Was ANYTHING retained when the Enterprise was refit?

[C.E. Evans]

I believe only externally, because it could be that various parts of the ship's interior spaceframe (or hidden skeleton) consist of reused original support frame members that were mated with new ones. Many of the interior bulkheads and deck plates could also have been retained, but repainted and refurbished to match the ship's new aesthetics.

Yeah, but then the "neck" isn't of the same length, the engineering section is of a different shape and the saucer is both wider and narrower. That's quite a structural change.

Which doesn't mean anything if the redesigned spaceframe still consists of original components. That's what I said earlier by "original frame members that were mated with new ones." It'd just be a form of recycling, which probably will still be a practice used in the 23rd-Century.

 

[Belz...]

I just thought it was a lot easier to call it a retcon than to assume everything had been replaced except 2% of the ship.

 

[C.E. Evans]

To me, it's much easier to call it what it was onscreen--a redesign of the ship. And I think about 9% of the original was retained (to match Decker's claim that Kirk didn't know the redesign a tenth as well as he did).

 

[Belz...]

I'm not sure Decker was meant to be taken literally, but ok.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I have Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, by the way, and it's a very nice collection of deck plans, though I don't know how accurate they are. He gets the dates all wrong, however, as he's basically making it up as he goes.

The dates in Mr. Scott's Guide are based on those in the 1980 Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology by Stan and Fred Goldstein. That dating system was considered official at the time, and used in the novels of the era as well as FASA's Trek RPG.

It was in the early 90's when TNG was huge, that the Okuda's Star Trek Chronology was released, which moved around all the dates, rendering the prior book obsolete. The writers of all subsequent Treks switched to this new dating system.

Shane Johnson also wrote Worlds of the Federation, a guide to Trek's planets (also rendered somewhat obsolete by recent canon, although still a fun read) and some unlicensed Trek books like The Star Fleet Uniform Recognition Manual.

A fascinating interview with Johnson, about the creation of Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, is here: http://www.trekplace.com/shanejohnson.html

 

[Belz...]

The dates in Mr. Scott's Guide are based on those in the 1980 Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology by Stan and Fred Goldstein. That dating system was considered official at the time, and used in the novels of the era as well as FASA's Trek RPG.

Yes, I remember that. I have quite a few books from that RPG. Gosh, I miss FASA.

It was in the early 90's when TNG was huge, that the Okuda's Star Trek Chronology was released, which moved around all the dates, rendering the prior book obsolete.

That's not entirely true. In Star Trek II McCoy brings Kirk a bottle of Romulan ale which is dated 2283, so even back then the dating in FASA and Scott's Guide were wrong.

 

[Lance]

To me, it's much easier to call it what it was onscreen--a redesign of the ship. And I think about 9% of the original was retained (to match Decker's claim that Kirk didn't know the redesign a tenth as well as he did).

It does make you wonder what the 9% is exactly, though (I agree with your earlier assertion that it could be as simple as the 'skeleton' of the old ship).

One thing which puzzles me is the general lack of other Constitution refits out there. Obviously the later 1701-A came from somewhere (theory being it's a renamed other vessel), but my impression of the TOS movies is that it always seemed like Enterprise was nearly the last of her kind, maybe only one of a couple Constitutions still in service... indeed, if Admiral Morrow in STIII is to be believed, Starfleet has definitely taken a shine against the Constitution Class.

Obviously the Excelsior project was ongoing, but even aside from that the rest of the fleet is depicted as other classes, all of them evidently from the 'post-Refit' era. Which really stands out compared to TOS, where most of the fleet seemed to be made up of indentical sister ships to the Enterprise.

 

[Belz...]

One thing which puzzles me is the general lack of other Constitution refits out there.

I think it's just that they (the studio) reserved the hero ship for 1701, that's all. And when they designed it, I don't think they went "oh, we should make it so that it's physicall possible in-universe to have this upgrade." They just designed something that looked the way they wanted.

I mean, if they had kept Ken Adam's design for Planet of the Titans, for the same reasons, is there a way we could fit that with the original design in-universe ?

 

[RyanKCR]

To me, it's much easier to call it what it was onscreen--a redesign of the ship. And I think about 9% of the original was retained (to match Decker's claim that Kirk didn't know the redesign a tenth as well as he did).

I tend to take it as a refit/rebuild. It is not without precedent. Look at the USS Merrimac when she was rebuilt as the CSS Virginia.

 

[Lance]

I do think sometimes we attribute our feelings (as fans) about the ships to those of the characters. Whereas we have an affection for the 'TOS asthetic' and find it hard to think the characters would be able to relate the sterile grey of the refit to the original on those terms, to the characters themselves it might seem like there is little difference between the floor-plans of the two versions of the ship. To Kirk, stepping aboard in that cargo bay, the ship had a very different look, but was still exactly as he remembered her. In this sense you could almost argue the case of it being a retcon of sorts.

I also think Mad Magazine were very clever in their parody of the Enterprise refit at the time. The bit in the movie where he's told "Admiral, this an almost entirely new Enterprise!" became a hilarious scene where Kirk tries to go to the bridge and instead ends up in the men's room.

 

[Timo]

Of course, we could more specifically say that the cargo area had not changed much if at all. We never saw any of it in TOS, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lance]

^ Very true.

 

[The Old Mixer]

It was in the early 90's when TNG was huge, that the Okuda's Star Trek Chronology was released, which moved around all the dates, rendering the prior book obsolete. The writers of all subsequent Treks switched to this new dating system.

It's worth noting that the Okuda chronology was extrapolating from what had then been firmly established onscreen. The TNG season 1 finale, "The Neutral Zone," gave Trek's first onscreen mention of the current date in Earth years (2364).

 

[trevanian]

One thing which puzzles me is the general lack of other Constitution refits out there.

I think it's just that they (the studio) reserved the hero ship for 1701, that's all. And when they designed it, I don't think they went "oh, we should make it so that it's physicall possible in-universe to have this upgrade." They just designed something that looked the way they wanted.

I mean, if they had kept Ken Adam's design for Planet of the Titans, for the same reasons, is there a way we could fit that with the original design in-universe ?

Maybe some way a devotee could rationalize it, but clearly that kind of continuity was not a factor in Kaufman's thinking. One story is that he wanted to kill the whole crew off up front and do it with all new characters, but I've often thought that was just an exaggeration of the 'Kirk goes missing for most of the movie' storyline they went with (apparently because they were unsure about making a deal with Shatner and keeping him for the lead.)

I do think it funny that the most interesting visual concept from Kaufman was the idea you could look down from the bridge and see into lower decks, most of the way into the saucer ... apparently they've done some kind of low-rent rip on that idea for the new movie -- though whether Chambliss thought it up or somebody showed him some TITANS sketches, i do not know ... this is the guy who put all the reflective surfaces into TREK09 because (in his words, my italics for points of stunned disbelief at his statements):

One of the first things I wanted to do in terms of materials had to do with reflections. In the Sci-Fi that I looked at to catch up – because this has never been my genre of moviegoing – I noticed everything for years had been molded plastics and leathers and there haven’t been reflective surfaces and transparencies. I thought of the foils that NASA has been using on the sides of their ships forever, but that kind of thing hadn’t ever made its way into the sci-fi movie design lingo yet. I felt I should introduce that here, that it would be interesting to bring that in on the bridge, as well as other sets on the Enterprise.​

Based on his statements, I assume he saw zero movies with space helmets, since they ALL have reflections in them. He didn't see FIRST CONTACT since the Phoenix is pretty much all metal foil (it's the only actual Trek model I've held in my hand, this one I KNOW.) he didn't see TFF because you've got the actors reflected in monitor screens ... the list goes on and on.

 

[Belz...]

Maybe some way a devotee could rationalize it, but clearly that kind of continuity was not a factor in Kaufman's thinking.

Sure, but that's not my point. What I'm saying is that it's quite possible we'd have a refit Enterprise that would look so different fromt the original that this line of thinking would be impossible. Basically, I'm asking where do we draw the line ?

Yes, it's fiction. This is why I call it a retcon because if it weren't fiction, such a refit would never happen. But I'm more than happy to agree to disagree with you and CE Evans on this.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Maybe some way a devotee could rationalize it, but clearly that kind of continuity was not a factor in Kaufman's thinking.

Sure, but that's not my point. What I'm saying is that it's quite possible we'd have a refit Enterprise that would look so different fromt the original that this line of thinking would be impossible. Basically, I'm asking where do we draw the line ?

Yes, it's fiction. This is why I call it a retcon because if it weren't fiction, such a refit would never happen. But I'm more than happy to agree to disagree with you and CE Evans on this.

But in the fictional world of Star Trek, it was called a refit and a redesign. There's really nothing to retcon (and what would you retcon anyway? That it didn't happen?).

 

[Belz...]

But in the fictional world of Star Trek, it was called a refit and a redesign. There's really nothing to retcon (and what would you retcon anyway? That it didn't happen?).

Sorry, by retcon I meant that the Enterprise always looked that way, but that the nacelles and possibly struts were changed.

And of course, you're right, it's fiction and not really important. But we're Trekkies and we like to nitpick and over-analyse, don't we ?

 

[C.E. Evans]

Ah, I see.

 

[F. King Daniel]

It was in the early 90's when TNG was huge, that the Okuda's Star Trek Chronology was released, which moved around all the dates, rendering the prior book obsolete. The writers of all subsequent Treks switched to this new dating system.

It's worth noting that the Okuda chronology was extrapolating from what had then been firmly established onscreen. The TNG season 1 finale, "The Neutral Zone," gave Trek's first onscreen mention of the current date in Earth years (2364).

In "Encounter at Farpoint" Data states that he graduated "Class of '78" which is consistent with FASA's updated version of the SFC timeline (in their Next Generation Officer's Manual), which places TNG at the very beginning of the 24th century.

Of course, by that time the SFC dates had already been invalidated by STII's Romulan Ale (although why would a Romulan drink have an Earth year on the label?) and Kirk's comment in STIV that he's from the late 23rd century.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Those prior examples fit in just fine with the tradition of often-contradictory vague date references in TOS. "The Neutral Zone" still stands out as giving the first definitive onscreen date, no inferences required.

Back in the day, I'd assumed the date on the Romulan ale bottle was supposed to be a stardate...it hadn't even occurred to me to think of it as an Earth calendar date.

The class of '78...that must have been the UESPA Academy, where Data roomed with a Vulcanian.