Miranda Class in the Dominion War.

[137th Gebirg]

@137th Gebirg I meant they were no more dangerous to their crews, which I thought was the original question.

Dangerous in a "they'll kick your ass" sense, I would agree with your points entirely.

AH! I misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification.

And yes, I do feel that OSHA was probably abolished sometime in the 22nd century when they started building these deathtrap starships. Too many exploding consoles for my taste. Doesn't matter which class anyone is assigned to. One does so at one's own peril.

 

[CaptChris42]

Two pseudo-OT things that I'd like to add to the ongoing discussion...

1. It was once suggested that the Constellation class might be TMP-era tech taken to extreme; that is, it's the final "hurrah" of that level of tech, pushed as far as it could go almost to a cartoonish extent. The four nacelles and pseudo-kitbash nature of the ship, replete with greebles here and there, combined with Picard's lines about it being an "overworked, underpowered vessel" would seem to agree with this thought and I agree. Just as Miranda class ships are still valid in the 24th century, there could likely be found good reasons why the Constellation's niche would still render them useful. (Indeed, Starfleet seemed to be big on "we got 'er, let's use 'er" when it came to ships.) I would also agree with the notion that the Constellation was some kind of deep space cruiser/explorer.
2. Registry numbers, for me, exist somewhere between a ship hull number and an aircraft tail number, best thought of as a "license plate." They were indeed kept quite organized in the TNG era but I have come to suspect there was an amount of intentional complication to their otherwise linear pattern. Take for example the Constitution class Eagle (NCC-956) and Constellation (NCC-1017) both being alleged contemporaries of NCC-1701. To me, one is special but two could form a pattern, and Eagle's registry was as far as I know, purely invented by Mr. Okuda. (I believe we have other incidences of lower registry ships being launched later than we think.) I suspect that Mr. Okuda and team, when possible, created and perpetuated oddities such as this just enough to give the writers room to establish whatever they wanted to about when a ship was ordered, launched, refit, and so on. The Tsiolkovsky would be an exception caused by production complications and there were likely others of this type, but Mr. Okuda almost certainly had his own internal logic for why there were so many NCC-4xxxx Excelsiors, for example.

Now to the original topic, I agree with others that the Miranda class probably represented a sort of peak or ceiling for its design lineage. Assume for a moment that they're frigates; they may have been the best frigate Starfleet ever produced in terms of durability and reliability. Attempts to replicate or replace it (of which perhaps the Centaur class was one) came up short for whatever reasons. When repeated efforts failed, Starfleet just kept building more Mirandas. Newer built ships would have continued service, while older ones would have been retired and relegated to surplus yards. As others have noted, it appears that automation allowed the vessels to carry much smaller crews than originally intended, freeing up that space and power that would have otherwise been used for crew accommodation for other goodies. It's likely that that ships we saw in the Dominion War were a combination of active ships and ones that were pulled from mothballs to act as gunboats and then probably retired again if they survived the war.

Regarding the Jeep Wrangler analogy that someone mentioned earlier, I'll relate the somewhat apocryphal story of the Jeep Cherokee. Allegedly, the old Cherokee was built so well (and people so fond of them) that Jeep silently quit building them and replaced it with the Jeep Liberty because it was staying on the road so long and keeping people from buying new vehicles. Flip that around a little and militarize it, and we could see why a Miranda class starship just couldn't be killed without a lot of effort.

Are they more dangerous than other ships? I'd firmly say no.

I believe the Okudas took many of the registries they ended up using off of the infamous Greg Jein Wall Chart interpretation, from the episode 'Court Martial' (which used a somewhat rough and ready method of assuming all listed ships were Connies, and then putting them in reverse alphabetical order, based on the known matching numbers)

Mind you, the NCC-956 registry had appeared in the Operation Retrieve deleted scene papers, in Star Trek 6 - although I do not know if the Okudas might have supplied the number, at the time. Jein extended his list of numbers, for example (like the Valiant's) but many of those did not end up being used in the encyclopaedia.

 

[Praetor]

I believe the Okudas took many of the registries they ended up using off of the infamous Greg Jein Wall Chart interpretation, from the episode 'Court Martial' (which used a somewhat rough and ready method of assuming all listed ships were Connies, and then putting them in reverse alphabetical order, based on the known matching numbers)

Mind you, the NCC-956 registry had appeared in the Operation Retrieve deleted scene papers, in Star Trek 6 - although I do not know if the Okudas might have supplied the number, at the time. Jein extended his list of numbers, for example (like the Valiant's) but many of those did not end up being used in the encyclopaedia.

For the Constitution class they did indeed. I recently did my own re-analysis of the "Jonathan Doe Starship" list to try to see if I could make any more sense of it. Anyway, as far as I know, NCC-956 was purely an Okuda invention. It's interesting to go back to TOS and look at the few registries they did give us, juxtaposed with the few names given.

As far as I recall, the only instance of a named ship with a registry is the U.S.S. Constellation NCC-1017 and I think we all know why that ship had the registry number it had on screen. We have names of other vessels but no registries. The other registries, made up for that Starbase 11 chart from which Mr. Jein derived his list, have no recorded names attached to them.

So, in all of TOS we really had two starships with registries that were official, a list of names and a list of numbers.

 

[Unicron]

There's also the USS Republic (NCC-1371) mentioned by Kirk in "Court Martial" but that episode doesn't specifically mention what class she is. Other sources assume she's a Constitution.

 

[Praetor]

@Unicron Thanks, I completely forgot that one.

 

[Tim Walker]

Two pseudo-OT things that I'd like to add to the ongoing discussion...
Now to the original topic, I agree with others that the Miranda class probably represented a sort of peak or ceiling for its design lineage. Assume for a moment that they're frigates; they may have been the best frigate Starfleet ever produced in terms of durability and reliability. Attempts to replicate or replace it (of which perhaps the Centaur class was one) came up short for whatever reasons. When repeated efforts failed, Starfleet just kept building more Mirandas. Newer built ships would have continued service, while older ones would have been retired and relegated to surplus yards. As others have noted, it appears that automation allowed the vessels to carry much smaller crews than originally intended, freeing up that space and power that would have otherwise been used for crew accommodation for other goodies. It's likely that that ships we saw in the Dominion War were a combination of active ships and ones that were pulled from mothballs to act as gunboats and then probably retired again if they survived the war.

Regarding the Jeep Wrangler analogy that someone mentioned earlier, I'll relate the somewhat apocryphal story of the Jeep Cherokee. Allegedly, the old Cherokee was built so well (and people so fond of them) that Jeep silently quit building them and replaced it with the Jeep Liberty because it was staying on the road so long and keeping people from buying new vehicles.

I recall another comparison-a comment that the replacement for a DC-3 is another DC-3. A plane from the early 20th century that kept flying into the early 21st century.

Attempts at replacing the Miranda may have resulted in a single prototype being built. The Centaur may have seemed promising enough to see a short production run; after a short period these may have been moth balled.

I imagine that the Mirandas and Excelsiors were top of the line ships in the late 23rd, that persisted as work horses up to TNG. In one thread it was suggested that the Constellations were a back up design in case The Great Experiment failed. I figure that some Constellations were built when Transwarp seemed to be failing, and continued (if just barely) as work horses up to TNG.

BTW, I can imagine the final block of Mirandas being built in the mid 24th century, even after production ceased for the Excelsior. I have this notion of a Soyuz with a roll bar as the final version.

With automation, I figure that some old Mirandas remained in use as support vessels. Hauling cargo, for example.

 

[Praetor]

Great points. I do think the Constellation was built for some kind of rapid-response/deep space role, I'm just not sure what.

Regarding Soyuz, I've had this thought (that others may have had) with all the frigate-like configured ships in fandom and now on "Discovery" that there may have been a series of frigates designs in the 23rd century that were ultimately either retired or retrofit to MIranda specifications. The Soyuz class could represent a mid-step or sidestep in these retrofits, given the more TOS-style bridge superstructure, and perhaps ultimately the members of the Soyuz class were stripped down to Miranda specifications and used rather than retired. Indeed, the basic shape of the Miranda seems to me to offer a very good customizable platform for many roles, which would fit with the various versions we've seen with and without rollbar.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I've always found the Soyuz to be a very interesting Miranda variant. It was the only one with a different kind of bridge and larger B/C deck structure (taken from the Phase II model) and with the minimalistic black-out lighting sans-spotlights on the hull, the huge spires on swiveling turrets and extended aft-facing shuttlebay made it look more like a combat vessel than anything else. Kelsey Grammer's delivery of Captain Morgan Bateson was one of a seasoned combat veteran acting suspiciously towards an unknown threat when spoken to by Picard. The novel "Ship of the Line" featured the gruff and out-of-time Bateson and said the Bozeman was a "border cutter" that patrolled the Klingon neutral zone. I'm following the Jackill's take on the ship in my head-canon, interpreting the turrets as high-powered focused phasers (not "sensor pods", although it may also have some sensor capability as a secondary function) and the oversized bridge design allowing for additional weapons stations to handle all the combat actions in which the ship and crew might find itself.

 

[Tim Walker]

The FASA Anton class would appear to be a precursor to the Miranda.

I can imagine that in the immediate post war years there would be an effort to build a Miranda-esque design. A smaller ship that could be built rapidly. To build up fleet strength ASAP.

Compared to the recent past, the fleet would be numerically weak in terms of larger ships (such as Excelsiors), so many of which had been destroyed.

 

[Ithekro]

One wonders if the Miranda/Anton/Soyuz would have been a result of losses in the Klingon War of 2256-57?

 

[USS Artorius]

Is there any canon source for the Mirandas and Excelsiors being decomissioned post Dominion War?

 

[Dukhat]

Is there any canon source for the Mirandas and Excelsiors being decomissioned post Dominion War?

No, because the Excelsior class USS Hood is still on active duty in LDS.

 

[USS Artorius]

The FASA Anton class would appear to be a precursor to the Miranda.

While I enjoy the hypothetical TOS version of the Miranda, I prefer to believe that the Original Constitution Class was a unique design among other contemporary classes. All the Movie era starships we see (aside from the Grissom) had higher NCC numbers than the Connie did (I know it doesn't mean its in chronological order) but I prefer to think that the Connie Refit was such a succesful design that Starfleet chose to build new ships post TMP that follow the same design elements as the Connie Refit, instead of all the Mirandas and Soyuz Class ships being refitted TOS era starship classes. Another reason would be that, if all Mirandas were originally commisioned around the TOS era, that would make them even older by the time the Dominion War began, their spaceframes being around 110 years old by the middle of the conflict. AND having a Miranda Class precursor or pre-refit that uses the same components as the TOS Connie makes the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 feel less special imo. Its supposed to be the flagship after all so I like to assume it uses superior components to most other ships of the time, not just another ship of the line.

 

[Dukhat]

There's a debate that Commodore Stone's wall chart in "Court Martial" shows one of the NCC numbers as 1864, which is of course the registry of the Reliant. Former standard-def screencaps could not make out these numbers clearly, and in this instance Greg Jein though it read 1664, which is what he used for his infamous T-Negative fanzine ship chart. But HD screencaps of the number make it appear more like 1864 than 1664. So that would mean:

1. The Reliant was in service during TOS, and was originally a TOS-style design that was refit later, or

2. The Reliant was in service during TOS but always looked the way it did in TWOK.

Option 2 would mean that the TOS Connies we saw in TOS were in fact much older than was generally known, and that Starfleet was already producing TMP-style ships even during TOS. This would account for the older Connies being refit to match the Reliant type ships, but then this would also mean that the Miranda class is now much older than was generally thought, rather than being relatively new as of TWOK.

 

[USS Artorius]

I like the fact that the Mirandas in DS9 have blue glowing chiller grills on the outside of their warp nacelles, which I assumed to be an indication that at some point in the 24th century, their internal warp engines' infrastructure was replaced as the new 'TNG' warp scale was introduced. This meant that the Miranda Class ships could keep up with the rest of the fleet!

 

[USS Artorius]

Option 2 would mean that the TOS Connies we saw in TOS were in fact much older than was generally known, and that Starfleet was already producing TMP-style ships even during TOS. This would account for the older Connies being refit to match the Reliant type ships, but then this would also mean that the Miranda class is now much older than was generally thought, rather than being relatively new as of TWOK.

I have seen somewhere that the TOS Enterprise was first commisioned in 2245, 20 years before the majority of TOS. Is this canon, or an assumption by some of the fanbase?

 

[Dukhat]

I have seen somewhere that the TOS Enterprise was first commisioned in 2245, 20 years before the majority of TOS. Is this canon, or an assumption by some of the fanbase?

It wasn't canon at first, just a conjectural date in the Star Trek Chronology. The information has since been seen on displays on-screen in episodes of DSC, SNW etc. However, as I've always felt, things seen on a display, sign, etc. which isn't clearly readable on screen can be taken with a grain of salt. YMMV.

 

[USS Artorius]

If its true then I can buy the idea of Miranda Class ships being commisioned (as they look in TWOK) in the 2260s, as the TOS style of the Connies would by then be outdated. Its my sentimentality getting in the way of this theory though. I prefer to believe that the TMP Refit came before the Mirandas, so here is my headcanon. There were two TOS style prototype Miranda Class ships being tested during the latter half of the 2260s (logically the USS Miranda & USS Reliant) and by the time the testing and refinement period finished (perhaps 2272) the Connie Refit outclassed the Mirandas in every aspect so those prototypes were 'refit' just like the Enterprise and the rest were built to the refit specification. Its then likely that any new build Connies post TMP refit would be much more resource costly to build than the cheaper, more versatile Miranda Class and this could be the reason why we see no Connies in the Dominion War and a tonne of Mirandas. The latter was simply a better workhorse design and again why we see several different variants of it by the TNG era. I still like to think one or two new build Connies made it into at least the mid 24th century, but by this point the Excelsior Class would be starfleet's large workhorse vessel, and the Miranda its smaller counterpart. We see the USS Saratoga in "Emissary" with a registry of NCC - 31911, so perhaps the majority of Miranda Class spaceframes still spaceworthy by the 2370s would have been closer to 50 or 60 years old rather than ~110! Same goes for the Excelsior Class. There are exceptions to this such as the Lantree NCC-1837 featured in TNG along with the Repulse, with a low registry of 2544. It all comes down to whether we accept NCC numbers as being at least vaguely chronological - without this assurance and more canon info, we can each have our own perfect head-canons!

 

[Ithekro]

It is also possible that the Miranda was an older ship that was refit. The Bozeman (NCC-1941) was Soyuz-class. That class was said to have been retired in the late 2280s, around the time Starfleet was talking about retiring the Enterprise (NCC-1701). From PIC we see the New Jersey (NCC-1975) was an older style Constitution-class like the Enterprise was in the late 2260s, while Constellation (NX-1974) was a new four nacelled starship. While again hull numbers have not always been the best metric, we do know that Starfleet does have a range of nacelle types within a given timeframe.

In early DISCO we see older ship and the Discovery (NCC-1031) herself have square nacelles with three collectors at the front. Enterprise comes in and in SNW we see more of the larger cylinder nacelles we are familiar with in the 2260s. We have not seen any TMP style nacelles yet prior to TMP, but we have questions around the starships in the 1900s as we have both nacelle styles presented to us in the 2260s and presumably in the 2270s, depending on when New Jersey was launched. The Constitutions are known to have hull numbers in a wide range from the 1000s, 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, possibly 1800s, and also 1900s, with a possible 900s with Eagle (NCC-956). This range begs the question of just how old is the Constitution-class? Enterprise might be a newer ship of that class even though it was commissioned in 2245. So with such a wide range, we have a lot of questions towards the Miranda-class with their earliest known starships being in the 1800s range, but having a wide breath of starships into the 2370s.

 

[Dukhat]

Those squared-off nacelles for the DSC season 1 ships would have been far better off during the Lost Era between TUC and pre-TNG, rather than ten years before TOS. It's obvious that SNW has been shying away from that design aesthetic in favor of more TOS-inspired designs.