Actually, no. The Reliant was a new model, not a kitbash of the Enterprise.
I was talking about the Nebula.
Actually, the CG Nebula first appeared, ironically on *VOYAGER*, in "Message in a Bottle", hence why there no Nebula in sight in "Sacrifice of Angels". They didn't get around to using the CG one until the second Chin'toka battle, as I recall.
They did use a couple of First Contact ships (especially the lovely Akira), but I suspect, apart from the Bellerephon, we didn't see any Intrepids in battle for the same reason we never saw a Sovereign: It might be distracting to see another existing hero ship's class in battle and it might upstage the Defiant.
I'm sure they didn't want to use the Hero designs from the other spinoffs, but my point is that they were available and much more fitting for the time period than the Miranda or Excelcior or Oberth.
They DIDN'T use the Oberth, and available doesn't mean it's appropriate. Hence, no Intrepids or Sovereigns. It was never clear on how many Intrepids were built anyway (we only really know of three) and there's probably only a handful of Sovereigns as well, perhaps serving as flagships for other fleets.
I'm not arguing with you. I hate the Excelsior and Miranda classes for the exact reason that they were overused in DS9, and would have greatly preferred new designs for the CGI fleet shots.
Hate? That's pretty harsh, since they fit into battle sequences well, without being distracting.
As for designing new ships, where would they get the time and money to do that? Besides the Defiant, they had Mirandas, Excelsiors, Galaxies, plus Akira, Steamrunner, and Sabre from First Contact. (The Norway, of course was lost). That's six non-hero ships, with the eventual Nebula making seven.
With the exception of the Centaur (which was a kitbash), they've really NEVER designed guest starships from scratch for episodes unless it played a central role in the plot AND the script really necessitated a new design; i.e. Enterprise-C, Phoenix, Pasteur, Prometheus, Equinox.
Building some all new designs just for the sake of filling out the composition of the fleets would've undoubtedly cut into how much we actually saw in terms of those epic battle scenes in "Sacrifice" and "Tears". I don't think it would've been worth reducing that, just to introduce one or two new designs.
Pity they didn't scan the original Excelsior and the Ambassador in there too, huh?
I'm not exactly sure why they didn't scan the original Exclesior (with the Enterprise-B/Lakota extra parts) and use that design instead, but I do know why the Ambassador wasn't scanned...the filming model had been damaged right before Generations and was put into storage until being repaired and sold at auction (the model was going to be refurbished as one of the rescue ships at the end of Generations but the damage prohibited this from happening). So it was never scanned. Which of course creates all sorts of problems, as there really should have been
way more Ambassadors around than Excelsiors, IMHO.
Ah, mystery solved! I was wondering why the Ambassador vanished. Perhaps the Farragut was originally meant to be an Ambassador.
Speaking of the Farragut, something occurred to me recently: Now, supposedly, they chose to retcon the Melbourne in "Emissary" as being an Excelsior because that model was more detailed, having been built for a movie.
Which is rather strange since the Nebula model was still good enough to later use for that lovely flyby shot at the end of Generations, which would've been seen on screens MUCH bigger than "Emissary" was ever seen.
For that matter, they could've dispense with retconning altogether and had the ill-fated Excelsior from that shot be a different ship from the Melbourne.
Back to the use in Dominion War scenes, there's no reason to assume the Ambassador
must outnumber the Excelsior in the 2370's, however.
They did use a couple of First Contact ships (especially the lovely Akira), but I suspect, apart from the Bellerephon, we didn't see any Intrepids in battle for the same reason we never saw a Sovereign: It might be distracting to see another existing hero ship's class in battle and it might upstage the Defiant.
The feeling at the time was that the audience would get confused and think that the
U.S.S. Voyager was in the battle when it was supposed to be lost in the DQ. As if the audience were that stupid as to think that the Intrepids could be no other ship than
Voyager 
.
Probably still better to have the hero ships stick to their own shows and movies though.
...But now the twist of fate allows us to speculate that Ambassadors were not Excelsior successors at all - but instead the biggest ships in the family of "Excelsior era" ships, built in very low numbers because of being the rare kingpins rather than the workhorses.
I'm grudgingly forced to agree with that sentiment...that, or the other hypothesis floating around about why we never saw any other Ambassaors: because they were possibly built for deep-space exploration and the bulk of them were away when the Dominion war was happening.
Either way, neither hypothesis really suits my frame of mind. I would have
much rather seen the Ambassador class in DS9 instead of the Excelsior and Miranda, and those godawful FC ships. If they'd scanned the model they could have also made all kinds of kitbashed variant designs as well, to show more of the "lost era" of Starfleet.
The Ambassador class was such a missed opportunity in Star Trek...
The Ambassador may or may not have been intended to replace the Excelsior, as the Excelsior probably did the Constitution, but the class' usefulness probably meant that while it would be eclipsed, it wouldn't be retired just yet.
The sheer numbers of this class are a good indicator of it being a VERY successful design.
But actually, yes. The Phoenix was also a new model.
Correct, my mistake.
Still, the point is that I'm not a big fan of either reusing old models to death as they did with 22nd century ships, and just taking bits of one ship and changing it to make another ship. It looks cheap.
I disagree. It says to me Starfleet builds its ships to last, which makes sense if you're going to have them out on their own for weeks, months, or even years.
That also means resources that would normally go to designing and building new ships could be diverted elsewhere. (Certain people might understandably be critical of the quasi-military investing so much into constantly building new ships).
And, also, waste not, want not.
(BTW, what 22nd Century ships were you talking about? Did we really see any before "Enterprise"?)
The problem with such a nicely evolutionary design is that it's not particularly distinct from the Galaxy. I appreciate variety here...
While I understand your point,
I personally would have been able to tell them apart, and quite frankly if they only used Ambassadors and not a single Galaxy class ship, I still would have been happier
Well, we KNOW why they didn't have any Ambassadors, and it was easy enough to scan the Galaxy model and create a CG one. I think the Galaxy fit in well with the battle scenes as well.
I would have appreciated the "TNG era" kitbashes from "BoBW", too, and the proliferation of the Miranda in DS9 was unfortunate.
Agreed.
The problem is, for most, you have no suitable model to scan into the database. IIRC, there was only one study model built for New Orleans class, for example, and that was wrecked for the scene in BOBW.
So, it's not that much better than designing ships from scratch.
But really, the only use the Excelsior class seems to have had in TNG was to ferry VIPs to the Enterprise-D. Now all of a sudden these glorified ferry boats are now Starfleet's answer to the Dominion and Cardassian war fleets?
We don't know what all those Excelsiors were doing before the war broke out. It doesn't seem likely all those ones we saw in battle had been kept in service just to act as transports.
The Akira is an acceptable "Galaxy era" design, but the other two ST:FC principals, while interesting by themselves, don't really help fill out that era, not the way a Cheyenne or a Springfield would have.
I think that if the Akira had GCS nacelles and ASRV lifeboats instead of the Sovereign-type ones, it would have been perfect. But those angular nacelles really kill the design lineage for me. I much prefer the BoBW designs over the FC designs (and if we were to speculate registry=production time, then both of these very different design lineages were built at the same time. Of course the Excelsior and the Oberth look nothing alike either...)
Then again, the kitbashes would have needed a bit of refining to make them presentable in close-ups or even semi-distant shots; perhaps too much to be worth the while.
Well, they already had to re-map the Akira, Saber, Steamrunner and Miranda CGI models from ILM, so why not throw in some New Orleans and Cheyennes into the mix?
See above.
Given the existance of the Miranda, the Nebula makes sense because it applies the same design concept to the Galaxy class that the Miranda did to the Constitution. Here's once interpertation of a "Mirandized Excelsior".
http://s1217.photobucket.com/user/EmsleyWyatt/library/Shiloh
I can't say I'm too keen on that look. Actually, I think the Centaur comes close to filling that role.
That's assuming, of course, that it's a role that needs to be filled. Not every ship in the Enterprise legacy necessarily warrants a "Mirandized" offshoot. There's no evidence that this was done for the Ambassador, let alone the Sovereign.
The reason, most likely was they weren't necessary, as the Miranda itself could probably continue to fill a number of different mission profiles well into the 24th century, such as planetary surveys (Reliant), science vessels (Brattain), and supply ships (Lantree).
I think we've gotten a bit off-topic.
