Should 1701-PHASE II REFIT design have been used in TMP/WOK/SFS?
- Thread starter Galileo7
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Yep. "Waypoint" was an anthology miniseries featuring stories from all the (existing) prime-universe Trek shows. This issue was a what-if one-shot imagining if Phase II had actually gone forward rather than TMP (specifically crafted to be a story that emphasized the difference between Xon and Spock, so it wasn't just TOS with a different art style).
As for the phaser in the comic, I hadn't even known they'd built a phaser for Phase II. Must've slipped through their research.
This would not have happened. The reason why the TMP Enterprise was used again as the 1701-A was because they weren't going to build an all-new model just for a one-minute scene at the end of the movie. So if they'd used the Phase II ship as the TMP Enterprise, they would have used it again for the 1701-A.
Nothing was 'retconned.' There is no canon evidence either way that the 1701-A was a brand-new ship or an older ship that was renamed. The closest 'proof' we have is when Scotty refers to it as 'this new Enterprise,' but that could simply mean that he's just delineating it from the old Enterprise and not necessarily meaning that the ship is new.
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Not exactly. Scotty only says:
Admiral, we have just spent eighteen months redesigning and refitting the Enterprise.
...and then...
...The crew hasn't had near enough transition time with all the new equipment. And the engines, they're not even tested at warp power. And an untried captain.
But it's Decker who says:
DECKER: Admiral, this is an almost totally new Enterprise.
"I think this new ship was put together by monkeys" - she's new and was put together recently, hence Scotty having to make everything right.
The TMP Enterprise had more detail than the Phase II one, so we're better off with that. What they should have done is give the crew Excelsior at the end of IV, making that much less of a total reset button to the pre-II status quo.
The TMP Enterprise had more detail than the Phase II one, so we're better off with that. What they should have done is give the crew Excelsior at the end of IV, making that much less of a total reset button to the pre-II status quo.
I was talking about the Enterprise-A (and Scotty’s comment in STV), not the refit 1701 from TMP.
Yes, that’s the quote I was referring to. Which does lend credence that the ship was brand new, but there’s also a possibility that it was refitted from a TOS Connie, and the refit had problems.
I read somewhere that the original intent was to have the Excelsior be the replacement ship for Kirk and crew, but by the time of STIV, it had such a bad reputation with fans that the idea was nixed. I suppose they could have just superimposed a second Excelsior (with new name and registry) into the shot instead of the TMP Connie, but I don’t think it would have had the same effect as seeing the original ship.
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Whoops. Sorry. Mea culpa.
There's nothing definitive that I'm aware, but in reference to the ship's condition Scotty does say in STV: "All I can say is they don't make 'em like they used to." That seems to imply that it's closer to being newer than to being older. Typically, it's something said only of new things.
Based on dialogue and visual evidence, I’ve always assumed that the 1701-A was a brand new ship. However, if that’s the case then its decommissioning after only five years makes no sense (since the ship seemed to be fully functional by TUC). But I have a theory about that.
When Morrow reveals that the Enterprise is going to be decommissioned, what he didn’t say was that the next Excelsior class ship off the line in a few years would be her successor, the Enterprise-A. But after the whale probe incident. Starfleet decided to quickly make another Constitution class ship the A as a reward to Kirk, with the idea that he and his crew would only be serving on her temporarily until the new Enterprise was finished construction (now called the B.) Once the B was commissioned, the A would then be decommissioned, renamed and reregistered, and given to a different crew (hence Kirk’s line at the end of TUC, although it was meant more as foreshadowing for TNG.)
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The novelization had it that the ship was the Yorktown....not canon, of course, but here's my take on that:
When Scotty talks about the 'new' ship....the Yorktown may have just come through a refit like the Enterprise did for TMP. Thus, she would have been an almost totally new ship. The comment about not making them like they used to might even refer to some kind of deep-seated quality-control issue at the shipyard. Who knows what might have caused the problems. Could have been a virus, sabotage of some other kind, or....? Might be something worthwhile for an S.C.E. novel to explore. Maybe something was resolved just before the refit was completed, but some 'bugs' still remained that had to be ironed out.
Personally, I would not have been against the idea of an Excelsior-class Enterprise-A at the end of TVH. But not the Excelsior herself. That was Sulu's ship.
When Scotty talks about the 'new' ship....the Yorktown may have just come through a refit like the Enterprise did for TMP. Thus, she would have been an almost totally new ship. The comment about not making them like they used to might even refer to some kind of deep-seated quality-control issue at the shipyard. Who knows what might have caused the problems. Could have been a virus, sabotage of some other kind, or....? Might be something worthwhile for an S.C.E. novel to explore. Maybe something was resolved just before the refit was completed, but some 'bugs' still remained that had to be ironed out.
Personally, I would not have been against the idea of an Excelsior-class Enterprise-A at the end of TVH. But not the Excelsior herself. That was Sulu's ship.
The screenplay should have just been altered to say that the ship was brand new rather than a refit and it would have solved this problem. It's just a symptom of the production problems that film had.
I think there was a sense at the time that the audience were attached to the literal TOS Enterprise and it would have been easier to explain the difference in look to suggest it was a refit and the old hull was still there underneath it all (despite differences in proportion) rather than asking them to embrace a whole new ship. In retrospect with so many Enterprises having come and gone that idea doesn't hold a lot of weight anymore.
I think the best reference to the ship being the same was the destruct sequence in Trek III being an almost verbatim repeat of Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. So at least the ship has the same firmware
I think there was a sense at the time that the audience were attached to the literal TOS Enterprise and it would have been easier to explain the difference in look to suggest it was a refit and the old hull was still there underneath it all (despite differences in proportion) rather than asking them to embrace a whole new ship. In retrospect with so many Enterprises having come and gone that idea doesn't hold a lot of weight anymore.
I think the best reference to the ship being the same was the destruct sequence in Trek III being an almost verbatim repeat of Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. So at least the ship has the same firmware
From my understanding, during IV Nimoy and Bennett were growing further apart on the film. Bennett wanted Excelsior to be the new Enterprise and I believed DC comics' run of Trek had the crew on board the Excelsior. Based on what my dad and my brothers recollection were the rumors were white hot the new Enterprise would be Bennett's vision of Star Trek. They mentioned to me when the shuttle got closer to Excelsior, they were on the edge of their seats... and when the Enterprise appeared-- them, and the audience, delivered a HUGE round of applause. Nimoy was making something special in IV and he made the right decision to have the Enterprise appear. Brand new.
In V, Herman Zimmerman done a tremendous job making the new Enterprise look state of the art.
Yes, they did. They also had Spock as captain of the USS Surak. To get him back to where he needed to be to tie in with TVH, they destroyed the Surak and killed off the whole crew except Spock.
Which is so weird because they could have just re-used the Intruder Alert diagram made for TMP (seen in trailers) but unused until TWOK, where they cut away from it before it indicates the intruder location. In TWOK People think it's drawing some forcefield or whatever, but it's actually drawing the deck layout.
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I've always preferred that readout over say, using actual forcefield "bubble" fx visualizations (which looked VERY "TV" on TNG~ENT and were one thing I really would have preferred to not see cross over into the feature film version of TNG). Whereas this display looks very analogue, very 1982 and very Nick Meyer.
I also prefer it to the updated readout seen in STs V and VI, which seems to depict multiple layers of forcefield going up. Everytime I see that one I half expect there to be really awful dialogue telegraphing "Shield one is up! Shield two is up...!" Or worse, cutting away to a shaky-cam close up of somebody's worried-looking face in between the layers expanding. (Now you're going to visualize that everytime you try to watch one of those movies; you can thank me later)
Well, it predates Nick Meyer by a few years.
