Original 12 Constitution class ships

[garak1]

I was curious about the Constitution class ships from TOS. As I understand it, there were only 12 Constitution class starships during TOS.

Is there a definitive list of which 12 were the original ships?

Further to this, why were there only 12? Was this number chosen for a reason?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I think the number twelve mentioned in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" reflects the approximate number of super-carriers that the U.S. Navy had on active duty. At least, that was probably a number that influenced Roddenberry's thinking on the subject of Starfleet's biggest ship and how many there would be.

 

[Timo]

In in-universe terms, the 12 or 13 mentioned obviously weren't "original": the class had suffered casualties by that point already, so the 12 or 13 would be "survivors" instead. Unless the aired episodes of TOS represented a rush hour for Constitution losses, there might well have been several dozen ships in the class originally, with a fairly steady rate of loss across the supposed decades of service.

Straddling in-universe and out-universe, any number higher than 12 or 13 would make Kirk's boasts of uniqueness sound hollow, even if story logic might well dictate fleets featuring hundreds if not thousands of ships of that approximate size, shape or capacity. But Kirk would be well entitled to display pride for being one of the dozen even if said dozen were only a tiny subset of a much larger total - say, much like the commanders of advanced attack submarines or hydrofoils or whatever in USN service may be justly proud for their boats despite the hardware itself not being all that prominent or important in the big scheme of things.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

The reference to "twelve like it" is simply to tell the viewers that only twelve ships like the Enterprise exist in Starfleet, at least at that time. I never thought it meant to imply that only twelve ships comprised the entire Starfleet.

As to what the names of the twelve actually are that has never been established onscreen. During the production of TOS memos with lists of suggested names were circulated, as well as other names were suggested for individual scripts, but only some of those names ever made it onscreen. As such those not mentioned and/or not seen onscreen cannot really be considered official. Some years later many of those suggested names appeared in the works of Franz Jospeh in his blueprints and technical manual to establish two classes of heavy cruisers, but again because they never appeared onscreen their authenticity is questionable.

Regarding the names actually referenced onscreen.

Enterprise - Obviously this one counts.

Valiant - There are two such ships referenced in TOS. The first is mentioned in WNMHGB, but being a ship lost two centuries earlier it's not likely to be A Starfleet sister ship of the Enterprise. The second ship is mentioned in "A Taste Of Armageddon" referring to a ship lost fifty years earlier. While not impossible it's also likely this isn't a sister ship of the Enterprise. The name Valiant does appear on the suggested list of names so if there is a Starfleet contemporary of said name in existence we've never seen or heard of it.

Exeter, Excaliber, Lexington, Hood, Potemkin and Defiant - All but one of these appear on the suggested list of names and are shown onscreen so we can accept them as contemporary sister ships of the Enterprise. The Defiant doesn't appear on the suggested list, but the name Defiance does so maybe it's just a matter of spelling.

Yorktown - This was GR's original name for the series' hero ship until he changed it to Enterprise. A Yorktown is on the suggested list of names and the name is referenced in the episode "Obsession," but since we never actually see the ship it can be debated as to whether it is an Enterprise equivalent. Later in the films in TSFS we see a ship named Yorktown, but I believe it was a Reliant type design which could be either a wholly different vessel or a refit of the TOS era vessel. If it's a refit then the Yorktown mentioned in TOS wasn't an Enterprise equivalent.

Farragut - This name is from the suggested list of names and is referenced as a starship Kirk served aboard several years earlier. Again we never actually see the ship so its class remains open to debate. It is referenced that half the crew were killed and that "more than one hundred crew" were killed during an incident all those years earliers. That seems to suggest a crew complement about half of that of an Enterprise equivalent vessel. That might disqualify the ship as an Enterprise quivalent except that in "The Cage" Pike referenced the Enterprise crew complement as 203 (at that time anyway). So perhaps crew complements can fluctuate depending on mission type and the Farrugut could have been an Enterprise equivalent after all.

Intrepid - This name appears on the suggested list and is referenced onscreen twice ("Courtmartial" and "The Immunity Syndrome"), but again we never actually see the ship. It is said to have had 400 crew aboard so that might suggest it was indeed an Enterprise equivalent.

Constitution - From the suggested list this name does appear onscreen, but in a very obscure way. The name appears on a phaser schematic seen on a viewscreen, but was completely unreadable until the schematic was reproduced in magazines years later. Even on Blu-Ray and enhanced I'm not sure the schematic is legible. As such it can be debated whether Constitution is indeed an Enterprise equivalent in terms of canon.

Republic - Also from the suggested list of names as well as mentioned onscreen, but never actually seen. As such its class is debatable.

Constellation - I think the Constellation was intended to be an Enterprise equivalent, but for two interesting variables. Firstly, the use of an AMT model kit to represent the ship gave us a design that differed in some details from the familiar Enterprise. Additionally the ship's registry number was significantly lower than that of the Enterprise and thus possibly suggesting an older vessel. In the TOS-R they chose to make the Constellation an exact duplicate of the Enterprise while retaining the lower registry number which really doesn't clarify things. So based on the original version of the episode it's left up to the individual to regard the Constellation as an actual contemporary equivalent of the Enterprise or as a perhaps older and somewhat different class of ship from the Enterprise.

Eagle - This name appeared on a suggested list as well as an episode script, but never actually made it onscreen.

Kongo, Essex, Endeavor, El Dorado, Excelsior, Saratoga, Hornet, Wasp, Bonhomme Richard, Monitor, Merrimac, Tori, Lafayette, Defiance, Ari and Krieger - These are all names appearing on suggested lists of names, but none of them made it onscreen during in TOS. Some of those did appear years later either on film or in one of the spin-off series, but none as Enterprise equivalents. They were used by Franz Joseph in his blueprints and technical manual. And the Kongo did appear in a Starship Exeter fan film.

Scimitar - This was the name for a starship in early development of the script for "The Tholian Web." Later the name was changed to Defiant. The name Scimitar (to my knowledge) never appeared on any suggested list of names.


So in the very least the ships we actually saw were Enterprise, Excaliber, Exeter, Lexington, Hood, Potemkin, Constellation and Defiant. That is 8 out of 12 with four remaining unknown or at least specifically identified. Republic, Consititution, Farragut, Intrepid, Yorktown and Intrepid can be considered question marks because while the names are referenced in one way or another we never actually see the ships so their class are open to conjecture.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ As for the Constellation's number, I think it was only made NCC-1017 because that would more easily show up on TV screens of the day. They were just rearranging 1701, after all, and if they had (for example) used 1710, it might not have been legible.

 

[Warped9]

^ As for the Constellation's number, I think it was only made NCC-1017 because that would more easily show up on TV screens of the day. They were just rearranging 1701, after all, and if they had (for example) used 1710, it might not have been legible.

Maybe, but the fact is what we got was 1017 so that's what we have to deal with.

But seriously for the resolution on old CRT televisions they could just as easily have painted the main registry numbers onto the model and avoided the whole issue.

 

[Ithekro]

Makig one cut and swap with decals was probably easier than hand painting the numbers for TV. To get 1710, they would have to do two cuts and swap.

 

[Warped9]

Anyone who has ever dealt with decals on a model kit knows that something like making 1710 out of 1701 is no big time consuming problem. I've built a number of those old AMT kits and it would have been no effort at all to make 1710 out of 1701. With two kits on hand you could have had 1700, 1711, 1717, 1770 or 1771. Or I'm sure AMT would have happily supplied extra decal sheets if MJ or the TOS production staff had requested it.

Another possibility, albeit a more time consuming one, would have been to create a custom made stencil of the desired numbers and letters. I still think a steady hand could have painted a new registry number, much more easily than making a stencil, that would have served sufficiently for their purposes.


It could have been interesting to see what they might have done had they had the time to kitbash some AMT kits. After all many fans have long since done that very thing.

 

[Timo]

I wonder how important it was dramatically to have the victimized ship be identifiable with the hero one at a glance. Calculating that this was needed to heighten the concern for the heroes' own odds of survival would seem rather silly underestimation of the audience...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[J.T.B.]

I think the number twelve mentioned in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" reflects the approximate number of super-carriers that the U.S. Navy had on active duty. At least, that was probably a number that influenced Roddenberry's thinking on the subject of Starfleet's biggest ship and how many there would be.

It certainly sounds reasonable but I'm not sure about the numbers. For super-carriers I count eight: Four Forrestals, three Kitty Hawks and Enterprise (JFK was under construction). If you count the three Midways you get 11, plus three old Essexes still classed as CVA, that's 14. Plus another dozen Essex CVS's.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Constitution - From the suggested list this name does appear onscreen, but in a very obscure way. The name appears on a phaser schematic seen on a viewscreen, but was completely unreadable until the schematic was reproduced in magazines years later. Even on Blu-Ray and enhanced I'm not sure the schematic is legible. As such it can be debated whether Constitution is indeed an Enterprise equivalent in terms of canon.

Well, no, not really. To have a Constitution class (which "Space Seed" and "Trouble with Tribbles" do show), you need an actual Constitution. Otherwise the class name means nothing.

 

[Timo]

This depends on whether Kirk's TOS ship was of Constitution class or not, of course.

Several canon visuals identify the refit configuration with the name "Constitution class", but it might be that the thus implied USS Constitution was built directly to that configuration and never was a sister ship to the TOS-configured Enterprise. Whether this putative ship was the one to spearhead the "refit-configuration batch" chronologically, i.e. preceding ST:TMP, or gained the status of class ship by virtue of being the first (only?) newbuild of that configuration, can then be further speculated upon.

However, canon dialogue identifies Kirk's TOS bridge with that of the Constitution class in TNG "Ethics" already, and then DS9 "Trials and Tribble-ations" dialogue establishes the class identity of the TOS vessel for good.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

At least, that was probably a number that influenced Roddenberry's thinking on the subject of Starfleet's biggest ship and how many there would be.

I never felt that the Enterprise is one of the "largest" ships in Starfleet. Now there's nothing that says it isn't, but there no evidence that it is.

In in-universe terms, the 12 or 13 mentioned obviously weren't "original": the class had suffered casualties by that point already ...

While the Enterprise wasn't a young ship, the Connies might still have been in production, and the dozen odd ships of that class in the fleet were being maintained at a more or less stead number.

The Connie destroyed in The Ultimate Computer could have been less than a year old.

 

[Kemaiku]

I tend to think that what we regard as the Constitution class has been around for decades, but that originally they looked much more primitive.

Silverish hulls, much less powerful warp nacelles, older generations of weaponary, different engineering configurations and older, maybe even a single bulkier support craft permanently on the (near always vacuum) hunger deck.

It would give clues as to the design choices of the later generations of the ship, the original look of the Enterprise in The Cage and WNMHGB etc

If the Constitution herself was around the 1000 mark, then the Constellation would have been part of the Mark 1 design and that maybe both the original and Remastered versions of the episode are right, reflecting two stages of her operational lifespan.

Something not done for many ships, but a small few hulls. It might also explain why a Commodore would be aboard, prefering a ship that had quite a history, maybe the Constellation took part in some historic starfleet event.

When Kirk says 12 like the Enterprise in the fleet, maybe he means 12 "active" Constitution ships, with others in mothballs, being refitted, being upgraded etc. Or maybe 12 of the 2245 Mark 2/3 design.

 

[TheSubCommander]

Constitution - From the suggested list this name does appear onscreen, but in a very obscure way. The name appears on a phaser schematic seen on a viewscreen, but was completely unreadable until the schematic was reproduced in magazines years later. Even on Blu-Ray and enhanced I'm not sure the schematic is legible. As such it can be debated whether Constitution is indeed an Enterprise equivalent in terms of canon.

Well, no, not really. To have a Constitution class (which "Space Seed" and "Trouble with Tribbles" do show), you need an actual Constitution. Otherwise the class name means nothing.

Not necessarily. The Constitution could have just been a testbed ship, much like the Nasa shuttle Enterprise.

But, I don't disagree with your reasoning. I think unless you take apocrypha into account, you can only count what we saw depicted as Constitution Class ships on screen, as confirmed Constitution Class ships.

By my count, that would be:

Enterprise from TOS and Movies:

Enterprise 1701
Enterprise 1701-A
Mirror Enterprise ISS-1701

Other than Enterprise:

Constellation(NCC-1017, The Doomsday Machine)
Defiant(NCC-1764, Tholian Web)
Excalibur(NCC-1664, Ultimate Computer)
Exeter (NCC-1672, Omega Glory)
Hood (NCC-1703, Ultimate Computer)
Lexington(NCC-1709, Ultimate Computer)
Potempkin (NCC-1657, Ultimate Computer)


I questuion the following as "confirmed" constitution class ships, since they never actually appeared on screen. I can buy them being commonly accepted as Constitution class, but technically, we never saw visual confirmation:

Intrepid (NCC-1631, mentioned in the Immunity Syndrome, seen in Court Martial(?) in the remastered version...depends on your version of canon, I suppose)
Republic (NCC-1371, mentioned in Court Martial)
Farragut (mentioned in Obsession)
Yorktown (TVH, only see bridge shot and not confirmed if Enterprise-A is a rechristened Yorktown )
Abramsverse Enterprise (Unless I missed it, I never hear it called "Constitution class." For all we know, it could be the first of its kind, making it an Enterprise Class)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Constitution - From the suggested list this name does appear onscreen, but in a very obscure way. The name appears on a phaser schematic seen on a viewscreen, but was completely unreadable until the schematic was reproduced in magazines years later. Even on Blu-Ray and enhanced I'm not sure the schematic is legible. As such it can be debated whether Constitution is indeed an Enterprise equivalent in terms of canon.

Well, no, not really. To have a Constitution class (which "Space Seed" and "Trouble with Tribbles" do show), you need an actual Constitution. Otherwise the class name means nothing.

Not necessarily. The Constitution could have just been a testbed ship, much like the Nasa shuttle Enterprise.

Of course. The class ship doesn't have to be in active use, but it still has to have existed at some point, even if it was only a prototype.

IMHO, I actually like the thought that the Constitution was in active service. It helps to propound the thought that there was nothing inherently special about the Enterprise - that it was just another ship of its class. Of course the Enterprise had an exceptional crew, nobody's denying that, but the actual SHIP was just one of many. I think that was the intention after all.

Besides, the class was - out-of-universe - named after the real life USS Constitution, 'Old Ironsides', so I'm sure the Trek version was an important, active ship as well.

 

[Warped9]

As far as known registries we only know three from onscreen: 1701, 1017 and 1371. The rest is guesswork.

The list of registries seen in Commodore Stone's office in "Courtmartial" are not matched with any names. The only registry we recognize is 1701 which we know is the Enterprise. Stone makes reference to the Intrepid and so we can assume the Intrepid's registry is also on that list, but we have no clear idea which one it might be.

The list itself is interesting because it shows us a mix of numbers in the 1700 and 1600 (possibly others) range to suggest other classes and types of Starfleet ships. This was a clever and inexpensive way of suggesting ship diversity within Starfleet.


The notion of the Enterprise being Constitution-class is not clearly established within TOS itself. The schematic displaying a Constitution-class phaser emitter is quite obscure and not visible in any realistic manner. And even if it were it's not stated that this is related to the Enterprise in any way. It could be argued to have been a phaser schematic of an entirely unrelated class quite different from the Enterprise. Of course, the fact the schematic seen is labelled as such was most likely to suggest that it was indeed a phaser of the same class as the Enterprise.

According to MJ it was once stated (I believe) that the Enterprise design was supposed to be the 17th major design of Starfleet vessels, or something to that effect. So the rest of the same ships were meant to have a registry in the 1700 range seems to have been the reasoning. Of course, the Constellation's 1017 registry might throw that reasoning out of whack if the ship is meant to be of the same class as the Enterprise.

Now I'm willing to accept that MJ might not have had this all reasoned out during TOS' production. He might well have rationalized it after the fact when questioned some time or some years later. As as I understand it MJ chose the numbers 1701 because he felt they would be more easily readable on the television screens of the day.

 

[Timo]

Stone makes reference to the Intrepid and so we can assume the Intrepid's registry is also on that list

Or then she was removed from the list just before the camera arrived, as Stone says the ship gave up her slot in favor of the Enterprise.

Of course, the Constellation's 1017 registry might throw that reasoning out of whack if the ship is meant to be of the same class as the Enterprise.

It might also be that the 17th ship design was a repeat of the 10th. Or then merely looked like one, or whatever, and the rationalization isn't really needed because the idea of the first two digits denoting design perished soon thereafter, but still.

Now I'm willing to accept that MJ might not have had this all reasoned out during TOS' production. He might well have rationalized it after the fact when questioned some time or some years later.

If so, he might have taken into account "Doomsday Machine". That he didn't may thus mean that the idea is older than the episode. Or that he came up with the idea without remembering the episode.

Just pointing out various alternatives. Which is frustrating, because it would be fun to a) know what TPTB really thought originally and b) have some sort of order and pseudo-logic into what actually appeared onscreen. It's sort of understandable that Okuda so actively tried to demolish any registry-based logic in the Chronology, considering that all these original mice-and-men efforts really came to nought...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

It's possible a lot of this was thought up on the fly given no one had a clue it would be so scrutinized especially decades later.

 

[Timo]

Oh, it's inevitable that most of it happened that way. Doesn't mean the parties involved wouldn't also have had their elaborate pet theories and systems and models and constructs that never withstood the test of time and indifference...

Timo Saloniemi