I don’t see a problem with an original Ambassador class followed by an optimized model with the same class name (just as the Constitution class name is ambiguous). The conference room display would feature the former analogous to the original Excelsior class, probably because it’s really a display of breakthroughs that led to ships named Enterprise, not necessarily that of literal Enterprises.
Starship questions
- Thread starter somebuddyX
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My problem with that theory is that the Sternbach Ambassador doesn’t look as advanced as the Probert Ambassador, something the TOS Enterprise and the TMP Enterprise did correctly (if you’re implying that the Probert ship was the prototype and the Sternbach ship came afterwards.)
Yes, but the original prototype could’ve been ambitious and had to be simplified for mass production.
Then why not just call it a different class if it’s so different from the prototype?
When the New Frontier novels first came out, they described the Excalibur as having been refitted after the battle with the Borg in First Contact, and I initially assumed that was in the TMP sense, and imagined the ship as being redesigned into something that, once I saw it, I realized was a lot like Probert’s concept.
I think that’s a feature of the Sternbach version, not a bug. It doesn’t really make sense to me that a ship would just happen to look like a 50% morph of its immediate predecessor and its immediate successor. It makes more sense to me that the Probert version would be newer and trying to fill in some of the Galaxy class’s advancements into the older ship.
That doesn’t work as well given the early Excelsior-class design on the wall display, not to mention that an entire newer iteration somehow never, ever showed up in on TNG in space. Best to make it real but limited to a prototype and no more than a couple of ships, before production realities led to a less ambitious design (exactly as seen out-of-universe). The class name could’ve been reused because the original limited run meant the risk of confusion was low to nonexistent.
Quite true, pretty much all of the ships are deformed in some way from their original profiles. But the poor Ambassador now looks like a completely different ship from its sculpture representation.
As does cvn-65, which is the point. (No flight deck taper to the bow, no starboard side elevators, no canted fantail, a undersized island, and what should be a cone-shaped radar structure is more a pyramid-shaped box.)
Of course, the CVN-65 of the wall art looks completely different from the real CVN-65 seen in ST4:TVH... 
That Picard's wall relief would portray ships named Enterprise is not a well-founded assumption: two of the ships are already dead wrong for onscreen Enterprises (the basic Excelsior and the Probert design), while of the rest, none are unique to things named Enterprise ITRW. Save, that is, for the distinctive island of the carrier - but as said, this island is gone in ST4:TVH, and may have been a thing refitted to or defitted from any number of carriers in the Trek reality.
Possibilities for other interpretations abound. Ships named Stargazer? Apt for both UFP starships and USN carriers (Shangri-La, anyone?). Ships named Galaxy? Equally possible.
Timo Saloniemi
That Picard's wall relief would portray ships named Enterprise is not a well-founded assumption: two of the ships are already dead wrong for onscreen Enterprises (the basic Excelsior and the Probert design), while of the rest, none are unique to things named Enterprise ITRW. Save, that is, for the distinctive island of the carrier - but as said, this island is gone in ST4:TVH, and may have been a thing refitted to or defitted from any number of carriers in the Trek reality.
Possibilities for other interpretations abound. Ships named Stargazer? Apt for both UFP starships and USN carriers (Shangri-La, anyone?). Ships named Galaxy? Equally possible.
Timo Saloniemi
Bull. Flight deck shape is a defining visual clue to the class, as can been seen in this image that includes (CW from top left) a Midway, a Nimitz, a Kitty Hawk and a Forrestal. None of which look like a featureless wooden plank.
Not to discerning eyes. Besides, the only ones that would be looking that model from the side are Tellarite toddlers. Everyone else will be looking down at that not-the-Enterprise's flightdeck (regardless whether you are using CVN65 or CV61 as your guide,)
Not if you restrict your view to just the side view,
Then they are very similar with just a few "minor details" different.
Sorry, we’ll have to agree to disagree. There’s enough detail on the CVN-65 sculpture that no one is going to think it’s some other ship. As for the C, it looks different from every angle from the Sternbach design. The closest it ever gets is the saucer, since they’re both completely round, but that’s about it. The nacelles on the Probert C are much thinner, the pylons are swerved instead of straight, and the secondary hull is totally different.
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Suppose the sculptures date back to the late 2280s when Starfleet was looking ahead three Enterprises down the line?
Say it’s basically a Galaxy-class development plan, outlining the stages towards that ultimate vision. In reality, the -B would’ve incorporated the changes made to the Excelsior class in the meantime, while the -C would’ve been a miscalculation on the way there: more and different testbeds were needed and ultimately abandoned as the Wolf 359 fleet.
I don’t think they were envisioning the Ambassador class as early as the 2280’s, much less the Galaxy class. If one feels the need to retcon the sculptures (I personally don’t, but whatever), one could simply say that they are just representations of other Starfleet ship classes, and not specifically the Enterprises. That gives the added incentive that there is another class of ship out there that matches the Probert design, albeit a different class than the Sternbach Ambassador.
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The more, the merrier, certainly.
Which IMHO applies to the different incarnations of CVN-65, too: I'm happy with her at some point receiving a refit that rids her of that peculiar flat-faced island and the remnants of its outdated radar systems, something the real ship never quite could afford. Most wall art then would feature the original configuration, perhaps because the ship did something remarkable back then - perhaps so remarkable that she outshines the surprisingly absent CV-6 in pseudohistory.
Timo Saloniemi
Which IMHO applies to the different incarnations of CVN-65, too: I'm happy with her at some point receiving a refit that rids her of that peculiar flat-faced island and the remnants of its outdated radar systems, something the real ship never quite could afford. Most wall art then would feature the original configuration, perhaps because the ship did something remarkable back then - perhaps so remarkable that she outshines the surprisingly absent CV-6 in pseudohistory.
Timo Saloniemi
One which despite the lack of space encounters would be famous enough to justify inclusion in that wall display, but not actually an Enterprise?
As noted, I can see this as an artwork honoring breakthroughs that led to ships named Enterprise (which would also explain why the TOS original was included and not its final state in 2285), but the concept-art idea happens to match the real-world making-of, which as we all know involved interpolating the Ambassador’s lines between the known Excelsior- and Galaxy-class designs. It need not mean that the Enterprise-D was practically finished as a ship design, only that a warp-appropriate shape had been calculated in the 2280s, and the sculptures’ inclusion in the conference room would’ve been a testament to Starfleet’s vision and the ability to execute it despite a misstep.
For all we know, there isn't even a name theme going on - all the ships in the artwork might have held special significance to Captain Thomas Halloway, who was supposed to assume command until a peculiar cross-timeline mishap turned him into a meek enlisted botanist.
Things we can probably rule out:
- Ships significant to Picard (because his family supposedly gave up nautical adventures after Nelson, and never went to Starfleet, or perhaps space, even)
- Ships that achieved similar things (because some are explicit warships while others are explicit testbeds)
- Ships named Enterprise (because there are too many errors)
The rest is up to grabs.
Timo Saloniemi
Things we can probably rule out:
- Ships significant to Picard (because his family supposedly gave up nautical adventures after Nelson, and never went to Starfleet, or perhaps space, even)
- Ships that achieved similar things (because some are explicit warships while others are explicit testbeds)
- Ships named Enterprise (because there are too many errors)
The rest is up to grabs.
Timo Saloniemi
