Starship Insignia

[Tallguy]

I'm starting a new thread so Donny can get back to the business of building a starship.
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/donnys-tos-twok-enterprise-interiors.212119/

This issue is if the Enterprise arrowhead is THE insignia for starfleet or at least starships. If someone wants to reconstruct the info from Donny's thread, they are welcome. The gist is that the two times we saw starship personnel with different insignia (The Doomsday Machine and The Omega Glory) was a mistake. Bob Justman wrote a memo on the subject and reportedly Roddenberry backed him up.

So the arrowhead being a Starfleet emblem rather than an Enterprise one (as it became in the movies) was there all along. But then fans (and professional fans) took the original misconception and ran with it (leading to the Defiant having its own insignia on ENT).

Unfortunately, they couldn't put the shit back in the horse, as it were. Justman's memo was clearly ignored throughout the series run. We have commodores and other flag officers with the starburst. You had the Exeter and Constellation with their own insignia, beyond the one used by the Antares' crew in "Charlie, X". Then you had the "fish" logo for the listening posts (like in "Balance of Power" and "Arena"), and in TAS they added the new pointy insignia for the Ariel in "The Eye of the Beholder" and another variant of the arrowhead for the Huron in "The Pirates of Orion". It became more canonical to have different insignias for the different ships throughout the entirety of the TOS/TAS era, and it wasn't until TMP came around that all uniforms once again used the arrowhead, which was retconned as an "homage" to the great things that Enterprise did during her career.

Well, they never had the opportunity to ignore it again in TOS. And TAS was outside of Justman's control.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Shall I re-post the original charts I put in the other thread?

 

[Donny]

Such a mess, unfortunately. The original producers never thought we'd be here 50 years later discussing a mistake that I'm surprised got past Justman in the first place.

 

[STRenegade]

We're Trek fans. It's what we do.
Oh and here's the memo:

 

[137th Gebirg]

Such a mess, unfortunately. The original producers never thought we'd be here 50 years later discussing a mistake that I'm surprised got past Justman in the first place.

They clearly underestimated the OCD imbued within the average Trek fan. That's why I love your TOS and Refit Enterprise interior threads - where else does anyone put dust and coffee stains on briefing room tables?!? Or something like that...

 

[uniderth]

In this era I don't think the Enterprise insignia is for all of Starfleet. But perhaps it is a large portion of Starfleet including other ships.

I think what we see is pretty clear. There are other Starfleet ships with their own insignia. There are non-Enterprise crew wearing the Enterprise insignia. Starbase personnel wear the starburst insignia.

 

[Jedman67]

They clearly underestimated the OCD imbued within the average Trek fan. That's why I love your TOS and Refit Enterprise interior threads - where else does anyone put dust and coffee stains on briefing room tables?!? Or something like that...

are you sure the coffee stains aren't on your computer screen?

 

[137th Gebirg]

are you sure the coffee stains aren't on your computer screen?

Of course not, the stains are on the retractable coffee holder that is conveniently built into the computer! Although, for some odd reason, I've never been able to play CD's or DVD's for years, like other people. Honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong...

 

[Tallguy]

In this era I don't think the Enterprise insignia is for all of Starfleet. But perhaps it is a large portion of Starfleet including other ships.

I think what we see is pretty clear. There are other Starfleet ships with their own insignia. There are non-Enterprise crew wearing the Enterprise insignia. Starbase personnel wear the starburst insignia.

Going entirely by TOS do we ever see any starship personnel wearing non-Enterprise insignia other than Tracey and Decker? (I don't remember what the guy that is in the ship's log in Omega Glory wears.)

Shall I re-post the original charts I put in the other thread?

Sure! (Great chart, btw.)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Going entirely by TOS do we ever see any starship personnel wearing non-Enterprise insignia other than Tracey and Decker? (I don't remember what the guy that is in the ship's log in Omega Glory wears.)

He's wearing the sciences version of the rectangle insignia. You can see the "sphere with equator" circle/ellipse in it like what's in Spock's arrowhead insignia.

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x23hd/theomegagloryhd0191.jpg
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x23hd/theomegagloryhd0214.jpg

 

[137th Gebirg]

Sure! (Great chart, btw.)

Thankee kindly! They're actually 6 charts total - didn't want to make one image so big that it would take forever for some folks to load that may not have broad-band.

 

[UssGlenn]

and it wasn't until TMP came around that all uniforms once again used the arrowhead

Not quite, the Epilon 9 station had it's own unique insignia.

 

[Tallguy]

Not quite, the Epilon 9 station had it's own unique insignia.

Which sticks to the original idea of TOS: Starship crews wear the arrowhead.

 

[Donny]

It could be reasonable to assume that Stafleet once had different insignia for each of the original 12 starship/constitution class vessels, but as planning for more ships and more classes of starship moved forward, they abandoned this idea sometime before "Court Martial (where we see non-Enterprise crew wearing the Enterprise arrowheads for the first time) As a result, Starfleet began phasing out the use of different symbols for each starship. Some starships, like the Exeter and Constellation, had not yet recieved their shipments of new uniforms? And the Defiant had recieved theirs, yet some of the crew were still wearing their old uniforms? We see that uniform distribution is still a problem in the 24th century as well, with the DS9 crew getting their sleek new uniforms before the TNG crew finally got theirs at least two years later in "Generations".

 

[Donny]

They clearly underestimated the OCD imbued within the average Trek fan. That's why I love your TOS and Refit Enterprise interior threads - where else does anyone put dust and coffee stains on briefing room tables?!? Or something like that...

Coincidence you mention coffee stains, as I'm modeling the coffee pot seen in The Corbomite Maneuver right now....

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It could be reasonable to assume that Stafleet once had different insignia for each of the original 12 starship/constitution class vessels, but as planning for more ships and more classes of starship moved forward, they abandoned this idea sometime before "Court Martial (where we see non-Enterprise crew wearing the Enterprise arrowheads for the first time) As a result, Starfleet began phasing out the use of different symbols for each starship. Some starships, like the Exeter and Constellation, had not yet recieved their shipments of new uniforms? And the Defiant had recieved theirs, yet some of the crew were still wearing their old uniforms? We see that uniform distribution is still a problem in the 24th century as well, with the DS9 crew getting their sleek new uniforms before the TNG crew finally got theirs at least two years later in "Generations".

Other proposals out there are that there are different fleets, or different agencies within Starfleet each with their own fleet, like the United Earth Space Probe Agency, one for Vulcan, Andor, etc. and that the different patches represent the different fleets. The idea is that later on, sometime before TMP they were all combined, but before that the arrowhead would be used specifically for the UESPA. This could cast a specific light on the Intrepid in "The Immunity Syndrome" as a Vulcan ship, so it would be not only crewed primarily by Vulcans but perhaps therefore also part of the Vulcan agency.

In any case, given "The Omega Glory" and "The Doomsday Machine," the only choices are either to modify the proclamations in the memo somehow or to ignore canon.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'm a proponent of the different fleet idea, with the arrowhead being the insignia of the First Fleet.

 

[uniderth]

Other proposals out there are that there are different fleets, or different agencies within Starfleet each with their own fleet, like the United Earth Space Probe Agency, one for Vulcan, Andor, etc. and that the different patches represent the different fleets. The idea is that later on, sometime before TMP they were all combined, but before that the arrowhead would be used specifically for the UESPA. This could cast a specific light on the Intrepid in "The Immunity Syndrome" as a Vulcan ship, so it would be not only crewed primarily by Vulcans but perhaps therefore also part of the Vulcan agency.

Which is fine, except I usually see the Constellation and the Exeter listed as belonging to one of those other agencies, yet it is still (probably) primarily crewed by humans. That must mean that there are still different divisions withing the human branch.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Which is fine, except I usually see the Constellation and the Exeter listed as belonging to one of those other agencies, yet it is still (probably) primarily crewed by humans. That must mean that there are still different divisions withing the human branch.

Even though we see only humans from Exeter and Constellation, altogether we see only three officers out of 860 or so, IIRC. How can we conclude that those are primarily human ships? (Serious question.)

 

[uniderth]

Even though we see only humans from Exeter and Constellation, altogether we see only three officers out of 860 or so, IIRC. How can we conclude that those are primarily human ships? (Serious question.)

Based on the fact that their captains are human. I imagine it would be highly unlikely that you would have an entire alien crew and one of the few humans is the captain. It just seems like it's reaching to presume it any other way.