Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

[F. King Daniel]

Subclasses have been a thing since the old Franz Joseph Schnaubelt Star Fleet Technical Manual. The Constitution-class was only the first of the Heavy Cruiser type, with Bonhomme Richard and Achernar as the next two variants. Unofficial publications fleshed these out usually as Phase II-style upgrades between the TOS ship and the Enterprise-class refit of the first movie. Growing up reading that stuff, it's kind of ingrained in me and I just assume the Soyuz-class is a subclass of the Heavy Frigate, of which Miranda (or Avenger, as it was called in these unofficial books prior to Mike Okuda officially naming the class via a dedication plaque in TNG) was the first type. The Saratoga and Lantree were presumably different subclasses too. Diane Carey's Ship of the Line goes into some detail about the USS Bozeman. I really like the backstory and mission of the ship as she depicts, where it even has flashing police lights (finally seen on-screen on the mini-Salcomes in Star Trek Beyond)

But it's all up to interpretation.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Jesus Fuck, is it really even necessary to entertain discussion on such a patently ridiculous statement? I mean fucking seriously!

 

[Dukhat]

That's par for the serial contrarian course.

 

[Timo]

It doesn't matter that it wasn't seen. It was used in the shot, and its official. That's proof enough that the ship is Excelsior class, until someone else in charge says otherwise.

Nonsense. "People in charge" have no interest in saying anything in general. But even if they do, it doesn't happen in Star Trek, unless we're talking Jonathan Frakes and he happens to wear a uniform in addition to directing. No amount of saying will make the unseen text visible or the unvoiced line heard.

Most of Star Trek is just fan interpretation. LDS is having fun putting some of that into Star Trek proper, but most of it is best kept far, far away from it. And insisting that a particular piece of plastic is of X class rather than Y can only backfire, especially if X both creates contradictions and deprives the Trek pseudo-universe of an additional cool class name...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Yeah, no. And that's all I'm going to say about that, lest I give you fodder for your contrarian tendencies, which I'm not about to do.

 

[Timo]

But you always do anyway...

I just present the facts, in case somebody were to derive conclusions from an erroneous set. No, we don't "know" the things we often think we do. And no, the writers pushing something different is not a "change" or a "contradiction". But in this particular case, our not really knowing is merely what gives us room for thinking up various scenarios, none of which are part of Star Trek yet - one of these being that ships that look different are always given a different class name at the time, and only history books later cut a few corners there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

So you admit that you’re intentionally being contrarian to perpetuate irrelevant arguments that nobody else here cares about? That’s textbook trolling. Glad you finally realize what you’re doing.

 

[Unicron]

Subclasses have been a thing since the old Franz Joseph Schnaubelt Star Fleet Technical Manual. The Constitution-class was only the first of the Heavy Cruiser type, with Bonhomme Richard and Achernar as the next two variants. Unofficial publications fleshed these out usually as Phase II-style upgrades between the TOS ship and the Enterprise-class refit of the first movie. Growing up reading that stuff, it's kind of ingrained in me and I just assume the Soyuz-class is a subclass of the Heavy Frigate, of which Miranda (or Avenger, as it was called in these unofficial books prior to Mike Okuda officially naming the class via a dedication plaque in TNG) was the first type. The Saratoga and Lantree were presumably different subclasses too. Diane Carey's Ship of the Line goes into some detail about the USS Bozeman. I really like the backstory and mission of the ship as she depicts, where it even has flashing police lights (finally seen on-screen on the mini-Salcomes in Star Trek Beyond)

But it's all up to interpretation.

I tend to like subclasses myself, though it might be fair to argue some are basically variants. For example, the Achernar, Endeavor, and Tikopai are variants of the Constitution as they're described in the FJ TM, with Ships of the Starfleet later explaining different variations in technology. The Tikopais wound up being built much later in this source, being variants of the TMP/Enterprise subclass instead.

I tend to view the Miranda as being the TNG-era refit Avenger, as one option, same with Oberth referring to ships of that design operating in the TNG era (with older sources like FASA giving alternate class names). The Lantree was originally intended to be a normal Miranda type design but the rollbar was removed after it wouldn't function properly. Given that it's stated to have a small crew in dialogue and to be a supply ship, it could be variant refitted for that role.

 

[Stoo]

To be sure, we have no reason to think the E-B would be Excelsior class.

We have plenty of reason to think that to be so.

You could more reasonably say, we cannot be absolutely sure it's not a new class.

 

[Dukhat]

We have plenty of reason to think that to be so.

You could more reasonably say, we cannot be absolutely sure it's not a new class.

Technically, but since we have dialogue indicating that the Ent-B's variant is in fact an Excelsior class starship per O'Brien mentioning the Lakota as that class, I'm not quite sure what's the argument here?

 

[137th Gebirg]

Precisely. There shouldn’t be an argument. The whole premise is absolutely specious and a complete waste of time.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yet incredibly important for some reason.

 

[Stoo]

Technically, but since we have dialogue indicating that the Ent-B's variant is in fact an Excelsior class starship per O'Brien mentioning the Lakota as that class, I'm not quite sure what's the argument here?

I was being charitable and assuming he meant at the time Generations was released.

 

[Dukhat]

I was being charitable and assuming he meant at the time Generations was released.

Ah, I see.

With that said, I agree with @137th Gebirg that this particular point is quite nonsensical. It's blatantly obvious that the Enterprise-B is an Excelsior class, both because of the intent for it to be so, and just by using simple common sense, and to argue otherwise is a moot point. The real question, as I mentioned before, was what makes a certain ship a different class, and what makes it just a variant of the same class?

For the example of the Bozeman, the original intent was for the ship to be a TOS Connie, but the budget obviously nixed that. There was also the problem that whatever new model they built for the ship would only be able to be used for that episode, since the ship was described as having been decommissioned 70 years before. Why they simply chose not to film the TMP Enterprise-A as the Bozeman eludes me, but there you go. We now have a 'new' ship class which happens to look 90% like a Miranda, while other variants of the Miranda are just that; variants. When the Enterprise-D got its third-nacelle-and phaser-cannon upgrade, did that turn it into a different class, or was it still a Galaxy class?

 

[137th Gebirg]

Galaxy-X.

 

[fireproof78]

Yet incredibly important for some reason.

Technically correct: best kind of correct.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Oh don’t you fuckin’ start now...

 

[fireproof78]

Oh don’t you fuckin’ start now...

 

[The Old Mixer]

So you admit that you’re intentionally being contrarian to perpetuate irrelevant arguments that nobody else here cares about? That’s textbook trolling. Glad you finally realize what you’re doing.

Oh don’t you fuckin’ start now...

This is all getting too personal. On the first one, @Timo is free to speculate any crazy shit he wants, and everyone else is free to skip past it if they have reason to believe that it won't be to their liking. Also, publicly accusing somebody of Trolling is itself an actionable offense.

 

[Timo]

It's blatantly obvious that the Enterprise-B is an Excelsior class, both because of the intent for it to be so, and just by using simple common sense, and to argue otherwise is a moot point.

Your argument seems to be that looking almost like X makes the ship X in all cases. But that one we know to be false: an almost-Miranda is not a Miranda.

With that out of the way, we can treat your argument in the appropriate isolation. Can looking almost like X make the ship X? There we have two examples to go by: NCC-1701, which was a Constitution on sceen (in dialogue or graphics) in three of her distinct incarnations, and the shape of Lakota which differs from that of NCC-2000 but shares the class name.

So the line of speculation that is valid here is the one that covers both cases, irrelevant backstage conspiracies aside. Would the E-D of "AGT" be a Galaxy or not? We have no data. So..

1) Changes that affect performance count - yay, we get to invent a new name!
2) Changes that affect mission count - still a Galaxy?
3) Depends on the percentage of change - probably still a Galaxy.

The assorted Mirandas seem to do all the odd jobs in Starfleet already, so #2 looks like an unlikely candidate...

...until we realize that our only example actually supports #2, there being no data on the classes of the other Reliant model reworkings.

And if #2 works, then we can easily argue that reuses of one and the same model can represent differently named classes, only with the interiors suitably reworked. Say, Danube vs. Yellowstone runabouts.

Timo Saloniemi