulls suffer when hijackers make the ship do warp fourteen? What sort of a life did the putative NCC-1018 lead?
Timo Saloniemi
Would a TMP-style refit really zero-hour a starship? Or does the "almost completely new" only refer to the fact that veterans no longer can comprehend the modern systems installed? Hard to tell. We hear of warp cores getting fatigued with hard use, but do starship hulls suffer when hijackers make the ship do warp fourteen? What sort of a life did the putative NCC-1018 lead?
Timo Saloniemi
The Promellians explicitly built their spacecraft to last for generations. And it shows, even showing up in the Gamma Quadrant 1000 years years after their "extinction".
We also see one in "Sons of Mogh", quite a bit after "Sanctuary". Might be the Skreeans hired Alpha assets for their exodus, and the Promellians never went to Gamma.
But yeah, some ships never die. It would be fun to learn who first built those Batris-type ships. (Clearly not the Talarians, because identifying the Batris as one of theirs required spotting the Talarian symbols on her flanks.) Quite possibly those ships have been around for thousands of years, too, so spotting something shaped like that gives no hints whatsoever of the owners, since every hull is likely to have changed hands a hundred times already. Or do folks just produce endless copies of a trusted design?
Timo Saloniemi
But yeah, some ships never die. It would be fun to learn who first built those Batris-type ships. (Clearly not the Talarians, because identifying the Batris as one of theirs required spotting the Talarian symbols on her flanks.) Quite possibly those ships have been around for thousands of years, too, so spotting something shaped like that gives no hints whatsoever of the owners, since every hull is likely to have changed hands a hundred times already. Or do folks just produce endless copies of a trusted design?
Timo Saloniemi
Ships might last a century with "normal use" and periodic upgrades, not going into combat multiple times and barely surviving
That’s what I hope happened to the E-A. It was the Enterprise AND it was a ship commanded by Kirk.
Well, we know that. This is all just harmless speculation, with no bearing on the current shows. I have no expectation of ever seeing a Promellian battle cruiser or the Batris ever again, which means we can come up with outlandish ideas to workaround production idiosyncrasies.
The most logical way to view it is that the ships just coincidentally look the same. To think that there is some shipbuilding organization which produces vessels for multiple alien races all over the entire galaxy and at multiple points in history is just absurd.
Why would you say so? Today, organizations produce automobiles for multiple races all over the entire planet at multiple points in history, engaging in both persistence and retro to create products that sell despite being decades out of date. Tomorrow, everything will simply be more.
What possible reason would there be for an organization not to be everywhere and forever? Surely this is the existential purpose of the organization to begin with.
Timo Saloniemi
What possible reason would there be for an organization not to be everywhere and forever? Surely this is the existential purpose of the organization to begin with.
Timo Saloniemi
