Twelve Like It In The Fleet

[Red Ranger]

People,

Well, to answer the O.P., I tend to agree the line means Constitution-class vessels. After all, 12 ships do not a fleet make, let alone a Starfleet!

While non canon, the ST Technical Manual posits several different types of starship classes, all general variants of the Constitution-class, but several with specific uses -- as I recall, they had a tug type vessel, I assume used for towing damaged ships.

And I like to think of the Miranda-class as the workhorse of Starfleet, even though we only see it for the first time in TWOK. It's essentially a stripped-down Constitution-class vessel.

Wingsley makes a good point about the preponderance of human captains, and, to a lesser extent, crews. We do know the Excalibur's captain was named Harris, so he probably was human.

However, I want to poke a few holes in his argument. We really only saw a fraction of the crews of all those ships. Wesley's ship, Lexington, we see maybe a half dozen people, all human. But we have no idea the composition of the rest of his crew.

As for the other ships in that ep's task force, we don't even see one crew member of some ships, like the Potemkin or Hood. For all we know, the Hood may have been crewed entirely by Andorians while the Potemkin may have been an all-Tellarite crew.

In the case of Exeter, we really only saw one other crew member, the chief medical officer. After all, the crystal remains we see that are all that's left of the crew could have been of any humanoid life form.

As for the Constellation, we only saw Decker, and a reference to a Science Officer Masada, so he was most likely human. Other than those two, we also don't know if there were other Federation races represented on Decker's ship.

And again, while all the corpses we saw on the Defiant were humans, we didn't see all 430 corpses on the ship, so we can also assume a number of them also belonged to other races in the Federation.

Red Ranger

 

[Lieut. Arex]

Kirk's "combined service" mention seems to back this up.

Kirk's combined service line doesn't refer to the combined forces of the planets of the UFP. It refers to the fact Star Fleet handles all the operations the U.S. military divides between the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. You quoted the line yourself:

CHRISTOPHER: Must have taken quite a lot
to build a ship like this.

KIRK: There are only 12 like it in the fleet.

CHRISTOPHER: I see. Did the Navy--

KIRK: We're a combined service, Captain.
Our authority is the United Earth Space Probe Agency.

Kirk's correcting Christopher's assumption that the Enterprise was operated by the Navy.

And to backtrack:

I said "like those listed in FJ's Tech Manual".

I never said that FJ's work has to be adopted verbatim; only the concepts he introduced were of interest.

And I'm not advocating it should be, just pointing out the fact FJ himself paid close attention to Kirk's "twelve like it in the fleet" line and didn't have subsequent classes built until after "Tomorrow is Yesterday"'s stardate. That's consistent with GR, DC Fontana, and Bob Justman's reading of the line, twelve total, as evident in the TMoST memos. There were at least 14 built, as per the finalized list, but two--Valiant and Farragut--had been lost before TiY.

This doesn't preclude other ships from other member worlds nearly as capable as the Constitutions, similar to what you suggest, though I'd argue the Andorian, Tellarite, Vulcan, and Alpha Centaurian ships wouldn't necessarily be physically similar to the Terran ships, just comparable in performance.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

I believe when Kirk said 12 he was referring to 12 Constitution class starships which are unique ships within Star Fleet.They are designed mainly to explore unexplored regions and thus have to be equiped on many levels(defensive,scientific,etc) There would be many other ships in the fleet, but designed for specific purposes(war ships, cargo ships, science ships) so not as impressive as a start ship would be.

Even as late as DS9 there were references to all-Vulcan crews(Take Me Out To The Holosuite),and of course in TNG they had officer exchange programs. It is very easy to imagine that most ships in The Federation were still manned by crews from one race, but in TNG Star ships were a little more intergrated. IN TOS days fully intergrated star ships were still a future dream. Perhaps the preponderance of humans on them can be explained that humans were new to space travel and didn't have attatchments to their old fleet and could better man new "all-Federation" ships.

 

[payndz201]

This is one of those discussions that seems to answer itself without any need to overcomplicate matters with semi-canon/fanon. Kirk says there are 12 ships like the Enterprise in the fleet; the Enterprise is the kind of ship that gets called upon whenever Earth/the Federation/whoever needs its best people and biggest guns to sort out a crisis; therefore, the Enterprise and its sister ships are the most powerful and advanced of the time. But that doesn't mean they're the only ships in the fleet. It'd be like saying that because the US Navy has 11 aircraft carriers, they don't need anything else.

 

[Wingsley]

The operative phrase here is "only twelve like it in the fleet".

Kirk's remarks did not dwell on the specifics of what he meant. Was he talking about starship class? Maybe, but that's by no means conclusive. Since he bothered to bring up UESPA, then that could just as easily indicate that he's focusing on starships from Earth, as opposed to ships from Vulcan or Tellar, etc. "twelve like it in the fleet" could just as easily mean 13 Class I Federation starships from Earth, including a few Constitution-class cruisers (Enterprise, and also perhaps Defiant, Lexington, Exeter, etc.), and several Class I starships from other classes. If the later were the case, then Kirk's remarks were not about the number of Connies; he was speaking to the number of starships from Earth.

 

[Wingsley]

Kirk's "combined service" mention seems to back this up.

Kirk's combined service line doesn't refer to the combined forces of the planets of the UFP. It refers to the fact Star Fleet handles all the operations the U.S. military divides between the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. You quoted the line yourself:

CHRISTOPHER: Must have taken quite a lot
to build a ship like this.

KIRK: There are only 12 like it in the fleet.

CHRISTOPHER: I see. Did the Navy--

KIRK: We're a combined service, Captain.
Our authority is the United Earth Space Probe Agency.

Kirk's correcting Christopher's assumption that the Enterprise was operated by the Navy.

But, you are overlooking the UESPA mention in Kirk's remarks.

Kirk's UESPA mention obviously completes what he was saying: The Federation Starfleet is a combination of supporting member-world agencies (UESPA, Vulcan Space Central, etc.) and the Enterprise (and supposedly 12 other Class I starships "like" her) represent Earth "in the fleet."

I'm pointing out that Kirk's remarks could legitimately be interpreted as referring to the number of UESPA-sponsored Class I starships (including a few Connies, Enterprise among them) while saying nothing about the total number of starships in the overall fleet, or the total number of Connies in that overall fleet, either.

 

[Timo]

Within the episode, and within TOS aired until that time, and even within TOS in its entirety, all sorts of generalizations and specializations are possible on Kirk's line. I feel it would be best to concentrate on what best fits the broadest possible set of evidence, though.

TOS might well work with a fleet of just 12 capital ships. In light of evidence from spinoff shows, a fleet with 12 capital ships of some very specific type out of a broader contingent of capital ships is the likelier answer, though.

Whether we should narrow down the 12 by capabilities, specific design or operating organization is a matter of personal preference, then. But we should then also examine the nature of UESPA against the broader evidence - in ENT, it already exists in full, being either directly above or below Starfleet in hierarchy or perhaps partnering with it, as per that seal in "Demons", so it's a bit unlikely to be the name for Earth's "National Guard" within the Federation. That is, unless a somewhat different organization later starts using the old ENT era name. But a "Space Probe" organization doesn't sound like a local militia to begin with, really, and certainly not something that an already spacefaring spatial military would choose as its name when joining the interstellar community. It's more like the name of a "scientific subsidiary" or an "exploration branch", really.

We should also examine the technology in broader view. The TOS movies already present us with a Starfleet that operates a wide range of ships, many of them equal or superior to Kirk's. This need not be a new phenomenon for the 2270s, but may well have already been reality in the 2260s as Kirk's ride was already pretty mature even back then.

Finally, we should consider the role of our heroes in context. Are they really the cream of the cream, objectively thinking? Or are they more like the men of Horatio Hornblower, the promising upstart who gets all the dirty work and misses much of the big action?

All this would reflect on how Kirk's "12" should be interpreted. And IMHO it all points towards a very narrow and specific interpretation rather than towards a generalizing "that's the whole Starfleet" approach, even when the exact mileage may vary.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Red Ranger]

People,

Straying a bit off topic, but not quite, it would be interesting if in the new movie, we see a drydock scene with other starships based on the original ST Technical manual showing the various classes represented in that tome, like tugs and single-nacelle starships, hell, even a dreadnought-class vessel would be nice!

Other musings: Naturally, of all the Starfleet starships shown in TOS, we only saw the Constitution-class because of budget reasons. We never did see what the Intrepid looked like, although if someone can tell me if they showed it in the remastered version of The Immunity Syndrome, we'd be grateful. And aside from the Antares, were there other contemporary starships mentioned but not shown?

As I have maintained before, although we never saw the Miranda-class till TWOK, I like to think, since it was basically a stripped-down Constitution-class, that they were in service during and even before Kirk's five-year mission. So I can see maybe Intrepid and other vessels having this configuration.

While not canon, in the novelized version of TWOK, Vonda McIntyre refers to Reliant as an older-style Starfleet vessel -- think it's nickname was "that old rustbucket" -- which makes sense to me. Perhaps the Miranda-class was a precursor to the Constituion-class.

Red Ranger

 

[Wingsley]

The Intrepid was shown in the newly remastered early scenes of "Court Martial"; Commodore Stone mentions that the Intrepid is under repairs. Intrepid is indeed shown as a Constitution-class vehicle.

We also see the Medusan vessel for the first time in the remastered "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" And we got to see a new Space Cruiser Aurora in "The Way to Eden", but neither of these were Starfleet vessels.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

We also see the Medusan vessel for the first time in the remastered "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"

The Medusan vessel was most likely a Starfleet ship (probably just 'loaned' to them). Notice how it has Starfleet-style nacelles, plus *windows* on the primary hull (which Medusans obviously would not need).

 

[jayrath]

This all results from the ret-con of "Starship Class" to "Constitution Class."

Kirk says it. The wall plaque says it. At the time of TOS there are only 12 starships.

Many, many other ships, sure, but only 12 very special "star"ships.