What Class Was 1701?
- Thread starter Tiberius
- Start date
You know, calling superficial and baseless rationalizations designed to sooth discomfort with inconsistency and ambiguity "schools of thought" is dignifying them for no justified reason.
Probably.. but I feel like causing shit tonight and hereby declare it's the first canon instance of a photon torpedo tube.
I thought that the term referred to the simulator itself. It was made to resemble the Enterprise, so the simulator is therefore Enterprise-class. The actual SHIP class is Constitution, though.
Probably.. but I feel like causing shit tonight and hereby declare it's the first canon instance of a photon torpedo tube.
Hah! I thought about that too. Or else some kind of Pods; escape, ion, anti-matter?
My turn to be clearer.
I wasn't disputing that he most likely got it from one of those Lincoln Enterprises clips. I was just saying that it wasn't a clip of anything that actually made it to air. The fact that there was some close up footage of that graphic makes it more likely that's how he got it.
I believe it is an exploded diagram of a portion of an aircraft's wing assembly. The upper left portion of the drawing below shows a similar one for a Piper:
Wasn't someone in the art department a pilot?
Hell, who on that show wasn't a pilot?
pmsl
Well, the plaque on the Bridge lists it as being a Starship Class -- that may have been the first idea they thought of.
When Matt Jeffries conceived of the designation system for the Enterprise, he based the 1701 on the fact that 1's and 7's were the most easily recognized numbers; the NCC was based on commercial aircraft tail-numbers: In the US, prior to 1951, commercial aircraft had "NC", and after that "N", and the Soviet Union had "CCCC" -- Matt Jeffries decided to mix them up arriving at "NCC". He eventually created a system in which the "17" emphasized it was the 17th cruiser class built, and the "01" was the first ship in the class. Being that the vessel was to be named the Enterprise, the ship could be argued to be the Enterprise Class.
At some point in Star Trek, there was a diagram on a starbase which listed a vessel designated the USS Constitution, which has a hull number of NCC-1700. In 1968, the vessel was first referred to as the Constitution Class and that has largely been the established canon ever since.
When Matt Jeffries conceived of the designation system for the Enterprise, he based the 1701 on the fact that 1's and 7's were the most easily recognized numbers; the NCC was based on commercial aircraft tail-numbers: In the US, prior to 1951, commercial aircraft had "NC", and after that "N", and the Soviet Union had "CCCC" -- Matt Jeffries decided to mix them up arriving at "NCC". He eventually created a system in which the "17" emphasized it was the 17th cruiser class built, and the "01" was the first ship in the class. Being that the vessel was to be named the Enterprise, the ship could be argued to be the Enterprise Class.
At some point in Star Trek, there was a diagram on a starbase which listed a vessel designated the USS Constitution, which has a hull number of NCC-1700. In 1968, the vessel was first referred to as the Constitution Class and that has largely been the established canon ever since.
...To be sure, there never was a diagram linking NCC-1700 with the name Constitution, and we had to wait until TNG to see a ship shaped like the (movie) Enterprise appear with the lettering NCC-1700 (but still without a name) in a diagram.
And of course, the class identity of a ship may change during her service time, thanks to refits or bureaucratic reshuffling. Fans have come up with an interesting succession of class names for Kirk's ship, possibly doing a full circle eventually so that the launching vessel for both the inaugural class and the final modification is the Constitution, NCC-1700. For all we know, the ship indeed belonged to the Starship class during TOS, to the Enterprise class during ST1-3, and (in her second incarnation) to the Constitution class again during ST4-6.
Timo Saloniemi
And of course, the class identity of a ship may change during her service time, thanks to refits or bureaucratic reshuffling. Fans have come up with an interesting succession of class names for Kirk's ship, possibly doing a full circle eventually so that the launching vessel for both the inaugural class and the final modification is the Constitution, NCC-1700. For all we know, the ship indeed belonged to the Starship class during TOS, to the Enterprise class during ST1-3, and (in her second incarnation) to the Constitution class again during ST4-6.
Timo Saloniemi
We see Scotty reading a schematic of the Enterprise in ST6 that is clearly labelled "Constitution class".
If we accept the widely known theory that the Enterprise A was a renamed Yorktown (or some other ship), then it stands to reason that the A is also refitted from the design we saw in TOS. This would make no functional difference between the First movie enterprise and the second. Sure, different bridge module and all that, but not any significant differences. If that is true, then both the first movie Enterprise and the A were the same class. And if the A was a constitution class, then so was the original one.
If we accept the widely known theory that the Enterprise A was a renamed Yorktown (or some other ship), then it stands to reason that the A is also refitted from the design we saw in TOS. This would make no functional difference between the First movie enterprise and the second. Sure, different bridge module and all that, but not any significant differences. If that is true, then both the first movie Enterprise and the A were the same class. And if the A was a constitution class, then so was the original one.
Another item to add to the mix:
The plaque was made in '65, for the second pilot, while the designation of the Enterprise as a Constitution Class starship didn't occur until the show was already in production, with the plaque remaining as it was because 1) they had more important things to spend those very tight budget dollars on, 2) hardly anybody could read that thing on the tv sets of the day, and 3) if folks were scrutinizing that plaque hard enough to read it on their 19" Zenith, they clearly weren't paying attention to the story, meaning they had bigger problems than a freakin' piece of background dressing.
Translating that into an in-universe explanation, when the ship was launched, she was a Starship class vessel, and the plaque was made to read accordingly. Later, some brainiac at Starfleet Command thought it'd be a nifty idea to redesignate all the various ship classes, and thus the Enterprise became a Constitution class starship. Only this time, they never got around to having a corrected dedication plaque made up (either to keep a record of the ship as she was originally launched, or they just never got around to it).
The plaque was made in '65, for the second pilot, while the designation of the Enterprise as a Constitution Class starship didn't occur until the show was already in production, with the plaque remaining as it was because 1) they had more important things to spend those very tight budget dollars on, 2) hardly anybody could read that thing on the tv sets of the day, and 3) if folks were scrutinizing that plaque hard enough to read it on their 19" Zenith, they clearly weren't paying attention to the story, meaning they had bigger problems than a freakin' piece of background dressing.
Translating that into an in-universe explanation, when the ship was launched, she was a Starship class vessel, and the plaque was made to read accordingly. Later, some brainiac at Starfleet Command thought it'd be a nifty idea to redesignate all the various ship classes, and thus the Enterprise became a Constitution class starship. Only this time, they never got around to having a corrected dedication plaque made up (either to keep a record of the ship as she was originally launched, or they just never got around to it).
Perhaps she was a starship class (in terms of her role and mission), constitution designation (in terms of her design and abilities).
Then later on, they changed it so what used to be called "class" was then "type" (as in how the Galaxy class in an explorer) and designation became class.
Then later on, they changed it so what used to be called "class" was then "type" (as in how the Galaxy class in an explorer) and designation became class.
The USS Exeter got around that problem by covering up the offending plaque.
Before someone jumps all over this post to say that had to be done because it was a redress of the Enterprise bridge, please notice the
s.Why not? We see two completely different main powerplants - a massive difference that would completely occlude the trivial similarity of the outer hulls.
Whether this would result in a different class name would depend on other factors. A WWI coal-burning battleship refitted with oil boilers would be a totally new fighting machine, but if the first ship of the original design was also the first to be refitted, the bureaucratically appropriate thing would be to continue to call the refit by the original class name. Albeit with a "(II)" or somesuch added to the end in some contexts.
Now, NCC-1701 might have been the first and perhaps only TOS-style heavy cruiser to be fitted to the specs we saw in ST:TMP through ST3. That'd make her Enterprise class. But the fiasco of that refit might have prompted another attempt, with lesser alterations to the shuttle handling areas but also with a more ambitious and more successful warp powerplant refit, and the first TOS-style heavy cruiser to undergo that could have been NCC-1700, USS Constitution. The NCC-1701-A could then represent that standard of refitting and carry the class name Constitution. Or perhaps Constitution (II) for as long as some ships of the original, unrefitted Constitution class remained in service...
It would be a bit of a coincidence if the various Enterprises always happened to be of the same standard of refitting as the Constitution, of course. So perhaps this coincidence only happened once, by which I mean that the heavy cruisers were originally some different class inaugurated by, say, USS Pompous, and we caught Kirk's ship during the time she happened to represent the same standard of refitting as the more or less randomly chosen USS Constitution, both of which had originally been of Pompous class. There's no specific requirement for USS Constitution, NCC-1700, to have been the first ship ever to be built to these rough heavy cruiser specs, even if and when we decide to believe that a USS Constitution, NCC-1700, did exist and did spearhead (among others) the refit of which NCC-1701-A was part.
Timo Saloniemi
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