How big was the Enterprise?

[DSG2k]

Yes.

It is August 29th, 1973, a Wednesday. You and a couple of friends are gathered around the big TV in the main hall of the dorm. The last details of the plan had been finalized over the weekend as you rode around a little after going to watch American Graffiti (by some guy named Lucas) in Jack's 1967 Chevelle. It's another hot evening now, but you're inside with the good camera, the magnifying glass taped to the stick, and the books weighing down the end of the stick on top of the TV, so the magnifying glass is just over where the text will be. On top of those books is the TV Guide that said what tonight's episode would be ... you hope it's right.

Spoiler: The rest of the story . . .

Jimmy still has his Polaroid camera but nobody knows why he brought it again . . . it didn't cut the mustard last time this episode aired in the spring. At least the pictures give you a sense of where the diagram will be. You're worried about the exposure or whatever . . . Jimmy's flash had gone off which left a big white splotch on the picture of the screen, but it was also maybe the only way that you could even see the screen . . . the thick squarish picture had a dark view of the scene, and maybe without the flash it would be too bright. You think again that maybe the best thing would be to just try to catch it on the 8mm your dad has at home and project it as big as you can on a white wall and take a picture of that before the frame gets melty, but maybe that's what you'll try if this doesn't work.

A few minutes before the episode starts, Fred comes in. He likes the show, too, but he's always trying to act like he's not as interested as he really is. He's always riveted to the screen but then acts aloof to the "dorks" like you and your pals, leaving immediately after the show ends while you guys talk about it. He isn't into that dork stuff, you understand, even though you've heard him slip with "this is a good part" or "wait, here she comes", and sometimes he'll even say stuff that must have come from an episode you haven't seen. You and your pals only found the show last year so you know he must have been watching probably since it came out. Now he's going to have trouble watching it with this dorky contraption in the way.

"Are you guys trying to take a picture of the show again?"

"Yes, there's a diagram of the Enterprise and the Romulans' Klingon ship I want to trace, and there's a scale bar on it I want to see if we can see. Jack swears he saw an episode where they look into the the top and he thinks the ship's like 500 feet long, but he didn't get to watch the whole thing. Jimmy thinks it's bigger, we both think Jack is crazy, and we saw this one a few months ago and I wanted to try to catch it."

You see him pause, assuming he's searching for an insult or deciding how to break the stick with the magnifying glass taped to it but instead he gets a look of ... is that pity?

"Hang on," he says, and he hurries down the hall. Just as the episode starts, he returns with a book.

"It's in here," he says, with a book titled The Making of Star Trek. Your mind is blown; you've never seen this before. "And it's just like what was on the big screen of this one at the convention . . . "

"The what?"

He continues like he didn't hear, wrapped in his memory: "... They had a 16 millimeter print of this episode and 'The Cage' ... the one they made 'The Menagerie' from that has that scene he saw in it ... it was great. You could see everything. The ship is like a thousand feet, the size of a carrier. But if you dorks tell anyone about this your underwear will be on your head, capice? Better yet," he says, swiping it back, "go get your own ... I don't want you greasy sweaty dorks pulling your pud at my book."

He returned from putting the book back in his room around the same time the Romulan Commander turned around. You'd been so distracted you didn't have your camera ready, so the contraption was out of the way now. "Good, I didn't miss her," he slipped.

 

[Takeru]

Are we just ignoring we have access to the diagram from the episode "The Enterprise Incident" ?

No, we all know the intent was that the ship was about 1000 feet long, that's not actually up for debate. The argument is that intent doesn't matter, that there's no on screen source that specifies the length of the ship and more importantly that even if there was it still wouldn't matter because the current powers that be are well within their rights to make changes. Just like the original show changed Kirk's middle initial from R to T and the R was actually legible on screen.

They have said the Enterprise is 442 meters and we know it's the same ship from The Cage and TOS, that settles it as far as the canonical size is concerned.

Of course people are free to ignore that, it's not that serious but you cannot really argue against it just like I cannot quote TOS episodes to proof it doesn't take place in the 23rd century although there's lots of evidence that it didn't.

No they wouldn't, not in the context of being used on a scale bar indicating length. Because who the fuck would have a scale bar counting by 80s or 90s? Not Matt Jefferies, that's for sure.

It could be in meters.

We know, but some ship rescale truthers had been saying for years that there was no canon evidence for TOS ship lengths, meaning it was open season for rescaling to whatever size.

Ship rescale truthers? This is getting ridiculous, you talk about it as if it was some conspiracy theory.

But it's not like they're wrong, there was no canon evidence, if graphics from a book that show what wasn't visible on screen count than the Enterprise D has a giant hamster in giant hamster wheel I engineering.

 

[DSG2k]

Ship rescale truthers? This is getting ridiculous, you talk about it as if it was some conspiracy theory.

It's certainly reminiscent. This isn't referring to the Discoprise explicit "cheat" of the ship size to 442 meters, as recounted by @Kamen Rider Blade _here_:

"With the return of the class to the limelight as redesigned for its Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds appearances, a new set of specific dimensions were established onscreen in a recurring manner for the first time. Most easily seen during SNW: "Memento Mori", a length of 442 meters (1450 feet), width of 201 meters, and height of 93 meters can be identified on the dedication plaque of the Constitution-class USS Enterprise as it was in 2259. Of the 53% increase from the prior reference material figures, Discovery Production Designer Tamara Deverell said following its debut, "Overall, I think we expanded the length of it to be within the world of our Discovery, which is bigger, so we did cheat it as a larger ship." [2] In the redesign's debut episode "Brother", Deverall intended to leave behind what she called an "Easter egg for the fans" in the form of a USS Discovery bridge display screen which stated the prior reference dimensions of 288.6 meters long, 127.1 meters wide, and 72.6 meters high, taken from Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual. A full view establishing shot of the complete graphic on a freestanding bridge monitor screen, featuring these figures, was filmed but eventually trimmed from the episode as aired. However, the graphic remained partially visible on two other Discovery bridge station computer screens; Joann Owosekun's ops station and Paul Stamets' engineering station, [3] legible in the latter case.​

The Constitution-class USS Cayuga​

The revised class dimensions continue to be referenced in later appearances, such as in SNW: "All Those Who Wander" on a graphic for the Sombra-class derivative, which used the same space frame as the Constitution. On 12 August 2023, the database graphic appearing in SNW: "Hegemony" for the USS Cayuga was posted with clarity by Motion Graphics Designer Tim Peel on his Twitter account, establishing that Constitution-class ship as being 442 meters long, 192 meters wide and 93 meters high. [4] A length of 442.06 meters for the USS Enterprise was cited within the Eaglemoss Collections reference publications as well."​

​

(Incidentally, they would also mix and match scales . . . the Somraw thing was both 442 meters and with original 153 meter nacelles, which would've looked rather Voyager-esque.)

Instead, I refer to the "shuttlecraft fuel can't melt spaceframe beams" folks who pre-dated the Discoprise upscale, typically asserting something like 350 meters minimum for the TOS ship. They tend to ignore production realities and alternative explanations in order to declare that the ship has to be bigger, based on whatever evidence (real or imagined) they found. Everything's nefarious and suspicious and whatever insofar as pointing toward a problem. This has become their 'elite knowledge' mythos where they had to 'wake up' to join the club where they knew more than the hoi polloi minions of official orthodox propaganda who foolishly believe things like details stated in shows.

It's a whole subculture that's developed . . . me, coming across it after knowing the "SCALE IN FEET" for over twenty years and seeing folks ignorant of it or pretending they can't even read it in HD, it's baffling.

They have said the Enterprise is 442 meters and we know it's the same ship from The Cage and TOS, that settles it as far as the canonical size is concerned.

Au contraire . . . they've labeled the Discoprise as 442 meters. The notion of "same ship" and unchanged is mere assertion. After all, Star Trek: Picard features both a Discoprise type and something resembling the TOS ship, so I don't think y'all are ground as solid as you imagine.

It could be in meters.

That's six letters, not four.

 

[Tomalak]

Au contraire . . . they've labeled the Discoprise as 442 meters. The notion of "same ship" and unchanged is mere assertion. After all, Star Trek: Picard features both a Discoprise type and something resembling the TOS ship, so I don't think y'all are ground as solid as you imagine.

The appearance of both within PIC is evidence that both exist within the same continuity, which actually strengthens the "it's a refit" argument. And for that to happen, the TOS ship needs to match the SNW scale.

You don't have to like this, but it is a solid argument based on canon, on-screen material.

IIRC some secondary, licenced sources go with the Cage>SNW>TOS>TMP refit history for the ship.

Personally I think this is ludicrous, because it's obviously a simple visual change. But if you want to keep it entirely with in the canon realm, you are forced to go with the refit option, which necessitates a larger TOS ship. And as has been discussed, there aren't really many obstacles to this, again within the canon realm.

 

[UssGlenn]

Are we just ignoring we have access to the diagram from the episode "The Enterprise Incident" ?

No, just that it doesn't matter that we have access to the original diagram.

the scale as seen in "The Enterprise Incident" was tiny and unreadable and thus unknown and unknowable until the Blu-Ray high-definition remastering of 2006-2008 (Edit: or even now! ), despite the fact that it was perfectly readable years before that

That's not what is being argued.

if graphics from a book that show what wasn't visible on screen count than the Enterprise D has a giant hamster in giant hamster wheel in engineering.

This is the salient point. If 947 feet is ironclad then so are all the production in jokes. The scale is there to give the graphic extra "texture" not to convey information, just like putting gibberish numbers on a lcars display, or the Gilligan's Island lyrics on a door label.

The intent of the graphic designer doesn't actually matter in the long run. Its like the historical placards in Picard. We know what they said, but no producer is going to be beholden to the info about Uhura's Captancy if they don't want to be, nor should they.

 

[HotRod]

It's certainly reminiscent. This isn't referring to the Discoprise explicit "cheat" of the ship size to 442 meters, as recounted by @Kamen Rider Blade _here_:

"With the return of the class to the limelight as redesigned for its Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds appearances, a new set of specific dimensions were established onscreen in a recurring manner for the first time. Most easily seen during SNW: "Memento Mori", a length of 442 meters (1450 feet), width of 201 meters, and height of 93 meters can be identified on the dedication plaque of the Constitution-class USS Enterprise as it was in 2259. Of the 53% increase from the prior reference material figures, Discovery Production Designer Tamara Deverell said following its debut, "Overall, I think we expanded the length of it to be within the world of our Discovery, which is bigger, so we did cheat it as a larger ship." [2] In the redesign's debut episode "Brother", Deverall intended to leave behind what she called an "Easter egg for the fans" in the form of a USS Discovery bridge display screen which stated the prior reference dimensions of 288.6 meters long, 127.1 meters wide, and 72.6 meters high, taken from Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual. A full view establishing shot of the complete graphic on a freestanding bridge monitor screen, featuring these figures, was filmed but eventually trimmed from the episode as aired. However, the graphic remained partially visible on two other Discovery bridge station computer screens; Joann Owosekun's ops station and Paul Stamets' engineering station, [3] legible in the latter case.​

The Constitution-class USS Cayuga​

The revised class dimensions continue to be referenced in later appearances, such as in SNW: "All Those Who Wander" on a graphic for the Sombra-class derivative, which used the same space frame as the Constitution. On 12 August 2023, the database graphic appearing in SNW: "Hegemony" for the USS Cayuga was posted with clarity by Motion Graphics Designer Tim Peel on his Twitter account, establishing that Constitution-class ship as being 442 meters long, 192 meters wide and 93 meters high. [4] A length of 442.06 meters for the USS Enterprise was cited within the Eaglemoss Collections reference publications as well."​

​

(Incidentally, they would also mix and match scales . . . the Somraw thing was both 442 meters and with original 153 meter nacelles, which would've looked rather Voyager-esque.)

Instead, I refer to the "shuttlecraft fuel can't melt spaceframe beams" folks who pre-dated the Discoprise upscale, typically asserting something like 350 meters minimum for the TOS ship. They tend to ignore production realities and alternative explanations in order to declare that the ship has to be bigger, based on whatever evidence (real or imagined) they found. Everything's nefarious and suspicious and whatever insofar as pointing toward a problem. This has become their 'elite knowledge' mythos where they had to 'wake up' to join the club where they knew more than the hoi polloi minions of official orthodox propaganda who foolishly believe things like details stated in shows.

It's a whole subculture that's developed . . . me, coming across it after knowing the "SCALE IN FEET" for over twenty years and seeing folks ignorant of it or pretending they can't even read it in HD, it's baffling.



Au contraire . . . they've labeled the Discoprise as 442 meters. The notion of "same ship" and unchanged is mere assertion. After all, Star Trek: Picard features both a Discoprise type and something resembling the TOS ship, so I don't think y'all are ground as solid as you imagine.



That's six letters, not four.

 

[Daedalus]

The appearance of both within PIC is evidence that both exist within the same continuity, which actually strengthens the "it's a refit" argument. And for that to happen, the TOS ship needs to match the SNW scale.

You don't have to like this, but it is a solid argument based on canon, on-screen material.

IIRC some secondary, licenced sources go with the Cage>SNW>TOS>TMP refit history for the ship.

Personally I think this is ludicrous, because it's obviously a simple visual change. But if you want to keep it entirely with in the canon realm, you are forced to go with the refit option, which necessitates a larger TOS ship. And as has been discussed, there aren't really many obstacles to this, again within the canon realm.

I don't think that a refit is really an option, as there's issue of the I.S.S Enterprise and the way it looks in Mirrors. Its from a different universe, but the intention is the same either way.

It's not impossible to end SNW with refit that resembles the classic design, but it's incredibly unlikely.

 

[cooleddie74]

What was onscreen in Trek also told ya that warp drive was a technology invented after 2236. That was retconned by Season 2 of TOS and then some.

What's onscreen isn't always the lasting Gospel.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

This is the salient point. If 947 feet is ironclad then so are all the production in jokes. The scale is there to give the graphic extra "texture" not to convey information, just like putting gibberish numbers on a lcars display, or the Gilligan's Island lyrics on a door label.

The intent of the graphic designer doesn't actually matter in the long run. Its like the historical placards in Picard. We know what they said, but no producer is going to be beholden to the info about Uhura's Captancy if they don't want to be, nor should they.

This.

 

[DSG2k]

The appearance of both within PIC is evidence that both exist within the same continuity, which actually strengthens the "it's a refit" argument. And for that to happen, the TOS ship needs to match the SNW scale.

For a sensible universe you could be right that they should match, but that ship has sailed. It departed in 2017. The passengers rode through a vast turbolift cavern and exited via special one-time-use round pod launch tracks that had to have run the length of the Discovery.

Besides, let's not forget that it is not just the length and width and height, but the mass as well. The Discoprise is 190,000 metric tons. The TOS Enterprise is almost a million.

Further, as noted elsewhere:

It is not just the raw size, but the morphology.

Everyone recognizes that different models were used to represent the Enterprise, even in "The Cage", but traditionalists tend to view the 11 foot model as the primary one, and we know the modelers did their best to match the two in details. The TMP refit design was initiated by Jefferies before Minor and Probert took over, and, while opinions vary, there are strong points of matching between the TOS and TMP Enterprises, _even down to deck levels, certain hull curves, and even in the secondary hull_. This is exactly what one would expect out of a refit . . . major elements like decks and spaceframe retained where possible, with new elements cut in or built atop.

The Discoprise allows for none of this. It evokes the original design, sure, but nothing more. We may as well try to work with JJ's Monsterprise. We have to assume massive component replacement in order to forgive the short neck, different nacelles, and funky pylons. Even then we're left with a remaining ship that just doesn't match up very well with either version.

(And, that's even if we go with the rescaling of the old ship far beyond its canonical size (which I consider to largely be an absurd conspiracy-theory-level belief system bent on ignoring the messy realities of production by those who cared, acquiescing to the failings of those who didn't (cough Michelson cough), and generally serving as a muddying of the analysis waters.)

That is why I am strongly in favor of your new-build/replacement idea. If you think that the Discoprise has to fit in the continuity of TOS, the alternatives are less plausible.

Last but not least, the STP ship is likely embiggened anyway and not a match for TOS.

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[DSG2k]

That's not what is being argued.

Oh? Then praytell.

This is the salient point. If 947 feet is ironclad then so are all the production in jokes.

Nonsense! We don't have to check our brains at the door when entering the Trek analysis room, do we?

When they made the SCALE IN FEET diagram for the show, an apparent practical effect, they had little idea how close the camera could end up getting. There's certainly no evidence they scrubbed anything except perhaps the "STAR TREK" label as seen in the book, and if indeed that was a removal then they were prepared for a close shot indeed, even down to "BATTLE CRUISER / KLINGON EMPIRE", following the script notation thereof.

The scale is there to give the graphic extra "texture" not to convey information, just like putting gibberish numbers on a lcars display, or the Gilligan's Island lyrics on a door label.

No, the scale is there to be a scale, which is what scales are for. If it was just gibberish then there would have been no reason for non-gibberish like "SCALE IN FEET".

In-jokes are in-jokes. Half-assery is half-assery. Work well done is work well done. Confounding those to obfuscate the visible reality is icky.

The intent of the graphic designer doesn't actually matter in the long run. Its like the historical placards in Picard. We know what they said, but no producer is going to be beholden to the info about Uhura's Captancy if they don't want to be, nor should they.

Nonsense, also, in part. The canon is and always has been the work of many hands. The FX guys of DS9 caused a rewrite of a season opener, for instance, by the choices they made that surprised the writers.

Subjective standards of evidence aren't good for discussions.

 

[DSG2k]

What was onscreen in Trek also told ya that warp drive was a technology invented after 2236.

This is part of the "James R. Kirk" class of argument that errors or changes mean anything goes. That said, this is a poor example. "The time barrier's been broken!" doesn't mean warp drive didn't exist, unless you're arguing the flight to Talos by the SS Columbia was sublight.

 

[fireproof78]

No, just that it doesn't matter that we have access to the original diagram.

Exactly.

I'm not sitting around with my technical manual to double check my Star Trek episode for accuracy. I watch it for entertainment.

I can do historical accuracy check on shows like MASH. For Star Trek, that doesn't exist because it's mutable.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Did I really read this whole thread? I need professional help.

 

[Tomalak]

For a sensible universe you could be right that they should match, but that ship has sailed. It departed in 2017. The passengers rode through a vast turbolift cavern and exited via special one-time-use round pod launch tracks that had to have run the length of the Discovery.

Besides, let's not forget that it is not just the length and width and height, but the mass as well. The Discoprise is 190,000 metric tons. The TOS Enterprise is almost a million.

Further, as noted elsewhere:



Last but not least, the STP ship is likely embiggened anyway and not a match for TOS.

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The ship sailed twenty years ago when Drexler made the Defiant 50% bigger.

 

[DSG2k]

The ship sailed twenty years ago when Drexler made the Defiant 50% bigger.

Nah. If you just go by what's on screen, there's very little to worry about.

The only real issue here is Drexler's Defiant cutaway from "In a Mirror, Darkly, Pt. II", but fortunately that's so busy that the fact it was so bungled is easily disregarded. The wide view without quite so much detail gives an appearance of a saucer deck count, but if you look at the lower engineering hull it looks, on-screen, like four decks below the level of the bottom of the deflector dish (his "cargo bays", per a labeled version he posted). Then, once the shot zooms in you just end up with a whole lot of jumbled mess other than a teeny tiny misscaled {front of a} shuttle that doesn't fit the bay as it should, et cetera. So, the Drexler cutaway doesn't seem like a deficit, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[fireproof78]

Did I really read this whole thread? I need professional help.

I know someone.

The ship sailed twenty years ago when Drexler made the Defiant 50% bigger.

Pretty sure it sailed with various model swapping throughout establishing shots in TOS.

 

[UssGlenn]

Oh? Then praytell.

You are correct that the the graphic is decipherable, but it is still unreadable, let me explain the distinction. An OCR program, for example, couldn't parse the blobs to decipher letters. A human could logic out from context that the blobs say SCALE IN FEET, but it isn't readable. What was important to the producers was to convey to the audience that this was a technical diagram with the Enterprise and D7 at the same scale, not what the scale actually was. If that was important they would have made the letters bigger, but it wasn't. So 947 feet is mutable, just like a ton of other "facts" that may or may not eventually become official.

Nonsense! We don't have to check our brains at the door when entering the Trek analysis room, do we?

Subjective standards of evidence aren't good for discussions.

These 2 points are in opposition. You have a subjective standard on what bits are jokes, shortcuts, or gospel. While that might seem an easy thing to discern, it's still a subjective call. Memory Alpha thinks a man named Gene Roddenberry was C-in-C of Starfleet for much of the 23rd century, based on dedication plaques. Is that gospel or an Easter egg? I'm saying it's not subjective, either everything counts, or the producers word is god. Roddenberry and Jefferies doubled the physical size of the Enterprise between the 2 pilots because their initial size wasn't big enough. The current producers enlarged it by another 50% because it still wasn't big enough for the sets seen (even in the original series). Those 2 actions are identical, the only difference is we used one for a long time and you got attached.

The only real issue here is Drexler's Defiant cutaway from "In a Mirror, Darkly, Pt. II", but fortunately that's so busy that the fact it was so bungled is easily disregarded.

This is you taking a subjective view on what counts, and not going "by what's on screen".

 

[DSG2k]

You are correct that the the graphic is decipherable, but it is still unreadable, let me explain the distinction. An OCR program, for example, couldn't parse the blobs to decipher letters. A human could logic out from context that the blobs say SCALE IN FEET, but it isn't readable.

Close! The discernible versus readable thing is interesting but there is one more layer to it. If something isn't perfectly readable but can be discerned to within a set of one, then it is perfectly reasonable to treat it as canon. If the set of possibilities is larger, then it is not so reasonable.

Considering SCALE IN FEET and the whole enchilada has been perfectly readable for decades, however, this is largely academic here.

What was important to the producers was to convey to the audience that this was a technical diagram with the Enterprise and D7 at the same scale, not what the scale actually was. If that was important they would have made the letters bigger, but it wasn't.

Nope nope nope, you're making things up, here. You have created motivations, claims of importance, and responses thereto out of whole cloth with little regard for how production actually happens.

These 2 points are in opposition. You have a subjective standard on what bits are jokes, shortcuts, or gospel. While that might seem an easy thing to discern, it's still a subjective call.

It isn't, unless we're picking the first 'opposite'. Just because something has words doesn't make it subjective.

it still wasn't big enough for the sets seen (even in the original series).

This is false.

Those 2 actions are identical, the only difference is we used one for a long time and you got attached.

A size change in 1964 preproduction is entirely different than changing an established size. I can't imagine why anyone would suggest otherwise.

This is you taking a subjective view on what counts, and not going "by what's on screen".

Not at all. A lot of folks will pull out the Drex Files colored and labeled view and pretend it is canon, but the actual image used isn't that.

 

[Takeru]

This is part of the "James R. Kirk" class of argument that errors or changes mean anything goes.

I agree that not anything should go but technically changing Kirk's middle initial from a clearly shown R to a T within the same series should be a bigger deal than changing the intended but never clearly established size of the ship decades later.

But of course technical things like the size of ships are not that important to me, if they did another Picard season and randomly had his sister visit to ask him to take over "Caniche Picard", the family's poodle breeding business then I'll complain too.