There Were Two Stargazers

[T'Girl]

The Constellation Class starship USS Stargazer in the episode The Battle had the hull number of NCC-2893. The display model in Picard's was a Constellation Class starship with the hull number of NCC-7100.

Are these two different starships, both named Stargazer?

In the episode The Battle, Picard said of the "Battle of Maxia"

We were traveling at warp two through the Maxia Zeta star system when this unidentified starship suddenly appeared and fired on us, point-blank range ... I was remembering being at the helm of the Stargazer. A maneuver was being made, we were hit. I did what any good helmsman would have done.

We were finished. On fire. We had to abandon ship. We limped through space in shuttlecraft for weeks before we were picked up.

At this point in time the Stargazer NCC-2893 is gone, Picard doesn't see it again for several years, after he is made Captain of the Enterprise Dee. Picard was commanding officer of the Stargazer NCC-2893 for a very brief period of time.

However, Picard tells occasional stories of his time as Captain of the Stargazer. Running from Cardassian starships, studying theda band emissions

In Relics, Picard told Scotty; The first ship I ever served aboard as Captain was called the Stargazer. It was an overworked, underpowered vessel, always on the verge of flying apart at the seams. In every measurable sense, my Enterprise is far superior. But there are times when I would give almost anything to command the Stargazer again.

I think what happen was after the first Stargazer was "lost" Starfleet named a second ship Stargazer, this is the ship that is depicted by the model in Picard's ready room, the one with the hull number of NCC-7100. Picard as at some point made captain of this vessel. This (and not the first ship) is "Picard's Stargazer," the one he tells stories about and remembers fondly.

Not being as noteworthy a vessel as the Enterprise, Starfleet didn't simply place a "A" after the name (Stargazer-A) and give it the same hull number.

The second Stargazer might have still been in existence when Picard assumed command of the Enterprise Dee.

In addition to the different hull number, it's been point out that there are slight surface and design differences (which I don't see) between the model in Picard's ready room, and the ship seen in The Battle.

And there's the hull color.

Does it make sense that there were two Stargazers?

 

[tharpdevenport]

It's just a case of the TNG writers not remembering (or even knowing) there was actually a ship with that name before.


As I recall, that's just like D.S.9.; I recall there beign a Defiant in the TOS series as well, with different call mumbers.

 

[Kemaiku]

There are about 6 Lexingtons as well, all different hull numbers.

As for the Stargazer, chalk it up to production problems like the Enterprise-C.

They needed quick cheap models for the background, when it came time to actually have those ships in the series, they realised they needed something different for the filmable model.

The Buried Age covers Picards loss of the 2893 Stargazer to the Enterprise D perfectly.

 

[BillJ]

The Buried Age covers Picards loss of the 2893 Stargazer to the Enterprise D perfectly.

Whose to say NCC-7100 is even suppose to be the Stargazer? In universe, it may simply be the first starship Picard served aboard and he had a fondness for it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The model marked NCC-7100 had no name. Take that however you wish.

 

[Misfit Toy]

Since this is solely a TNG topic, I'll send it over to the TNG forum.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Picard supposedly served on 2893 for a long time, and we know from "The Battle" that 2893 was only lost nine years before that episode. I don't think we can say that Picard only commanded the 2893 for a very brief time... wasn't it supposed to be, like, 20 plus years?

I don't know for sure that there weren't two Stargazers, but I would assume the one Picard remembers fondly is in fact 2893.

 

[trekshark]

It's just a case of the TNG writers not remembering (or even knowing) there was actually a ship with that name before.


As I recall, that's just like D.S.9.; I recall there beign a Defiant in the TOS series as well, with different call mumbers.

I don't see where the DS9 Defiant having the same name as a ship lost 100 years prior is an issue

as for the stargazer, memory alpha lists picard as taking command in 2333, so that would give plenty of time for all his stories to have happened prior to its abandonment

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Constellation Class starship USS Stargazer in the episode The Battle had the hull number of NCC-2893. The display model in Picard's was a Constellation Class starship with the hull number of NCC-7100.

Are these two different starships, both named Stargazer?

Nope. The model on Picard's desk was kitbashed from two AMT Enterprise models and some other parts, hence the number 7100. The Stargazer was originally scripted to be a Constitution-class ship (hence the model swapping to a silver AMT Enterprise for the episode), but they decided to build a new ship model instead. "Constellation" was dubbed over "Constitution" and a new model was made, based on the yellow kitbash, but with slightly different proportions and a lower number more suitable for the TOS movie sets which were used.

They're supposed to be the same ship, just like the USS Yamato is the same, despite having the numbers 1305-E, 71807 and 61807 in it's two appearances.

 

[Ithekro]

There have been ship models on desks in commanding officer's offices that they did not command or even serve on. Sisko has a nearly 200 year old starship design model for one thing.

 

[Trekker4747]

As I recall, the Battle at Maxia where the Stargazer was lost was a very different battle from the battle where the captain was lost and Picard took command. The latter being where he was given command of the ship and he served as commander for nearly 20 years.

 

[Kemaiku]

Whose to say NCC-7100 is even suppose to be the Stargazer? In universe, it may simply be the first starship Picard served aboard and he had a fondness for it.

The model marked NCC-7100 had no name. Take that however you wish.

Good point, it's a generic ship with no name to begin with.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"THERE...IS...ONE...STARGAZER!!!!!!!"

 

[Timo]

As I recall, the Battle at Maxia where the Stargazer was lost was a very different battle from the battle where the captain was lost and Picard took command. The latter being where he was given command of the ship and he served as commander for nearly 20 years.

That's more than we were actually told. All that we learned from the episodes is that Picard once took command of the bridge of the Stargazer when her captain was incapacitated (TNG "Tapestry"). We are never told that this would have resulted in Picard being placed in command of that ship. It's just one incident in a long string of heroics that made Starfleet impressed with Picard and ultimately resulted in his promotion to Captain rank and him being given captaincy of a vessel (which, perhaps not completely incidentally, happened to be the Stargazer). We don't know when any of this happened, and we have no reason to think any of it happened in an unrealistic or inconsistent manner.

IMHO, the writers maintained excellent consistency with the Stargazer backstory, never contradicting themselves. Anything that happened could plausibly have happened before the Battle of Maxia; all the people involved could have been involved. Even what little we know about the ranks of the people involved makes sense.

And no, there doesn't appear to be a second ship named Stargazer anywhere in Trek lore, either preceding or succeeding Picard's old ship.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

The thing that stand out to me Timo is Picard twice stated in The Battle that just prior to Battle of Maxia, he was the helmsman. Which implies that he wasn't the ship's captain at the time.

 

[BillJ]

The thing that stand out to me Timo is Picard twice stated in The Battle that just prior to Battle of Maxia, he was the helmsman. Which implies that he wasn't the ship's captain at the time.

He says he did what "any good helmsman could have done". That doesn't mean he was the helmsman.

In his dream state, he's shown sitting in the captain's chair. Wouldn't have been much of a command if he had only been captain for fifteen minutes. When he returns to the Stargazer to attack the Enterprise, he once again sits in the captain's chair.

I think he was the captain already.

 

[Avro Arrow]

^ I agree. I just checked the transcript, and the Stargazer crew called him "captain" when he was reliving the battle. (I know that naval tradition says the ship commander can be called "captain" regardless of rank, but we pretty much see the incident from the beginning, and there's no "original" captain that gets killed causing Picard to take over, or anything like that.) As well, Picard refers to Vigo as "my weapons officer", which would be strange phrasing if Picard was only the helmsman.

The bigger question is... why didn't Starfleet send a ship to recover the Stargazer sometime in the past nine years? Picard had to abandon ship, but he knew it didn't blow up, and he knew where they left it. Yar mentions that except for six torpedoes, the ship was fully armed. You wouldn't think Starfleet would want to leave a fully armed ship lying around for just anyone to find.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yeah, Picard simply says he did what any good helmsman would have done, but Riker seems to think Picard is being overly modest in this regard. Picard says that he "did what any good helmsman would have done" but he says this as a man who's served as a helmsman, since in the flashbacks we do see him in the Captain's chair.

Memory Alpha (a Wiki based of "canon" Star Trek works) has Picard taking command of the ship, Jack Crusher dying on an away mission, the ship operating in the Cardassian Wars and then the Battle at Maxia. Taking place over the course of twenty-some years.

While the dates are assumed, we're told enough over the course of the series about Picard's time on the Stargazer to know he served on it for quite some time and it's clear to me that the incident where Picard took command, prompting him to be given command, is different than the incident where Picard lost the Stargazer.

As for what became of the Stargazer between the battle with the Ferengi and "The Battle"? Canonically we have no idea, "The Buried Age" by our very own Christopher covers this very nicely. in the book the ship was overly contaminated by radiation when the crew evacuated and the auto-destruct system failed. (Not really spoilers of the book since the incident on the Stargazer is a fairly small part. It can be assumed the Ferengi performed radiation clean-up of the ship before returning it to Picard.)

It's "maybe" possible to just believe the technology on the ship was old/already leaked to other races and the ship contained no sensitive information or technology to make Starfleet overly worried about it. Or maybe they *had* been looking for the ship but were never able to recover it.

 

[BigJake]

"THERE...IS...ONE...STARGAZER!!!!!!!"

I came into this thread to say only that. Well played.

 

[Dukhat]

Rick Sternbach has stated that the desktop model was always meant to represent Picard's previous command (The Stargazer), although ironically it was quickly replaced by an AMT Enterprise-A model for "The Battle" when the possibility existed that a new filming model wouldn't be ready in time and they might have had to reuse the TMP Enterprise for the Stargazer. Luckily that didn't happen.

As for the 7100 registry? Aside from what's been already stated about reusing the decals from the AMT kit, there's another way to look at it in-universe: The model could have just been a representation of his ship class. When I worked at the Naval Academy gift shop, we sold wooden model airplane replicas. The models just had generic registry numbers on them (all the same number). So if someone bought the model because he once flew that kind of plane and wanted a replica of it for his desk, it wouldn't have the same registry as his original plane, but would still be a representation of it. That's probably why the desktop Stargazer didn't have a name. Captain Zimbatta might have had the exact same NCC-7100 model in his ready room on the Victory...