Starship design history in light of Discovery

[Christopher]

I could be mistaken but when we see the Hood rendezvous with the Enterprise-D in "Encounter at Farpoint, Part I(TNG)" it may literally be the Excelsior shooting model from the two most recent films with the NX-2000 registry still on the hull, but the model was shot at an angle where the movie registry wasn't legible.

It definitely was the same miniature -- they recycled a ton of stuff from the movies to save money, which is why the same ship designs, corridors, etc. are still in use 8 decades later. I found a behind-the-scenes photo of it in issue 2 of Starlog's TNG magazine, and it looks like they painted or taped over the Excelsior registry and just left it blank.

 

[cooleddie74]

Ah. I was wondering. You can see a registry underneath the saucer section as it swings away from the Enterprise and flies offscreen but the number is fuzzy and indistinct.

 

[Christopher]

Ah. I was wondering. You can see a registry underneath the saucer section as it swings away from the Enterprise and flies offscreen but the number is fuzzy and indistinct.

Ah. The photo in the magazine only shows the top of the saucer.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Ah. I was wondering. You can see a registry underneath the saucer section as it swings away from the Enterprise and flies offscreen but the number is fuzzy and indistinct.

According to Memory Alpha, it reads USS HOOD NCC-2541. Click!

 

[Dukhat]

According to Memory Alpha, it reads USS HOOD NCC-2541. Click!

Yes, they actually renamed the model and gave it a new registry for the EaF scene, even though neither could be seen with the angle of the shot. The model was then renamed Repulse and the last digit of the registry was changed from a 1 to a 4 for the next time the model was used. Ex-Astris-Scientia has a comprehensive article about the Excelsior model:

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/excelsior-model.htm

I’m not sure why the decision was made to give the Hood a significantly higher 4XXXX registry on a display later in the series, since Okuda would have known the original registry (as he was the one who would make these changes), and yet the Repulse’s registry stayed the same.

 

[Christopher]

Hmm, I guess the magazine photo was taken before the new registry was painted on.

 

[Tomalak]

I’m not sure why the decision was made to give the Hood a significantly higher 4XXXX registry on a display later in the series, since Okuda would have known the original registry (as he was the one who would make these changes), and yet the Repulse’s registry stayed the same.

Plus given the history of the names of the Repulse and the Hood, you might assume they were sister ships. It could be that the original Hood was indeed NCC-2541, and she was replaced with the NCC-42296 version, but that's quite a low number to suddenly be commissioned in the mid-TNG era.

I guess you have to chalk it up to nearly series weirdness, like the Yamato's bizarre 1305-E registry, or an inconsistency like the Prometheus's hull number versus interior graphics.

 

[Dukhat]

Plus given the history of the names of the Repulse and the Hood, you might assume they were sister ships. It could be that the original Hood was indeed NCC-2541, and she was replaced with the NCC-42296 version, but that's quite a low number to suddenly be commissioned in the mid-TNG era.

Unfortunately, there's a few discrepancies with that theory. First, the NCC-2541 Hood was commanded by Robert DeSoto in 2364 ("EaF"), and was still in command two years later in 2366 ("Tin Man,' assuming it's the same ship as in EaF). The next we hear of the ship in 2367, it is at Starbase 174 for a major system upgrade, which is where the ship gets the 42296 registry ("Brothers" Okudagram). I suppose there's a possibility that the old ship was retired and a new ship was commissioned between 2366 and 2367, but why would Starfleet build an exact duplicate of a ship that was already an 80 year old design, and give it such a low registry for a brand-new ship in 2367? Also, the Okudagram shows up again retroactively in the past segment of "All Good Things...", and it has the Hood's 42296 registry.

I guess you have to chalk it up to nearly series weirdness, like the Yamato's bizarre 1305-E registry, or an inconsistency like the Prometheus's hull number versus interior graphics.

I never actually understood the problem with the Yamato's original registry. Like the Enterprise, it connotes that it was the sixth ship to bear that name and registry; the original ship being NCC-1305.

 

[Christopher]

I never actually understood the problem with the Yamato's original registry. Like the Enterprise, it connotes that it was the sixth ship to bear that name and registry; the original ship being NCC-1305.

Because that practice is utterly stupid. It makes no sense to give the same registry number to different ships of the same name; the entire purpose of a registry number is to be a unique identifier for a ship independent of whatever names it may be given over its lifetime, and to give meaningful information about when and as part of what class or series of ships it was built, something that's totally lost if you keep reusing the same number over and over again for half a dozen ships built over more than a century. It's frustrating enough that we're stuck with that idiotic practice being used for the Enterprise -- at least having it be unique to that ship makes it slightly less nonsensical.

I gather that in real life, appending a letter to a ship's registry number is something you do for a refit of that specific ship. So really, it should've been the TMP Enterprise that was 1701A, and the TVH Enterprise should've had a different number. (If they wanted it to resemble the original number, they could've made it 1761, say, a later ship of the same class.)

 

[Dukhat]

Because that practice is utterly stupid.

Whether it was 'stupid' or not wasn't my issue with it. My issue was why they felt they needed to change it when there was already a precedent of this type of usage with another ship.

 

[Tuskin38]

I never actually understood the problem with the Yamato's original registry. Like the Enterprise, it connotes that it was the sixth ship to bear that name and registry; the original ship being NCC-1305.

The higher ups wanted the letter in the registry to be unique to the Enterprise.

That's the IRL reason.

 

[Dukhat]

The higher ups wanted the letter in the registry to be unique to the Enterprise.

That's the IRL reason.

Then when the Yamato was destroyed, they just didn't need to build another Yamato to replace it; just retire the name and number. Problem solved.

 

[Tuskin38]

Then when the Yamato was destroyed, they just didn't need to build another Yamato to replace it; just retire the name and number. Problem solved.

Uh what? I'm not sure what you're getting at here. There was only ever one Yamato in the series.

Anyways the ship had like 4 different registry numbers

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Yamato#Registry

 

[Dukhat]

Uh what? I'm not sure what you're getting at here. There was only ever one Yamato in the series.

If they really wanted to change the Yamato's registry because they only wanted the Enterprise to have suffixes, then destroying the Yamato accomplishes that. There was no need to change the registry.

 

[thribs]

I wouldn't use JJVerse ships in your timeline. They don't mesh at all with Prime.

 

[Timo]

Yanking names away from ships so that they can be applied on other ships is standard naval practice (and fighting navies in general are much less worried about renaming ships than superstitious civilians). A mighty battleship might be forced to donate her hallowed name to a newbuild when herself relegated to coastal patrol duties, say.

Did this happen to the Hood? There is less precedent for ripping the name from an existing ship for painting it on another already existing ship, but that exists, too. And "perpetuating a ship" by moving the name from a wreck to a sister ship is a classic: most prominently, the Spanish did that to their celebrated España (although chiefly because the surviving sister ship at that point had a politically unpalatable name).

Most of the Starfleet name and registry weirdness is but a pale shadow of the real world, and shouldn't raise too many eyebrows. And if something really bothers us, we can plead extra weirdness from, well, weird being Starfleet's business. The Yamato might never have carried that five-digit registry, except in a log file corrupted by the Iconian virus; Riker in an earlier adventure would be thoroughly acquainted with this sister ship and would use the E-suffixed registry as proof positive of her identity, while Picard in the latter adventure would not pay much attention to yet another annoying glitch.

And, hey, even if we insist on freeze-framing the explosion to read the numbers painted on the saucer (which don't match those on the computer file anyway), DSC now shows us starships can change pennant paint in a jiffy, the Discovery's USS changing to ISS quickly enough, but the ISS getting changed back to USS happening fantastically fast, too, and apparently quite automatically at that. Apparently, the Iconian bug just commandeered a few paintbots...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

There was no need to change the registry.

There was no need to change Kirk's middle initial either, or to decide mid-episode that Data didn't use contractions. It's the nature of serial fiction that it's a work in progress and the creators sometimes change their minds. Especially in something like series television, where decisions are often made in haste and things slip through the cracks that the creators later regret. People have a right to change their minds. That's why we aren't still talking about lithium crystals and Vulcanians and the warriors of Kling.

 

[thribs]

Isn’t Vulcanian a Vulcan/human hybrid?

 

[Timo]

It'd be odd for Harry Mudd to be able to tell that about Spock at a glance...

I'm sort of fond of thinking that Vulcania was the star empire of Vulcan back in the bad old days, just like Andoria was the star empire of Andor (and Talaxia is the star empire of Talax, or was before they were taken down a peg or a thousand by the Haakonians). After the events of ENT, referring to members of the Vulcan species as being Vulcanians is just bad form, an insult reminding them of their old days of glory and oppression. And that is right down Mudd's alley!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Groppler Zorn]

There was no need to change Kirk's middle initial either

Unless Mitchell was mocking him and the “R” stood for the Rip he was gonna put in Kirk’s shirt...

or to decide mid-episode that Data didn't use contractions.

Data can’t operate quickly enough to use contractions.

That’s right - he cannot operate quickly enough...

He best close his mouth and stop talking

That Data never got a grammar upgrade always bothered me. Can’t Siri use contractions?

That's why we aren't still talking about lithium crystals and Vulcanians and the warriors of Kling

As a linguist I liked that these inconsistencies create variation in the terms used for things. Maybe “lithium crystals” was a clipped version or an informal term for “dilithium crystals” (a term which only posh upper class snobby flagship officers used maybe). And “Kling” was the name of a city on Qo’Nos (I think I nicked that from beta canon).

I always liked to think that “time warp” was a reduced form of “space time warp”, which is basically what warp drive is - so when they were going on about “the time barrier” in the Cage they really meant “the space time barrier” or some such so they were really talking about good old fashioned warp drive.

Obviously these are just production errors but muh head canon muscle likes to deal with them.

And one Yamato registry was the construction number and the other was its IP address so both are valid...

being Vulcanians is just bad form, an insult reminding them of their old days of glory and oppression

Given that we’ve seen the Vulcans be a bit mean to Spock about his human heritage, maybe when he referred to Vulcanians he was passive aggressively insulting them back (at least in his own way and to himself)