This is limited to the productions of 1966-2005 with a strong preference to on-screen material, thus keeping more or less to an Okuda-centric list for consistency.
So it occurred to me that I'd never sat down and worked up a year-based registry tracking list. I've had pieces and parts, and I've done class-specific stuff before (like the pic below where I was looking at commissioning plaques) and studies of the various starship lists but this particular target was uniquely different.
The idea here is to get a firm sense of where the highest registries land year-by-year (meaning the earliest appearance of the highest registry known) as best as can be determined. The working theory is that the shipbuilding rate can meet, but can not exceed, the rate of NCC increase, at least for frontline starships.
Yes, I'm aware some people reject chronological registries, but considering they increase in a pretty consistent way (not counting the "first season weirdness" that populates most of the "mismatch" entries in that image above), I find that point of view impossible to agree with. I'm certainly open to a some skipping or a bunch of NAR nonsense and there is, of course, the question of when a registry is applied (which could itself vary). Is it at the initial order, or at the laying of the keel, or at the end of construction, or at launch, or at commission? Are seemingly 'held' registries like NCC-2000 common?
That said, those are all topics that are somewhat outside the point of this thread. This thread is intended mostly to capture data like "oh hey, we know that such-and-such ship has registry NCC-12345 and there's a reference in this episode to it doing stuff in such-and-such year, so that registry makes sense as being valid for such-and-such year." Certain other concepts naturally follow, like avoiding the assumption of new ships unless it makes sense, and so on.
I have a spreadsheet with years, direct-evidence registries, alternate registries (covering either alternative directs or semi-sketchy stuff), and entries for conjecturally dated registries. The list is somewhat extensive, though sparse across a number of years/decades. For instance, here's basically the entire 22nd Century from the founding of the UFP:
In both those cases, I rather doubt the ships were freshly registered. These were Daedalus Class birds, fast builds from wartime, to my way of thinking, in a time when I presume a lot of ships had been absorbed into a ragtag UFP fleet. In other words, not a whole lot of use, there . . . a new build of 2168 could probably have a wide variety of possible registries.
For the 23rd Century, I have the Constellation 1017 conjectured at circa 2210 (which is on the late side of the possibilities), Enterprise 1701 at 2245 per Gene, and the next entry is 2257 as a conjectural date for when Kirk and Finney were on the Republic 1371. (That's based on 2233 for Kirk plus 18 for Academy entry plus four for graduation plus a couple of "some years later" for when they were posted there), though of course 1371 is a reversal (and marked as such on my spreadsheet) compared to 1701.)
Next up:
TOS just doesn't show us anything in the 18xx area (sorry 1831 truthers), much less 19xx, but both should really have existed by the time of TOS (and yes, I think the Reliant and Bozeman ought to have launched in the 2260s, and I think they looked pretty much just like they did in the 2270s/2280s.)
I next have 2278's reversion to the Bozeman 1941, and after that it's 2285 with the Excelsior 2000 and the Hathaway 2583 side-by-side. Given the Entente 2120 existing in 2272 I'm perfectly content with the Excelsior being demonstrably out of order in two different ways, mind you. I'm just not super-keen on taking the "eighty-year-old star cruiser Hathaway" quite so literally . . . I've elsewhere suggested the Hathaway ought to be closer to 2289 . . . but then I need Hathaway out of the way so Stargazer's consoles bug me less so whatever.
The 2290s entries are reversals . . . Constellation 1974, Ahwahnee 2048, Jenolxn 2010 . . . then we finally hear about the Stargazer 2893 but only waaaaaay out in 2333 because Picard takes over. The ship had maybe 35 years of history prior to him, but you'd never know. I also feel like Ambassador Class ships should appear somewhere in here but I just don't have any with usable registries associated with dates . . . even the Ambassador 10521 isn't really on screen anywhere for me to use, and other than the Enterprise-C destruction there's nothing dating them at all other than the 26xxx registries.
And yes, the period circa 2300 is when registries would really have to go nuts. I think (but cannot find where) I'd calculated before that at the typical pre-TOS/TOS/TMP rate, the TNG era ships ought to have registries in the NCC-4100 range, as I recall, but instead we're at ten times more. It's certainly possible they decided to either (1) avoid advertising actual starship numbers, a la the classic German tank problem, or (2) that they started absorbing alien fleets and giving them registry numbers, or (3) registering shuttlecraft, or (4) some combination thereof. But, Voyager alone could drive them into six-digit registries, so maybe that last one isn't it.
Anyway, skipping a bunch of empty years, we get these:
The Galaxy is placed in 2363 based on the Enterprise plaques and their launch / commissioning dates, but, again, this is not indicative of ship commissionings or constructions otherwise . . . any of these ships (arguably including the Galaxy) could've been very much older than the years on the left. While there are a number of mentions of other ships (e.g. the Rutledge, the Okinawa, the Strata) during these periods, none of those have registries attached.
As for the others, there's really no way to know whether these registries were old or new at the time, to be honest, so other than knowing that they can't be lower than 19386 in 2338, they tell us little.
We can try to calculate off of a linear progression from the Hathaway to the Galaxy, for instance, but that's just guesswork. For reference, though, it's 872.36 NCCs per year . . . that'd put NCC-5000 in 2288, NCC-10000 in 2293, NCC-20000 in 2305, NCC-40000 in 2327, NCC-60000 in 2350. Unfortunately, if we continued that, it would also put NCC-74000 in 2366 and NCC-80000 in 2373, which isn't how it works:
We get a lot of registries during this period, but many are old or smaller and don't tell us much of interest . . . we don't get "oh hey here's the brand new ship so-and-so" other than the Enterprise. The one bright spot and surprise is the Bradbury, mentioned in "Menage a Trois" and then with data in "Brothers" . . . technically these could be different ships, but when separated by only a year I tend not to want to assume such a thing. Notably, the Bradbury as 72307 puts the Equinox at 2366 or 2367, too, which I'd estimated before based on other details but this is closer, numerically, than I'd had previously.
Moving on, the Sutherland of 2368 was in for repairs, for instance, suggesting she'd been around a bit . . . and yet the "new" runabouts (which never should've been a new concept in-universe and certainly not registered NCC like full-size starships) are pretty low, yet far exceeded by Intrepid.
There are some ships that are tantalizing but don't work. Ahwahnee 71620 versus 73620 . . . I come down at 71620 per the most visible thing, and that's also from "Redemption" rather than the basically entirely invisible BoBW appearance.
For 2371 there's Defiant 74205 and Valiant 74210, presumably built more or less as a pair or with the latter registry held. Chronologically, the Defiant has been a bit confusing to me for awhile, which is all I'm gonna say about that for the moment.
Finally, we have:
2375 also featured the Insurrection scout, 75227.
That's it.
Outside of that, am I missing any significant entries?
So it occurred to me that I'd never sat down and worked up a year-based registry tracking list. I've had pieces and parts, and I've done class-specific stuff before (like the pic below where I was looking at commissioning plaques) and studies of the various starship lists but this particular target was uniquely different.
The idea here is to get a firm sense of where the highest registries land year-by-year (meaning the earliest appearance of the highest registry known) as best as can be determined. The working theory is that the shipbuilding rate can meet, but can not exceed, the rate of NCC increase, at least for frontline starships.
Yes, I'm aware some people reject chronological registries, but considering they increase in a pretty consistent way (not counting the "first season weirdness" that populates most of the "mismatch" entries in that image above), I find that point of view impossible to agree with. I'm certainly open to a some skipping or a bunch of NAR nonsense and there is, of course, the question of when a registry is applied (which could itself vary). Is it at the initial order, or at the laying of the keel, or at the end of construction, or at launch, or at commission? Are seemingly 'held' registries like NCC-2000 common?
That said, those are all topics that are somewhat outside the point of this thread. This thread is intended mostly to capture data like "oh hey, we know that such-and-such ship has registry NCC-12345 and there's a reference in this episode to it doing stuff in such-and-such year, so that registry makes sense as being valid for such-and-such year." Certain other concepts naturally follow, like avoiding the assumption of new ships unless it makes sense, and so on.
I have a spreadsheet with years, direct-evidence registries, alternate registries (covering either alternative directs or semi-sketchy stuff), and entries for conjecturally dated registries. The list is somewhat extensive, though sparse across a number of years/decades. For instance, here's basically the entire 22nd Century from the founding of the UFP:
2167 | NCC-173 | Essex | “Power Play”[TNG5] |
2168 | NCC-176 | Horizon | “A Piece of the Action”[TOS] + DS9 Sisko Office Model |
In both those cases, I rather doubt the ships were freshly registered. These were Daedalus Class birds, fast builds from wartime, to my way of thinking, in a time when I presume a lot of ships had been absorbed into a ragtag UFP fleet. In other words, not a whole lot of use, there . . . a new build of 2168 could probably have a wide variety of possible registries.
For the 23rd Century, I have the Constellation 1017 conjectured at circa 2210 (which is on the late side of the possibilities), Enterprise 1701 at 2245 per Gene, and the next entry is 2257 as a conjectural date for when Kirk and Finney were on the Republic 1371. (That's based on 2233 for Kirk plus 18 for Academy entry plus four for graduation plus a couple of "some years later" for when they were posted there), though of course 1371 is a reversal (and marked as such on my spreadsheet) compared to 1701.)
Next up:
2267 | NCC-1718 | n/a | “Court Martial”[TOS] |
2268 | NCC-1764 | Defiant | “The Tholian Web”[TOS] |
2269 | | | |
2270 | | | |
2271 | | | |
2272 | NCC-2120 | Entente | ST:TMP Epsilon IX Chatter |
TOS just doesn't show us anything in the 18xx area (sorry 1831 truthers), much less 19xx, but both should really have existed by the time of TOS (and yes, I think the Reliant and Bozeman ought to have launched in the 2260s, and I think they looked pretty much just like they did in the 2270s/2280s.)
I next have 2278's reversion to the Bozeman 1941, and after that it's 2285 with the Excelsior 2000 and the Hathaway 2583 side-by-side. Given the Entente 2120 existing in 2272 I'm perfectly content with the Excelsior being demonstrably out of order in two different ways, mind you. I'm just not super-keen on taking the "eighty-year-old star cruiser Hathaway" quite so literally . . . I've elsewhere suggested the Hathaway ought to be closer to 2289 . . . but then I need Hathaway out of the way so Stargazer's consoles bug me less so whatever.
The 2290s entries are reversals . . . Constellation 1974, Ahwahnee 2048, Jenolxn 2010 . . . then we finally hear about the Stargazer 2893 but only waaaaaay out in 2333 because Picard takes over. The ship had maybe 35 years of history prior to him, but you'd never know. I also feel like Ambassador Class ships should appear somewhere in here but I just don't have any with usable registries associated with dates . . . even the Ambassador 10521 isn't really on screen anywhere for me to use, and other than the Enterprise-C destruction there's nothing dating them at all other than the 26xxx registries.
And yes, the period circa 2300 is when registries would really have to go nuts. I think (but cannot find where) I'd calculated before that at the typical pre-TOS/TOS/TMP rate, the TNG era ships ought to have registries in the NCC-4100 range, as I recall, but instead we're at ten times more. It's certainly possible they decided to either (1) avoid advertising actual starship numbers, a la the classic German tank problem, or (2) that they started absorbing alien fleets and giving them registry numbers, or (3) registering shuttlecraft, or (4) some combination thereof. But, Voyager alone could drive them into six-digit registries, so maybe that last one isn't it.
Anyway, skipping a bunch of empty years, we get these:
2338 | NCC-19386 | Tripoli | “Datalore”[TNG1] + “Unification, Pt. I”[TNG5] | | |
2346 | NCC-38907 | Intrepid | “Sins of the Father”[TNG3] | | |
2347 | NAR-32450 | Raven | “Dark Frontier”[VOY5] et al. | | |
2349 | NCC-43730 | Wyoming | “Flashback”[VOY3] + "In the Pale Moonlight"[DSN6] casualty list | | |
2358 | NCC-53847 | Pegasus | “The Pegasus”[TNG7] | | |
2363 | NCC-70637 | Galaxy | “Encounter at Farpoint”[TNG1] | | |
The Galaxy is placed in 2363 based on the Enterprise plaques and their launch / commissioning dates, but, again, this is not indicative of ship commissionings or constructions otherwise . . . any of these ships (arguably including the Galaxy) could've been very much older than the years on the left. While there are a number of mentions of other ships (e.g. the Rutledge, the Okinawa, the Strata) during these periods, none of those have registries attached.
As for the others, there's really no way to know whether these registries were old or new at the time, to be honest, so other than knowing that they can't be lower than 19386 in 2338, they tell us little.
We can try to calculate off of a linear progression from the Hathaway to the Galaxy, for instance, but that's just guesswork. For reference, though, it's 872.36 NCCs per year . . . that'd put NCC-5000 in 2288, NCC-10000 in 2293, NCC-20000 in 2305, NCC-40000 in 2327, NCC-60000 in 2350. Unfortunately, if we continued that, it would also put NCC-74000 in 2366 and NCC-80000 in 2373, which isn't how it works:
2366 | NX-72307 | Bradbury | “Menage a Trois”[TNG3] + “Brothers”[TNG4] display | SMS-21166 |
| 2367 | ||||
2368 | NCC-72015 | Sutherland | “Redemption, Pt. II”[TNG5] | |
2369 | NCC-72452 | Rio Grande | “Emissary”[DSN1] | |
2370 | NCC-74600 | Intrepid | “Caretaker”[VOY1] + “Force of Nature”[TNG7] + ST:NEM | Precedes Voyager 74656 … could be 2371 if the 2370 example was another ship, but that is unlikely |
We get a lot of registries during this period, but many are old or smaller and don't tell us much of interest . . . we don't get "oh hey here's the brand new ship so-and-so" other than the Enterprise. The one bright spot and surprise is the Bradbury, mentioned in "Menage a Trois" and then with data in "Brothers" . . . technically these could be different ships, but when separated by only a year I tend not to want to assume such a thing. Notably, the Bradbury as 72307 puts the Equinox at 2366 or 2367, too, which I'd estimated before based on other details but this is closer, numerically, than I'd had previously.
Moving on, the Sutherland of 2368 was in for repairs, for instance, suggesting she'd been around a bit . . . and yet the "new" runabouts (which never should've been a new concept in-universe and certainly not registered NCC like full-size starships) are pretty low, yet far exceeded by Intrepid.
There are some ships that are tantalizing but don't work. Ahwahnee 71620 versus 73620 . . . I come down at 71620 per the most visible thing, and that's also from "Redemption" rather than the basically entirely invisible BoBW appearance.
For 2371 there's Defiant 74205 and Valiant 74210, presumably built more or less as a pair or with the latter registry held. Chronologically, the Defiant has been a bit confusing to me for awhile, which is all I'm gonna say about that for the moment.
Finally, we have:
2374 | NX-74913 | Prometheus | “Message in a Bottle”[VOY4] |
2375 | NCC-75633 | Sao Paulo | (DS9) |
2375 also featured the Insurrection scout, 75227.
That's it.
Outside of that, am I missing any significant entries?
so I'm very pleased that you started this thread and I shall be watching and nodding along, probably 
