The true purpose of the Galaxy Class?

[Shawnster]

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Interesting video.

TL: DW the video postulates that perhaps there was a specific mission profiles the Galaxy Class was designed for that we never saw in any Trek series.

The Enterprise D (and the entire class) seems to be over engineered for the missions we saw her undertake during TNG. She has a lot of firepower for an exploration starship, and ample room with a variety of labs and a full suite sensors.

Perhaps the intended (but unrealized) mission profile was for the Galaxy Class to serve as a mobile command center. The Galaxy Class starship would be the central command, or flagship of a fleet or squadron of stsrships sent to explore a very distant or remote area of the galaxy. This command center would participate in and direct squadron operations, while also serving as mobile fleet support as well as offering a place for squadron crew to relax, unwind, make use of the holodecks, and general use the Galaxy Class ship as a substitute for a starbase.

It is an interesting proposal especially when you consider how large an internal volume the Galaxy Class has for only 1,000+ people in the ship's compliment.

The Enterprise-D is huge in comparison to the amount of crew that serves on board

Should there have been more than 1,000 StarFleet Officers on board given how spacious the Galaxy Class was?

www.trekbbs.com

 

[GIDave]

A floating South Korea.
Now, hear me out.
1. Families, allowed to Officers and NCOs of a certain rank
2. The ability to NEO (noncombatant evacuation operation) on a moment's notice
3, On-board education systems for "The Next Generation"
4. Families close-by would enable crew to experience less anxiety

 

[drt]

Are we doing this from a Doyalist or Watsonian perspective? We know why the 1701-D was over-designed from the Doyalist angle. The original idea for the TNG show that it was twenty year mission far beyond the Federation's borders so she needed to be super self-sufficient and the reason for having civilians & families aboard etc., but that premise was pretty much abandoned after "Encounter at Farpoint".

I guess from the Watsonian perspective, the idea that it was supposed to be a mobile starbase to support distant exploration makes sense. It's seems that when she was built was period of extended peace, but things took a turn south after commissioning, with the Cardassians and reemergence of the Romulans, so Starfleet ended up using the class almost exclusively inside the Federation instead.

 

[GIDave]

"Q,Who?" changed the whole "families onboard" paradigm, somewhat reflected in 'Yesterday's Enterprise" and to some extent "Best of Both Worlds". Yes, in the face of Roddenberry's thrust of peace in the universe it is a non sequitur. Far be it from me to doubt Sir Gene, but the original 1701-D had a massive compliment of weapons, employed judiciously. Whether these weapons or tactics were employed adherent to Doyalist or Watsononian principles is a bridge too far.

 

[C.E. Evans]

If we were to exclude offscreen material, the Galaxy-class was simply a large multipurpose starship capable of carrying out almost any mission Starfleet needed without the assistance of another vessel. A case could be made that its large size enabled the vessel to also serve as an evacuation vessel or personnel transport for many thousands of people in an emergency. It could have been based on the philosophy that it was better to have the extra space and rarely need it than to need the extra space just once and not have it, IMO.

 

[Qonundrum]

Overdesigned for a ship of merely hauling delegates and goodies from fro to to. Or to and fro. Or everywhere. But as a mobile town/village for housing families (aka the next generation, hehe), a ship would need to have plenty of defenses while exploring the middle of galactic space. One with stellar cartography, advanced laboratories, etc, to make use of the vastness of space as well. It's the Swiss Army Ship.

Thankfully the show found itself, generally kept the kid stuff kept under a rug, and did little else but to haul delegates to and fro, since hauling sensitive scientific experiments would be too dangerous for families. But that's another reason why I prefer the earlier seasons in a way, they did it all -- or tried to.

What amazes me most is, after TBOBW, they didn't refit the Enterprise with a big lit sign atop the bridge dome reading "T-A-X-I" and placards on the nacelles with per-light year distance fees.

 

[tharpdevenport]

To boldly go where no man has gone before, in luxury.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It's purpose is what ever the plot requires. Just like the Connies before it.

 

[JoseNoodles]

I always felt the Galaxy was supposed to intentionally get into the situation the USS Voyager accidentally got into: Go into a faraway and remote part of space and explore it for some time before returning home. The ship seemed to be a Jack of All Trades, and had a lot of amenities to reduce stress, so it might help people deal with being so far from home (especially when you could bring your family along).

 

[Nerys Myk]

I always felt the Galaxy was supposed to intentionally get into the situation the USS Voyager accidentally got into: Go into a faraway and remote part of space and explore it for some time before returning home. The ship seemed to be a Jack of All Trades, and had a lot of amenities to reduce stress, so it might help people deal with being so far from home (especially when you could bring your family along).

Yeah it never lived up to TNG's premise of being out there in unexplored space. To many episodes a block from home.

 

[Mojochi]

I guess from the Watsonian perspective, the idea that it was supposed to be a mobile starbase to support distant exploration makes sense. It's seems that when she was built was period of extended peace, but things took a turn south after commissioning, with the Cardassians and reemergence of the Romulans, so Starfleet ended up using the class almost exclusively inside the Federation instead.

I lean toward this myself. It could even have been a material push that's goal was just overzealous for the reality that would follow, much like the NASA space shuttles of that time, which were clearly designed to largely be cargo freighters for much more than they were ever used. Those ships had the hauling capacity to outfit or construct whole space stations or lunar bases (in their case even more likely to be for orbital launch platforms or military expansion, Reagan even called the program "Star Wars")

Instead, after the Cold War, they ended up being somewhat ill-fit to the more routine application they'd realize. That's kind of how I feel about the Galaxy class, lofty ambitions of a space station sized vessel on long term, deep space deployment. Lord knows the continuation of the agenda to boldly go where no one had gone before, some hundreds of years after they'd already been prolifically doing so, would mean some huge leaps in all manner of investment, only to have it end up being institutional overreach, for the reality that would come to bear.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I don't feel like watching the video, but I would point out the ship is so large and spacious because the technical manual, I think the blue print that came with the Playmates ship, and online sources indicate incase of an evacuation emergency, that ship can hold something (doing this from memory) like about 2,000 people.

And I feel like based off what I am reading here in regards to the video I am not watching, that perhaps the video creator is forgetting the history of the Federation and starships: encounters with powerful beings with malevolence, other alien vessels with superior firepower, space phenomena deadly to small starships, wars with other alien races including a prolonged one with the Klingons. It makes total sense the Federation at some point decided it wanted at least one class line that is significantly larger and beefed up weapons wise. When you don't need it, sure it seems like over kill, but when you do and you don't have it, sucks to be you.

 

[JoseNoodles]

Yeah it never lived up to TNG's premise of being out there in unexplored space. To many episodes a block from home.

I feel like the emergence of the Ferengi (who were conjectured to be big badasses), the Cardassians (an actual threat), the return of the Romulans, and the potential of a new foe (perpetually revealed as the Borg), probably put a damper on deep space exploration missions for the Galaxy, whose great firepower and ability to hold so many people would probably put to better use in a war should it come.

 

[Ragitsu]

...to fly around the neighborhood and sell...

Spoiler

 

[Qonundrum]

...to fly around the neighborhood and sell...

Spoiler

Spoiler: My typically florid response

Now there's a milky way that isn't light on the calories, fat, or delicious taste! :9

 

[Qonundrum]

There is one other possibility:

Spoiler: just in case

It's for teaching doggies how to fetch, woof!

 

[Mage]

I always felt the Galaxy was supposed to intentionally get into the situation the USS Voyager accidentally got into: Go into a faraway and remote part of space and explore it for some time before returning home. The ship seemed to be a Jack of All Trades, and had a lot of amenities to reduce stress, so it might help people deal with being so far from home (especially when you could bring your family along).

Indeed. Basically the same concept as the class of ship the Enterprise-J belongs to. Universe class I believe.
To boldy ACTUALLY go OUT of Federation space and actually explore, out there. Small, self contained communities in space. Sadly, that never happened.

 

[C.E. Evans]

A few ideas to consider:

The Enterprise-D may have been atypical of other Galaxy-class ships and that her duties as the Federation flagship required her to stay closer to home than other vessels of the class (I could see many Galaxy-class ships being recalled home during DS9's Dominion War though).

Exploration may also not be limited to just new planets and star systems, but investigating anything unknown, including things in Earth's own backyard. "To boldly go where no one has gone before" could also mean confronting strange things that pop up well within Federation space. It need not be always taken so literally, IMO. And given the vastness of Federation space, it's plausible that even well-charted sectors may contain occasional new mysteries.

Another possibility is that the Enterprise-D was still a relatively new vessel even by Season 7 of TNG and still just in the first phase of her operational lifetime. Maybe the upgrades we saw to the ship's bridge and elsewhere in Generations were in preparation for a long-term deep-space exploration mission that she unfortunately never got to embark on after Veridian III.

 

[David cgc]

I know it doesn't fit with the backstory from Star Trek Online, but my headcanon for the Ross-class (the Sovereign-style Galaxy-configuration ship canonized in seasons 2 and 3 of PIC) is that the Galaxies were meant for long range, long term exploration, but were so damn useful that they never got to go that far from the Federation, so they commissioned a stripped-down version of the class that could match the capabilities of the Galaxy operating out of a Starbase without all the redundancy for flying without a net for ten or fifteen years at a time, freeing up the actual Galaxies to really go out there, months or years away from the nearest Federation port.

 

[Mage]

A few ideas to consider:

The Enterprise-D may have been atypical of other Galaxy-class ships and that her duties as the Federation flagship required her to stay closer to home than other vessels of the class (I could see many Galaxy-class ships being recalled home during DS9's Dominion War though).

Exploration may also not be limited to just new planets and star systems, but investigating anything unknown, including things in Earth's own backyard. "To boldly go where no one has gone before" could also mean confronting strange things that pop up well within Federation space. It need not be always taken so literally, IMO. And given the vastness of Federation space, it's plausible that even well-charted sectors may contain occasional new mysteries.

Another possibility is that the Enterprise-D was still a relatively new vessel even by Season 7 of TNG and still just in the first phase of her operational lifetime. Maybe the upgrades we saw to the ship's bridge and elsewhere in Generations were in preparation for a long-term deep-space exploration mission that she unfortunately never got to embark on after Veridian III.

Yeah, except that Star Trek refuses to use the term flagship correctly. The US Navy does not have one fleet, it has several. Each fleet has a flagship that carries the commanding admiral of that fleet. And if I recall correctly, that is not the same of the commanding officer of that vessel.
So this entire 'the Enterprise is the flagship of the fleet' is just something that never vibed with me.

Now, I can understand that perhaps they wanted a ship with the name Enterprise closer to home, because that somehow carries weight, but it is still a huge waste of resources to use something that is capable of staying away from anything remotely considered nearby Federation space for I believe it was a decade on errand runs that could have been done by many other vessels.
Only in fiction is the concept of one ship being cool to enemies important in diplomatic relations.
Hell, let's say in a fictional sense, the US Navy sends the Enterprise and its support fleet to lay wast to a part of Russia, and THEN think that sending an ambassador over on that ship because the Russians will respect that.....

Your second reasoning is fair, but again, those duties can be done by ships that still need a reliable support network. Again, the idea of the Galaxy class was and is that it doesn't. So again, waste of resources.

Your most fair point is really war. Even though is it a true explorer, its firepower is insane! Having about 10 of those with a support fleet of about 40-60 other ships.... Hell, an Excelsior can be upgraded to pack a real punch as seen in season 4 of DS9. So yeah, that is still the most fair point for keeping Galaxy's classes close by.