What ship class is the "consolation prize" assignment in the TNG era?
- Thread starter Mark_Nguyen
- Start date
The wreck of the U.S.S. Olympia from "The Sound of Her Voice" was made from the destroyed TMP Constitution class Enterprise saucer from The Search for Spock. It wasn't an Ambassador class ship.
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Nor was the USS Odyssey, and she used the same prop whilst exploding too. 
Mark
Mark
Nor was the USS Odyssey, and she used the same prop whilst exploding too.
Touché.
(Although I'm wondering where the idea that the Olympia being an Ambassador class came from.)
Back in the 90s I (and others) had posited exactly this in the old rec.arts.startrek.tech newsgroup, based on the aforementioned headcanon that we didn't see Ambassador-class ships because they were OUT THERE doing the long-range exploration missions they were supposedly designed for. There was no evidence of this in-universe or in production. Over the years it's come back now and again. Including here and here.
Mark
Mark
Yeah, I’ve heard that theory for many years, and it doesn’t quite fly for me. If the reason why we saw so few Ambassadors was because they were all away on deep space missions, then why didn’t we see any more Sovereign, Norway, New Orleans, Challenger, Springfield, Cheyenne, Freedom and Niagara classes, and the Centaur, Curry, Raging Queen and Yeager types, not to mention the 15 or so conjectural classes mentioned in the Encyclopedia, all of which were seen on screen even less, or not at all? Were they all away on deep space missions too?
The only real on-screen gauge we have to determine the bulk of Starfleet’s active duty ship classes as of the 2360’s-‘70’s are the DS9 fleet scenes. And those ships are only composed of primarily Excelsiors, Mirandas, Sabers, Steamrunners and Akiras with a smattering of Galaxies, Nebulas and Defiants. The latter three can be chalked up to their relative newness of the time period, which leaves an extremely odd combination of two extremely old classes mixed with three relatively newer classes.
But I digress. For the matter of the Ambassador, my head canon is that the class simply wasn’t all that popular and was phased out early. There weren’t even other ship classes which utilized its parts, unlike the Constitution, Excelsior and Galaxy classes. It was just a fluke that one of those ships happened to be given the Enterprise name and registry. It’s not an elegant theory, or even one that I particularly like, as I like the Ambassador class design. It’s just that in the absence of other evidence, what’s left leads me to logically assume the class didn’t live up to expectations, and not a lot of them were produced. This would explain why most of the ships (and the other above classes I mentioned) have registry numbers that are very close together, rather than the more spread out numbers of the Excelsior and Miranda classes, which seem to have proliferated more over the decades.
The only real on-screen gauge we have to determine the bulk of Starfleet’s active duty ship classes as of the 2360’s-‘70’s are the DS9 fleet scenes. And those ships are only composed of primarily Excelsiors, Mirandas, Sabers, Steamrunners and Akiras with a smattering of Galaxies, Nebulas and Defiants. The latter three can be chalked up to their relative newness of the time period, which leaves an extremely odd combination of two extremely old classes mixed with three relatively newer classes.
But I digress. For the matter of the Ambassador, my head canon is that the class simply wasn’t all that popular and was phased out early. There weren’t even other ship classes which utilized its parts, unlike the Constitution, Excelsior and Galaxy classes. It was just a fluke that one of those ships happened to be given the Enterprise name and registry. It’s not an elegant theory, or even one that I particularly like, as I like the Ambassador class design. It’s just that in the absence of other evidence, what’s left leads me to logically assume the class didn’t live up to expectations, and not a lot of them were produced. This would explain why most of the ships (and the other above classes I mentioned) have registry numbers that are very close together, rather than the more spread out numbers of the Excelsior and Miranda classes, which seem to have proliferated more over the decades.
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The problem with the CGI fleet was that it was easier and faster for them to just scan the physical models they had available into CGI models rather than create new CGI designs from scratch. The physical filming models they had available were the Reliant from TWOK, Greg Jein's Excelsior from "Flashback," the Defiant, Enterprise-D, and the Nebula class (they also had the Voyager and Enterprise-E models but didn't use them in the fleet shots.) They were also able to get the Akira, Saber and Steamrunner CGI models from ILM, so with those eight classes, they felt they had enough ships to pad the fleet.
If they ever redo the VFX for DS9, I would love for them to create new ship designs for that fleet, but I doubt that will ever happen (the VFX update or the change in ship designs.)
If they ever redo the VFX for DS9, I would love for them to create new ship designs for that fleet, but I doubt that will ever happen (the VFX update or the change in ship designs.)
You mean like this:
I know, right? Goosebumps. EVERYWHERE.
Mark
I know, right? Goosebumps. EVERYWHERE.
Mark
Yah, me likey.
I agree. I’m sick of seeing 100 year old Klingon Birds of Prey and K’t’ingas.
In three sizes each.
I concur, they need to be properly scaled to the "correct-size" =D
I thought the Ambassador model was somehow damaged so that they couldn't use it again?
Kind of like why we never see any Norway-class ships after ST:FC - the CGI model was corrupted and unusable.
That was the in-real-life reason why we never saw it again. The closest we came to seeing the model again was at the end of Star Trek: Generations. The model was supposed to be refurbished by ILM to be used as one of the rescue ships leaving Veridian III, but because the refurbishment of the Nebula class model for that shot cost so much money, they opted to forgo that and used the Reliant and Grissom models instead.
