Miranda Class in the Dominion War.

It is possible that the Klingon War presented the flaws of the older design and Starfleet and been shifting to a better design. Or most of the starship with that design were destroyed in the war, and Starfleet is scrambling to build new starships in the 2260s, thus a potential for the appearance of the Miranda-class starships in the SNWs era.

 

Its certainly possible. Though, the further back we place the Mirandas, the less believable it becomes for them to be used for anything other than canon fodder for the Dominion War, which in itself makes little sense given the Saratoga was a fully crewed starship with TNG style LCARS displays (I just realised this ship was destroyed at wolf 359 but its only several years before the Dominion Conflict began). Its feasible that only the younger Miranda Class ships were refurbished and brought out of mothballs, whilst any Miranda space-frames still intact from the 2260s would either still be lying dormant in junkyards or sent away for non-starfleet service as they simply couldn't operate reliably enough to go into combat.

 

Additionally, if the design lineage went from the DSC Season 1 ships to the SNW/TOS style, then that leaves the DSC ships as outliers as we go from very TOS looking nacelles of the NX-01 to a variety of strange blocky nacelles and then back to the familiar TOS/SNW style. I would like to think the TOS style ships came first and the Starfleet ships seen in DSC Season 1 were a fleet that was specifically built for the Klingon War, hence their strange looks and wild varied design aesthetics. If each class was built specifically for a particular combat role, it would do a lot to explain their differences from the rest of the fleet. The USS Discovery though was stated to be a science ship though which throws a wrench in the works.

 

Depends on how useful the hull design is for Starfleet's purposes. If the first Miranda-class starships start coming out in the early 2260s but are found to be adaptable enough to keep building them into say the 2320s than you would have a wide range of starships with the same or similar hulls. That might track with the Constitutions if they are in fact an older design than we originally suspected. Enterprise being about 40 years old before being lost at Genesis might be a younger to middle aged starship of that class in terms of when they were built. If Constellation (NCC-1071) was actually a much older ship than Enterprise (NCC-1701), than we have to question just how old the class is? With that the question also is how long did Starfleet build them? With New Jersey (NCC-1975) being presented in 2260s style and the still unclear origin of the hull that became the Enterprise-A, we do not have a clear history of the Constitution-class starships (I and II) which makes framing the likes of the Miranda-class difficult. The Excelsior-class at least has a known starting point with the NX-2000 and we can see some of its evolution with the Excelsior II (NCC-42037) and other starships.

So if the Constitution-class is older than we think, it is possible that the Miranda-class was also built for a really long time because it filled a spot in Starfleet's uses, or as time went on they found they could use this hull for lots of things, and it was easier to just leave the shipyard fabricators building parts for that class than to switch for something else.

 

I love this kind of discussion, but would recommend not taking Starfleet registries too literally or treating them as fully sequential when attempting to dissect starship lineage or production order. There have been enough inconsistencies, both unintentional and intentional that I think we are left with no choice to assume that Starfleet registries are generally but not totally sequential. My general impression is that intentional loopholes were left for the writers in this area, knowing that future unintentional inconsistencies will arise.

Regarding the age of the Constitution class, I do think this is a very open topic. The famous "dozen like her" line from TOS leaves a lot of wiggle room. We don't know which, if any, of those dozen we ever saw in any production. Maybe all the ones that we saw were, for reasons not obvious to us, not amongst this fabled dozen. If you're going to treat NCC-1017 as an older ship that was refit, you're likely forced to do something similar with NCC-956. For that matter, what IS the Constitution class? Was the Constellation ever called this? For all we know there were a series of very similarly shaped starships launched in the early half of the 23rd century that were all "Starship class" but not Constitution class.

I think there are similar mental gymnastics that can be done to put, say, NX-1974 with refit design before NCC-1975 with TOS design. I mean, having NX/NCC-2000 be launched in 2285 is pretty weird too. They should have hit NCC-2000 around 2260-2265 if things were as linear as we might want them to be. Maybe prototypes get reserved early, as soon as a project is ordered, not when the ship is commissioned.

 

Well launched at least (commissioning sometimes comes later).

For instance a real example, we can reasonably assume that CVN-78 to 82 was "reserved" for the "CVN-78" class when the prototype (named Gerald R Ford in 2012, launched 2013 and commissioned 2015) was laid down in 2009, but we didn't get the next name in the sequence until 2011, and we still don't know the name of CVN-82.

 

And then back to angular nacelles, this time without even the suggestion that they're cowlings over round nacelles with the red (or blue) domes peaking out, and then back to round with red domes, then settling on angular nacelles with red windows in the front for the foreseeable future.

Starfleet ships, especially with regards to nacelles, are riddled with back-and-forth generational outliers.

 

My bad, that was a typo on my part; I meant to say when the ship is ordered the registry gets reserved. Your example seems pretty consistent with what I'm thinking and how it probably has to work.

 

The Excelsior and Constellation projects might have started a decade or more before the prototypes were launched. While being given a number at or near the projects founding.

One wonders though about this with things like the Galaxy-class project having started around the time of the loss of the Enterprise-C. And all those other starships with significantly lower hull numbers that USS Galaxy.

 

As I see it - registries hit 1700 around the mid to late 2240s, maybe a bit earlier than intended? 1600s were also still being filled, and maybe some 1500s too.

By the 2260s registries were well into the 1800s possibly, but older numbers were also still being filled. There may have also been multiple versions of 500s and 600s 'flights' too, for all we know. 1900s also likely reached before long.

2000s were simply skipped altogether, as a distinctly set aside 'next generation' bracket of numbers. 2100s possibly not so allocated, if we include the Federation-class.

Numbers then jump rapidly, with the 2500s being set aside, and then more and more parallel blocks. By the turn of the century, blocks past the 6200s were very likely in existence also.
And by the 2310s, they were probably close to, or beyond five figure digits. But that's just how I see it, personally.

So yes, some prototypes probably do get reserved early. Apparently that's (like many things) not entirely uniform, though.

 

Agreed. I think it's likely that Starfleet recognized in the late 2250s (after the Klingon war, perhaps) that they were going to need a bigger/badder heavy cruiser that ultimately became Excelsior, as well as an experimental dreadnought. When the project is ordered, the registry might be reserved at that time, or not.

At one point, I tried graphing the registries chronologically - a fool's errand I know. One oddity that has taken a while to set in... has anyone else noticed that it seems generally starships of the 24th century (TNG-era onwards) seem to correspond more or less with the year they were launched? For example ships in the NCC-10000 range seem to be launched near or in the 2310s, NCC-20000 range launched near or in the 2320s, and so on. It's obviously not really linear, and there are clearly some exceptions, but I have to wonder if Mike Okuda may have been using this as a benchmark when coming up with registries. It could indicate intent.

 

I have an Excel spreadsheet ship list that I've maintained for decades (originally adapted from a list made by member Reverend), not to mention essays I've written about chronological registries by date vs. batch number registries by date, so I'm quite informed about this stuff, if I do say so myself. And yes, it's quite amazing (mostly during the TNG-VOY years, and later TMP/TNG films) just how well the numbering system matched up with the construction/service dates of most of the ships seen or mentioned in those shows. That's probably because people like the Okudas, Drexler, Sternbach, etc. were so good at keeping this stuff consistent because of their love of the job, even going so far as to create minute details that wouldn't have been seen on screen at the time, like the registries of the BoBW kitbashes.

 

You are quite well informed from every interaction I've had with you.

Quoting to emphasize this point:

I think you hit the nail on the head here.

 

Yep. Such folks cared about these things because they knew such details would be scrutinized for years, as they have been.

However, something somewhere along the way got munged up. And I'm pretty sure the Okudas and Drexler (I think Sternbach has been out of that particular picture for some time now) weren't always around in the early stages of Kurtzman-era Trek, which is when and why these foul-ups occurred. After some passage of time, they were brought back in to help out but, by that point, they weren't able to put the shit back in the horse. They could only attempt to make sense of things going forward.

 

Agreed there too. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Okuda, Mr. Sternbach and Mr. Drexler... and Mr. Probert too.

I've often wondered why Mr. Sternbach and the franchise parted ways after Voyager. I have always assumed that it was something to do with "Enterprise" being a prequel and the concepts presented on that show not fitting well, or the producers not listening to him about their tech ideas not totally making sense for a prequel. Or, he could have just simply been burnt out.

In any case, it was a loss to that production IMHO, much as the absence in early Kurtzman-Trek was keenly felt.

 

I've often considered contacting Sternbach on Facebook (mainly to ask him about the Mars Defense Perimeter model he built), but a combination of not wanting to bother him with such a mundane thing after almost 35 years, and the fact that most of his FB posts for the last few years have just been Wordle, I've decided that I'm not going to waste his time. Plus the fact that most of the production personnel from TNG/DS9/VGR I've tried contacting through FB has been hit or (mostly) miss.

 

Hmm, I may well wish to ask you more about that spreadsheet before long? See if it matches some of my own estimates, I suppose.

 

I’d be happy to send you a copy if you like.

 

I wouldn't mind comparing notes on that myself.