NCC Numbers to Choose From

It would be nice if the "Court-Martial" wall chart had names on it:




My second AMT Enterprise kit came with a new decal sheet that gave you a choice of NCC numbers but no list to match them to the names:



I'm sure some boys were rash and impulsive enough to make up their own list, but I wanted to be serious about it. I chose the Lexington and used the Franz Joseph number, which seemed final enough in the absence of any other available info:





Then The Star Trek Concordance (1976) came out with a different set of numbers (including one obvious misprint):




The book didn't explain where this list came from, and everything else in the Concordance was sourced right from aired material that everyone agreed on, so that was confusing. It was a major editorial omission.

As most of us know in the Internet era, the source was a fanzine article by Greg Jein, who devised his own list at about the same time as FJ, that being early 1975:



The Star Trek Encyclopedia (1994) would use the Jein numbers, except that the Intrepid becomes 1831.

Studio productions from the TNG era on seem to use the Jein system, including TOS-R (Exeter, Lexington, Defiant). So that's it. But sometimes I wish Jein had seen the FJ numbers, left well-enough alone, and that was it.

 

But what if you wanted to build a destroyer, & you were an adherent to the Jefferies system? Then you'd really be fucked.

 

There's also the numbers from FASA's booklets (particularly the Star Trek III Sourcebook Update and TNG Officer's Manual), and the USS BIDDEFORD NCC-0718 from this Into Darkness deleted scene.

 

OK - I give - IC? DSC?

 

Starfleet does not allow vanity plates, nor are you allowed to choose your NCC number. Klingons, however, often sport "I don't brake for tribbles" bumper stickers.

 

Interstellar cruiser & deep space cruiser.

 

I would assume also the MK designation would be a designation of which version of each sub class a ship is? Like Kirk's 1701 is the IX version of the DSC sub class, while Pike's might have been the VIII or even VII version of said sub class. Each refit making a another version higher - just like any software or hardware.


Make sense?

 

Something like that, yes. It's also a bit of a modification of the Jefferies system, wherein we would have here representatives of the 10th, 13th, 16th, 17th, & 18th cruiser classes.

 

As Greg Jein's article "The Case of Jonathan Doe Starship" indicates, DSC stands for "Deep Space Cruiser," IC stands for "Interstellar Cruiser," and SC stands for "Space Cruiser."

Matt Jefferies had included the "Star Ship MK IX/01" comment in his "Primary Phaser" artwork. It looks like Ruth Berman (the editor of the T-Negative fanzine) chimed in with a footnote to Greg Jein's article to speculate the existence of other classes (e.g. MKs VI, VII, VIII, and X). She also speculated the aforementioned Deep Space Cruiser, Interstellar Cruiser, and Space Cruiser.

For what it's worth, all the MK X ships are assigned to 1800 NCC numbers, MK IX ships are 1700 numbers, and MK VIII ships are (mostly) 1600 ships. I think that was meant to have been her pattern. (It starts to become inconsistent with the low 1600s as well as the 1371 and 1017--but I think that was the intent, even if she had some glitches.)

Find Greg Jein's article here:

http://www.trekplace.com/article10.html

 

Regardless of whose numbering system you choose, I would never have used that crappy decal sheet. The condensed font is all wrong.

 

Friend of mine who is a model builder prints out his own decals, needs special "paper" though.

Any fonts and colors from the internet.

 

Other than the Enterprise the only one seen onscreen is the Constellation. No other registries of other ships are ever visible. To that end nothing is concretely established. A pity they couldn't have just rearranged the decals better or just played with the 0 to make a 6.

The only other registry known, because it's mentioned, is the Republic 1371. And we have no substantial reason to assume it do the same class as the Enterprise.

I would also suggest it to be a narrow view to accept the registries appearing on Stone's wall chart are all heavy cruisers like the Enterprise. There is no reason it could not also include frigates, destroyers, cruisers and other types.

 

And for those who can't or won't print their own decals, you can get super-accurate decals at cybermodeler.com:




(You can also get all the all the various star ship names in their proper font--as well as "ISS" ship decoration.)

 

I do recall being disappointed in the new font on the "upgraded" AMT decal sheet circa 1976.

I wish AMT had gone the extra mile on that count, and also one other thing. Gene Roddenberry and Matt Jeffries were both alive and reachable at the time, so AMT could have asked them to create an official list of names and numbers. If the model kit had included that list with an explanation that it was GR/MJ approved, then Franz Joseph and Greg Jein might both have accepted it and we'd have one list. One and done.

 

Naw. Then people would haggle over which of the *three* lists is the most authoritative--with people arguing who trumps whom when it comes to being "definitive:" "canon" or "seminal" or "authoritative." What happens when Roddenberry says "In retrospect, it was a mistake to give the Constellation 1017. My new Great Bird list proclaims the Constellation to have been 1710."? What would people decide the Constellation "actually" was--what they saw with their own eyes or what Roddenberry decides he should actually have meant?

 

In the era when I grew up, FJ was THE source along with the concordance. I have a soft spot for FJ, and love all his scout/destroyer designs.

 

And I don't recall seeing what
NCC stands for?

 

No Can Comprehend.

 

According to Franz Joseph's original USS Enterprise Blueprints, Star Fleet Technical Manual and Diane Carey's novel Dreadnought!, it stands for "Naval Construction Contract". One of those 80's fan made blueprint packs used "Navigational Contact Code", which I think sounds a bit more swish.

 

Nut Crackerjack Code - a prize every time, and occasionally an Enterprise.

I'm in the Naval Construction Contract camp, because I just like it, but I wouldn't be totally opposed to Navigational (or Naval) Contact Code if it were revealed in screen canon, either - much better than some of the other alternatives I've heard. Some of those, I'd almost prefer it turn out to be some kind of in-joke like I started this post with among the designers of Archer's ship than any of them.