Was the U.S.S. Horatio an Ambassador Variant?

[CharlieZardoz]

Oh my that D looks just awful! Haha! The C looks very much like the original Probert concept. I always enjoyed the Belknap and Akyazi class concepts from that time period. Would have been perfect if they made a series for Star Trek: Excelsior! Hahaha

 

[Dukhat]

I seem to recall the Alaska class originated in a set of ship plans that were produced around the same time FASA was working on the OM, but whether it was intended to actually be a FASAverse design or simply fit in with it is up for debate. This set of plans was published by Temporal Graphics in 1988 and identified the ship as being the Enterprise-C, so FASA might have simply borrowed that for convenience and there being no conflicting information available at the time. There were some other oddball ship plans floating around then, like the USS Churchhill and the "Centurian Class" 1701-D.

I remember that Centurian Class. It was obviously drawn by someone from memory. There was a very inaccurate set of Grissom blueprints that were the same way when STIII came out.

 

[throwback]

For those who like the Ambassador-class prototype, there was a great illustration of it in the Ships of the Line Calendar.

 

[CharlieZardoz]

For those who like the Ambassador-class prototype, there was a great illustration of it in the Ships of the Line Calendar.

Indeed beautiful!

http://franksavage918.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/uss_ambassador_01.jpg

There is also an exceptional rendition of the Sternbach version as well someone did.


http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=100668&d=1354189058

I like both designs really though accept the latter as the "canon ship", it would have been nice to have seen this other Ambassador class utilized as something else in the Star Trek Universe as it deserved to stand on its own.

 

[Dukhat]

While I think there is a slight possibility of adding Ambassadors or Constellation or even New Orleans into the mix (very slight), I don't expect them to come up with new designs for Apollo, Hokule'a, Rigel and the like.

No, I don't expect them to either. But if Mr. Okuda is reading this, hopefully it might light a spark...

That said there are some beautiful fan renditions of these mysterious ships on the internet.

I wouldn't call most of those designs "beautiful" by a long shot. Most of them are just kitbashes, some aren't all that different from the canon ships they were kitbashed from, and the Drake especially is just a photo of the Enterprise-D that's been badly photoshopped, never mind that it should look much older than that based on it's registry number.

That said we massively off the original topic of the Horatio! LOL :P

Yeah, sorry about that. When I talk about Trek ships that tends to happen

I like both designs really though accept the latter as the "canon ship", it would have been nice to have seen this other Ambassador class utilized as something else in the Star Trek Universe as it deserved to stand on its own.

I like Probert's original version too (but I'm biased because I like all Probert's work), and I've always speculated it would make a good Renaissance class starship. But as for the Ent-C design, I also prefer Sternbach's version. The Ambassador class as envisioned on the screen is probably my favorite Trek ship design, matched only by the Ent-D, and it's a damn shame it saw hardly any screen time on the various Trek series.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Aside - in an older RPG history, my character was assigned to the USS Horatio for seven years, from 2356 to 2363. I started there as a junior operations officer, ultimately running the ops department before taking an extended LOA to take advanced command track courses at the Academy (with a promise from Captain Keel that once I returned I'd be in line to become his next XO). The guy who replaced me ended up being the one who brought those parasites to the ship, ultimately resulting in her destruction. Guilt trip ahoy.

Back to the idea of the Horatio as an Ambassador variant of the Probert design, I'd also say no. Perhaps at the time they had intended for her to be as such (in dialogue she was only referred to as a heavy cruiser), of coruse they had no intention to build a model for the episode we saw, so it could have really been anything. However, the infancy of the TNG-verse at the time suggests that whoever wrote Worf's dialogue could have been reading the fanon of the time and was thinking that the Horatio would be the equivalent of the Constitution Heavy Cruiser in terms of her capabilities and import for her era. When Okuda and co. retroactively made her an Ambassador class and the same class as the Enterprise-C, of course it would fit.

Mark

 

[Timo]

It's true they used stock footage of the Enterprise-C in one shot, but the footage of the Excalibur actually shot for the episode, namely the wide shot of the fleet, clearly shows her to be of the later variant type.

The Excalibur was definitely a variant. I mean they even changed the decals on the model for it.

The thing is, all the work on the Excalibur for "Redemption II" was "wasted", because we never saw any of those decals on screen. There's nothing to indicate that the variant vessel seen in the fleet scene would be the Excalibur, as opposed to some generic Ambassador. We learn the names and registries of some of the 23 ships that eventually reach the border, but not all of them... Only seventeen are listed on the graphic we see, and even of those, most are never seen on screen and given a canonical class identity.

The FASA Ambassador design was included because it was referenced in the dialogue of "Conspiracy," along with the Paine class frigate from the same book.

Yup, FASA did the standard unimaginative thing of deciding that any ship mentioned by name must be the class ship, hence the "Paine class". They never did a "Renegade class", though...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CharlieZardoz]

Well for me personally I consider "canon" to be ultimately the intent of the creators rather than what appears on screen (for the most part). Otherwise all the retcons Star Trek has would be difficult to explain. But I'm happy to believe that whatever Mike Okuka and co. say is canon is canon. But it's tricky, I will happily believe that the Zhukov is NCC-26136 and not 62136 even though the model said so (and misspelled the name), I'll happy take that as an error as it wasn't seen anywhere onscreen and then later was changed. I also believe that the Hood was always ncc-42296 and the 2541 never happened and neither was there a nebula class Melbourne despite the model being made and destroyed. That said the "Brittain" is a little harder to explain due to the massive closeup of the name it's hard for me to say the ship was supposed to be "Brattain" when it's staring you right in the face. So yeah it's a case by case basis but getting back to the Excalibur, I am pretty comfortable that the intent was that the ship was to be identical to the Zhukov and Yamaguchi. Whether the Horatio was also a variant is still open to interpretation as it's registry number is in the 10,000's so it could have been like the C but I'm still leaning to the idea that it had been upgraded just like the Zhukov/Yamaguchi.

The changes to the Ambassador class could be likened to the changes the Excelsior received between Star Trek III and VI also the upgrade of the Constitution class as well. So yeah I'm starting to feel that they were probably all subsequently altered some time before TNG and the destruction of the C.

That said, this guy has another argument and it is convincing

http://www.stevepugh.net/fleet/ambassador.html

 

[Timo]

Well for me personally I consider "canon" to be ultimately the intent of the creators rather than what appears on screen (for the most part). Otherwise all the retcons Star Trek has would be difficult to explain.

But writer intent in Trek is typically far more obscure and contradictory than the end result - because for every aired adventure, there are a dozen conflicting ideas, from the writers of that episode, from the writers of earlier episodes that this one derives from, and from the writers of later episodes that derive from this one. What we see is the refined outcome of all this mulling.

Having two Ambassadors in "Redemption II", rather than one that changes configuration in mid-flight, seems simple enough an interpretation of what we actually see... Anything only seen behind the scenes, or in a book somewhere, exists in a separate universe that should not be allowed to confuse us. After all, the real writer intent is to get money anyway, and money isn't part of the modern Trek universe.

Admittedly, in that model of viewing Trek, we can't even tell what the registry number of the Horatio might be, so whether she's first batch, second batch, third batch or the rare pink three-and-a-half-nacelled variant is left even more obscure than otherwise.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

Two Ambassadors are possible, although could be confusing during battle maneuvers and there is probably some attempt at avoiding such overlaps by Starfleet Operations unless in situations of dire need (like a Borg attack, neutral zone incursion, etc). Two Ambassador classes co-existing at the same time, however, not as likely.

 

[Timo]

FWIW, the FASA ship wouldn't result in overlap as such, because there was no FASA USS Ambassador. Rather, the class ship was one USS Ambassador Hardin, and the rest of the names were also in-jokes camouflaged as the names of politicians or other leading figures.

So far, we have every reason to believe that the class of which the Horatio was part had a ship named USS Ambassador as the class ship. Clearly the class isn't named thematically, as the known names are not ones of known ambassadors (Gandhi might fit with a bit of stretching, but not Horatio herself unless we postulate a fictional Ambassador Horatio, and Enterprise would certainly break the pattern). But we could always speculate that "Ambassador class" is Starfleet shorthand for the class launched by USS Ambassador Nixon, just like "New Orleans class" supposedly is shorthand for the class launched by USS City of New Orleans (yes, I know, just another in-joke in the Encyclopedia, but so many take it seriously)...

As for the general concept of overlapping classes, the Royal Navy has to struggle with that often enough: it always has a County class, a Town class, a Duke class, a Tribal class and a River class to juggle, and it's sometimes a very close call to get the last member of the previous County class stricken from strength before the next County class is introduced...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CharlieZardoz]

Admittedly, in that model of viewing Trek, we can't even tell what the registry number of the Horatio might be, so whether she's first batch, second batch, third batch or the rare pink three-and-a-half-nacelled variant is left even more obscure than otherwise.

Timo Saloniemi

Don't you mean the Niagara class? Ugly thing hehehe

No way of really knowing what ships make up a fleet really. The battle to retake DS9 supposedly had Olympic class ships in the fleet (according to the defiant screenshots), so really it is quite circumstantial and wouldn't be surprised if a few Constellation class and Ambassador class ships were there supposed to be somewhere in the background as well.