Was NCC-1701 active for 40 years?

[SPCTRE]

^The Galaxy class is supposed to have an operational lifetime of 100 years. The Enterprise-D lasted for a whopping 7, just so Brannon could get his jollies seeing the saucer crash on a planet.

^The Galaxy class is supposed to have an operational lifetime of 100 years. The Enterprise-D lasted for a whopping 7, just so Brannon could get his jollies seeing the saucer crash on a planet.

Don't put it all on Brannon. Ron Moore (stupidly) thought it would be a good idea too.

And yeah, I hated that decision also, but it was easily fixed. The Enterprise-E could have been another Galaxy class ship, just like, when Kirk lost his first one, they gave him an identical replacement. The same could have happened to Picard. That way, Moore and Braga could have had their jollies, and we could continue to have the best starship design Star Trek ever had. It would have been cheaper to the production too. All the modelmakers would have had to do was slap an "E" sticker over the "D".

But no, instead we're stuck with the ugliest starship ever put out.

Whatever.

They could have had their cake and eat it, too.

Just script the battle a little differently. The saucer separates, during the battle, while the battlesection tries to draw the attention of the BoP instead of popping like a balloon like it did.
It goes to town on the Klingons and destroys them successfully, though a last stray torpedo hits the saucer and causes it to crashland like we've seen, while the battle section remains heavily damaged in orbit.

At the end we see the saucer salvaged and lifted back into orbit and towed by the relief ships.

In the new movie we see a spanking new Ent-D refitted extensively like the 1701 to bring the model up to the movie quality and tweaked design elements like hull details, nacelle shape, etc but keep the frame.

Oooooh, now I wish they had used the Galaxy-X modifications (third nacelle, anyone?) from AGT for ST XIII - the outcry that would have caused... priceless.

 

[AverageWriter]

Generations was a mess of plotholes- everything from "Why aren't Lursa and B'eTor dead yet" all the way up to the end of the film and it's shameless "fire when cloaked" ripoff from Star Trek VI. You would have thought that, given the amount of damage the OLD Enterprise was able to take (unshielded) from Warbird shots, the D would be made of sterner stuff.

You know, the one thing that gets me- they could have had the big climactic battle scene with the Enterprise D being blown to bits...

AND saved it at the same time.

AND saved his family that burned to death.

AND kept Kirk from dying.

All he had to do was just exit the Nexus at literally ANY point before the fire killed his extended family, and as soon as they find Soran, just punch him in the face and throw him in the brig.

Instead he picked what was quite possible the worst moment -period- to exit the Nexus.

TNG is my favorite Trek, but sometimes the obvious plotholes make me scratch my head.

 

[Shat Happens]

My 2 quatloos:

Kirk single-handedly saved the Earth from the Whale Probe. Picard did nothing comparable to "earn" a new Galaxy-class Enterprise.

I dont like the E-E, for the same reason I don't like the E-A: ther weren't in good movies.

 

[Leto_II]

Not necessarily unheard of. The last Essex-class aircraft carrier, the USS Philippine Sea, was commissioned in 1946 and decommissioned in 1958 after serving a short 12 years. The 1701-A could've been the last Connie ordered and have a shorter career than her older sister ships.

Sure, I can accept that reasoning. It's just that I find it unusual that Starfleet decided to build one more Connie in just the three months between the destruction of the original Enterprise and the end of STIV, and coincidentally have it ready for Kirk and crew at the conclusion of their trial. I think it would make more sense for them to have just found an old ship and changed the name and registry.

In offscreen sources like Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, it was postulated that the starship that was eventually designated the Enterprise-A was in fact finished, construction-wise, months prior to the Cetacean Probe's arrival at Earth.

The USS Ti-Ho (NCC-1798) had been undergoing its initial deep-space trials and had just returned to Spacedock when the Probe showed up -- it was after Admiral Kirk's trial that it was rechristened NCC-1701-A, but it had been completed some time around Star Trek III.

Non-filmic, of course, but very plausibly laid out in that book; it's always been a particular favorite of mine.

Generations was a mess of plotholes- everything from "Why aren't Lursa and B'eTor dead yet" all the way up to the end of the film and it's shameless "fire when cloaked" ripoff from Star Trek VI.

To be sure, it's not the same thing that we saw in Star Trek VI -- in that film, the Enterprise-A used sensor devices to track the gaseous emissions of Chang's Bird-of-Prey in order to gain a targeting lock (the ship was utterly untraceable up to that point).

In Generations, the Enterprise-D triggers a cloaking-activation via transmitted signal-pulse in order to force the Duras sisters' ship to drop its shields long enough to score some damage; the ship was already decloaked and well-visible to the Enterprise.

 

[Timo]

And fighting Klingons in the Trek movies has always involved defeating their invisibility advantage; this is a feature of the Klingon menace.

Why Picard wouldn't go back to Adam and Eve to reshuffle things is pretty clear. He's an officer with a duty, and if he goes back any further, Lursa and B'Etor and their doomsday weapon will be at large. If he goes back just the smidgen he does, the Klingons will be under the guns of the Federation Flagship and no tribble at all. Picard isn't the type to sacrifice the safety of the entire Federation for personal gain or the life of a little kid.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Not necessarily unheard of. The last Essex-class aircraft carrier, the USS Philippine Sea, was commissioned in 1946 and decommissioned in 1958 after serving a short 12 years. The 1701-A could've been the last Connie ordered and have a shorter career than her older sister ships.

Sure, I can accept that reasoning. It's just that I find it unusual that Starfleet decided to build one more Connie in just the three months between the destruction of the original Enterprise and the end of STIV, and coincidentally have it ready for Kirk and crew at the conclusion of their trial. I think it would make more sense for them to have just found an old ship and changed the name and registry.

In offscreen sources like Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, it was postulated that the starship that was eventually designated the Enterprise-A was in fact finished, construction-wise, months prior to the Cetacean Probe's arrival at Earth.

The USS Ti-Ho (NCC-1798) had been undergoing its initial deep-space trials and had just returned to Spacedock when the Probe showed up -- it was after Admiral Kirk's trial that it was rechristened NCC-1701-A, but it had been completed some time around Star Trek III.

Non-filmic, of course, but very plausibly laid out in that book; it's always been a particular favorite of mine.

Generations was a mess of plotholes- everything from "Why aren't Lursa and B'eTor dead yet" all the way up to the end of the film and it's shameless "fire when cloaked" ripoff from Star Trek VI.

To be sure, it's not the same thing that we saw in Star Trek VI -- in that film, the Enterprise-A used sensor devices to track the gaseous emissions of Chang's Bird-of-Prey in order to gain a targeting lock (the ship was utterly untraceable up to that point).

In Generations, the Enterprise-D triggers a cloaking-activation via transmitted signal-pulse in order to force the Duras sisters' ship to drop its shields long enough to score some damage; the ship was already decloaked and well-visible to the Enterprise.

I think that's not the point - It was the same footage. The same piece of film, reused. i.e. they were too cheap to film a new special effect and re-used the footage from the film just previous, as if no one would notice. And not just an establishing shot like the ship leaving port, which are often stock shots, but the climax of the film's major battle scene, which should be individual and memorable! It takes you right out of the film with a big ! Even more than the rest of the film, it screamed "We don't really care if we make a good product, 'cause we know you guys will give us money as long as it says Star Trek on the label."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And fighting Klingons in the Trek movies has always involved defeating their invisibility advantage

You're thinking of Romulans.

The Klingons didn't even HAVE cloaking devices until Search for Spock, and Enterprise didn't bother to defeat it so much as wait for them to decloak and then punch them in the face really fast.

Why Picard wouldn't go back to Adam and Eve to reshuffle things is pretty clear. He's an officer with a duty, and if he goes back any further, Lursa and B'Etor and their doomsday weapon will be at large...

Not unless he uses his knowledge of the future to thwart Soran in the first place, much like he does in "Time Squared," and like O'Brien did in "Visionary."

If he goes back just the smidgen he does...

Then everyone on Amagosa except Soran is still dead, that star has still exploded, and a bunch of pissed off Romulans are still roaming the galaxy looking for their missing trilithium.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I think that's not the point - It was the same footage. The same piece of film, reused. i.e. they were too cheap to film a new special effect and re-used the footage from the film just previous, as if no one would notice. And not just an establishing shot like the ship leaving port, which are often stock shots, but the climax of the film's major battle scene, which should be individual and memorable! It takes you right out of the film with a big ! Even more than the rest of the film, it screamed "We don't really care if we make a good product, 'cause we know you guys will give us money as long as it says Star Trek on the label."

That has bothered me from the very moment I saw Generations in theaters and continues to ruin my enjoyment of that movie every single time I watch it. It almost feels like the cheesy "camera cuts away suddenly!" scenes in old spy movies where somebody gets gruesomely murdered but they don't actually SHOW it because it's the 70s, dammit.

 

[Dukhat]

I think that's not the point - It was the same footage. The same piece of film, reused. i.e. they were too cheap to film a new special effect and re-used the footage from the film just previous, as if no one would notice. And not just an establishing shot like the ship leaving port, which are often stock shots, but the climax of the film's major battle scene, which should be individual and memorable! It takes you right out of the film with a big ! Even more than the rest of the film, it screamed "We don't really care if we make a good product, 'cause we know you guys will give us money as long as it says Star Trek on the label."

The thing about that shot was, not only did they reuse it just to save a few bucks, the reason why Lursa and Betor have an old BoP in the first place was so that they could reuse that TUC shot of it getting destroyed. So they spent all that time and money on new shots of the BoP in Generations, but when it came time for the ship to get blown up, they got cheap. Unbelievable.

They should have given the sisters a battleship comparable in power to the Enterprise-D, so the fight would at least have been on more equal footing, and the Ent-D wouldn't have had to have been brought down just by a "lucky shot" from an antiquated ship.

 

[Timo]

You're thinking of Romulans.

There weren't any Romulans to fight in the movies. (Not until Nemesis, where only the Remans cloaked.)

The Klingons didn't even HAVE cloaking devices until Search for Spock..

...The first-ever fight with them in the movies (simulations aside). The cloak remained a factor ever since.

Not unless he uses his knowledge of the future to thwart Soran in the first place, much like he does in "Time Squared," and like O'Brien did in "Visionary."

What "unless"? How could Picard catch Lursa and B'Etor doing illegal things by going way back in time?

Picard has no idea when Soran provided the Klingons with their doomsday missiles (and in fact Soran never did, but Picard doesn't know that!), so at best he could go back to the day the El-Aurians arrived in Federation space and arrest Soran there and then, on no charges whatsoever.

Then everyone on Amagosa except Soran is still dead, that star has still exploded, and a bunch of pissed off Romulans are still roaming the galaxy looking for their missing trilithium.

But said trilithium is under the control of the good guys, which wouldn't happen at any other timepoint.

Oh, Picard could again confiscate the stuff on flimsy charges at an earlier timepoint, assuming he could convince somebody to help him out with apprehending Soran. But the Duras sisters would still be at large, with no certainty on whether they already possessed the trilithium weapon or at least its secret. The key factor here is that while Soran may be elusive, the Cleavage Duo is invisible - and catching them red-handed is a once-in-a-timeline opportunity.

They should have given the sisters a battleship comparable in power to the Enterprise-D

Absolutely not. The sisters shouldn't logically command anything like that, given their histories. And the whole point of the villain of the story is that Soran surprises our heroes again and again with his knowledge, skills, technology and ruthlessness; the Durases are just sidekicks whose fortunes are dependent on the main villain. Why would the two suffer Soran if they really were powerful on their own? Why not just take the trilithium, twist the man's arm or other parts until the secrets were divulged, and be done with it? Soran needs to maintain at least psychological superiority throughout the movie, and that works the best if the Klingons don't have outward signs of power.

And what's wrong with the "lucky shot" thing? Space battles are boring. They need a gimmick to work, and this time the gimmick was Soran, giving the underdog inside intel and apparently also boosted shields.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Corran Horn]

Kirk single-handedly saved the Earth from the Whale Probe. Picard did nothing comparable to "earn" a new Galaxy-class Enterprise.

well...Riker and crew (with a hint from Picard) did save the Earth from the Borg.

 

[Timo]

It's difficult to say whether saving the Earth, the Federation or the universe is atypical for Starfleet officers. Both Kirk and Picard (or crews under their command) had their turn at those at least:

Saving the Earth or mankind:

Kirk: ST:TMP and ST4
Picard: "All Good Things..", ST:FC, ST:NEM

Saving the Federation (from an imminent war or a seemingly unstoppable enemy, say):

Kirk: "Balance of Terror", ST6, peripheral role in "Errand of Mercy"
Picard: "Conspiracy", ST:GEN, perhaps ST:FC

Saving the universe:

Kirk: "The Alternative Factor"
Picard: "We'll Always Have Paris"

One wonders, of course, how many of our heroes' exploits went unreported or at least unpopularized. Saving the Earth is bound to make headlines in the general case, but "All Good Things.." is a likely exception! And the role of time travel in ST4 and ST:FC was probably downplayed a lot; the role of Locutus in ST:FC might also best have been kept secret.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[lennier1]

40 years sounds normal for a workhorse.
Production of the B-52 bombers stopped with the H model in 1963. Those birds are still in use today and have undergone refits througout the decades, with the most recent one for the electronic components going on as we speak.

 

[Timo]

...And several WWII surplus ships are still afloat, despite seawater being a challenging environment for preservation. The Minas Gerais, ex-HMS Vengeance, was theoretically combat-capable from 1945 to 2001, for example.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Absolutely not. The sisters shouldn't logically command anything like that, given their histories.

In your opinion. Only a few years before they had half the Klingon Empire on their side in the civil war. I think they would have found a way to get a better ship from someone who was still loyal to their cause.

And what's wrong with the "lucky shot" thing? Space battles are boring. They need a gimmick to work, and this time the gimmick was Soran, giving the underdog inside intel and apparently also boosted shields.

What's wrong is that this is the Enterprise-D we're talking about. A ship whom the fans were invested in for the last seven years. To see it be carelessly brushed aside simply because TPTB wanted a new ship and wanted a "kewl" saucer crash scene was a slap in the face.

 

[Wingsley]

Oops...when I saw the thread title I thought this was a reference to The Making of Star Trek according to which the members of the Enterprise Starship Class had already been 40 years in service by the time of TOS!

Fact is that the ship sustained heavy damage in the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and next (the VFX model) underwent some noticable design changes, thus I never really dismissed the possibility that the "new" Enterprise seen in "The Corbomite Maneuver" could have been a new ship.

From a retroactive point of view that could explain Admiral Morrow's "20 years old" remark in ST III (though I still think that was a stupid line. Khan had severely damaged the Enterprise in TWOK, so if Harve Bennett wanted a plausible reason to have her decommissioned he should have better taken another look at the previous film...)

Bob

What page number in "The Making of Star Trek" is the 40-year-old remark printed on? Id like to review it.

I agree that Morrow's remark in TMP3 about the Enterprise (herself) being 20 years old was silly. But I have a theory about that: obviously the technology that went into the TMP refit was extensive. Capt. Decker even told Kirk that the refit made the ship "almost totally new". If, for sake of argument, we consider the refit to have taken place in the later-half of the 2270's, and if the technology that went into the refit was indeed so ground-breaking, then it is possible that the development of its design (and the design of its component technologies) was started as far back as the 2260s.

So if the hull # 1701 Enterprise was destroyed say, in 2286, but development of the TMP refit / development of the TMP refit's technologies started at the beginning of TOS, then it is not out of line to say that the 1701's technology was, say, 20 years old in the eyes of the Federation's top brass. After all, they were expressing a lot of faith in the newer-tech of the Excelsior which was supposed to blow the doors off the Enterprise.

 

[Nightowl1701]

I've said it before, I'll say it again...

Harry Morrow was Kirk's friend (probably from when he first became an Admiral, if not earlier). He was trying to spare Jim's feelings. What he was really saying (in a subtle way that Kirk would get, but wouldn't publicly embarrass him in front of his shipmates) was "Jim, you've been attached to the Enterprise for 20 years, more or less. It's time to let her go. You're in your fifties, you're an Admiral and a schoolteacher now. The Excelsior is coming out, a new generation is taking charge. We (meaning the Admiralty) feel her day - and your day as a captain - is over." That's why he made a point of saying 20 years and not 40 - because that's how long ago Kirk took command.

That's probably also part of the reason the Enterprise was decommissioned, in addition to her age and banged-up state. "We're never gonna get this guy settled down as long as that damn ship's around."

 

[Dukhat]

^Then why didn't Morrow just say, "You've been the Enterprise's captain for twenty years; we feel that it's time for the both of you to move on," instead of, "The Enterprise is twenty years old; we feel her day is over?"

I don't think Morrow was at all trying to spare Jim's feelings. He was making a statement of fact about the age of the Enterprise and how Starfleet feels about the ship. The fact that he got the Enterprise's age wrong was just sloppy writing.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You're thinking of Romulans.

There weren't any Romulans to fight in the movies.

There were in TOS, when the Klingons made four appearances without ever using the cloaking device (the Romulans made three, cloaking all three times).

What "unless"? How could Picard catch Lursa and B'Etor doing illegal things by going way back in time?

By arresting Soran on the observatory and/or shooting down the Sisters they showed up to collect him (now that he knows they're there). Or by simply confiscating his solar probes so the sisters couldn't get access to it.

Picard has no idea when Soran provided the Klingons with their doomsday missiles

Of course he does: after the observatory but before Viridian-III. He knows this because Soran didn't launch the probe from their bird of prey, he had to launch it from the observatory itself. Which means the weapon wasn't actually COMPLETED prior to that point, apparently because Soran only recently got access to a quantity of stolen trilithium from the Romulans.

Oh, Picard could again confiscate the stuff on flimsy charges at an earlier timepoint, assuming he could convince somebody to help him out with apprehending Soran.

Why would he have to convince somebody? He's Captain of the USS Enterprise, with a crew that has seen WAY too much weird shit to doubt his time-travel story. Much less so if he shows up on the bridge with:

"Attention everyone. I've just arrived from a temporal nexus that transported me seven days into the past in order to stop a madman from launching a doomsday weapon that will destroy several hundred million innocent people. Set course for the Amagosa observatory, warp six. Also, yes, the man standing behind me is Captain James T. Kirk. Autograph signing will be in half an hour. Engage!"

And what's wrong with the "lucky shot" thing? Space battles are boring.

And technobabble is really exciting, yes?

I'm gonna quote a passage here, see if you can guess the book:

Q:How much
science fiction terminology do you want?

A: The less you use, the better. We limit complex terminology as much as possible, use it only where necessary to maintain the flavor of the show and encourage believability.
IMPORTANT: The writer must know what he means when he uses
science or projected science terminology. A scattergun confusion of meaningless phrases only detracts from believability.

Space battles can be pretty damn exciting when they're done right. Technojibberish gimmicks do NOT fit that category.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^Then why didn't Morrow just say, "You've been the Enterprise's captain for twenty years; we feel that it's time for the both of you to move on," instead of, "The Enterprise is twenty years old; we feel her day is over?"

Consider that McCoy just finished making the exact OPPOSITE point at the beginning of Wrath of Khan where he urged Kirk "Get back your command! Get it back before you become part of this collection! Before you really grow old!"

Consider that this probably isn't happening in a vacuum, so there's a lot of loaded emotion there when McCoy prefaces with "I'm your doctor and I'm your friend..." this means McCoy's opinion is not a popular, it's not one Kirk wants to hear, and it's probably going to get him into a lot of trouble if he really does it. Kirk knows it and McCoy knows it, but McCoy ALSO knows that Kirk is miserable without a ship to command. So his wrath of Khan line is basically this:

"Fuck the admiralty, go get yourself a ship."

I don't think Morrow was at all trying to spare Jim's feelings. He was making a statement of fact about the age of the Enterprise and how Starfleet feels about the ship.

I don't think he's trying to spare his feelings either, but I'm pretty sure he's trying to convince Kirk to get the fuck out of that chair and go fly a desk like everyone else wants him to do. I suspect this has a lot less to do with his age or even the age of the Enterprise than it does with Starfleet not really trusting Kirk and wanting to keep him out of trouble.

Let's face it: the Khan fiasco is the snowballing result of a bad decision Kirk made (and evidently didn't properly report to Starfleet, and was made worse by a combination of Kirk's cowboy attitude (not raising shields when he was supposed to) and his personal attachment to Doctor Marcus. Probably more damming is the destruction of Reliant and the detonation of the Genesis Device; the first is just a regrettable loss of material that could be justified by Khan's piracy, but the latter is an unfolding fiasco of which Kirk is the cosmic center.

Basically, they're pulling the "she's too old, Jim" card because it's a plausible way of keeping him the hell away from Genesis before he can make things even worse (and is also why Captain J.T. "By the Book" Esteban got to take David and Saavik on the Genesis Expedition).

More to the point, when Kirk later asks for the Enterprise back, Morrow jumps from one excuse after another (the Enterprise wouldn't stand the pounding! The Council won't like it!) and finally settles on "Think of your career."

That's when Kirk finally gets that Starfleet (or the Council, probably) doesn't want HIM SPECIFICALLY going back to Genesis and Morrow is trying really hard to come up with an excuse. Incidentally, Kirk's return to Genesis wound up creating exactly the kind of interstellar incident everyone was hoping to avoid, although in all fairness it wasn't actually his fault, and in even greater fairness putting him back in charge of a starship probably makes him a lot easier to control since they can now assign him to "Saturn ring patrol" or something until he retires.