Oberth class

[Timo]

I have no major problem accepting 59000 range regos for some newish Oberths: they're the Jeeps of Starfleet, and the classic Jeep hasn't changed all that much in the almost full century of production yet, not externally anyway.

However, I agree that recommissioning after a major refit would be a nice way to explain the high commissioning date of the Tsiolkovsky, and perhaps the Prometheus et al.. It's only recently that navies have stopped decommissioning their ships for the duration of refits... Starfleet might well have returned to that practice.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Nice write up, i really enjoyed it. Have you done any others? It would be nice if they could do a TNG-R. Im all about maintaining the original material as the real version but an alternate TNG replacing all the unnecessary Oberths would be nice, maybe even tone down the Mirandas and Excelsiors as well(although DS9 really overused those more) Maybe a Miranda-ish vessel with Ambassador style nacelles would work well for a small, workhorse ship of the 24th century.

Edit: I agree that the NCC numbers could be chronological, and sometimes I like to pretend that the whacky ones were because a ship was decommissioned, and then later refit and recommissioned with a new NCC number.

Magellan: I'm planning on writing something up about the Miranda class too. I was considering doing the Excelsior as well, but most of its appearances in TNG were just ad nauseum re-uses of stock footage, so I decided not to bother. There were only four uses of the original Reliant studio model in TNG (Lantree, Brattain, Bozeman and Saratoga), so that's going to be easier. Look for it soon.

My whole obsession with chronological registry numbers (and how that affects the Oberth class in particular) came about when I wrote up my conjectural Starship Construction Timeline. I had posted that a while back as an HTML file, but I've since updated it and made it a PDF file like this one. If there's an interest in that I'd be happy to post it too.

I have no major problem accepting 59000 range regos for some newish Oberths: they're the Jeeps of Starfleet, and the classic Jeep hasn't changed all that much in the almost full century of production yet, not externally anyway.

And for an in-universe explanation I suppose that would be OK. It's just that the 59XXX registries don't coincide with 2360's launch dates, if we take registries chronologically. If they were built in, say, the 2340's (which is the production date of ships with 5XXXX resgistries according to my timeline), then it would have been fine. I could speculate that these were the last Oberths to be produced while at the same time new designs such as the New Orleans, Springfield, Challenger and Olympic classes were debuting. But thanks to the Tsiolkovsky and the Pegasus, that's not the case. (I suppose we could just ignore the info on the dedication plaque of the former ship, but the latter ship was specifically mentioned to be only 12 years old at the time, so that throws a spanner into the works).

However, I agree that recommissioning after a major refit would be a nice way to explain the high commissioning date of the Tsiolkovsky...

The problem with that is that the above-mentioned ship doesn't look like it's changed at all both inwardly and outwardly since the TMP era. Doesn't look like it was refit to me (or at least a refit as vigorously as the TOS-to-TMP Ent-nil refit).

and perhaps the Prometheus et al...

The 5XXXX registry on the Prometheus's hull was a VFX mistake. Okuda even confirmed this, along with having the correct 7XXXX registry on the dedication plaque. It's no different a mistake than the misspelling of the Brattain, or the 6XXXX registry of the Zhukov when it was supposed to be 2XXXX; mistakes that have been overlooked easily enough. I truly believe that the low registries of the First Contact ships were the same type of mistake as the Prometheus.

 

[C.E. Evans]

It actually wouldn't be a problem if the Prometheus was a design that was originally approved and awarded the NX-59650 registry many years ago, but actually wasn't built until much later.

Some of the First Contact ships might have possibly come a few years prior to the Galaxy-class, but simply weren't seen until then. That would be the easiest "in-universe" way to explaining their low registry numbers, IMO.

 

[Dukhat]

It actually wouldn't be a problem if the Prometheus was a design that was originally approved and awarded the NX-59650 registry many years ago, but actually wasn't built until much later.

It was heavily implied in "Ship in a Bottle" that the Prometheus was built for the Dominion War.

Some of the First Contact ships might have possibly come a few years prior to the Galaxy-class, but simply weren't seen until then. That would be the easiest "in-universe" way to explaining their low registry numbers, IMO.

I've heard this before, and although I don't have a shred of proof to back my feelings up, I just don't agree with that assessment. The ships just look too contemporary to the Sovereign class to have been built 10 or twenty years previously (which is where their 5XXXX and 6XXXX registries would put them, chronologically speaking).

 

[kkozoriz1]

They could have been refit recently. There may have been ships of the same classes that looked older. Imagine a TNG era TOS vs TMP Enterprise.

 

[Dukhat]

They could have been refit recently. There may have been ships of the same classes that looked older. Imagine a TNG era TOS vs TMP Enterprise.

Yeah, I've also heard this idea before as well, and it doesn't hold water for me. My response to that is: If they were older ships that had been refitted to look more modern, then why didn't Starfleet do the same thing to all those old Exclesiors, Mirandas and Oberths?

Also, there's no real canon evidence that ships were refitted to look completely different at any time other than the TOS-to-TMP Enterprise itself.

 

[kkozoriz1]

The Excelsiors could have been refit, just not externally. Perhaps all the new tech could fit in the hull as it existed.

 

[C.E. Evans]

It actually wouldn't be a problem if the Prometheus was a design that was originally approved and awarded the NX-59650 registry many years ago, but actually wasn't built until much later.

It was heavily implied in "Ship in a Bottle" that the Prometheus was built for the Dominion War.

Not really. It was mentioned that the war with the Dominion was currently going on at the time--which was true--but there was actually no mention that the Prometheus itself was built for that particular conflict, only that it was a new ship with some new technology onboard. The same thing could be said for any new ship commissioned during the 2370s.

Some of the First Contact ships might have possibly come a few years prior to the Galaxy-class, but simply weren't seen until then. That would be the easiest "in-universe" way to explaining their low registry numbers, IMO.

I've heard this before, and although I don't have a shred of proof to back my feelings up, I just don't agree with that assessment. The ships just look too contemporary to the Sovereign class to have been built 10 or twenty years previously (which is where their 5XXXX and 6XXXX registries would put them, chronologically speaking).

The only thing we really know is that they're 24th-Century and aren't in the same design lineage as the Nebula- and Galaxy-class starships. In that regard, they really could have been launched during the 2350s for all we know.

 

[Dukhat]

The Excelsiors could have been refit, just not externally. Perhaps all the new tech could fit in the hull as it existed.

Maybe, but from an engineering standpoint I find that hard to believe.

The only thing we really know is that they're 24th-Century and aren't in the same design lineage as the Nebula- and Galaxy-class starships. In that regard, they really could have been launched during the 2350s for all we know.

Of course that's possible. I just don't find that likely, that's all. It's obvious (to me anyway) that those four classes were supposed to be contemporary to the new Ent-E.

 

[kkozoriz1]

A cat can have kittens in the oven, but that don't make them biscuits!

 

[Dukhat]

Yes, that makes all kinds of sense.

 

[Timo]

The ships just look too contemporary to the Sovereign class to have been built 10 or twenty years previously (which is where their 5XXXX and 6XXXX registries would put them, chronologically speaking).

To be frank, I see nothing Sovereign-like in those ships. The Sovereign is characterized by a longitudally stretched primary hull with terracing, and by long nacelles with triangular ramscoops. There are a couple of obvious stablemates to her in that respect, namely Nova and Prometheus.

But the Akira has neither the elongation, the terracing nor the nacelle detail - instead, she looks almost exactly like the Galaxy, Nebula, New Orleans and Challenger with her white transverse ovoid of smooth surfaces and with her bulbous ramscoops; I see no problems in associating her with the range of registries that characterizes that school of starship design, from the 57XXX New Orleans to the 71XXX Galaxy.

All the other ships have the stocky nacelles with bulging ramscoops, too. The Steamrunner and the Sabre are obvious stablemates, but stand well apart both from the E-D and the E-E lines. The Norway might lead to the Intrepid eventually, but not to the Sovereign.

Why couldn't all these ships preexist? Virtually every other starship design ever seen has been assumed to predate that first appearance, too - even some "prototype" ones such as the Defiant have been introduced as old news. That we haven't seen these particular ships before may call for an explanation, but every ship needs such an explanation, not merely the ST:FC ones. And the easy explanation is that we just plan don't get to see many starships. Not until ST:FC and DS9, that is.

If we really want, we can additionally argue that some of the ST:FC types were warships, and we have never seen war in Star Trek before. The more exotic ships might have been stockpiled at Earth for the Dominion war, and were available to fight the Borg for that reason.

Really, the exceptions to the idea that registries are chronological are so few and far between that I have really hard time believing that the ones in ST:FC were "erroneous" in any way, and that the artists intended each and every of those ships to be brand new.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Really, the exceptions to the idea that registries are chronological are so few and far between that I have really hard time believing that the ones in ST:FC were "erroneous" in any way, and that the artists intended each and every of those ships to be brand new.

As I said before, these four ships could very well be older than I'm making them. But I personally do not feel that way. I truly believe that these ships were meant to be new ships, by whoever the VFX people were who created the CGI models. And I also beileve that their registries were erroneous in the same way the Prometheus's registry was erroneous. Also, because that battle scene already consisted of older ships (Nebula, Miranda, Oberth, and even the Defiant) mixed with a newer ship (the Enterprise), I'm assuming the four new ship classes were really meant to be new ship classes. IMHO, their hull plating, bridges, and escape pods look very similar to the Sovereign's. Although I might tend to agree with you that at least the Akira might be a bit older, the Norway, Saber and Steamrunner look pretty new to me.

 

[Dukhat]

EDIT: I've taken another look at the renders of the FC ships at Doug Drexler's blog, and upon reflection, I think I am more apt to make them older ships. I could definitely see attributes of the Saber that resemble, say, the Nebula class (the ventral view, while having a more angular saucer than a round one, looks quite like the dorsal view of a GCS), and the Akira definitely could be older too. I just wish the ships had GCS-style nacelles instead of that wierd angular style.

I still feel that the Steamrunner doesn't look like any other ship with a 5XXXX registry, and the Norway doesn't look like any other ship at all. but in the latter case the CGI model was never really finished so it has an excuse, and for the former I suppose I could just chalk it up to a different design aesthetic. I'll have to update my Starship Production Timeline now