New Enterprise: One-off or progenitor of a class?
- Thread starter Shark
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Another one I think. Read it on Memory Beta I think....
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Constellation_(alternate_reality_NCC-1017)
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Constellation_(alternate_reality_NCC-1017)
After reading the link, it would seem most of the Constitution class ships listed are linked to the D-A-C game. Of those that were used in the comics, only two were active. I find it interesting that the Cairo was listed as being a newer Constitution class ship that had been deactivated and used as a cadet training vessel. I guess it makes sense to have a newer ship for your cadets to use for training so that they are trained on the newest technology.
Interesting, thanks for that. Commodore Dekker?
Clearly Nero's arrival motivated Starfleet to hand command of the Constellation over to Matt Decker's rival going back to his Academy days, Pat Dekker!
Going through the effort to create a new ship design and then only build one makes no sense to me. Unless of course the prototype revealed massive design flaws which wold be incredibly difficult to fix making it easier to create another new design then to fix the existing one, or something causes the creators to reject the design despite the prototype working. I could easily see the latter happening to the Vengeance's class especially since that is exactly what happened to its counterpart from the TOS Novel Dreadnought.
There's a novel, Final Frontier (no relation to the fifth movie) by Diane Carey, which the 2009 writers are aware of (their George Kirk was inspired by Carey's), and had some weird reason for the Enterprise being the first Constitution-class ship - something about incorporating so many technological advances through development they cancelled the original contract, and took out a new one for it, Naval Construction Contract 1701.
I like the idea of the Enterprise being special, not just another ship. It fits the world of the reboot movies, which are like Trek's legends come to life.
Also, with the massive budgets these movies have (well... massive compared to prior Trek's, miniscule compared to Avengers Infinity War or Batman v Superman), I doubt we'll ever see another Constitution-class ship. Reusing models and sets was always a cost-cutting measure of the TV shows.
I like the idea of the Enterprise being special, not just another ship. It fits the world of the reboot movies, which are like Trek's legends come to life.
Also, with the massive budgets these movies have (well... massive compared to prior Trek's, miniscule compared to Avengers Infinity War or Batman v Superman), I doubt we'll ever see another Constitution-class ship. Reusing models and sets was always a cost-cutting measure of the TV shows.
Actually it was described as "Our newest flagship." Lots of ways to interpret that, but it mainly depends on what a "flagship" actually is in Starfleet usage.
FWIW, the Starfleet Academy novels list, IIRC, five different Constitution class starships having approximately the same design as the Enterprise. These aren't considered canon, though, and one of the ships named appears in the movie as an entirely different class. YMMV.
There's no indication in film, but it's unlikely to be a one-off. We've seen multiple configurations of every other ship in the reboot universe except for Kelvin, and I doubt either ship is totally unique.
Indeed. The newest flagship in a series, retiring the previous one? The newest addition to Starfleet's collection of flagships, to be maintained at no less than twelve flagships at any time? The newest vessel in the already long-running Constitution class of flagships?
The same sort of goes for the ST:TMP introduction of a "new" hero ship. Sure, she's new - but is she pathfinding, or merely recent?
The design or performance of the new ship doesn't seem to make a difference in the plot. Stupid older ships die because they are flown by stupid people believing in stupid stories about natural disasters and crewed by stupid cadets. The Enterprise survives the initial shot because the shields are up, not (necessarily) because the newer shields are better.
Timo Saloniemi
In all fairness the only reason Enterprise had its shields up was that Kirk recognized the description of what was happening and convinced Pike, who had studied the Kelvin incident what was coming. The rest of the ships didn't have anyone with that knowledge and we aren't certain that some of them didn't get their shields up only to have them be destroyed. Enterprise's defenses didn't seem much more effective against Narada's weapons then the Kelvin's to me.
Behind the scenes material for Trek XI still referred to the Enterprise as "Constitution class" so there has to be at least one other ship of the same design, the USS Constitution. Or are we going to suggest Nero's arrival made Starfleet abandon the traditions of very navy on Earth and not name the class after its first ship?
There are also dramatic reasons for reusing ship designs. If you show another Constitution class ship defeated, it sells whatever defeated them as a legitimate threat and casts doubt as to if the Enterprise can win if another identical ship lost. Same reasoning for making the USS Odyssey a Galaxy class ship, it sells the Dominion as a serious threat if they can make short work of a ship identical to the Enterprise D.
There are also dramatic reasons for reusing ship designs. If you show another Constitution class ship defeated, it sells whatever defeated them as a legitimate threat and casts doubt as to if the Enterprise can win if another identical ship lost. Same reasoning for making the USS Odyssey a Galaxy class ship, it sells the Dominion as a serious threat if they can make short work of a ship identical to the Enterprise D.
Me too, which prompted my question.
Yes, in the first movie. It is also described by Kirk in the quote above in the second movie, as I stated.
There are many real-world examples; look no further than the Navy's first Nuclear submarine, the U.S.S.Nautilus, which was a one-off. Then there's the U.S.S.Seawolf, a unique design of which there was only one.
The Nautlius was one of a kind because they found limits in her design that were changed in later models. That's the first case I listed for why a ship might be one of a kind.
And Seawolf had a prototype reactor but the navy decided not to use that type on future subs. Eventually Seawolf's reactor was replaced but that still falls under the rejection due to being a testbed example.
And Seawolf had a prototype reactor but the navy decided not to use that type on future subs. Eventually Seawolf's reactor was replaced but that still falls under the rejection due to being a testbed example.
Staying in service isn't necessarily a measure of success - it's often simply a measure of desperation. You don't "prototype" naval vessels, as they cost way too much to be used as mere testbeds.
A typical reason to cut short the production of a type is because the threat environment has changed; many ships are grossly outdated on the day their keels are laid already, and some are scrapped in mid-construction for that reason, if their steel is worth recycling (and that used to be much simpler in ye olden days than today). Another reason would be a change in budgets (a "threat environment" on their own right!), making it unfeasible to complete either the projected number of ships, or indeed any ships of this particular design that doesn't provide the best bang for the reduced buck.
Starfleet might be suffering from any of the above, as well as from the introduction of new, game-changing technologies that just plain have to be implemented ASAP. But we never explicitly hear of any of this. All we see is some types apparently fail to go to series production, while others get inexplicably altered "between production batches" (say, the Ambassadors). And then there are the explicit turkeys such as the Defiant. It's way too early to say if any of this would apply to the newest hero ship or not.
Timo Saloniemi
A typical reason to cut short the production of a type is because the threat environment has changed; many ships are grossly outdated on the day their keels are laid already, and some are scrapped in mid-construction for that reason, if their steel is worth recycling (and that used to be much simpler in ye olden days than today). Another reason would be a change in budgets (a "threat environment" on their own right!), making it unfeasible to complete either the projected number of ships, or indeed any ships of this particular design that doesn't provide the best bang for the reduced buck.
Starfleet might be suffering from any of the above, as well as from the introduction of new, game-changing technologies that just plain have to be implemented ASAP. But we never explicitly hear of any of this. All we see is some types apparently fail to go to series production, while others get inexplicably altered "between production batches" (say, the Ambassadors). And then there are the explicit turkeys such as the Defiant. It's way too early to say if any of this would apply to the newest hero ship or not.
Timo Saloniemi
Well yes, actually you do, as in the aforementioned U.S.S. Nautilus. Not to mention countless other diesel submarines, many of which were also one-offs. And I think it's safe to say that the Nautilus was a success, if for no other reason than because she was the first fully-functional nuclear submarine.
Or the old nuclear carrier Enterprise, currently being disassembled. She's also considered a one-off, sharing less than 50% of her design with the newer Nimitz class ships. (most notably, her reactor system)
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