Talk:USS Saratoga (NCC-31911)

is 1867 really 31911?

 * moved from talk:USS Saratoga.

NCC-1867 and NCC-31911 are the same class with modifications... I wondered if it could in fact be same ship. Miranda have been in service for over a century, so it's obvious there have been several upgrades and modification to indivual ships. Maybe the Saratoga underwent a large refit sometims between 2286 and 2367, and was given a new registry code. A registry change could be used to denote modernized vs. original mirandas. A usefull prevaution if the refit completely change the ship's capacities. --Rami


 * I was thinking something similar. Do we know that a change in registry is impossible and if so, from what source? Jaf 15:29, 20 March 2006 (UTC)Jaf
 * No ship has ever been shown to change registry, unless you count that the Sao Paulo 75633 was renamed Defiant and briefly (and admittedly erroneously) shown as 74205.


 * USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A) Enterprise spent 2 1/2 years in refit but a few months later, we have a new Enterprise.  Why refit an old ship if you could build a new one in a fraction of the time?  So it's reasonable to assume an existing ship became Enterprise-A.  There's some debate as to what ship was renamed/renumbered but it's pretty much accepted that one was. --StarFire209 03:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * There is also the case of the Yamato, that was first 1305-E, then later changed to 71807 some degree of time later that same year.


 * Both are derived from errors, although in the Yamato's case there is a possibility the ship actually carried two registries (the "hero ship" registry with a letter suffix, and its regular five digit number seen later).


 * Anyone else have any thoughts? I personally think the Saratogas might be separate because of their age, anyway -- since other Mirandae like Lantree were shown to maintain their old 23rd century style registries into the same time period. -- Captain M.K.B. 15:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Either choice has to be based on assumptions, I'm not sure how we go about getting to the bottom of this one. Jaf 13:21, 22 March 2006 (UTC)Jaf


 * This might not be resolvable. There's not enough information. A ship could be renamed or renumbered or renamed AND renumbered or replaced entirely.  You can go with the most likely (which I think is that it's another ship), but you don't know. There's not enough information available to get to the bottom. – StarFire209 03:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

3 pics?
Any particular reason why we need so many images of this ship, I understand two...but the third? --Alan

Sisko's model?
Its been suggested the Miranda model seen in Sisko's office is the Saratoga. Is this true? How many episodes was it in? -- DS9 Forever 17:05, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Ultimately destroyed by a warp core breach?
That was the assumption since the computer was warning of an imminent containment system failure. But as Sisko is looking out of the window of the escape pod, you can clearly see a cutting beam hitting the ship just before she is destroyed. So the containment failure may not have been the cause. 68.249.244.3 11:14, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If the ship exploded after being hit by the cutting, it's because the ship's containment system failed as a result of that beam. Remember, whenever you see a starship explode, it's because of a containment failure or containment breach. ;) --From Andoria with Love 13:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Measure of a Man
Is there any reason why the USS Saratoga NCC-31640, active in 2365 (Measure of a Man, of unknown class), is automatically assumed to be the same as the Miranda-class USS Saratoga NCC-31911 lost two years later at Wolf 359? Why not have them as two ships, as their registries indicate? Catiline63 (talk) 22:13, January 5, 2013 (UTC)


 * There has been at least one example of the same ship being shown to have different registry numbers (the Prometheus class USS Prometheus (Prometheus class)) and given that it is possible for registry numbers to be changed, we can't assume that different numbers mean different ships. At least I think that's the reasoning. :) 31dot (talk) 22:18, January 5, 2013 (UTC)


 * That said, I'm not sure why Throwback put it in there. I will ask him to post here; I'm actually inclined to think it should be a separate article. 31dot (talk) 22:20, January 5, 2013 (UTC)


 * Cheers 31dot. I've made similar observations on the USS Excalibur (NCC-26517) and USS Atlantis talk pages. Personally I think that as long as there's a reasonable gap between ships with the same name but different registries (say, a minimum of a year or two), it's better to accept them as different ships than it is to assume that a ship had it's number altered. Thanks again. Catiline63 (talk) 22:36, January 5, 2013 (UTC)


 * For me, this is a complicated issue. When I began writing the articles, I was concerned about the issues that may arise from the fact that we now have more ships that have contradictory registries. Unlike some of us, I get the feeling that Michael Okuda didn't keep a Bible of starship registries, until he actually had to write the Encyclopedia. At the front of my thinking, there was the the discussions people had about the USS Melbourne, the USS Yamato, and the USS Prometheus (Prometheus class). Some people believe that, in especially in the case of the Melbourne, that there were two ships of the same name operating at the same time. So, for me, the question is, does Starfleet actually have two starships operating at the same time? Based on the canonical evidence, the answer is yes. What's worse is that we have ships sharing the same registry operating at the same time. I made several assumptions when writing the articles: (1) that Starfleet wasn't making ships in the 10000 to 50000 range in the 2360s; (2.) that Starfleet followed US Navy policy in that no two ships with the same name could be operating at the same time; and (3.) I went with the registry that was most prominent. For the Saratoga, the most prominent registry was NCC-31911. I know that 2 contradicts canon, but I consider that most of the newly added ships were never meant to be seen. I have no objections to having two articles for the Saratoga. However, I do have a question, do we create new articles for the other ships - Atlantis (3210), Endeavour (25330), Excalibur (21534), Yamato (24383). Where do we draw the line? Unlike the Prometheus, which we know is the same ship with two different registries, we don't know the class of these other ships. And, if this article is written, I can see people arguing for an article for the Nebula-class Melbourne.Throwback (talk) 23:26, January 5, 2013 (UTC)

I don't think we have to worry too much about the clear mistakes made by TPTB with the Prometheus, and Yamato as in each case the Saratogas (31640 and 31911), Excaliburs (21534 and 26517), and Atlantises (72007 and 32[7?]10) are separated by one, two, or three years, so it's perfectly feasible that they are different vessels. Nor do I think we know enough about how registries are assigned to assume that nothing in the range 20000-40000 was being commissioned in the 2360s. (Indeed, the second Atlantis might well read as NCC-82710, it's so blurred!) As a side issue, I agree that Starfleet never has two ships of the same name commissioned at the same time. However, I'm not worried about their being two Melbournes in service at once - that's easily explained by having an old decommissioned one temporarily pulled out of mothballs to help in the emergency presented by the Borg. Clearly not normal circumstances ;) Catiline63 (talk) 00:16, January 6, 2013 (UTC)


 * There was another consideration I had to consider, and that is Memory Alpha's policy on contradictory information. When there is contradictory information, the contradiction is noted in the notes. Canonically, we know


 * the USS Pegasus, with a registry of NCC-53847, was commissioned in 2358.
 * the USS Voyager, with a registry of NCC-74656, was commissioned in 2371.
 * the new classes of ships introduced in Star Trek: First Contact had features common to ships of the late 2360s and early 2370s, but with registries of 521xx and 619xx and 635xx and 649xx.
 * the Prometheus, with a registry of NX-59650, was commissioned in 2374.
 * My assumption on registries was built on these facts. As for the registries in TMOAM, the majority of these ships began with a 2 or a 3. The exceptions being the Constantinople and the Enterprise.Throwback (talk) 07:11, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

So how do we proceed from here? Seeing that we know of ships with much higher registries being launched before ships with much lower registries (for examples, USS Galaxy NCC-70637 in 2357 vs. [U]SS Tsiolkovskiy NCC-53911 in 2363; multiple ships with 8xxxx registries in service in 2364, while state-of-the-art ships with 7xxxx registries were still being commissioned in the mid-2370s), we can conclude that while the tendency is for registries to go up with time, there are a fair proportion of exceptions and the trend is by no means rigid and absolute. With no *absolute rule* in place, having (in the mid-2360s) Saratoga NCC-31911 replace NCC-31640, Excalibur NCC-26517 replace NCC-21534, and Atlantis NCC-32[x]10 (or, better, NCC-82710) replace NCC-72007, produces no contradiction to canon. Catiline63 (talk) 18:00, January 6, 2013 (UTC)