Paramount had established that they owned the IP and negotiated a publishing deal with FJ and Ballantine Books before the Booklet of General Plans was published in 1975.
Was Kirk supposed to be a Lt. Commander?
- Thread starter Arpy
- Start date
Paramount had established that they owned the IP and negotiated a publishing deal with FJ and Ballantine Books before the Booklet of General Plans was published in 1975.
Actually every starship look's similar to Kirk's ship on the outside. That is not the same thing as being called a member of the same class in canon.
We know that Kirk's Enterprise is special because there "are only 12 (other?) like in the fleet" at one moment, and we also known that Kirk's Enterprise is special because it is a starship. But those can be the same reason expressed in different ways or they can be two different reasons why Kirk's Enterprise is special.
Thus the Enterprise's 12 and the Enterprise's starships can be two different groups. The 12 can be a subcategory of starships or less likely starships can be a subcategory of the 12. Or maybe the two categories only partially overlap.
Commodore Stone said that only one man in a million had what it took to be a starship captain. If that is literally true then the number of Federation citizens classified as "men" divided by a million is the maximum number of starships the Federation could find captains for, if it could build that many ships. Thus the Federation should have been able to recruit and train enough "men" to be captains of thousands of starships at least, if it could build that many starships.
I don't know if the Federation needed thousands of starships, but it probably needed thousands of ships with military capability equivalent to starships for the defense arm of the starfleet and/or planetary defense forces. And if you go by some of the Star Trek space maps the Federation would need millions of space warships for defense.
Last edited:
It's likely that both of those statements involve hyperbole. Especially Stone's line.
There may well be only 12 other Constitution-class ships, but in the grand scheme of things, that means comparatively little.
So, what is new here as of this date?
We have seen what sort of ships are invited to participate in a frontier fight in 2256. They are all essentially in the size range of Kirk's TOS ship, with a few ever-so-slightly smaller ones.
We have been introduced to the new hero ship, too, and she's about the same size as Kirk's TOS ship, perhaps a tad less well endowed in the saucer department but (over)compensating with the warp nacelles.
In light of this, the TOS ship could still rank among Starfleet's Big and Bad ten years later. On the other hand, nothing at all is stated about the relative size of the ships of 2256 on screen, and thus it is also possible that the Heavyweights like Kelvin remain unseen, fighting the conventional war with their large Klingon counterparts, while the smaller vessels mind the far frontier or perform esoteric experiments.
Both of the onscreen skippers of these new TOS-sized ships of 2256 wear four pips for their Captain rank/position. So nothing new to be learned there, either...
Tangentially, it's around this time that Kirk earns his status as a skilled warrior or leader of warriors as mentioned by Garth and accepted by Kirk. Can a lowly Lieutenant achieve this sort of fame, especially in leadership, unless we additionally speculate that Lieutenants can command these moderately sized starships (like Pike potentially did)?
Timo Saloniemi
We have seen what sort of ships are invited to participate in a frontier fight in 2256. They are all essentially in the size range of Kirk's TOS ship, with a few ever-so-slightly smaller ones.
We have been introduced to the new hero ship, too, and she's about the same size as Kirk's TOS ship, perhaps a tad less well endowed in the saucer department but (over)compensating with the warp nacelles.
In light of this, the TOS ship could still rank among Starfleet's Big and Bad ten years later. On the other hand, nothing at all is stated about the relative size of the ships of 2256 on screen, and thus it is also possible that the Heavyweights like Kelvin remain unseen, fighting the conventional war with their large Klingon counterparts, while the smaller vessels mind the far frontier or perform esoteric experiments.
Both of the onscreen skippers of these new TOS-sized ships of 2256 wear four pips for their Captain rank/position. So nothing new to be learned there, either...
Tangentially, it's around this time that Kirk earns his status as a skilled warrior or leader of warriors as mentioned by Garth and accepted by Kirk. Can a lowly Lieutenant achieve this sort of fame, especially in leadership, unless we additionally speculate that Lieutenants can command these moderately sized starships (like Pike potentially did)?
Timo Saloniemi
The fact that several different designs of starship exist that are similar to the Connie (and the Discovery's role as a prototype or experimental testbed, suggests to me that the mid-2200s were a period of transition for the fleet where they were trying various different approaches with small build runs (2-3 Crossfield-class, 12-13 Connies) to see what the 'next big thing' was, with the Miranda-class eventually winning out as the conventional mid-tier workhorse and the Excelsior taking the high end.
As far as minimum rank for a starship command, I've always thought that would be Lieutenant Commander (if there is only one Captain rank/seniority band) or Commander (if there are two ranks/bands), for small, support-type vessel used for interceptor, fast response or local patrol (2 to 25 crew, minimal passengers) I would consider a experienced Lieutenant.
Similar threads
