Starship questions

[Dukhat]

Why?

I don’t know; I’m not privy to how Starfleet ship naming conventions work. I’m just pointing out what the tech manual stated. Perhaps Starfleet launched an investigation into the ship’s disappearance and felt it was bad form to name a new one after it until it could find answers. Or perhaps some bureaucrat decided that the name needed to wait until the spaceframe of the second Galaxy class ship was completed no matter how long it took. My personal feeling was that it should have been the Enterprise-B that was lost in 2344 so that the Enterprise-C would then have been commissioned and then decommissioned in 2363 to make way for the D so that there wouldn’t have been a gap in time. But that’s not what happened.

At least it makes more sense than the 84 year gap in time between the decommissioning of the Enterprise NX-01 and the launch of the Enterprise NCC-1701.

 

[Henoch]

As long as the USS Constitution is still a commissioned naval vessel (even as a museum ship; key term is "commissioned" and not "decommissioned"), no more US Navy ships can be named the same. Probably something similar with the NX-01...

 

[Timo]

I don’t know; I’m not privy to how Starfleet ship naming conventions work. I’m just pointing out what the tech manual stated.

It never stated anything about assigning the name Enterprise, save that it supposedly did happen before the time of her launch, as she's cautiously suggested to have completed her post-launch, pre-commissioning antics under that name. Although perhaps she was nameless, or named X-2746 or Testy McTestface for that period of time, and the book just keeps it simple with addressing the hull in question?

ITRW, the names for ships under construction get generally decided at the very last minute. Nobody builds a "successor HMS Invincible", say - one builds a successor to HMS Invincible, and then names her HMS Prince of Wales, while in the meantime the name Invincible goes to some dinghy or another, or then doesn't.

Starfleet might be weird in this respect. But the TNG Tech Manual is not the source suggesting it would be. For all it says, the project to build USS Galaxy and a bunch of sisters was poetically named Project 8472B back in the forties, and the actual name Galaxy for the class ship and the class was invented in late 2357 when some landlubber politician asked about it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

It never stated anything about assigning the name Enterprise...

I know that. As I mentioned, that was just my speculation.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I don’t know; I’m not privy to how Starfleet ship naming conventions work. I’m just pointing out what the tech manual stated. Perhaps Starfleet launched an investigation into the ship’s disappearance and felt it was bad form to name a new one after it until it could find answers.

I like to think that after a period of time following the loss of the first Enterprise with all hands aboard, Starfleet announced that the next Enterprise would be one of the newly-proposed Galaxy-class ships that was still in the early design stage at the time.

...
At least it makes more sense than the 84 year gap in time between the decommissioning of the Enterprise NX-01 and the launch of the Enterprise NCC-1701.

Yeah, that opened up a whole can o' worms here regarding whether NCC-1701 was really the first Federation Starship Enterprise. I do remember a post in one thread in which someone proposed she was actually the fourth or fifth, but just the first one with that registry.

 

[Dukhat]

Yeah, that opened up a whole can o' worms here regarding whether NCC-1701 was really the first Federation Starship Enterprise. I do remember a post in one thread in which someone proposed she was actually the fourth or fifth, but just the first one with that registry.

There’s also the possibility that there were several starships Enterprise between the NX-01 and the NCC-1701, but that they were operating under UESPA and not Starfleet, and since they seemed to be Earth ships (Earth being a Federation member), they weren’t considered part of the Federation Starfleet.

 

[C.E. Evans]

There’s also the possibility that there were several starships Enterprise between the NX-01 and the NCC-1701, but that they were operating under UESPA and not Starfleet, and since they seemed to be Earth ships (Earth being a Federation member), they weren’t considered part of the Federation Starfleet.

That was one of the other arguments presented in that debate, including a proposal that the practice still continues into the 24th-Century for all we know. So instead of the Enterprise-D being the fifth Starship Enterprise, she really could be the ninth or tenth, IIRC.

 

[Timo]

I like to think that after a period of time following the loss of the first Enterprise with all hands aboard, Starfleet announced that the next Enterprise would be one of the newly-proposed Galaxy-class ships that was still in the early design stage at the time.

Why, though?

I mean, the C wouldn't be the first Enterprise lost. She might be the first to go down mysteriously or with great loss of life (or then the B was), but which of those factors would make Starfleet think it would be a good idea to carve in stone that there would not be another Enterprise for twenty years - yet that after that period, there assuredly would be? Would this be a "time of mourning", perhaps? (Did the name Intrepid get that, too?)

Yeah, that opened up a whole can o' worms here regarding whether NCC-1701 was really the first Federation Starship Enterprise. I do remember a post in one thread in which someone proposed she was actually the fourth or fifth, but just the first one with that registry.

What is set in stone is that Kirk's/Pike's/April's ("Brother" sets those in stone) NCC-1701 indeed was the first "starship" with the "name" Enterprise, in TNG "Remember Me" already.

Since NX-01 puts the explicit lie to that, we need to add a third specifier there besides "starship" and "name". "Federation" would be fine - after all, plenty of foreign and indeed hostile powers would potentially have ships named Enterprise or Victory or Bloody Revenge or other such common concepts, and old Earth would probably count as both foreign and hostile from where the E-D computer was looking, too. But the other possibility for the third specifier indeed is "Starfleet", allowing for civilian Federation vessels by that name. And we'd like to retain that option, since the circumstances around the name Horizon suggest that civilians aren't blindfolded and shot if they name their ship the same as a serving Starfleet vessel.

Then again, do civilian starfaring vessels ever warrant the designation "starship"? If not, then I'd simply stick with "Federation" as the extra definer, so that the computer is excluding all those foreign military vessels commonly addressed as starships, such as the NX-01. Apart from this, the skies might be full of boats named Enterprise, there probably being about half a million overall, and thousands at any given moment - but none would affect the count of "starships".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

Why, though?

Why not? It's as likely a scenario as any other.

What is set in stone is that Kirk's/Pike's/April's ("Brother" sets those in stone) NCC-1701 indeed was the first "starship" with the "name" Enterprise, in TNG "Remember Me" already.

Tell that to all those who argued against that at the time. I'm just recalling that past conversation, but that was a debate I didn't participate in back then and still don't wish to now. I'm good with my own take on the subject, so whatever floats people's starship, um, boat.

 

[Tomalak]

2. The closest we got to another contemporary ship to the Ambassador class was Rick Sternbach's concept art for the Pegasus (which consisted of an Ambassador saucer and secondary hull (without the neck) with underslung nacelles on pylons dropping down from the saucer bottom. Unfortunately the VFX department went with the Grissom model instead.

Is this available to view anywhere? I'd not heard this before.

Memory Alpha has this to say:

The producers originally had the Pegasus as a Cheyenne-class starship, but was changed to Oberth-class so a new model would not have to be constructed. In the scene in Pegasus main engineering, one of the displays still shows a four-nacelle configuration.

 

[David cgc]

Is this available to view anywhere? I'd not heard this before.

Memory Alpha has a picture on the page for the Pegasus.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

Why, though?

I mean, the C wouldn't be the first Enterprise lost. She might be the first to go down mysteriously or with great loss of life (or then the B was), but which of those factors would make Starfleet think it would be a good idea to carve in stone that there would not be another Enterprise for twenty years - yet that after that period, there assuredly would be? Would this be a "time of mourning", perhaps? (Did the name Intrepid get that, too?)



What is set in stone is that Kirk's/Pike's/April's ("Brother" sets those in stone) NCC-1701 indeed was the first "starship" with the "name" Enterprise, in TNG "Remember Me" already.

Since NX-01 puts the explicit lie to that, we need to add a third specifier there besides "starship" and "name". "Federation" would be fine - after all, plenty of foreign and indeed hostile powers would potentially have ships named Enterprise or Victory or Bloody Revenge or other such common concepts, and old Earth would probably count as both foreign and hostile from where the E-D computer was looking, too. But the other possibility for the third specifier indeed is "Starfleet", allowing for civilian Federation vessels by that name. And we'd like to retain that option, since the circumstances around the name Horizon suggest that civilians aren't blindfolded and shot if they name their ship the same as a serving Starfleet vessel.

Then again, do civilian starfaring vessels ever warrant the designation "starship"? If not, then I'd simply stick with "Federation" as the extra definer, so that the computer is excluding all those foreign military vessels commonly addressed as starships, such as the NX-01. Apart from this, the skies might be full of boats named Enterprise, there probably being about half a million overall, and thousands at any given moment - but none would affect the count of "starships".

Timo Saloniemi

If one looks at the common original series usage of the term "Starship or Star Ship" it often used to mean an "important vessel operated by the Federation Starfleet." (We've discussed debated the nuances of this at great length, and the quoted areas are just summaries of all of that.)

Thus, perhaps, the idea from TNG that there have been so many "Starships called Enterprise" likely refers to people on this thread are referring to as "military," that is, operated by the Federation Starfleet, which is like the Federation's navy in many ways. The NX-01 (if it is really part of the same timeline at all) would not qualify as this because it was older than the Federation and the Federation's Starfleet. Also, in the promotional materials for the show, the creators of that series explicitly stated that the series was based around the "Spaceship Enterprise" that predated the Starship from TOS. Despite the NX-01 seeming like starship in the dictionary sense of the word, apparently it does not meet that criteria when going by 23rd and 24th century usage on the show.

Looking at all this, one more factor causes it to make some sense that there could be 20 years between the usage of the name "Enterprise" for Federation Starfleet vessels:

As some like to point out frequently, the Enterprise in TOS is apparently NOT the flagship, and, despite the history it gains later, seems to be one of several or many such vessels in its time; it is not until TNG that the name Enterprise is shown to be used for a vessel so important that it is almost like a mobile base and which always is the lead ship when groups are formed.

Perhaps the 1701, 1701-A, 1701-B and 1701-C were not flagships, but the 1701-D is. Maybe it is only AFTER the loss of 1701-C that Starfleet decides that the name Enterprise has enough history to make it warrant use on what might be the most important vessel in the fleet. In this scenario, Starfleet either waits until the Galaxy class is ready, or (in my opinion more likely) it is fifteen or twenty years after the loss of the 1701-C that Starfleet decides to make Enterprise the name of the flagship DURING the development of the Galaxy class, and thus picks the third ship (one hopefully after the bugs are worked out) to call Enterprise and make the flagship.

 

[Timo]

Quite possibly. It seems they played the "let's use a famous name for our biggest ship" card with the B already, though, quite possibly renaming the Excelsior-mod on the run when the A both got her career cut short and reinforced the rep that Kirk imposed on the name Enterprise. But playing the card twice is not a problem. Perhaps they played it the second time with the C, lost that ship, and thought real hard about using it a third time?

Non-starships named Enterprise are not our problem here. The minimum standard set for "starship" is - the NX-01 already warranted that designation, so if Starfleet operates Enterprises after Archer's ship (a ship it apparently never did operate, thankfully enough!) and before NCC-1701, they have to be really modest vessels.*

Nothing wrong with that. The RN "demoted" the name Intrepid often enough, assigning it to modest gunboats after using it on mighty ships of the line, or bumping it down to a destroyer after having named a protected cruiser thus. It's just that I don't see much interest in the idea of the UFP Starfleet tug Enterprise, NCC-123, or the Starfleet border cutter Enterprise, NCC-456, not when we

a) have our starships to tell stories about
b) never get references to these humbler Enterprises even though there's a ton on obscure namesakes like the sailing ships or STS testbeds or whatnot
c) aren't exactly in want of any sort of unbroken continuity for that name, given how the chain is broken even after Kirk gives the name fame
d) get the impression the name had zero fame before first Pike and then Kirk gave it some.

And point d is best achieved if we let the name rest for a full century after Archer...

Timo Saloniemi

*Also, the even more modest Franklin had a "starship class" dedication plaque while in UFP Starfleet service, FWIW.

 

[Tomalak]

Memory Alpha has a picture on the page for the Pegasus.

Thanks! That's awesome. I think it would have looked better with the nacelle pylons connected to the engineering hull, like the Nebula. Bless Rick for trying.

 

[Timo]

...Although the smaller the ship, the more sense the plot about Ensign Riker deciding her fate would make. Oberth is fine and consistent for a weird scientific experiment and all. An all-new design would be cool eye candy but, since the phase cloak works with any and all ships (including the E-D), not necessary plotwise.

I think it would have looked better with the nacelle pylons connected to the engineering hull, like the Nebula.

Omit the pylons to the saucer, and you could forgo introducing or modifying any bits at all. Just have half the saucer and the front ends of the nacelles sticking out from the papier-mache rock face, and let the audience imagine what is hidden inside that rock.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

...Although the smaller the ship, the more sense the plot about Ensign Riker deciding her fate would make. Oberth is fine and consistent for a weird scientific experiment and all. An all-new design would be cool eye candy but, since the phase cloak works with any and all ships (including the E-D), not necessary plotwise.

I once asked Rick Sternbach about the size of his Ambassador-ized Pegasus in relation to such a small crew. He said that had the new model been built, it would have been scaled down like the BoBW kitbashes (i.e. it would have had a larger bridge dome, larger windows and larger escape pod hatches to suggest a smaller ship in relation to the overall Ambassador class hull parts.) You can even see evidence of this on Sternbach's sketch with the windows on the saucer rim being only one deck high as opposed to multiple decks on the Ambassador studio model.

 

[somebuddyX]

That Pegasus kitbash looks pretty cool.
I love the idea of there being these different design families existing alongside each other at different points. I guess in the real world we'd call them something like Galaxy-class family or Enterprise-D family but I wonder what they'd be called in-universe.

 

[David cgc]

I noodled up some fanfic about starship generations based on what we’d seen in Discovery, and one of my conclusions was that after the Excelsior, technology had advanced to the point where standardized large components like saucers and nacelles had stopped making sense, and aside from a brief experiment with returning to the concept with the Galaxy/Nebula/BoBW ships, the majority of starships developed from 2300 on were bespoke, with related designs being similar in style but not actual parts.

 

[bryce]

I like to think that the Probert version of the Ambassador was also a real variation of the Ambassador class.

Since we saw two versions of the Excelsior, why not two versions of the Ambassador?

I think the boat-shaped hull seems more like a logical step from the Enterprise-B style Excelsior, which also had that partly boat-shaped secondary hull, and the Galaxy class, which has the squashed secondary hull.

 

[Dukhat]

Since we saw two versions of the Excelsior, why not two versions of the Ambassador?

When you compare the Excelsior and the Enterprise-B, there really isn’t much of a difference; one just has a few more add-on parts. But when you compare the Probert Ambassador to the Sternbach/Jein Ambassador, entire hull shapes and structures are different. The closest similarity is the saucer, and even that’s not nearly the same. Even the pic you posted with the Probert ship in the center and the Sternbach ship above it clearly shows just how different the two designs are.

Mind you, I’d be perfectly happy to have the Probert ship as a Starfleet vessel class other than the Ambassador (say, as the Renaissance class), but I think it’s structurally too different to be classified as an Ambassador.

The irony, though, is that the Probert C looks far more like the mid-point between the Excelsior and the Galaxy class than the Sternbach ship does.