How Was U.S.S. Hood Damaged?-The Ulimate Computer

[cooleddie74]

Noname Given said:

cooleddie74 said:

Mallory said:

Shaw said:
Am I to gather that no one here (beyond maybe aridas sofia, Captain Robert April and myself) actually watched Star Trek in the 60s, 70s and 80s?

I'm going to be 51 here in a very short time, so I think you can safely include me on that list. And of course TBonz was around for the original Wheel Trek in its cave art days.

T'Bonz probably remembers Paleozoic Trek: The Multicelled Generation.

^^^^
You mean Captain Video?

Still, you gotta admit...painted cardboard ray guns and models with strings were DA BOMB back when the earth cooled.

 

[Wingsley]

^ Spoken like a true BK.

Throw the pickle
Throw the lettuce
Shuddap lady
You upset us...

Just a little gradeschool humor from the age of bell-bottoms and the Osmonds...

 

[Hofner]

cooleddie74 said:

Noname Given said:

cooleddie74 said:

Mallory said:

Shaw said:
Am I to gather that no one here (beyond maybe aridas sofia, Captain Robert April and myself) actually watched Star Trek in the 60s, 70s and 80s?

I'm going to be 51 here in a very short time, so I think you can safely include me on that list. And of course TBonz was around for the original Wheel Trek in its cave art days.

T'Bonz probably remembers Paleozoic Trek: The Multicelled Generation.

^^^^
You mean Captain Video?

Still, you gotta admit...painted cardboard ray guns and models with strings were DA BOMB back when the earth cooled.

The models had STRINGS!?! Man, never would've known that on that old small and snowy black and white.

Robert

 

[T'Bonz]

Mallory said:
I'm going to be 51 here in a very short time, so I think you can safely include me on that list. And of course TBonz was around for the original Wheel Trek in its cave art days.

Dude, I'm only 49. You're the old person here.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

This is why I love hanging out here, 34 is seeming younger all the time!

 

[Horizon]

40 here.
I watched on black and white (then finally color) during the repeats of the 70's.
There were two showings on Saturdays. 4pm and 10:30pm. I was convinced that the 10:30 show was more graphic or scary. Especially the bit in Charlie X that it appeared he removed someones face!
Although that detail was hard to tell on my 19 inch screens. Thank heavens for lots of repeats.

 

[Wingsley]

EliyahuQeoni said:
This is why I love hanging out here, 34 is seeming younger all the time!

You'll get there, too. It's only a matter of time.

 

[Timo]

AND YET, we are to believe there was no concern that the audience, viewing on black and white televisions of questionable reception, in an episode with someone else commanding Enterprise and Kirk commanding another ship - that just so happened to look like Enterprise - might be a tad confused?

I think that is the point here: considering the odds, fiddling with some tiny decals would neither help nor hinder any.

It's quite a bit more likely that the order of the four available decal digits was chosen at complete random than that any sort of thought went into it.

Why, apart from the single scene where (unambiguously enough) the hero ship first meets the derelict guest ship, there isn't a scene in "The Doomsday Machine" where you could see the decals! The crucial Constellation action takes place with the guest ship at a distance, or facing away from the camera. The structuring of the drama conveys the identity of the ship well enough.

And even if an establishing exterior shot of the guest ship might be mistaken for the hero ship for a split second, the action then cuts into the darkened Auxiliary Control where Kirk toils with damaged machinery, dispelling all confusion. And vice versa, no scene aboard the hero ship bears visual or dramaturgical resemblance to those aboard the guest ship.

For the purposes of the plot, the pennants, the names, and indeed the very identities of the two vessels are irrelevant. We only need to know that there are two of them, one with Kirk aboard, the other with the rest. And when the time comes to sacrifice one of the ships, we hear it stated time and again that the guest ship is to perish - but we never quite see this confirmed in a shot of the guest ship's pennants. And we don't need to.

(Admittedly, the person who did the decals need not have thought it through quite that way, as he didn't direct the photography. He might have been thinking in terms of visual confusion vs. terms of continuity, and voting in favor of the former. But the odds are, he was only thinking in terms of "let's make this registry different", without any concern on either visual distinctiveness or continuity.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[aridas sofia]

^ We'll have to agree to disagree.

 

[Timo]

Disagreed, then. :thumbsup: (But not necessarily agreed; might there not be some written-down insight into how the number really was chosen?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[AC84]

Having read the posts explaining why they went with that number, this 23 year old now has a new found respect for the original registry number of the Constellation. I still wish they changed it for the Remastered episode though. They didn't even bother to show the cool nacelle pylon damage that the original model had.

 

[cooleddie74]

I just figured Starfleet gave her a much lower number because it was one still available that had never been used by a starship before. 1017 might have been skipped over in earlier years and decades for one reason or another and since most of the 1700-1799 range had already been claimed by other ships and construction projects the brass just slapped "1017" on the hull and that was that.

 

[Timo]

It might even be a political statement of sorts: "this ship is the factual successor of NCC-1016, even though it is built to the specs of the 1700 series of ships".

That sort of thinking has made the USN's new destroyer the DDG-1000. The registry is in continuation of the almost unbroken chain of old destroyer registries for essentially torpedo- and gun-armed types intended primary for anti-surface and anti-submarine action (the last one on that vein was the Spruance class DD-997, USS Hayler). The registry does not continue the more modern series of air defense -armed destroyers whose registries began anew from DDG-1, USS Gyatt, and has now reached DDG-112, an Arleigh Burke AEGIS vessel, no name assigned yet. The choice of DDG-1000 for USS Zumwalt for its part emphasizes her role in surface warfare rather than in air defense.

Perhaps Decker's Constitution was one of the "fighting" variants, while Kirk's vessel was from the "exploration" series, and the registry ranges reflect that? Possibly the 1600-range registries recently seen in TOS-R "Ultimate Computer" also peg the other Constitutions there as fighting vessels while only Kirk and Wesley flew exploration variants.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cooleddie74]

It might even be a political statement of sorts: "this ship is the factual successor of NCC-1016, even though it is built to the specs of the 1700 series of ships".

That sort of thinking has made the USN's new destroyer the DDG-1000. The registry is in continuation of the almost unbroken chain of old destroyer registries for essentially torpedo- and gun-armed types intended primary for anti-surface and anti-submarine action (the last one on that vein was the Spruance class DD-997, USS Hayler). The registry does not continue the more modern series of air defense -armed destroyers whose registries began anew from DDG-1, USS Gyatt, and has now reached DDG-112, an Arleigh Burke AEGIS vessel, no name assigned yet. The choice of DDG-1000 for USS Zumwalt for its part emphasizes her role in surface warfare rather than in air defense.

Perhaps Decker's Constitution was one of the "fighting" variants, while Kirk's vessel was from the "exploration" series, and the registry ranges reflect that? Possibly the 1600-range registries recently seen in TOS-R "Ultimate Computer" also peg the other Constitutions there as fighting vessels while only Kirk and Wesley flew exploration variants.

Timo Saloniemi

Possible. Frankly, even in the later shows and movies almost nothing was established about how Starfleet names and assigns numbers to her ships. They just show up on-screen with(usually)no explanations and that's that. I suppose your theory is just as plausible as others I've heard, even my own.

 

[bullethead]

It's a shame they never really went with Matt Jefferies's idea of having the first two numbers of a TOS registry number be the design number (so NCC-1700 would have been the 17th design created by Starfleet) and the other numbers would show the production order (I'm assuming that 00 in NCC-1700 would indicate that she was the prototype).

That would have been so much preferable to the rather confusing registry system we deal with now.

 

[Timo]

What I lament more is that every Starfleet registry begins with NCC. It would have been more real-worldish if the three letters specified the type of the vessel, so that NCC-1701 would be of the 17th cruiser (CC) design, while NDD-1783 would be of the 17th destroyer design.


That would jibe with everything we saw in TOS: the "starship status" chart would only show NCC registries because only CC ships were starships, and it would show several designs thereof (16, 17 and 18 series). Too bad that TAS and thereafter various fandom sources ruined that idea, so that by the time of TMP, every Starfleet vessel had (redundantly!) the three letters NCC...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Noname Given]

What I lament more is that every Starfleet registry begins with NCC. It would have been more real-worldish if the three letters specified the type of the vessel, so that NCC-1701 would be of the 17th cruiser (CC) design, while NDD-1783 would be of the 17th destroyer design.


That would jibe with everything we saw in TOS: the "starship status" chart would only show NCC registries because only CC ships were starships, and it would show several designs thereof (16, 17 and 18 series). Too bad that TAS and thereafter various fandom sources ruined that idea, so that by the time of TMP, every Starfleet vessel had (redundantly!) the three letters NCC...

Timo Saloniemi

From the FJ Tech Manual - NCC = 'Naval Construction Contract'

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned it means "Naval Construction Contract" and always will until contradicted on-screen in a canon fashion.

 

[Wingsley]

It could also mean "Navigation Contact Code", which would make sense.

The funniest one I ever read was in a cartoon in STARLOG magazine, around '80: "No Cover Charge".

 

[cooleddie74]

One novel had an Excelsior-class ship circa 2290 bear the insignia "NEE" for Naval Exploration Extension. Some sort of long-term, multiyear deep space assignment given to only the most heavily-equipped and survivable starships and science vessels.