Forget The Enterprise, Star Trek's Greatest Ship Is The Excelsior

[starsuperion]

Now, I'm posting this article link here because the main premise of this article's argument and its crux lies heavily in the TNG era. Beyond its brief intro in the TOS films, the Excelsior class is prominent within the TNG canon as well as TOS. But in this article, they state why the Excelsior is more important then the Enterprise. I think the writer gets confused with class or a ship's nomenclature with that of it's name or title, but I digress.
Check out the points he makes about the ship, and let me know what you think.

My first reaction was one of "Gasp! Sacrilege!! Blasphemy!! But then I got to thinking about it. Now I'm confused..could this article be right? Is the Excelsior truly the backbone of Star Fleet? Is it the deeds of a ship and its name that I love, or the model and class? Not sure. Interested to see the reaction and discussion, now I am a bit more intrigued about the Excelsior class and it's role during the Wolf 359 Battle..
Anyhow, here is the article published Sept. 30, 2019. Yesterday..as of right now.
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-excelsior-best-ship-not-enterprise/

Mods. If you feel this should go to the TOS board, no worries. I just felt it could go either way, and the article got pretty heavy in TNG territory so I felt this was relevant to that era.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well, same could be said about the miranda class.. Was there all those years!
But we know why, only so many ship models available, eventually getting. A nebula, ambassador class.. Has to get the monies worth
But it does make sense to have the ship still in service 80 years after introduction, stuff like the b-52 still in service after 50, and the enterprise aircraft carrier just being retired.

 

[starsuperion]

Well, same could be said about the miranda class.. Was there all those years!
But we know why, only so many ship models available, eventually getting. A nebula, ambassador class.. Has to get the monies worth
But it does make sense to have the ship still in service 80 years after introduction, stuff like the b-52 still in service after 50, and the enterprise aircraft carrier just being retired.

Yes, but the Greatest Ship in Starfleet tho?? That's the title, and tho the article makes good points, I struggle with that, given how much the Constitution class built the TOS era. Tho it could be so that the Excelsior class built the TNG era..

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

The Connie is the greatest because 2 Enterprises were Connies in three seasons and six movies.

I don't buy there were only 13 of them, and they kept them out of TNG and other later series for reasons. Outside of The Ultimate Computer, we never saw more than one Constitution class, again for reasons.

We did see a shit-ton of Excelsior class, both original and the upgraded Ent-B types, so it's likely a slight false sense of importance placed on the Excelsiors.

Still, a good design is a good design if they make it for 100+ years and what we saw of the Excelsior and Miranda classes on TNG and DS9, they had that era's registry numbers. They weren't 100 year old ships, just 100 year old basic designs made with 24th century technology.

 

[Timo]

...Save for those that were. A number of Excelsiors had low four-digit registries, even if just one Miranda did.

The B-52 will be more like 90 years old when it finally retires - but all the actual planes remaining are of the final H model, which is "only" 80 at the projected replacement date. With the Trek ships, the time difference between batches is likely to be greater. A bit like with F-15 which has been in production since the 1970s and may yet be produced for USAF stopgap use in the 2020s, even if the service life of the planes or the type won't compete with that of the bomber yet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[starsuperion]

The Connie is the greatest because 2 Enterprises were Connies in three seasons and six movies.

I don't buy there were only 13 of them, and they kept them out of TNG and other later series for reasons. Outside of The Ultimate Computer, we never saw more than one Constitution class, again for reasons.

This is where I have to disagree, but only for accuracy's sake.
Constitution class appearances:
TOS The Ultimate computer (as you have cited) (USS Excalibur, USS Lexington, USS Hood, USS Potempkin)
TOS The Doomsday Machine (USS Constellation)
TOS Court martial (USS Exeter)
TOS Omega Glory (USS Exeter)
TOS The Tholian Web (The Defiant)
TOS Mirror Mirror Alternative Universe (ISS Enterprise) I prefer the remastered version with the different markings.
ENT In a Mirror Darkly (The Defiant)

We did see a shit-ton of Excelsior class, both original and the upgraded Ent-B types, so it's likely a slight false sense of importance placed on the Excelsiors.

Still, a good design is a good design if they make it for 100+ years and what we saw of the Excelsior and Miranda classes on TNG and DS9, they had that era's registry numbers. They weren't 100 year old ships, just 100 year old basic designs made with 24th century technology.

Very true. Plus, I like the fact that there's a whole series of untold stories about Captian Sulu and his Excelsior class ship. I wonder if Big Finish wouldn't take a crack at it. Sulu's 5 year mission would be a very cool choice.

...Save for those that were. A number of Excelsiors had low four-digit registries, even if just one Miranda did.

The B-52 will be more like 90 years old when it finally retires - but all the actual planes remaining are of the final H model, which is "only" 80 at the projected replacement date. With the Trek ships, the time difference between batches is likely to be greater. A bit like with F-15 which has been in production since the 1970s and may yet be produced for USAF stopgap use in the 2020s, even if the service life of the planes or the type won't compete with that of the bomber yet.

Timo Saloniemi

Very true, But then again I did read that a few constitution classes were at the battle of Wolf 359 in addition to the Excelsior class.

 

[Timo]

Well, we saw parts of the Constitution photographic model floating in the battlefield: a secondary hull without a saucer, and then the half-blown-to-bits saucer from ST3:TSfS. Might be those "really" came from a Constitution or several. Might be they came from other, perhaps more modern ship designs that use the same parts.

The really weird thing is that we only ever saw one Excelsior there, in the DS9 "Emissary" version of the battle...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

This is where I have to disagree, but only for accuracy's sake.
Constitution class appearances:
TOS The Ultimate computer (as you have cited) (USS Excalibur, USS Lexington, USS Hood, USS Potempkin)
TOS The Doomsday Machine (USS Constellation)
TOS Court martial (USS Exeter)
TOS Omega Glory (USS Exeter)
TOS The Tholian Web (The Defiant)
TOS Mirror Mirror Alternative Universe (ISS Enterprise) I prefer the remastered version with the different markings.
ENT In a Mirror Darkly (The Defiant)

Very true. Plus, I like the fact that there's a whole series of untold stories about Captian Sulu and his Excelsior class ship. I wonder if Big Finish wouldn't take a crack at it. Sulu's 5 year mission would be a very cool choice.

Very true, But then again I did read that a few constitution classes were at the battle of Wolf 359 in addition to the Excelsior class.

It's been a long time for me watching TOS, so I was generalizing from memory.

We're any of those other appearances added in for the remasters?

 

[Timo]

Visual appearances originally happened in the two TOS episodes you mentioned, plus "Tholian Web" where we saw the Defiant and "Omega Glory" where we saw the Exeter.

The ship of "Court Martial" was added in TOS-R, as was an extra shot of the Lexington next to the space station in "Ultimate Computer".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Visual appearances originally happened in the two TOS episodes you mentioned, plus "Tholian Web" where we saw the Defiant and "Omega Glory" where we saw the Exeter.

The ship of "Court Martial" was added in TOS-R, as was an extra shot of the Lexington next to the space station in "Ultimate Computer".

Timo Saloniemi

Thanks. As long as it's been since I watched TOS, I've never seen the remastered episodes.

 

[starsuperion]

Thanks. As long as it's been since I watched TOS, I've never seen the remastered episodes.

Dude, there's nothing like watching the remastered episodes. Its like watching TOS again but for the first time. Its magnificent. Highly recommended.
Now about this biz about the Excelsior being the greatest ship in Trek, I can see it being a great successor to Constitution class, but overshadowing it? IDK...I mean it does see about 80 years of service by the 2400s, and is still present. It could very well be, that the one ship that was mass produced before the Galaxy classes came into being, that the Excelsior was the new standard.

 

[Timo]

I am still not convinced of the "mass production" bit - the one thing we learn about the (later-to-be-known-as-) Constitution class onscreen is that Kirk feels there are in fact very few of these ships, a point of pride for him. What reason do we have to think that he is lying?

The other shows rather consistently suggest Starfleet has thousands of ships (DSC recently established 7,000 ones for the rough Kirk era, although only a fraction of these apparently sport NCC registries). That Kirk chiefly encountered sister ships is not necessarily surprising: if the design is a frontier scout specifically, then that's what Kirk will meet at the frontier. And that's what Starfleet will pit the Enterprise against when testing the worth of the M-5 computer, because any other choice would just introduce unnecessary variables to confuse the comparison.

The Federation could be full of ships both lesser and grander than Kirk's. Every other show insists that this is the case. OTOH, the show about the 22nd century states that only sisters to the hero ship operate in deep space at the time, the others having inferior propulsion and staying closer to home. We might argue something like this to apply to TOS as well, so that Kirk enjoys his solitude because his ship leaves everybody else in her wake. No such excuse is offered in TNG, and indeed there the hero ship is surrounded by lessers more or less constantly.

Might still be that the Excelsior is the next Constitution, at least for a while. And then it gets demoted to mass-produced workhorse. Perhaps as with what happened to the Constitution (which in TOS performs some truly menial tasks), only without the mass production bit...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Now, I'm posting this article link here because the main premise of this article's argument and its crux lies heavily in the TNG era. Beyond its brief intro in the TOS films, the Excelsior class is prominent within the TNG canon as well as TOS. But in this article, they state why the Excelsior is more important then the Enterprise. I think the writer gets confused with class or a ship's nomenclature with that of it's name or title, but I digress.
Check out the points he makes about the ship, and let me know what you think.

My first reaction was one of "Gasp! Sacrilege!! Blasphemy!! But then I got to thinking about it. Now I'm confused..could this article be right? Is the Excelsior truly the backbone of Star Fleet? Is it the deeds of a ship and its name that I love, or the model and class? Not sure. Interested to see the reaction and discussion, now I am a bit more intrigued about the Excelsior class and it's role during the Wolf 359 Battle..
Anyhow, here is the article published Sept. 30, 2019. Yesterday..as of right now.
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-excelsior-best-ship-not-enterprise/

Mods. If you feel this should go to the TOS board, no worries. I just felt it could go either way, and the article got pretty heavy in TNG territory so I felt this was relevant to that era.

Looking at that chart, two things immediately stand out to me.

1. I'm glad they scaled the Jenolan 1:1 to the Constitution/Miranda class by nacelle size, and didn't make it significantly smaller to resemble a runabout's size.

2. The Shenzhou looks completely out of place design-aesthetic-and-size-wise for a ship operating ten years before TOS. Ten years after TUC, perhaps. (Note: That's not a rant against the Shenzhou's design itself. I actually really like the design; I just don't feel that it (or all the other DSC ships) fit aesthetically into its time period, other than the NX-01-style front deflector dish.)

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Looking at that chart, two things immediately stand out to me.

1. I'm glad they scaled the Jenolan 1:1 to the Constitution/Miranda class by nacelle size, and didn't make it significantly smaller to resemble a runabout's size.

I'm not sure I can buy the Sydney class being bigger than the Constitution secondary hull. You run into issues since it's a redress of the executive shuttle, but that alone doesn't mean they're the same of course.

Now here's the USS Nash (supposed to be the same class) docked at DS9. Definitely not that big here.

 

[Dukhat]

I'm not sure I can buy the Sydney class being bigger than the Constitution secondary hull. You run into issues since it's a redress of the executive shuttle, but that alone doesn't mean they're the same of course.

Now here's the USS Nash (supposed to be the same class) docked at DS9. Definitely not that big here.
View attachment 11506

I think that by showing it upside down, that they were intending it to be a different (and somewhat smaller) ship in that instance. It’s the Klingon BoP scaling nightmare all over again.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I think that by showing it upside down, that they were intending it to be a different (and somewhat smaller) ship in that instance. It’s the Klingon BoP scaling nightmare all over again.

There were possibly 3 sizes of that one, no? Still, the Jenolan would have to be sizeable compared to Enterprise/Reliant sized nacelles, and the few interior shots didn't really give that kind of scale.

It makes one think they really didn't think about these kinds of things

 

[Dukhat]

There were possibly 3 sizes of that one, no?

At least. They ranged in size from Kruge’s tiny BoP with a crew of 12, to the approximate size of a TNG Romulan Warbird.

It makes one think they really didn't think about these kinds of things

Well, that’s what happens when a production is too cheap to spring for new models. Even classic Doctor Who, with a shoestring budget, never reused the same model twice. Although in the age of CGI it isn’t as bad.

 

[starsuperion]

IDK.. I like the idea of the Jenolan being scaled by it's Nacelles. It makes sense to me. It looks like the center of the saucer section is the main top of the body. It's stout and more flat and wedge shaped. I can certainly see it being large given it's similar command module and the aft glowing dome like the TMP Enterprise and A.

Windows do look like a Constitution sized version.
What we really need is an LCARS for it, I've looked all over the web and I can't seem to find anything like that.

I will say It felt like the bridge was pretty expansive. Not massive mind you, but pretty large.This is just one section of it.

 

[JesterFace]

Like the Sovereign class with long warp nacelles, Excelsior too feels like it's offering an opponent a bigger targer to hit with weapons. Those nacelles are just.. long. Perhaps because the Excelsior was the used in the transwarp experiments?

 

[Timo]

Now here's the USS Nash (supposed to be the same class) docked at DS9. Definitely not that big here.View attachment 11506

Well, not all that different from a Miranda docking in the same place ("Way of the Warrior").

I wonder if the physical model (the larger of the two from "Relics") could actually be mounted on the station model for this shot, sorta dictating the scale?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[starsuperion]

Like the Sovereign class with long warp nacelles, Excelsior too feels like it's offering an opponent a bigger targer to hit with weapons. Those nacelles are just.. long. Perhaps because the Excelsior was the used in the transwarp experiments?

From what I read, it was initially involved in TW experiments. But ultimately they went back to conventional warp. I wonder if the Excelsior class had a better combat rating overall tho then say Constitution and Miranda. Was the Galaxy class the pinnacle at that time? What was the backbone of the Federation post TNG and Voyager??
Still I'd love to see a Sulu Big Finish audio or streaming mini series about his last year as captain.