What ever happened to the Stargazer?

[Christopher]

Here's the basic outline from ... The Buried Age:

Spoiler: The Novels

22 years later, she was ambushed by a Ferengi vessel, which got a lucky shot and severely damaged the ship. Picard used the 'Picard Manuever' to fool the Ferengi and destroyed them (also a lucky shot), but the Stargazer's damage was too severe. IIRC, the autodestruct had been disabled, so they set the Stargazer to plunge into a gas giant and abandoned ship. By a total fluke, the Stargazer's course slungshot it into orbit instead of being pulled in by the planet's gravity, and DaiMon Bok found it when investigating the incident.

Close, but just to clarify:

Spoiler: Buried Age

They never made a stable orbit around the giant planet to begin with, since they were knocked out of warp in its proximity by the attack, so its orbit was decaying to begin with. And they abandoned ship because of the fires onboard, with their intention being to vent atmosphere to smother the fires and then return, but there was too much damage and a radiation leak, so return was impossible. And instead of a slingshot into orbit, the ship sort of "skipped" off the upper atmosphere like a stone skipping on water (something that does really happen with meteoroids sometimes), temporarily delaying its fall into the Jovian; it would've fallen in for good if the Ferengi hadn't shown up at just the right time.

I don't mind telling you, it took a lot of thought to figure out a reason why they'd abandon a ship and believe it to have been destroyed when it actually wasn't. There's a lot about "The Battle" that was a struggle to make sense of.

 

[SeerSGB]

^

Weeee, another Stargazer/Constellation Class fan! They are so rare to find! Hehe. I love the Constellation Class and I was very pleased when they showed more Constellation Class vessels on TNG. ^^

And the Stargazer... oooh, I somehow hope she is still there, waiting for Jean-Luc to command her again one day. Hey, I can still dream, can't I?

Count in another one, I love the design. One of the better "Lost Era" designs to come out of TNG.

I think the design suffers from not being shown in a really flattering light in TNG. With the Stargazer were given a burned out wreck of a ship that had to be abandoned by her crew; with the Hathaway Geordi talks about the warp engines in the class having some sort of defect (been years since I saw the episode, so I can't recall the exact problem with the engines). It's one of those classes that was meant to make us go "Damn, how far they've come "X years"."

 

[Timo]

What LaForge says is that the old Avidyne engines were "archaic by [2360s] standards" and "touchy".

Since the combat exercise at that point is not expected to make use of warp drive at all, LaForge is either speaking of the impulse engines or of the powerplant. I'd rather that his language were precise enough to separate "engine" from "powerplant", and that the Avidynes were the impulse engines.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Red Ranger]

People:

I hear why some of you have love for the Stargazer. And I hear why using the familiar Constellation-class might've stretched in-universe credibility a tad. I would just point out that we saw three other designs that were more than 80 years old in TNG: Oberth-class, Excelsior-class, and Miranda-class.

The reason I thought seeing Picard's old ship as a Connie would be to show he's a bridge from one generation to the next. He did say in Relics that his old ship was always in danger of flying apart. Would make sense given the older design.

Also, you could have updated the nacelles so they had the blue glow of the Galaxy-class and other 24th century starships. Oh well! Still don't like the Stargazer, folks!

Red Ranger

 

[Tribble puncher]

I'm a fan of the design. Aren't there other constellation class ships still in service, The U.S.S. Victory, I actually think the size and the shape of the ship would lend itself quite well to refits...

 

[MikeS]

Indeed, I can't believe Starfleet would give captaincy of a vessel to some junior upstart who just happened to save the day. Certainly that junior upstart would earn brownie points towards an eventual command job, and it is even possible that he would be remembered so fondly by those associated with the Stargazer that these powerful people would let him have that particular ship later on. But a direct jump to skipper just because you temporarily replace the deceased former one? Not all that believable.

Timo Saloniemi

See Star Trek '09.

 

[The Castellan]

Indeed, I can't believe Starfleet would give captaincy of a vessel to some junior upstart who just happened to save the day. Certainly that junior upstart would earn brownie points towards an eventual command job, and it is even possible that he would be remembered so fondly by those associated with the Stargazer that these powerful people would let him have that particular ship later on. But a direct jump to skipper just because you temporarily replace the deceased former one? Not all that believable.

Timo Saloniemi

Tell that to JJ Abrahms.

 

[The Castellan]

^

Weeee, another Stargazer/Constellation Class fan! They are so rare to find! Hehe. I love the Constellation Class and I was very pleased when they showed more Constellation Class vessels on TNG. ^^

And the Stargazer... oooh, I somehow hope she is still there, waiting for Jean-Luc to command her again one day. Hey, I can still dream, can't I?

Same here, love the design, and it's great for deep space exploration. In fact, I hope, that I can get a good Constellation model for the 3D comic I am planning to make.

 

[R. Star]

Given the original timestamp of this thread is in 08, I think busting his balls over having not seen the 09 movie is rather harsh.

 

[The Castellan]

Given the original timestamp of this thread is in 08, I think busting his balls over having not seen the 09 movie is rather harsh.

Who's busting balls?

I saw a post and responded to it is all.

 

[R. Star]

Two people bumping a four year old thread to point out a contradictory fact in a movie made only three years ago seems unfounded at best.

 

[Christopher]

^But they're not the ones who bumped the thread. Tribble puncher bumped the thread to compliment the Stargazer's design. Other people saw what looked to them like a new thread and read it without noticing the timestamp, which is a common enough oversight.

 

[Timo]

And in the end, Starfleet of the STXI sort apparently would promote Picard straight not just to permanent CO but also to Captain rank for a relatively mundane performing of his duty. Certainly I'm the first to support the view that the fictional side of Trek must be analyzed in light of the latest knowledge, rather than in terms of what was being thought and written during the actual introduction of a Trek factoid...

It could be argued, though, that Picard never saved the Earth or the life of a celebrated fellow officer, and thus wouldn't receive the same reward nuKirk got.

Of course, it could be argued that nuKirk never saved Earth, either...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BriGuy]

It's now a gift shop and restaurant.

Quite right.

But I heard they once got in trouble for not having a sneeze guard over the salad bar.

 

[MikeS]

^But they're not the ones who bumped the thread. Tribble puncher bumped the thread to compliment the Stargazer's design. Other people saw what looked to them like a new thread and read it without noticing the timestamp, which is a common enough oversight.

Thank-you.

I don't generally take notice of the time stamp and thought this was a new thread. Apologies if anyone was offended, it was only an observation.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Oddly I missed this thread too, and I love threads like these.

Decomissioned would make most sense. The Constellation-class was still in service at the time, but the ship had been repaired by a then-new race to the Federation. I suspect that Starfleet Intelligence would have scoured the ship for a while to see if Bok had made any other modifications, investigate their repair methods, etc.

Once they discovered what they could, which given the apparent technological level of the Ferengi wouldn't have taken long, the Stargazer would've most likely been sent to a depot like Qualor II to sit for spare parts too big or complicated or unwieldy to replicate for the rest of the class still in active service. The ship had been damaged enough to warrant abandonment (if not scuttling) by Picard, so I'd imagine the SCE would have also evaluated it for return to service and deemed it unworthy of the effort. Presumably this wouldn't be TOO many years as the class is old. So after that, she'd be off to the scrap heap, used for wargames, target practice, or the museum IF there isn't an example of the class sitting there already.

Someone also mentioned that an old and small ship would be commanded by a lower rank than captain, but we all know this doesn't happen often. Grissom, Lantree, Saratoga, and Brittain were all similar-sized or smaller ships and they had Captains visibly wearing that rank insignia. Defiant, Yosemite and Prometheus (sic) had lower ranks in charge at whatever point, but those were more the exception than the rule.

Mark

 

[Christopher]

^Then again, we've often seen Starfleet treating rank rather flexibly and changing ranks and insignias to reflect current job status -- like Kirk going from admiral to captain (and Decker from captain to commander) in TMP, Data's two swift promotions in "Gambit," and of course the musical captain's chair of the 2009 movie. I've seen it said that Roddenberry (at least in the TNG era) thought of Starfleet ranks as more like job descriptions than a strict military hierarchy. So it's possible that someone in command of a ship could have the title and insignia of a captain while still being a lower or higher rank in every other respect.

Or something. I'm not even sure how that would work.

 

[Squiggy]

^Then again, we've often seen Starfleet treating rank rather flexibly and changing ranks and insignias to reflect current job status -- like Kirk going from admiral to captain (and Decker from captain to commander) in TMP, Data's two swift promotions in "Gambit,"...

You're confusing position with rank. Data was never promoted in Gambit. You might be confusing that with Chain of Command (S6) when Data was promoted to Executive Officer when Riker was sitting in time out. Data still carried the rank of Lt. Commander though.

Regarding TMP: yeah...that didn't make much sense.

 

[R. Star]

Well Roddenbery really didn't want to consider Starfleet a military, even when it so obviously was. You see less of that in late TNG, DS9 and VOY for example.

 

[Christopher]

You're confusing position with rank. Data was never promoted in Gambit. You might be confusing that with Chain of Command (S6) when Data was promoted to Executive Officer when Riker was sitting in time out. Data still carried the rank of Lt. Commander though.

I may be forgetting which episode Data was promoted in, but aside from that I'm not confusing anything; my whole point is that position and rank have been treated somewhat interchangeably in Trek, and that Roddenberry is on record as wanting it that way.