There may be hundreds of Starfleet ships, but few Constitution class. I might think a wargame exercise would not be incentive for a major enemy incursion .
How Many TOS Constitution Class Ships *Can* There Be?
- Thread starter Emperor Norton
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What I don't understand is if they went to the trouble of creating a new decal that said "Constellation" then how much more difficult would it have been to make another digit for the registry, such as a 3 or a 4 so it could have been 1703 or 1704? Apparently they made it 1017 because they just rearranged the 1701 decal.
No, the Federation in the first TOS season was Gene Roddenberry's vision of basically a Earth dominated republic (or Empire) with a few secondary alien species. In the second season that change to Dorothy Fontana's vision of the Federation as a analogy for the United Nations.
The starship more symbolize sailing ships from the 15th through 19th centuries.
Not really, Kirk said there were only twelve ships similar to the Enterprise, he never said that the Enterprise and the other twelve were the only ships Starfleet had.
There can be a variety of interpretations to what Kirk means. Some suggest that there are only 12 Constitution class starships (others 13). Some suggest that there were 12-13 of one batch built that Enterprise is part of and other batches are not like it exactly, and Kirk's pride in his specific batch come out as the 1700s are somehow better than the older 1600s or 1000s Or something like that.
The other idea is that there really are only a dozen or so Constitutions, but there are lots of other ship types, both larger and smaller. The "Starships" are important, but there are more than 12 of those, just only 12 like Kirk's ship.
Just after the V'Ger Incident, would Kirk still be able to claim there are only 12 like it? Or would he consider her to be the only one? Would he still count other surviving Constitutions even if they haven't been refit yet?
The other idea is that there really are only a dozen or so Constitutions, but there are lots of other ship types, both larger and smaller. The "Starships" are important, but there are more than 12 of those, just only 12 like Kirk's ship.
Just after the V'Ger Incident, would Kirk still be able to claim there are only 12 like it? Or would he consider her to be the only one? Would he still count other surviving Constitutions even if they haven't been refit yet?
LIKE
preposition
having the same characteristics or qualities as; similar to., the same as, identical to
KIRK: There are only twelve like it in the fleet
KIRK: There are only twelve similar to it in the fleet
KIRK: There are only twelve identical to it in the fleet
What Kirk did not say is ...
KIRK: There are only twelve in the fleet.
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It appears that the intention was that the D7 was equal to the Connies (the novelisation of TMP indicates that the refit to the K'Tinga was to bring the specs up to the refit Enterprise), but from both TMP and the Kobyashi Maru simulation, it seems that the Klingons have the ability to operate them regularly in squadrons of three.
Now of course we don't know if these are special circumstances (intercepting V'Ger in the former and a deliberate planned ambush in the latter), or if having a more martial society the Klingons just produced more D7 starships in lieu of smaller vessels, whereas Starfleet is more diverse. The fact that they actually produce enough D7s to be able to sell some to the Romulans may be of some indication here that they are able to produce them at a higher rate than the Federation can make Connies. Not due to better manufacturing techniques but more to the "no-frills" design of Klingon ships.
Had the budget allowed I have no doubt we would have seen examples of numerous various Federation designs in TOS, in all likelihood some of the established on-screen Connies may have even been different designs.
So this just planted the seed for a theory exploration. And that theory would involve the number of ship classes shown on TNG and other series related to the budgets of those shows and time on the air, correlating that to the plausibility of how many ship classes would be demonstrated on TOS with a similar budget, taking into consideration production costs and the cost to build the models. However, I burned out on the "there are 8 ships in two years" theory, so I step aside.
I've seen that in many manuals and novels over the years, but it doesn't really mesh with the Enterprise effortlessly smashing a D7 in TOS-R "Errand of Mercy"
Therein lies the problem of trying to tie-in tech to plot necessities. A D7 was blown away in seconds, while at battle-stations presumably with shields up and managing to catch the Enterprise off-guard and firing first. In Star Trek III a much smaller bird-of prey took two photon torpedo hits while unshielded, yet was still able to survive and fire back. In The Changeling, the Enterprise was hit by the power of Nomad that Spock calculated to be equal to 90 photon torpedoes in a single shot, and her shields are reduced to 20% (in the very same episode, Kirk is amazed that Nomad took the energy of a SINGLE photon torpedo yet was undamaged). How many photons did Chang fire into Enterprise before her shields collapsed in TUC?
Exactly my question for 50 years!
The other thirteen.
(Ooh, I like this game!)
(Ooh, I like this game!)
The other 15?
I'm winning this game
I'm winning this game
In fairness, we have to assume the words are true, or canon is thrown into chaos. But why can no one in the Star Trek universe ever misspeak, or round off, or be wrong?
But was that ship ever identified as a D-7?
Ticonderoga class cruiser: 22 active
Areligh Burke class destroer: 62 active
Ohio class SSBN: 18 active
Los Angeles class SSN: 36 active
Virginia class SSN: 13 active
Wasp class LHD: 8 Active
13 seems like a pretty decent number in naval terms, it seems to me. It seems like too few for a space fleet, however, which is one of the reasons I think that Starfleet has a LOT of other ship designs filling the same role and the Constitution class is just one of maybe 8 or 9 cruiser types they operate.
Without supplying details, we're not even sure what "like her" even means. There could be 30 Constitution class ships, but only 12 have the Block II retrofits needed to sustain the larger crew and science payload for a 5 year mission (the other 18 have slightly better armament and both smaller cargo bays and run with a crew of 150 to 200 at most).
I didn't know they made another "Constellation" decal. As far as I remember they actually went out and BOUGHT a commercial Star Trek model kit and modified that to be the Constellation, in which case the name would only have been visible in TOS-R. Could be I'm misremembering, but my understanding was that between the doomsday machine, the Klingon D7 and the asteroid Yonada their modeling budget was down to the director's pocket change and they had to improvise their asses off.
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