The Constitution class registries

The ever recurring question if Star Trek registries make sense are explained that even during the time of TOS no visible scheme was present. However this is not true. Matt Jeffries the designer of the most famous spacevessel intented that all vessels started with 17, as he confirmed in an interview with the BBC:

The Wallchart

The ultimate explanation?

In 1967 on episode, “Court Martial”, featured a chart with a couple of registries. In 1975 Greg Jein came up with a theory how the numbers on the chart could be assigned to the known vessel names. The wallchart as it was identified by Greg Jein who purchased high quality film clips:

He assigned to the given registries the names printed in The Making of Star Trek in reverted alphabetical order:

Ships he stated that were not on the list were the USS Farragut, because he stated a lost ship would not be listed, as the USS Republic (NCC-1371) because of her status as training vessel and the USS Defiant which he assumed was not yet constructed. The USS Potemkin and USS Yorktown were not listed either, but he gave no explanation as to why not.

However when Mike Okuda took the numbers some got mixed (e.g. replacing a 6 for an 8). If one keeps the ship names but replaces the registries the chart would read this way:

As you can see the registry of the USS Intrepid was changed to 1831, not a big deal, but the USS Endeavour now is either not listed or the former number 1718 was wrong, same with the USS Eagle which now is connected to the 958, the lowest Constitution class registry. If one keeps the registries, the chart "that is said to list all Constitution class vessels" would read as the following:

A paragraph I feel worthy to be quoted from Greg Jein’s article is this piece:

The Enterprise is known to be a Constitution Class ship [illustration: “The Space Seed,” Scene 44. Enlargement of portion of a film clip. This indicated that the USS Enterprise (MK IX/01) is a Constitution Class vessel.]. In naval parlance the class of a vessel is usually named after the first model of the line built, with each ship thereafter consecutively numbered. Thus we have Constitution #1700 and Enterprise #1701.

When Okuda made use of the numbers in Jein’s article he must have skipped that paragraph, because based on that assumption Jein did only list the Constitution, Endeavour, Enterprise, Hood and Lexington as Constitution class vessels. The Potemkin which was not on the list was given the number 1702 because of the argumentation. Of course this stretches credibility, because the Excalibur and Exeter (both with 16xx) numbers were Constitution class as well as the odd labelled Constellation.

As to where the rest of the numbers came from the answer is very simple: the editor of the Fanzine created a chart of starship names following the rule that was just set up by Jein:

(Classes are given in the format of the “Space Seed” diagram. Abbreviations: DSC/deep space cruiser; IC/interstellar cruiser; SC/space cruiser.)

Further Reading

• The Case of Jonathan Doe Starship by Gregory Jein
• Vessels of Starfleet by Steve Pugh