The end of Trek for good? No... that won't happen just yet, and I don't want to see that happen either. But I sincerely think this movie needs to fail, if only to open some eyes and slap some faces. Star Trek doesn't suck... only the people making the decisions for it right now. As long as the fans continue to realize that, that's all that matters. I won't blidnly support a bad product simply because it bears a brand name I am loyal to. I think I deserve the past quality I have come to e xp ect in the past.

I should add though, that if Trek was over for good due to the results of this movie, that it would be just typical of the people in charge right now. They would be so blinded by their own arrogance and idiocy that they would blame the failure on the fans rather than accept responsibility for the fact that they delivered something that sucked and was inferior to what we want. Movie studios are notoriously difficult to reason with in matters like this... they think they have a hit on their hands, and when it proves to be a bomb instead, they blame audiences, rather than to look at the real problem, which is purely and simply... a bad movie or concept.

like i said, i dont know what happened to berman... he was writing for TNG during its heyday and he was in charge of DS9... i guess he just ran out of ideas and now is delusional or something.

what about Ira Steven Behr... he wrote for DS9 and DS9 had some awesome episodes. he actually wrote some of the best eps...like trials and tribble-ations, siege of ar-558, tears of the prophets, image in the sand, far beyond the stars, what you leave behind, favor of the bold, sacrifice of angels... and badda-bing, badda-bang (it was a holo ep, but it was soooooo good... just seeing them all walk in their 1960s close heading for the casino was a great moment)

and from TNG he wrote Yesterday's Enterprise

Brannon Braga wrote All good things from TNG.

Shoot, i'd like jonathan frakes write a script... the actors from the movies would be better than getting someone from the outside.


Just a reminder, First Contact Special Edition comes out on Tuesday.

Wow, this thread sure got active again all of a sudden--that post about the movie idea was bound to do it.

I honestly thought after Nemesis tanked, they'd give Star Trek a long rest, especially since they're pulling the plug on its current TV incarnation. Of course, Nemesis came out at the end of 2002, and if a new movie comes out at the end of 2007, like that post said, that would be 5 years, which is an eternity in movie land, longer than they've ever gone between ST movies (Insurrection to Nemesis was only 4 years).

I don't want the movie to tank. I'd much rather have a good movie. If it is really lousy, what's left of the fan base will dissipate, and then Trek will really be up the creek without a warp core.

The movie idea (assuming it's legit and it gets made) is atypical of Paramount's reaction to a flop in the series. After ST:TMP came out way over budget, Paramount took creative control away from Roddenberry, brought in Harve Bennett, and turned Star Trek over to the studio's TV division for future movies. And that was on the heels of a movie that did the biggest box office of all of them! When ST V flopped, Harve Bennett took the fall, since obviously Shatner wasn't going to, and the cast whipped up fan rebellion against Bennett's Starfleet Academy idea. Paramount put some else in as producer and brought back Nicholas Meyer, who wrote/directed II and cowrote IV, to direct. Insurrection under-performed, and so the reins were given to Stuart Baird for Nemesis (who supposedly know so little about Trek he thought Data was an alien). Also, some marketing genius at Paramount decided to sandwich Nemeis between The Two Towers and Harry Potter, where it was sure to get crushed. So Nemesis flopped hard.

So I think Paramount has had 2 failures in a row already, and their solution is to dump the NG cast and bring in a cast of (presumably cheap) unknowns. How they arrive at these decisions, I'm not sure. I don't know how in touch with their audience they are. After Nemesis, did they perceive a sentiment that the fans were tired of Picard and his crew? Or did they just arbitrarily assign the blame to them?

I still think they should give ST a long rest. If they did that, they'd have to come up with a new cast, since the Next Gen folks would be too old (as would probably all the other casts). If they won't wait a good long while, I think probably the better idea than getting rid of the Next Gen cast would be to get rid of Berman. He's simply been doing ST too long and can't tell a good idea from a bad one any more, apparently. Sidebar on how he came to be in charge of ST: he's Roddenberry's hand-picked successor. Unlike the original cast movies after ST:TMP, Roddenberry did have creative control over TNG, and early in its run, as his health began to fail badly, he groomed Berman and handed him the reins, which Paramount has honored to this day.

The problem is, who'd replace Berman? He had a lot of underlings working on the various series, with mixed but generally good results, but his hand was on their shoulders the entire time, and I think if any of them were running ST, it would simple be Berman Light. I'd be inclined to say that the person I'd most trust to helm ST would be Leonard Nimoy, but I think his familiarities and sensibilities are most in tune with the original cast, and presumably they're out of the picture for any future movies.

They've started tearing down the Enterprise sets, so the chances of it finding new life on Spike TV or wherever are essentially nil. However, the final episode sounds interesting. Read about it here:

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/n ... /9996.html

and then report back here to discuss.

man, that makes me sad... only 6 new eps left... i never had much hopes.. but if spike puts money out, i am sure they can find someone to build the sets up again ... i am anxious to see Riker and Troi on the series finale... i wonder how its gonna be set up with no time travel, but with a holodeck... so i am assuming Troi and Riker will be in the holodeck in a past scene. they said they are gonna be in TNG era uniforms, so whatever riker and troi are doing, it must be before the "current" trek timeline (i.e. riker on the titan)... who knows... but it does sound interesting... cant wait for April 15th for the new episodes to start... it also says that jeffery combs is gonna be on the finale, i love his characters. combs should have a guaranteed spot on any trek tv show from now on.


i still think they should give it one more year... they just let manny coto take over and look what has happened, this year was fantastic... spike tv would be a good channel... they already show 4 hours of trek a day. spike really doesnt have an original show, this could help both parties out alot... what about the sci-fi network?

they should just have a trek-channel... all trek, all the time show some TOS, TNG, Voyager, Enterprise, DS9 and a movie

My concern is I'm afraid they're going to do a Roseanne/Dallas/Newhart/St. Elsewhere and imply that the entire series was only a dream...I mean, holodeck simulation.

I didn't infer that the 24th Century scenes would necessarily be TNG TV era vs. TNG movie era. I can't think of a good reason why they might set it "then" instead of "now." However, that reference to Ten Forward may be the clincher. The Enterprise E might have a bar called Ten Forward, and it might be on Deck 10, but that seems a bit of a coincidence, considering the designs of the D and E are so different. So it may TV-era. They'll have to e xp lain why Troi and Riker look so much older, if so!

Yeah, the Sci Fi channel seems to be missing in action during all these procedings. You'd think they'd jump at the chance to have a first-run Star Trek series. Perhaps Spike TV has some clause in their contract for showing the other shows' reruns that gives them exclusive rights to Enterprise.

the rumor i am reading is that riker and troi are watching smoe holo-records of the first enterprise... which really doesnt negate the show... because it all would have happened... maybe they have recreations of the logs and make movie type things. that wouldnt be THAT bad... it would be bad if it was all a made up story.it would be really cool if they showed riker and troi on the titan... i really dont know why they would show them on the Ent-D.

not to change the subject... i dont know if any of you like the star trek books... but a STAR TREK TITAN BOOK IS COMING OUT:head_bang ... i've never read the books but I AM reading this one... riker is the greatest... too bad they didnt do Star Trek: Titan as a tv show or a movie. i am actually excited about it, i know books arent canon, but this is gonna be cool.

speaking of books... Avatar, was a book written as a 8th season of DS9, i havent read it, but ive heard good things.

Well, the glimpses and hints of the final episode seem cool and tantalizing, giving me hope that the show will go out on a very good note. I'm sure whatever version of the Enterprise Riker and Troi are on, there will be a reasonable e xp lanation for it. Perhaps the Ten Forward deck is itself part of a holodeck simulation? Who knows.

My last real regret for this show is that we didn't get to see Shatner come back as Kirk. I would have paid real money to see that one last time.

That little star trek fan inside of me (or big fan for that matter) still has some hope that we will see Kirk again... maybe an old man.. but he'll be back, hopefully... they cant let him die that pathetic death.

The only reason I can think of that they'd have Riker and Troi on the D is to tie into the title of the episode, "These Are The Voyages...". As you know, the conclusion of that line is "of the Starship Enterprise." It would make more sense if both the past and future segments were on ships called Enterprise. The article on the Star Trek website showed a still from the ep: a closeup of the sign on the Holodeck door. I haven't popped in any DVDs yet to compare holodeck door signs on the D and E. I don't even know if the door sign on the E (in First Contact) was visible during the few seconds it took Picard and Lily to enter.

I suspect Shatner is probably kicking himself in the wake of the cancellation of Enterprise. You gotta think he'd rather see Kirk return in some fashion than to have had the extra dough he was asking for. It's not like the man needs the money, presumably. I would have loved to have seen Kirk rescued from his rather ignominious fate somehow. Unfortunately, I think if they had had him in an episode, it probably would have involved Archer entering the Nexus rather than Kirk being alive somehow.

i am really anxious to see the finale... i hope it is great, so it will be a big F-U to paramount.

Ok, i was doing some figuring ( i have waaaay too much time on my hands)... ok... from a site i go to often that has this huge timeline... Enterprise is at around the year 2154 and they have the romulan war starting at 2156, no big deal right? but if this new prequel movie is about the romulan war and they are not going to have the crew from NX-01 or anyone from the series... where did they go in 2 years.... thats one of the only things that get on my nerves on trek... i know they try to make the different series stand-alone, but they should acknowledge the other shows.. take for instance the dominion war... you have this huge invasion, you would think the enterprise would be there or mentioned at least once.

i dont know if the romulan war date is exact, but if it is only 2 years from where enterprise is now, what is gonna happen to the crew, i would imagine NX-01 would be involved in the war somehow... unless the date is wrong and they would have another crew at a later date

but the romulan war ended before the federation was founded, and it was stated the federation was founded in 2061, ok maybe i am thinking about it too much... i am gonna get a headache.

The Star Trek Chronology gives the dates for the Romulan War as roughly 2156-2160. So if Enterprise hadn't been cancelled, its final years would have dealt with the Romulan War. That would have been absolutely grand. DS9 was at its absolute best when it had the huge Dominion War story thread tying the last few years together. Which means the cancellation of Enterprise is awful for yet another reason!

That article that Valkrist copied from Dark Horizons said the prequel movie would be 160 years before Kirk, I thought, which would have it predating both the NX-01 and the Romulan War, so it would have to be about something else entirely. Personally, since the next movie is going to bomb anyway (there, I've said it), they should forget about trying to bring in new audiences and just make one for the fans, and have it be a continuation of Enterprise, and deal with the Romulan War. That wouldn't be as good as spending two or three years of the TV series fleshing out the war, but it's the best we could hope for now.

Star Trek does sometimes mention its other incarnations in passing, though as you point out, it makes an effort to keep them independent. The Dominion War is mentioned in Insurrection (and in Voyager, after they restore contact with Earth). I believe the Enterprise is mentioned in at least one DS9 episode dealing with either the Dominion War or the brief Klingon-Cardassian war.

Yea, they mention them a few times... just enought to acknowledge them a tad... like in the last season of TNG... riker talks to quark about Lursa and B'Etor

i read that the guy writing the prequel was mistaken when he said 160 years... he really isnt a big fan of the series and was just saying it was before kirk

but i do think that it should be the romulan war with the enterprise cast, being the fact that they got screwed.

As you can probably see, i love when the reruns start over with the pilot episode right after the finale... i love to compare


well the pilot for TNG came on today, and you pretty much can see the differences, Worf/Geordi wear red. Worf's ridges and hairline are completely different. Worf sits in Data's chair (the ops chair) the left and Data sits in the Helms chair... the right.

Troi wears the traditional skirt uniform, not her personal jumpsuit leotard thing she wears for the majority of the series, but she wears the greenish-turquoisy color. (on the finale, she is shown weary a blue one on the first day picard takes command when picard is moving through time.. shame shame shame on the continuity :lol_blue: )

obrien was a helm officer on the battle bridge.

oh yea, this is the first and only time that the main title them actually plays during the actual show (during the ship separation).

other than that things are about the same, besides those horrid one piece zip up the front uniforms.

Speaking of uniforms, maybe someone can help me out...
in the later 2 peice uniform, there looks to be a zipper in the back, but Ro Laren takes her uniform top off to give to a child, but she undoes it from the front, but there doesnt look to be a way to undo it.

oh yea, in the first episode, there was a man wearing the short skirt/tunic uniform.. he looked like a roman soldier in the future

yes, in nemesis Riker is leaving to take command of the Titan, but they get called to Romulus... i believe the enterprise was going somewhere else, i forget, but this was like Riker's last 2 weeks or so on the enterprise.


No specs are known about the Titan, what class ship it is or what it looks like. there Star Trek: Titan Books coming out next month and later in august i believe.. they are going to have specific info (i know not canon, but it'll give you an idea) and they are going to have a contest for someone to draw it.

Well i picked up my copy of First Contact: Special Edition today and watched the special features which as always are pretty dang good if i do say so myself.. everyones favorite producer, rick berman, was featured alot as well as brannon braga.


On Disc 1 you have:
The movie of course
text commentary by michael okuda and denise okuda
director commentary by jonathan frakes
commentary by braga and ronald moore

disc 2 you have:
The star trek universe
-- A tribute to jerry goldsmith
-- the legacy of zefram cochrane
-- First Contact - The possibilities (stuff with SETI and things like that)

The borg collective
-- unimatrix 1
-- the queen
-- the design matrix

scene decontruction
-- borg queen assembly
-- escape bod launching
-- borg queen's demise

first contact production
-- the story
-- the missle silo
-- the deflector dish
-- from "a" to "e"
-- making first contact
-- the art of first contact

archives
-- storyboards
-- photo gallery

trailers
-- teaser
--theatrical

i havnet watched the movie yet, but i did take a look at the special features.
i wish they had a blooper reel, i always like bloopers and to see actors i really like goof around.

BladeCollector wrote:Speaking of uniforms, maybe someone can help me out... in the later 2 peice uniform, there looks to be a zipper in the back, but Ro Laren takes her uniform top off to give to a child, but she undoes it from the front, but there doesnt look to be a way to undo it.

Yes, the uniform tops zipped in the back. I know this because I have one. Not an official one, mind you, but one made from the patterns they sold at conventions. It's very awkward to put on by yourself, and not much easier to take off. It would look very ungainly to show Ro taking it off, so I imagine they made her a special one that opened in the front.

oh yea, in the first episode, there was a man wearing the short skirt/tunic uniform.. he looked like a roman soldier in the future

That was the infamous "skant" (skirt + pant). Roddenberry had a lot of ideas about the future--some cool, some silly. This was his idea of a unisex uniform, other than the normal pants-based one. That hallway scene in the first ep is probably the only time the skant ever saw the light of day.

During the first season or two, the officers' formal uniform (a "dress" uniform apparently literally!) had a very long tunic that went to about mid-calf (and was worn with tights), another silly idea. By the third season, they modified it to a more appealing length.

With all this discussion of uniforms, it would be remiss of me not to tell the following anecdote. Apologies to anyone who's heard it a hundred times. You've probably seen the ep where they talk about the "Picard Maneuver," a battle move Picard improvised aboard the Stargazer in battle against the Ferengi, and which made it into the textbooks. Well, the cast pretty much all hated their uniforms, because they were uncomfortable and tended to ride up on you constantly. You know how Picard would always give his tunic a sharp downward tug or two when rising to stand, to reposition and smooth it. Well, as Marina Sirtis tells it at conventions, "This [tugs at shirt twice] is the real Picard Maneuver."

so, what were your favorite uniforms, since we are on uniforms.

i like different ones for different reasons..

TOS-Movie era-- i like the formal look to them, they had a since of dignity

TNG - i didnt like the 1-peice with the low/no neck, i liked the 2-piece with the high collar-- looked more professional.

i liked the TNG-era variation (DS9 first seasons) with the color on the shoulders, but all black for the rest.

but i guess my favorite would be the newer uniforms, with the grey top and colored undershirt... it looks more comfortable and easier to wear, even though it is 2 layers.

my least favorite uniform is the Motion Picture pajama uniforms.

not to get off of the uniform topic, please continue to answer, but i watched the episode of TNG season 1, and they have "first contact" with the ferengi, i know its been discussed that they had ferengi in Enterprise, and we will just chalk that up as missing records or something like that, but didnt picard have contact with the ferengi when he was on the stargazer because he destroyed the ship that Daimon Bok's son was on, which i gather was a ferengi vessel. i guess it could be the same as the romulans (not a war) but they had contact with them but not visually and everything they knew was based on rumor. but they also knew (TNG crew) knew the composition of a ferengi ship and knew what a ferengi ship looked like. not that i think this is a huge continuity deal, alot of things change between the 1st season, you throw out an idea and it either works or dont.

also the ferengi in this episode say gold is very valuable, but later gold is worthless and the latinum inside is the valuable part.

speaking of latinum, this is out of curiosity only, you hear slips, strips, bars and bricks of latinum, i am assuming that is the order of value, but anyone know how many slips make a strip or strips to bars, etc.

defyitall wrote:I also picked up First Contact yesterday. I watched the movie and was kind of surpirsed at how bad the transfer was. Looked like they used a dirty film print of the movie and never cleaned it. You could actually see dirt flecks every once and a while.

That's very surprising, as DVD reviews have raved about the quality of the print used and the transfer. Sound and Vision called (the original DVD of) First Contact "reference quality," and the one review I've read so far of the new one said it looked possibly even better. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet (that's tonight!), but on my cruddy old TV, I won't be able to tell anyway.

I just finished watching it and it looked fine on my TV, for whatever it's worth.

I detected a continuity error I never noticed before. One of the crew states the Borg have overrun all decks from 16 to 26. Later, Picard tells Lily the Enterprise has 24 decks. Hmmmm.

i watched it and it looked superb quality.


i recommend watching the commentary with jonathan frakes... he is hilarious.

yea, i notice that deck numbering little error, i guess if thats the only thing they mess up on, big deal.

if you watch the part when they are on the deflector dish... when worf hits the borg in the arm with a mek'leth, the point of impact and where the arm gets cut are 2 different places.
--- he slices at the elbow, but the hand comes off.

this may tick some people off but watch the scene towards then end when data fires the torpedos at the phoenix, and a little before that when picard and the queen have their confrontation, watch the scene with the commentary with brannon braga... him and the other guy are talking about maybe what star trek needs is a clean slate... like a "start over" and nothing that has happened counts... but towards the end of the convo, i think they realize it wouldnt be accepted... i dont think they were being serious, they were comparing it to comic books and stuff.

i thought this was kinda funny... worf has got to have the record for a character changing the most throughout a series... take a look

season 1



season 2


and on ds9

Technically, BladeCollector, you're only supposed to post photos in the Gallery section, although I can see why you put them in your post--they are much more effective in showing Worf's "evolution" that way. And obviously, some things--and some Klingons--improve with age. Too bad you didn't include a pic from Next Gen's 4th or 5th season (I think)--Worf had NO EYEBROWS in that one, for some reason.

Regarding Braga's comment about hitting the reset on Star Trek and ignoring everything, that would have been a disastrously bad idea, so he had to have been joking. That would have alienated all the fans. Plus, one of the things that elevates Star Trek above Star Wars (ok, cue the cries of outrage from the SW contingent) is the enormously detailed backstory of Star Trek. Between ten movies and five TV series, we've got hundreds of hours of Star Trek building an ever-growing depiction of humanity's future. To throw that all out the window would be beyond asinine. You certainly wouldn't be able to call it Star Trek.

sorry, i just posted pics on here because they were in the batman threads, and the gallery has been messed up here lately. i'll post them in the gallery next time.

they actually mentioned star wars in their conversation about the continuity... how they have 6 movies, but really one writer, and star trek has 10 movies and over 700 episodes with different writers, so continuity gets a little more difficult.

BladeCollector wrote:not to get off of the uniform topic, please continue to answer, but i watched the episode of TNG season 1, and they have "first contact" with the ferengi, i know its been discussed that they had ferengi in Enterprise, and we will just chalk that up as missing records or something like that, but didnt picard have contact with the ferengi when he was on the stargazer because he destroyed the ship that Daimon Bok's son was on, which i gather was a ferengi vessel. i guess it could be the same as the romulans (not a war) but they had contact with them but not visually and everything they knew was based on rumor. but they also knew (TNG crew) knew the composition of a ferengi ship and knew what a ferengi ship looked like. not that i think this is a huge continuity deal, alot of things change between the 1st season, you throw out an idea and it either works or dont.

i just watched another episode that answered my question, the unidentified ferengi vessel fired on the stargazer and picard blew it up and never knew it was a ferengi vessel.

for all you people that play video games, they are coming out with a MMORPG for Star Trek...kind of like Star Wars Galaxies, but for Trek. basically you start out as a cadet and work your way up through the ranks. and you e xp lore the galaxy and star trek stuff .

Speaking of which, here is a topic we haven't discussed yet: which Trek games have you played on the computer?

Here is my list (by no means all the Trek titles released, but most of them):

Star Trek (TOS - Commodore 64)
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
Star Trek: Judgment Rites
A Final Unity
Klingon Honor Guard
Birth of the Federation
Starfleet Academy
Starfleet Academy: Chekov's Lost Missions
Starfleet Command
Starfleet Command 2 - Empires at War
DS9 - The Fallen
Voyager: Elite Force
Voyager: Elite Force 2
Star Trek: New Worlds
Star Trek: Armada

I would have to say that my top three favourites would be Judgment Rites, Starfleet Command, and Elite Force. Those sure were a lot of fun.

My greatest disappointment ever in this genre was the cancellation of Star Trek: The Secret of Vulcan Fury. Basically, this game was to have been the sequel to Judgment Rites, written by original series writer D.C. Fontana, and featuring the voices of all seven original cast members. All of their voice work and lines had been recorded already, including DeForest Kelley's before he became ill, when suddenly the game was sadly cancelled due to multiple setbacks at Interplay.

Check out these links for some info on it, if you are interested. Click on the FAQ link for the game's doomed history, and on Screenshots for some amazing pictures of a masterpiece that could have been.

http://gaming.trekpulse.com/secretofvulcanfury/

honestly i have never played a star trek game. i have seen them on the game magazines as being made, but i have honestly never seen one at a store, and usually the reviews are horrid. but i have been describing a game like Star Trek Online to my friends for a couple of years now and when i heard about it, my eyes got big like christmas morning

The only computer game I've ever played is Freecell (and other solitaires, for that matter).

Awww... that's a shame, you guys don't know what you are missing, Admittedly some of the games were stinkers, but that is true of almost any game franchise or game genre. Even Star Wars has its share of crappy games. However, some of them have been quite good and gotten excellent reviews. I myself used to work as a game reviewer for a company here in Vancouver, and wrote my share of game reviews, including DS9's The Fallen, and Star Trek New Worlds.

OK, let me back up a little. When I said I hadn't played any games other than Freecell, I meant I hadn't routinely/frequently played any other than Freecell. A number of years ago, somebody brought in Duke Nuk'em or something like that, and I played with it a little bit. I discovered that due to all the panning across the screen and so forth, I could only play for about 5 minutes. I get motion sickness really easy, so playing computer games (or reading microfilm, which I sometimes have to do at work) is guaranteed to have me hurling if I have to do it more than just a little bit. So whatever curiousity I would have had about those Star Trek and Star Wars games got nipped in the bud. I guess that leaves me more money to spend on DVDs.

Well, allow me to say that if your game-playing e xp erience is limited to dabbling with Duke Nukem, and your subsquent discovery that you suffer from what is actually quite a common condition has stopped you from playing anything else, then that is truly a shame. That game and many others like it, including some Star Trek titles, are classified as first-person shooters in that they are played from the player's visual perspective, and can thus induce a bad physical response in some.

That being said, that is but one type of computer game, albeit a popular one. Maybe you don't like computer games in general or simply don't care to know about them, but there are many other types of games that are perfectly fine to play without risk of being sick. Judgment Rites and A Final Unity are perfect examples of interactive puzzle-solving style games that have absolutely nothing to do with nauseating motion-sickness. Anyhow, I'm sure you know all this, but just felt the need to clarify.

anyone have a topic to talk about... i'm fresh out of ideas.

have we talked about favorite ship design/class?

Not per se. We did talk about what was our favorite ship from each of the series; had a poll in it, in fact. But that's a little different, so I think this is a legitimate way to jump start this thread. OK, Im typing blind because my cat is climbing all over me. OK, she moved enough for me to see again. I think my all time favorite ship design is the Sovereign class (Enterprise E). I love its lines and color scheme. (OK, now she's sitting on one of my hands.) Some of the one-off ship designs they had for First Contact and later seasons of Voyager were pretty cool, but I don't know the names of any of them.

yea the Enterprise E was the best for me, and those little attack ship things they had in First Contact were pretty cool. i also like the defiant, and akira classes... and call me crazy, but i like the NX-01 design (it looks alot like the akira)

Yep... the ships seen engaging the Borg were of the Steamrunner, Norway, and Akira class. The Akira class is the one shown in the big closeup shot when the Enterprise orders all ships to fire in unison. Interesting little factoid: these new ship classes were never created as models and exist only as CGI.

Seen also briefly is the ever-present Miranda class (the USS Reliant from ST II was one of these.) In fact, has anyone noticed that out all of the starship classes, the Miranda class seems to have gotten the most mileage and use in Starfleet? I mean, we are talking about a ship class that has been in service for about a hundred years. Talk about a winning design. A close second would be the Excelsior class, which is also still in wide use.

I once speculated why, if the Excelsior and Miranda classes were still in use, why was the Enterprise A (Constitution-refit) no longer in use? It seems to have been a very versatile design, so why do we never see it? Even in the massive fleet scenes on DS9 during the dominion war, we never see it. I asked this once in another forum, and the response given made sense and seems to be the only plausible one: the original Enterprise design is too recognizable for fans, and thus the writers opted to never show it again so as to not raise confusion. Not that anyone would ever be silly enough to think Kirk's Enterprise could still be around, but it is no news to anyone how little writers think of their audiences' intelligence sometimes.

Here is one piece of trivia: the Enterprise A design is indeed seen once in the TV shows. Can you tell me where this very brief appearance was? (and I don't mean as a schematic on some computer screen or the DS9 episode with the tribbles - that was the older Enterprise.)

Just to add a few more names for Olorin to connect with the visuals:

The Enterprise C was an Ambassador class starship.
The ship class seen in various shows, including at the end of Generations and with Geordi in command in the future is the Nebula class.
The Grissom from ST III is an Oberth class.
Beverly Crusher's ship with the spherical primary hull from All Good Things, the USS Pasteur, was an Olympic class.
Another ship class created for First Contact was the Saber class (about the same size as the Defiant.)

Lastly...

The ships present in First Contact included:

USS Thunderchild (Akira class)
USS Budapest (Norway class)
USS Appalachia (Steamrunner class)
USS Yeager (Saber-class)

They created those new ships, if you all dont already know, so no-one (especially non-trek fans) would confuse the enterprise with any other ship. alot of people (apparently not enough) go to the trek movies but arent maybe huge fans (maybe friends, family or girlfriends or something like that) and cant always keep the ships straight. especially the Enterprise-D design, which a lot of ships kinda had the basic design of, like those fleet battles in DS9... lots of Enterprise-ish looking ships could throw some off.

The difference being, the Galaxy class starships that the Enterprise D belonged to were seen many times in the fleet scenes on DS9. My point was that the original Enterprise A design is never seen, for the reasons both you and I mentioned: that some folks just confuse very easily. Another ship type that never makes a return is the Enterprise B, which is a refit Excelsior class, Mark III variant, I believe.

So... still no guesses as to which episode actually offered an ever-so brief glimpse of a refit Constitution class vessel? :angel2:

Not yet.. but i do know that the Enterprise C was in Yesterday's Enterprise

Yesterday's Enterprise was one of my favourite episodes, though I've always wondered what went wrong with the wardrobe dept. in that show. Did you notice the crew were wearing only half of the Kirk-movie-era standard uniform? They had the red vests and black pants, but the distinctive white turtleneck undertunics were conspicuously absent. I wonder why they didn't have access to those or if they were going for a slightly different look. Whatever the case, they came across as looking quite silly and budget.

Back to the topic of starships, it is long held tradition that a ship's class is named after the first working prototype. The Defiant was the first of its class, and thus the Defiant class was born. Likewise with the Constitution, Galaxy, Sovereign, and just about any other class of starship in Starfleet. But what about the NX-01? Clearly it was the first of its kind, as the NX prefix attests, but did Starfleet adhere back then to the latter day naming convention? Meaning, were subquent ships of that design called 'Enterprise' class vessels, like the Columbia?

Kirk's Enterprise was the only one of 12 (some sources list 13,) original Constitution class ships to complete its five-year mission. I once read in an unofficial source that, after the refit seen in the first movie, the ship's class was changed from Constitution to Enterprise class, to reflect its modernized redesign, and to denote the fact that the Enterprise had been the first to undergo this refit. This would seem to make sense, but it would then contradict with the NX-01 being Enterprise class, but since we've seen continuity go out the window several times, does it really matter?

As for my trivia question, here is my one and only hint: it is in a TNG episode.