Star Trek Phase II: Origins

No, no, that's strictly the purview of JJ and his merry band.

 

And dozens of TOS episodes and a number of the TOS-based movies.

 

I was thinking the exact thing... You made my post for me CRA, nice job.

 

Here are all the people who wore an arrowhead-shaped ("Enterprise") patch who weren't actually from the Enterprise:

The Space Officer from "The Cage:"



Some Yeoman/Aide/Ward Secretary on Starbase 11 in "The Menagerie, Part 1:"



Timothy and Mike in "Court Martial:"



Corrigan and Teller in "Court Martial:"



Dead Engineering guy on the Defiant in "The Tholian Web:"



(Everyone else on the Defiant died in various positions that obscure their patches.)

 

Yep, one can't refer to TOS itself for consistent evidence of the "everybody had their own patches" claim. About the most that a preponderance of the evidence might support is the idea that some starships and some facilities had specific "mission patches" but that the arrowhead design was the generic Starfleet emblem all along.

 

I've often wondered if the arrowhead were for ComSol, not Starfleet. Other ships might be operating under different authorities, ComEridani, ComTellar, etc. Therefore they'd have different patches.

Sort of like the old 3rd Army and 7th Army had different patches.

Then after TMP, everyone's one big happy Starfleet with one patch,

 

I would go with this model of things. Makes the most sense fitting with the data we've got.

 

I quite like that idea.

 

It fits the observed data better than the "every ship has its own insignia" conclusion did.

 

Personally I think we're getting a little too hung up on such a minute detail, but if it works, it works

 

Hmm... I.D.K. I think it's also logical to assume that the ship specific patches were a logical extension of the mission patch we have seen in the real world. Course, I am a little biased....

 

I kinda had something similar in mind. For me, I thought the patches were fleet specific rather than individual ships--i.e. the delta/arrowhead was the First Fleet, the Connie "I" was the Second Fleet, and so on.

 

The arrowhead as COMSOL makes the most sense, as it explains every random arrowhead insignia we saw in TOS, the evolution of the insignia we saw in ST:E, and its use for cadets at the Academy in San Francisco.

The one guy on the Defiant wasn't actually assigned to her as crew.

 

So, the "star-burst" insignia would be what, starbase command?

 

Probably. Or Starbase Operations. Works as far as what was saw.

 

Would that make the "boomerang" from the enterprise hull pennant the overall "starfleet" symbol during the time of TOS, or do you think it was more of a "stylized" version of the Starfleet Delta used by ComSol?

 

I would think the boomerang on the engine and secondary hull pennants (which also appeared behind admirals and commodores) might indeed be the Starfleet emblem.

 

Hm. Can't argue with the logic. At least there's a rationale behind it instead of the usual presenting of the pics from "Court Martial" and saying we should just pretend that Decker and Tracey were really wearing the traditional arrowhead insignia.

As for "The Tholian Web", give them credit for trying to maintain the "each ship has its own insignia" model they'd established by this point by obscuring the view of all the insignias they could. And frankly, in that pic, I can't see any insignia on that dead engineering guy. I'm running the episode on the DVD currently to see if it's visible on the ol' telly.

 

Though it's worth noting that "COMSOL" is somebody's name and not, in fact, short for "Command, Solar Forces."

Other than that, yeah, it fits the observed data.

 

I don't think the pic changes the thrust of my argument. The emblems are not ship specific. If you want to use 1st Fleet, 2nd Fleet, etc., instead of ComSol, ComEridani, etc. that's fine. But they're clearly not ship specific.