NX-Class Starship in Star Trek IV:TVH

[tharpdevenport]

I got a related question:

Enterprise was famous, so they kept making new ship and naming it and used letters of the alphabet to distinguish them.

But how come other ship in TNG and passed (not including "Enterprise") which had the same names as TOS ships, didn't include letters are the call numbers?



I read somewhere, perhaps an old Star Trek magazine, that they weren't sure what NCC meant and suggested perhaps it was Naval Construction Contract.

 

[cultcross]

I assumed the keeping of the registration number was a special thing for the Enterprise in honour of her particularly note worthy history. We have seen it once or twice elsewhere I think, the Yamato had a Lettered designation at one point I believe.

 

[Anthony]

Oh, good Lord.

"NX" designation: Experimental, not NX Class, for God's sake.

Hurry up, O Star Trek Reboot.

Please...

 

[Anthony]

Thru brightest day...
Thru blackest night...
No idiocy escapes his sight.
Let those who worship Rick Berman's slights,
Beware his intellect,
Green Lantern's light.

Keep On Trekkin' Beaker :thumbsup:

 

[Nerys Myk]

Anthony said:

Hurry up, O Star Trek Reboot.

Please...

Something tells me that beaker is in no hurry for that. Those damn kids just wont let his lawn be!

 

[Unicron]

Tharpdevenport said:
I got a related question:

Enterprise was famous, so they kept making new ship and naming it and used letters of the alphabet to distinguish them.

But how come other ship in TNG and passed (not including "Enterprise") which had the same names as TOS ships, didn't include letters are the call numbers?

I seem to recall hearing (although I don't know how accurate it is) that Gene wanted the lettering system to be unique to the Enterprise.

 

[Good Will Riker]

Anthony said:
Thru brightest day...
Thru blackest night...
No idiocy escapes his sight.
Let those who worship Rick Berman's slights,
Beware his intellect,
Green Lantern's light.

Keep On Trekkin' Beaker :thumbsup:

Nice poem.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Anthony said:
Thru brightest day...
Thru blackest night...
No idiocy escapes his sight.
Let those who worship Rick Berman's slights,
Beware his intellect,
Green Lantern's light.

Keep On Trekkin' Beaker :thumbsup:

Dang. Thanks dude!

 

[Deleted 2]

Is this the right time to point out that the SS Columbia (NX-02) was visually quite different from the SS Enterprise (NX-01). It had different hull plating, and there were pipes with glowing lights on the bridge.

It's not too silly to assume that both were experimental ship classes. It would also explain the NX-01's early retirement, by seeing it as a technology testbed that didn't quite work out as planned.

Apart from that, I agree that it's hard to get worked up about an easily rationalised continuity error in a minor, negligable tv series.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Anthony said:
Thru brightest day...
Thru blackest night...
No idiocy escapes his sight.
Let those who worship Rick Berman's slights,
Beware his intellect,
Green Lantern's light.

Keep On Trekkin' Beaker :thumbsup:

Sure its not:

In brightest day
In blackest night

I've declared
Modern Trek aint right.

To those who like it
I direct my slights

Beware my ramblings
Green Ranter's Might

 

[Anthony]

Anytime, Beaker. :thumbsup:

Keep up the mayhem.

 

[Anthony]

Thru brightest day,
Thru blackest night,
Any MT's slight, Shadow puts a'right.
Rick Berman's disciples, he sets alight.
Beware this Classic Trekker,
and take to flight...

 

[aridas sofia]

Timo said:
Indeed. We can probably put the blame on a certain Franz Joseph Schnaubelt, whose Star Fleet Technical Manual was very influential in all post-TOS Trek... His expertise wasn't in naval tradition, and he had no chance to converse with e.g. Matt Jeffries who did have an inkling of such tradition.

Per Trekplace's Franz Joseph timeline of correspondences regarding Trek...

1974
January 4
FJ flies to Burbank to meet with GR, Matt Jefferies, Bob Justman, Bill Theiss, and Ralph Naveda in GR's offices at Warner Brothers.

This was to discuss designs for the proposed Planet Earth series, but this statement

The BGP has made the rounds of Warner Brothers and everyone, including the janitor, has seen it. Everyone is very enthusiastic about the BGP.

...makes it pretty clear that Jefferies and Joseph talked about the blueprints of the ship Jefferies designed and Joseph was blueprinting. And of course, the NCC system Franz Joseph adopted was substantially the same one [/b]Jefferies[/b] rationalized as the basis for "1701" -- different design families had different starting numbers, i.e. the seventeenth design was 17xx. I think it more than possible FJ didn't pull that numbering scheme out of the air, and instead got it during his talks with MJ.

 

[Timo]

And once again, I was dead wrong. Thanks for the information!

Still, FJ seems to have missed MJ's point that NCC would specify the ship type of which the hero ship would be the 17th model, first or second unit off the yards. Surely Starfleet would be expected to have more types than that, all of them introduced in something like seventeen models by that time. A couple of NDDs or NCAs to spice up the mix...

One could perhaps fully well speak of Kirk's ship as "NCC class" if Starfleet operated no other heavy cruisers at the time - by no means impossible or unrealistic. "NX class" would fit right in, then, as "historical precedent".

Alternately, while CC would mean "cruiser" in this postulated continuous scheme, X could have originally meant "explorer", a designation later falling in disuse when all ships were pressed to exploration duty. The letter would then be freed for other use, much like X in the US military aviation world was released from "prototypes" for use exclusively on one-off "experimentals", Y becoming the standard prototype letter (partly because Y had already long been used for the second prototype, the model that would be closest to going into production).

Timo Saloniemi