Lieut. Arex said:
The thing about FJ's lists is that it was assumed by fandom the various classes were represented by the changes to the Enterprise from first pilot to second pilot to series. In my view, that's a mistake.
That was my own idea, but the way it has been interpreted over the years by others is at odds with what I originally wrote, or at least meant.
It's not necessary to assume each refit brought the ship up to a new class's specs, though it's a convenient way to refer to them. Upgrading the shuttles with glass cockpits, etc. didn't change their class but it did make them more capable. Same with the Enterprise.
That's true, but the idea was that systems would be updated to keep up with the latest technology. And certainly power plants and nacelles would be swapped out. Whether any particular ship would actually experience a change in its external architecture beyond that was something we left vague. Vague, because I don't think given the level of physical change that constituted a "refit" in
TMP, it would be unreasonable for a refit to constitute architectural changes on the order of what you see from the three-foot model to the 11-foot model. Or from the 11-foot model to
FJ's entirely different design.
But still, we were referring to systems and capabilities, and not outward appearance. So when we said
Constitution was uprated to
Bonhomme Richard specs, we were not saying the ship was necessarily physically changed, (though it might have been).
Secondly, that scheme leads to inflation of the fleet during the series beyond all onscreen evidence and ignores both the series' and FJ's stardates, exactly what you're referring to and combated by cutting the number of ships. The Bon Homme Richard class wasn't appropriated until late first season, SD 3220...
Where did you get that date? I thought the date for that class was in the SD 5000 range? And for the ships built in Earthspace, in the Four Years War era of the late 2240s, not the 2260s.
Also, you have to remember that we had a view of stardating that was based on the description from
TMoST. Literally, that you couldn't tell much from any particular stardate without some decoder system that we assumed the 23rd century reader had, but that you and I didn't have. From page 197 of
TMoST:
... some sort of time-keeping system would be established in order to solve the problem. Such a system would undoubtedly have to be based on a highly scientific and mathematically complex formula.
Of course,
GR was addressing the real problems of not tying the show down to a specific date, and broadcasting episodes out of filmed (stardate) order. He writes
This time system adjusts for shifts in the vessel's relative time which occur due to the vessel's speed and space warp capability. It has little relationship to Earth's time as we know it.... The star date specified in the log entry must be computed against the speed of the vessel, the space warp, and its position within the galaxy, in order to give a meaningful reading. therefore star dates would be one thing at one point in the galaxy and something else again at another point in the galaxy.
So, it is a system that somehow took into account relativistic effects, location, whatever effects warp speed would produce, subspace timekeeping effects -- in other words, I thought we weren't seeing the whole number, but just the part that served as "shorthand" for whatever part of space they were in. So, when you see us quote some stardate, we are referencing whatever was the date logged for conversion or construction.
...right after the incident at Organia. Obviously a response to the Klingon aggression,
Really a response to the Klingon aggression much earlier, during the 4YW.
...but they wouldn't be in service for at best couple of years. The Achernar's and Tikopai's aren't ordered until SD 5930 at the end of the third season.
Achernars are actually ordered beginning around 2260, which by our reckoning is around the beginning of the 5YM. But we
were saying
Enterprise was uprated to that class's specs after the third season, and would have essentially had those capabilities during
TAS.
I'd argue only the latter represents a truly new design. FJ gives it the 1800 designation, a new design under MJ's system.
Absolutely, and
Alex R's modification to our system of "classes" --adding "subclasses" to make many of the ships you've mentioned just "subclasses" of the original
Constitution-class -- is a much better system IMO. In any event,
Tikopai would be the "production version" of the
Enterprise-class's extensive modifications to what were ships at the end of their service lives. Instead of scrapping them, for some reasons, they were extensively rebuilt to the "lines of the moment" that you see in a simpler form in the eighteenth type.
Arguably, the TMP refit brought the Enterprise up to the Tikopai's specifications.
Yes.
That look's a radical break with the past, incorporating new weapons and propulsion technologies and design sensibilities. Anything previous had been tweaks to the basic Constitution spaceframe.
I agree, but I'd say the even the
Enterprise-class is based on the
Constitution spaceframe, and as such represents a transitional design between
Constitution and
Tikopai.
While the Bon Homme Richard and Achernar may have been significant upgrades, enough to warrant a sub-class designation, they weren't different enough to call them the 18th and 19th designs. Heck, they may have only gotten those distinctions so Star Fleet could justify these supplemental allotments of Constitutions to the appropriations committee. "Yeah, sure, they're brand new designs. Now, would you just sign the check?"
I agree with you, and this kind of thinking exactly reflects the example I had in mind when I was writing -- the administrative "modifications" to the U.S. frigate
Constellation in 1854.
