That seems about right to me. The interesting notion on Bill Theiss' part to also differentiate between different starships seems to have gone over like a lead balloon with the producers.
Original 12 Constitution class ships
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That seems about right to me. The interesting notion on Bill Theiss' part to also differentiate between different starships seems to have gone over like a lead balloon with the producers.
If you look closely at the Exeter patch on the shirts, you'll see the one with the thinner collar has three silver circles on the left and two on the right. The one with the wider collar has the three circles on the right and two on the left.
Each shirt appears in at least two scenes. Not sure why this happened other than someone wasn't paying attention!
Doesn't count since that wasn't done during TOS' production, but attempting to retcon something back into TOS decades after the fact.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
Just because you don't include the sequel series in your limited view of what constitutes Star Trek, it doesn't mean that something perfectly acceptable shown on Enterprise "doesn't count."
We saw the Defiant bridge in both "The Tholian Web" and in "In A Mirror, Darkly" and it was very clearly the intent of the producers on Enterprise for it to be the same ship and bridge and it looked just like the TOS bridge set:
I'm not really seeing what the problem is.
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Part of the thread is trying to understand the Star Trek universe, for which "IaMD" is highly relevant. Another part has already settled on "they wanted one thing and got another", the ambiguity being over whether the failure to apply ship-specific badges was the result of TPTB deliberately dumping the idea, or the costumers making a series of mistakes. In this respect, "The Tholian Web" seems to fall squarely in the mistake category, as the director clearly took immense pains to hide the insignia of the fallen crew (compare to how Austin Powers' genitals fail to make an appearance at the end of that movie, or how Beowulf's do in the most recent take on that story).
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Please forgive the broken record for playing one more time, but I like the idea of "ship badges" actually being fleet-unit insignia, with the delta shield signifying the First Fleet, the largest fleet in the Federation. Works for me, anyway.
I do like the thought of adding different badges to the mix. The variety added some verisimilitude to the interaction between officers of different ships/units. I also thought the boomerang-shaped Starfleet pennant was a nice touch to TOS; too bad they stopped using it.
I do like the thought of adding different badges to the mix. The variety added some verisimilitude to the interaction between officers of different ships/units. I also thought the boomerang-shaped Starfleet pennant was a nice touch to TOS; too bad they stopped using it.
Too late. It's already done.
Since we - well, most of us, anyway - live in a universe where forms of Trek exist that are not TOS, again that is irrelevant.
In any case, it's interesting to mention Christopher's take on all of this. Spoilers for his Rise of the Federation novels ensue.
He suggests that it wasn't literally every ship in Starfleet that had its own badge, just different subsections of it. When Earth, Vulcan, Tellar, Alpha Centauri and Andor formed the Federation, each world contributed its ships to a portion of Starfleet, with different missions for each subsection of the new fleet. Here is a picture describing all of this.
In his view, it was just a coincidence that every ship we saw had a different emblem, since they came from the aforementioned divisions of Starfleet. And of course not every ship within any given division had a crew comprised only of one species (the Intrepid did, but not all).
I asked him once about the Defiant badge, and apparently he believed that it was similar enough to the Enterprise one (just pointed in a different direction) that it wasn't worth worrying about.
In his view, it was just a coincidence that every ship we saw had a different emblem, since they came from the aforementioned divisions of Starfleet. And of course not every ship within any given division had a crew comprised only of one species (the Intrepid did, but not all).
I asked him once about the Defiant badge, and apparently he believed that it was similar enough to the Enterprise one (just pointed in a different direction) that it wasn't worth worrying about.
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Actually if it is a question of original intent of the guys who made it, it probably isn't a good idea to factor in stuff made long after the thing in question was decided on and/or rethought. Largely becuase it's based on the final decision they came to and not the original idea.
Not if its after the fact yeah, its relevant.
He also for some reason decided Starfleet Security was descended from the MACOs despite Earth Starfleet already having a security division that would have likely been inspiration for that instead of United Earth's special forces troops. Also still not buying Antares as a Starfleet ship
Well, "TOS" means two rather different things around here... It might be the show that was made in the sixties, or it may be the era of Star Trek pseudohistory that is covered by, among others, "that sixties show".
Since both takes on "TOS" essentially discuss a hodgepodge of ideas and executions by people who were barely in speaking terms with each other at best, the inclusion or exclusion of things beyond "that sixties show" doesn't really represent any qualitative threshold. "Original intent" isn't contained within a single show or even a single episode, as most intent never gets executed and that which does tramples on the toes of previous intenders, sometimes deliberately. In discussing intent, one would be much better off drawing a line between Gene Coon -influenced episodes and the rest, say.
Timo Saloniemi
It get back to the topic, we consider that USS Enterprise is around 20 years old (in service) when we first see her under command of Captain Kirk. Can we really guess if the "original 12" Constitutions are in service? We know the names of a suggested 14 ships in the class. And possibly more depending on if any are being built to replace loses during the late 2260s (some suggest USS Defiant was a fairly new ship when she was lost). If say USS Constellation and USS Eagle as well as USS Republic are older than say USS Intrepid, USS Exeter, USS Yorktown, and USS Enterprise...how much older? Have several been lost in the previous decades? Starfleet loses at least three during Kirk's five year mission (Defiant, Constellation, and Intrepid). Is this a common thing, or random chance that these older Constitutions are starting to be lost? Is this a reason for the refit of Enterprise and probably others?
When was it ever said that there were originally only 12 Constitutions built? IIRC, Kirk's line about that was that there were "only twelve like her in the fleet." For all we know there were 50 of them built, but by the time Kirk made that statement 38 of them were either destroyed or lost.
Actually, in "The Tholian Web" you can see a Defiant crewmember lying on a biobed in sickbay wearing the exact same delta on his uniform as the Enterprise's:
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x09hd/thetholianwebhd0228.jpg
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^^ Yes, and that goes with when TOS was in production. Trying to bring in something retconned from a contemporary production--"In A Mirror Darly"--doesn't add any clarity to what was done during TOS' production.
The idea seems to have been that starship personnel, regardless of what ship they served on, were to wear the familiar arrowhead insignia. But somewhere along the line that got messed up and we saw other starship personnel--primarily in the ship commanders--wearing different insignia. That, too, would have been fine except it was applied inconsistently.
So there is no clear evidence as to what we saw onscreen. We know what it was supposed to be, but what got onscreen muddied that with no clear altenate explanation.
Someone upthread (I believe) suggested that different fleets could have different insignia. That could explain why we see the arrowhead insignia on some ship personnel and not others. And later prior to the TMP era it was decided that all Starfleet personnel were to wear the arrowhead regardless of ship or base assignment.
In early first season it isn't hard to rationalize references to Space Command or Space Central and the like as euphemisms for Starfleet Command. Or rationalize them as the authoruty to a seperate agency known as UESPA. It's relatively easy to rationalize that the starburst insignia is for all starbase personnel and the arrowhead is for all starship personnel except we see clear deviations with the insignias worn by Commodores Decker, Wesley and Captain Tracey.
The idea seems to have been that starship personnel, regardless of what ship they served on, were to wear the familiar arrowhead insignia. But somewhere along the line that got messed up and we saw other starship personnel--primarily in the ship commanders--wearing different insignia. That, too, would have been fine except it was applied inconsistently.
So there is no clear evidence as to what we saw onscreen. We know what it was supposed to be, but what got onscreen muddied that with no clear altenate explanation.
Someone upthread (I believe) suggested that different fleets could have different insignia. That could explain why we see the arrowhead insignia on some ship personnel and not others. And later prior to the TMP era it was decided that all Starfleet personnel were to wear the arrowhead regardless of ship or base assignment.
In early first season it isn't hard to rationalize references to Space Command or Space Central and the like as euphemisms for Starfleet Command. Or rationalize them as the authoruty to a seperate agency known as UESPA. It's relatively easy to rationalize that the starburst insignia is for all starbase personnel and the arrowhead is for all starship personnel except we see clear deviations with the insignias worn by Commodores Decker, Wesley and Captain Tracey.
Wesley's flower insignia in "The Ultimate Computer" isn't a "clear deviation," since he was introduced beaming over from a "space station."
A station isn't a starbase at least from what we've seen in TOS. Onscreen starbases were located on planets, but that doesn't mean large space borne habitats couldn't have been built and serve as a starbase. But what we saw onscreen was a K-7 type station which seems much too small to serve as a starbase. And Kirk refers to it as a station and not a base.
So either Wesley traveled from his starbase command to the station to take command of the wargames squadron or Wesley was like Decker and commanded a ship (the Lexington) with the rank of Commodore.
The latter scenario is consistent with what we saw in "The Doomsday Machine" or at least what we think we saw. It's possible Decker also commanded a starbase and for some reason elected to take the Constellation out himself on some assignment wherein he ran into the doomsday robot. And possibly the Enterprise--being in the area--was on the lookout for the Constellation which might have been overdue in its return or in reporting. The problem with that scenario is that Decker is not wearing a starbust insignia. Also the implication in the episode is that the Constellation is indeed Decker's command and evidenced by his distinct insignia, much like we see later with Captain Tracey commanding the Exeter.
Now can a Fleet Captain and a Commodore be essentially the same thing, at least in TOS' Starfleet? Kirk referred to Pike being promoted to Fleet Captain which might not actually have been a specific rank but rather a designation of position. Pike might actually have been promoted to Commodore and occupied the position of a Fleet Captain. Following that reasoning then Decker could also have been a Fleet Captain with the rank of Commodore commanding an individual ship or perhaps group of ships (who were off somewhere else when the Constellation had its mishap).
There was only one starbase (definitively) shown onscreen in pre-remastered TOS, AFAIK: Starbase 11. But that doesn't mean the "space station" isn't part or all of a starbase. The flower badge might be evidence that it is.
The "space station" in TUC-R is Starbase 6.
Firstly what is TUC-R. I wasn't aware TUC had been remastered.
And TOS-R is retconning. TOS-R changed the station design in "The Ultimate Computer" for the sake of change despite the fact that it's still referred to as a station rather than a base or starbase. So like the "new" Defiant emblem seen IAMD it's a retcon that has no weight in terms to what TOS was trying to depict originally.
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