Starship names in Starfleet communications logs in "Conspiracy"

[gaghyogi49]

Somebody asked about this in the TNG remastered thread: I checked the Starfleet communication logs Data reads in "Conspiracy" and wrote down the names of all the starship names that are legible now:

USS Albert Einstein
USS Atlantis
USS Callisto
USS Copernicus
USS Constellation
USS Elmer Fudd
USS Endeavour
USS Ganymede
USS Gremlin
USS Heart of Gold
USS James Fennimore Cooper (sic)
USS John F. Kennedy
USS Max Plank (sic)
USS Mustang
USS Nightwing
USS Non Sequitur
USS Omaha Nebraska
USS Robert Louis Stevenson
USS Sherlock Holmes
USS Ticonderoga
USS Tranquility Base
USS Tycho
USS Unicorn
USS White Sands

two or three I couldn't make out: One looks like USS Aleq, another one seems to be USS Matte Fringe.

 

[Dukhat]

Some interesting names there

Question: Are these from the original computer displays, or did they create new displays for the remastering? I ask because I thought one of the ships in that list was supposed to be the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy.

 

[gaghyogi49]

No, those are the original files, nothing was changed. I left out the USS John F. Kennedy because people already knew about that one. It's absolutely still there, flashes by several times.

 

[Basill]

Suh-weet!

 

[B.J.]

Nice! Are there screencaps available, so that we can try to decipher the few you couldn't make out?

 

[throwback]

Can we have the registries for these ships?

 

[Christopher]

USS Elmer Fudd

Dedication plaque motto: "Be vewy, vewy quiet. I'm hunting Womuwans. Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh."

USS Gremlin

Don't refuel it after midnight.

USS Heart of Gold

That seems improbable.

USS Nightwing

A recommissioning of the USS Robin.

USS Non Sequitur

Dedication plaque motto: "We come second to no one!"

...another one seems to be USS Matte Fringe.

Testbed for a flawed cloaking device?

 

[FreddyE]

I love these! Can´t wait to see what else we can now discover. I suppose we finally get the chance to see where exactly the giant mouse (or was it duck?) has it´s lair ;-)

 

[gaghyogi49]

Getting the registries right will take some time, as the text is still pretty tiny and numbers are much harder to clearly make out than letters (where the position within a word makes it easy to differentiate between letters).

I can say, though, that all starships have a "NCC"-registry, except for the USS White Sands which has a "NAR" registry (four digit, looks like 8002).

 

[DEWLine]

As to "USS" Non Sequitur...I have visions of a dedication plaque with a quotation from one Danae Pyle.

Which is a frightening thought.

 

[DEWLine]

As for a vessel named for Holmes...

It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

 

[CaptainDonovin]

U.S.S Gremlin eh? Is there a Pacer or a Javelin there too? (If you know ARC cars you'll get it)

 

[zephramc]

USS Elmer Fudd, the Fedewations first line of defense against the evil Womulan Empire!

 

[DEWLine]

As for Nightwing, we may have other options.

 

[throwback]

One of the ships, the Heart of Gold, has a registry of NCC-42. 42 is an in-joke from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. As for the registry, that is a very old starship.

Sometimes I wonder why Mr. Okuda ran home to momma with these in-jokes when there were a large list of historical and fictional ship names he could draw from. I also don't understand why it was so hard for him to correctly spell names.

I am the most curious about the registries for the starships Copernicus, Constellation, and the Endeavour. If the starship for the Constellation is different than the class leader for the Constellation-class starships, than for me this would one answer one question raiased by DS9, is the Constellation mention in one episode of that series the same as the second Constellation or is it a newer ship?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

USS Elmer Fudd, the Fedewations first line of defense against the evil Womulan Empire!

Actually, it's a ship that was in service in the 23rd century. The Enterprise was once mistaken for this vessel by one of Kruge's men, who wrongly identified it as a "fedawation battle cwuzah."

 

[gaghyogi49]

Sometimes I wonder why Mr. Okuda ran home to momma with these in-jokes when there were a large list of historical and fictional ship names he could draw from. I also don't understand why it was so hard for him to correctly spell names.

Lighten up a little! These starships names were never meant to be seen and were completely illegible in the SD version of the episode. In HD, they are still very difficult to make out and each datafile appears on screen for only 1-4 frames. And talking about legible injokes, Mike did remove the very obvious (very obvious NOW thanks to the HD transfer) injokes in "The Neutral Zone", like Clare Raymond's descendants being called Miss Piggy or Kermit D. Frog. Those have been replaced by proper names.

 

[gaghyogi49]

I am the most curious about the registries for the starships Copernicus, Constellation, and the Endeavour. If the starship for the Constellation is different than the class leader for the Constellation-class starships, than for me this would one answer one question raiased by DS9, is the Constellation mention in one episode of that series the same as the second Constellation or is it a newer ship?

As to the registries:

The USS Copernicus has a 5-digit registry. It looks like NCC-58637
The registry of the USS Constellation seems to be NCC-55817
The registry of the USS Endeavour is hard to make out. It looks like NCC-39272.

 

[DEWLine]

Sometimes I wonder why Mr. Okuda ran home to momma with these in-jokes when there were a large list of historical and fictional ship names he could draw from. I also don't understand why it was so hard for him to correctly spell names.

And he - or whoever was assigned to that part of the workload of the moment - did make use of that other, larger list.

Who - back in 1986-'87 - would have expected TV tech in the real world to get to the point where these little in-jokes would be available for everyone to see clearly?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ Actually, I think Okuda DID expect someone to see them eventually, or else what was the point of making them? Easter eggs are meant to be found, after all.

Trekkies: please remember that the creative geniuses who actually MADE Star Trek did not take Star Trek anywhere near as seriously as the fans do. We forget this, mainly, because TNG never a full-on "yanking your chains" episode like Trouble with Tribbles or I Mudd.

Television is hard, and it gets even harder the higher your ratings go. If Mike Okuda took his job THAT seriously, he probably would have gone crazy by season 3.