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In the first TNG episode Picard says something about Riker being able to Reattach his the last ship he served on Saucer section . If memory serves Riker last Assignment was a Excelsior class . It would seam that by the 24 th century the Excelsior class could Reattach it’s own Saucer section
Galaxy-class photon torpedo tube can fire five torpedos per volley or in continuous rapid-fire mode. You can't compare Excelsior class's torpedo tube to Galaxy class's torpedo tube when the launch rate is different.
One of the best-looking ships in Starfleet, slim and sweeping without looking frail. The Sovereign class looks like it takes more design influences from the Excelsior than the Galaxy, but that may just be me.
I agree. The Sovereign is basically a 24th century Excelsior descendant. Constitution spawned Miranda and Excelsior offshoots. Miranda descended to Nebula and similar designs. Excelsior descended to Sovereign and possibly some earlier unnamed classes. Constitution obviously directly descended to Ambassador and Galaxy, as well as a number of lesser known classes. The 4-nacelle ships like the Constellation may also have had their roots in the Miranda design.
Actually there are two reasons for the “fin sections” on the Enterprise B: firstly to differentiate it from the Excelsior, and secondly to have an area on the model to damage where Kirk gets sucked out without damaging the original model; at least according to one of the designers (I can’t remember which.)
Also, in reference to the cutaway, it is utterly impossible for the Enterprise-B and other Excelsiors to have 34 decks, unless each is like, 4 foot high. Only if it was around 700 meters long would they be full sized. 24, on the other hand, fits nicely.
They never removed the 1701-B addons. That's why the Lakota is of the 'B' subtype. They filmed it with the addons, just changed the name decals. When the filming model was sold, it still have the Lakota name and the 'B' addons.
Yeah, that was just a baffling error.... like... where does he think the seperation plane for the saucer is that those impulse engines would stay with the engineering hull?
I have seen some CGI artwork floating around online where they had an Ent-B style Excelsior saucer separating where the impulse section stayed attached to the neck and engineering section. Maybe that's where he got it. Looks really bizarre though, and makes no sense given there's no separations points visible on the top of the saucer to support that kind of breakaway.
Glad somebody caught it. These kinds of videos always seem to fumble the ball hard with basic audio or visual information somewhere along the line that stands in stark contrast with the in-depth technical info that was otherwise gathered.
But it must be true somehow or the stardrive would have no impulse engines after separation nor aux power. Maybe the bridge stays with the stardrive section and there's a battle bridge in the saucer? 😆
@@michaelcroff7097 OK, one , more , time... The saucer is a sub-light 'lifeboat' with Impulse engines, one small Hangar Deck bay, and is (in theory) able to land in an atmosphere. Without a Warp-Core, it cannot re-arm + fire Photon Torps, but it could launch those previously armed and 'held-the-Tube'. It cannot go-to Warp speed, but does retain 50% Shields. It has most=of the Ships Transporters for crew evac/supply shipping. It contains the MAIN BRIDGE, the one IN THE CENTER OF THE DISK, (which, BTW, is "WHY" a Saucer was chosen as Form; You can GET TO & FROM most ship Sections Quickly by going Thru the Center. Doh... The Engineering Section has the WARP CORE and Nacelles, NO IMPULSE DRIVE, but a 'Battle Bridge', Main Shuttle Bay, a Photon Launcher both Fore & Aft, and 1/3rd of the Phasers, most able to fire in a planar 360* with a conical 120* arc. This section also has a Cargo transporter station, and at-least two other 'light-duty transporters. IT is NOT able to Land in an atmosphere, and can only handle 1/3rd of the total Crew. IT IS NOT the 'Life-boat' but, it can FIGHT until it's warp drive is Toast. It has 75% of the Shield capacity at separation, but, since 'something' will likely be damaged by then, expect only 50% of normal shielding. Use your Shuttles if needed for transport evac if you've lost Transporter capacity. Shuttles can also use tractor-beams to stabilize a near-approach Orbit if needed, since you've no Impulse Drive to maneuver with.
Ok, 2 things. A) Taking a moment to laugh at Oberth, excellent. B) Star Trek 5, the gang goes to sleep while camping, everything happening after that is a dream Kirk is having, which explains oddities such as the rocket boots scene and whatever the heck that "god" is supposed to be. In conclusion, excellent video.
My mom walked into my room to see me and my trekkie buddies watching a clip of the oberth class getting blown up on repeat. She slowly closed the door and asked why she couldn't of had a normal kid
The main reason for the "fins" on the Enterprise-B's hull was that they wanted to show the ship taking damage without actually damaging the Excelsior filming model. Unfortunately, when they went to remove them after the film, they found that the glue had damaged the finish anyway, so the pieces were left on for the Lakota.
I think you need to have another look at the ship and where the impulse engines are actually located. Even on the original, they're on the saucer section, so the refit would have four impulse engines on the saucer leaving none on the engineering section. Would make perfect sense to use the separation as a last ditch effort to escape if necessary if the engineering section is badly damaged. Honestly the ship would just look very strange if it separated in a way that the original impulse engines remained with the secondary hull...
The engineering section also has to have in both engines or once or saucer separation the battle section is now inoperable because it can only go into warp
you see you see if the rainbows are pretty and the ships saying full power available but your not moving when you give the order to go you know somethings broken badly on your ship🤣🤣
When the Excelsior class was originally made torpedo tubes only could launch 1 torpedo at a time. By the time of TNG and the Galaxy class ships, torpedo launchers could launch multiple torpedos, I think 7 or 8, at a time so there was only a need for 1 fore and 1 aft launcher.
@@GenerationFilms Star Trek ships USS Vengeance Class, USS Excelsior Class, USS Excelsior Refit Class, USS Excelsior study I Class, USS Excelsior 4-nacelled study I Class, USS Excelsior 4-nacelled study II Class, USS Excelsior vaeiant 1 Class, USS Sovereign Class, USS Sovereign Class Variations, USS Obena Class, etc
Since the Enterprise-D was a Galaxy Class ship outfitted for deep space exploration, it made sense to me to have one forward and one aft torpedo tube that could fire a cluster of torpedoes and probes. A purpose-built combat ship would do better to have multiple launches facing forward and aft for combat-survivability. You don't want to lose your ability to fire torpedoes because your only forward facing tube got damaged. I figured they could put multi-launchers on Excelsior-class ships as upgrades, though there are probably different styles of the newer tubes that maybe can do multiple, or rapid fire, but not the staggering 5 we've seen Enterprise D launch at the same time. If you look at how big the Enterprise D's tubes are, fitting that into a much smaller ship would be tricky.
"The Transwarp Drive was easy to sabotage" Oh yes, it only took one of the best, legendary status engineer in Starfleet history, a man who helped design said drive, to do it. "Strange how the Excelsior had four fore torpedo launchers when the Galaxy had one" Oh yes, because obviously the Galaxy did not have the very first auto-reloading, programmable spread pattern, variable yield torpedo launchers that were part of the Galaxy Design Program.
If Discovery can have a turbolift world bigger inside than the entire ship (bigger on the inside like a Tardis), I guess the Enterprise A can have a 75 deck interdimensional turboshaft too....
@@76TomD 31st century Federation certainly has that technology (subspace manifold or whatever you want to call it). Kirk and co. may have obtained it in one of their adventures?
My head canon is that the “transwarp drive” is simply called warp drive once it’s finalized and deployed fleet wide, like how cellular phone, mobile phones, or what have you are simply called “phones” these days.
I've been head-canoning it that way myself for decades. My other head-canon tidbit is that the TNG warp scale is different precisely because it's a transwarp scale now, hence a reason for the warp scale to change that makes sense.
My own idea is that Star Fleet just used the new name to distinguish between the old Constitution Class Refitted updated warp drive with the newest, faster warp drive in the Excelsior. The biggest difference besides being faster is that it had its own computer core: hence Scotty "borrowing" those parts from it to disable the Excelsior. Older ships just had one central computer core, not a separate one for the warp drive - which may make sense, given the tech of that time, the new warp drive needing a single purpose computer core to control it. The other reason of course could have been shear publicity - the Klingons and the Romulans may wonder what this new type of drive is that Star Fleet had come up with. And then be worried enough not to go to war with them if they had some type of faster, unknown drive, rather than just an updated warp drive.
@@krisgonynor689 I could see that as well. Prior to the refit, warp cores were more boxy things, and then after the refit we see this tall perpendicular multi-deck approach that becomes the new norm
That's how I've always seen it, transwarp drive is just the Next Generation warp tech on it's prototype vessel and became the new warp scale once it became normal. Like how High Definition has been used at multiple levels of resolutions. Also explains why the Excelsior is still in use in TNG era, literally the backbone of the fleet as every following ship is based on it's systems.
Trans- is a Latin prefix meaning "across", "beyond", or "on the other side of". to me, "on the other side of" is what ever the current warp limit is. So in the movies, the transwarp warp barrier would we what the current warp speed limitations would be. When the scale changes, and puts warp 10 at the very top, the new barrier, or transwarp, became what we see in Voyager.
The Excelsior class, from what I recall reading somewhere, years and years ago, was supposedly the first starship that could actually reconnect on its own. Granted, that could be in later incarnations of the ship. The novelization of "Encounter at Farpoint" mentioned that Riker had performed manual dockings on the Potemkin and the Hood, and that was Excelsior class by then. One other thing about separation, as I understand it, all Federation ships have some form of separation ability, even if it's just detaching the warp nacelles. I don't remember where I read that, it was as long time ago, but it stuck with me, for some reason.
100 years of service doesn't mean each ship served for 100 years. If they built 125 of them over 63 years, that could reasonably put the ships' service LIFE at around 50 years or so including refits and upgrades, as originally stated. Thus, you could have Excelsior classes still in service fighting the Borg that are not actually 100 years old, but as young as 35-40 years old, as The Next Generation took place in 2369 while the last Excelsior class was built in 2335.
If I may humbly add, the remark about "fins" got my interest going. The addition to the fuselage are some sort of conformal add-ons and not "fins". For reference, look up "F-16 conformal tanks" which are bulky yet sleek addition to the aircraft.
I still argue that Transwarp did not fail. Scotty sabatoged it. It's likely that TNG warp is the same as transwarp in the later TOS era. They just shortened it to warp. That ties in to the recalibrated warp scale.
My impression was the transwarp system the Excelsier was equipped with wasn't an entirely new warp system, but merely one that allowed a starship to jump instantly to a specific warp factor, rather than leveling up speed like the original Trek did.
THERE ARE FOUR LAUNCHERS! Plus 2 more on the rear of the neck. The Galaxy was severely under-gunned because Starfleet thought it was only going to be doing long distance exploration and diplomatic missions from then on out. With the Klingons being good allies and the Romulans almost completely absent from the Quadrant, there was no one at the time of developing the Galaxy class that was a real threat to the Federation. However the Excelsior class was developed at a time where hostilities with both the Klingons and Romulans were at their peak, then Praxis happened and everything changed almost overnight.
IIRC from "Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise" The enterprise class, a.k.a. Constitution - Refit class, has the ability to separate as well. Notice 4 squareish patches on the underside of the saucer. Those are the landing gear, with a landfall ramp at the dorsal inside. Explosive bolts separate the 2. Enterprise class also had an Auxiliary bridge as backup, in the secondary hull. Also, the1701-a refit brought with it Transwarp. Though this may have been retconned out later. Looking closely at the TOS Enterprise, an OG pre-refit Constitution class, you can see 4 triangular patches, implying it also can make landfall with the saucer, implying separation even back then.
I have the same book and I loved it. I was huge into the mechanics behind things at that age, and Mr. Scott's Guide was very good at scratching that itch.
The Lakota was an experiment to see how the cost in time and resources of upgrading an Excelsior as far as they possibly knew how vs the cost of building new ships for battle like the Norway, Steamrunners, and Defiants would compare. They had a lot of Excelsior ships with experienced crews that knew their ships well flying around, but certainly not all of them were upgraded in every way, and none were as upgraded as the Lakota which was an attempt to push the old ships as far as they could. The Defiant won the exchange, which doesn't mean it's not worth it to upgrade more Excelsiors, but it means the Defiant is better at fighting (which could have been due to it being commanded by our "high level" hero characters as much as it being a tough ship). There could be tons of reasons you'd want an upgraded Lakota-style Excelsior over a Defiant class ship, even if Defiants fight better. Lakota-style Excelsiors have a bigger gas tank - they can operate without external support for much longer periods of time. They can carry more troops and supplies, they can evacuate more people, they have bigger sickbays to treat more wounded, etc. An upgraded Excelsior is a much better all-arounder than the tough-but-tiny Defiant could ever be. I think all of the Excelsiors we see getting blown up in the big battles might not have benefited from all of the same upgrades as the Lakota (refits take a long time, and there simply wasn't enough time).
I think you confuse the operation life of a vessel for how long the program was continued. An Excelsior-Class vessel built on a given date, can be expected, unless destroyed, lost, or otherwise decommissioned, to remain fully operational, with upgrades and proper maintenance, for 100 years. The Excelsior program however remained for over 150 years and so ships of the Class Lineage were built for 150+ years. Starfleet just built more Excelsiors for 150+ years because the ship was that good.
Right. Sort of how they were still building new VW bugs and Pintos in Mexico until the '90s. With the B-52, though, those are the same actual airframes still in service; the last ones built are from the '60s..
According to Mr. Scott's Guide, the only semi-cannon resource for the movies at the time, Transwarp Drive did to warp drive, what breaking the Sound Barrier did to aircraft back in the mid-1900's. Styles, the Excelsior's original captain bragged the ship would blow past the Enterprise and pick her up on the way back. Why the Transwarp Project was then abandoned, is still a mystery. The most logical theory is that while it looked promising on paper, the actual results were far too modest for all the effort put into it.
In the novelization of Generations, Sulu was conducting Saucer Separation Drills on the Excelsior, when he got the message Kirk had died on the Enterprise- B. And the Saucer had warp capability. So weird.
I can explain the torpedo tube discrepancy between the B and D. The Excelsior class was designed to be useful and Badass, where as the Galaxy was designed to ugly enough to make everyone rip out their eyes. There was a cameo of the Galaxy class in Event Horizon, the Hell part
In beta canon, in the 25th century the Excelsior class is upgraded to *similar specifications as the Odyssey class* Enterprise-F. Called the _Archer class Excelsior refit_ (which is confusing as there's a 23rd century Archer class Scout ship as well) it is definately more than a just a _minor refit._ Amongst the upgrades; Quantum slipstream drive (naturally) - the over-engineering for the original transwarp concept payed off. Quantum torpedoes and tricobalt devices. Multi spectral phasers. Deployable armour generators. The Galaxy class style Saucer separation and in field docking system was retrofitted a while back. And the shuttle bay is enlarged, which is nice.
To this day, the excelsior refit is still one of my favorite designs for starfleet ships. From the Crazy Horse to the Lakota keep flying you old workhorse!
I think Transwarp Drive was "new warp scale." Transwarp Drive appeared on Enterprise-A's console, onscreen. In both Star Trek V and VI, the Enterprise seems to reach amazing speeds, both to the center of the galaxy, and making it near Klingon space before Kirk is even done packing.
The Excelsior Class had impulse engines. They are right behind the saucer. The Enterprise B had additional impulse engines on the sides of the saucer. The Excelsior refit was built for deep deep space exploration.
Good old reliable work horse, one of my all time favorite ships from any sci-fi show! Loved how Sulu confidently sat up in that bridge on the captain's chair sipping his tea 😉 wish we could've seen more with him in command of the Excelsior! Great video 💘
but the two original impulse engines are part of the saucer as well. They don't seem to be connected to the top of the neck & they seem to be connected to the same uninterrupted deck as the deck below the Bridge! And they added the wings to the deflector decks so they could physically "damage" the ship without permanently damaging the model... which didn't work out as planned, so they kept it.
Originally in the Enterprise B MSD the Extra Impulse Engines were supposed to be the Upper Shuttle Bays. The MSD was done by Doug Drexler if you're wondering.
I love how you compare the very long service of the Excelsior class to the B-52 Stratofortress. Tying a fictional vehicle to something from the real world really adds depth to the lore, and helps to make the it feel more real. I do wish that we could have seen the Excelsior class sport actual upgrades, such as modernized phaser arrays, color schemes that matched that of the Ambassador class, and perhaps warp nacelles that shared design motifs linking them with the Ambassador and even early Galaxy era. I'm pretty sure that current Strato Fortresses do have small physical differences distinguishing them from their 20th Century cousins. I would imagine if they had the 3D modeling abilities that we have now (and had the time/budget), perhaps that is how they would have been depicted in the 24th Century.
Whenever someone talks about the long life span of the B-52 Stratofortress as well as the Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers in how they refuse to be retired, I often joke that if you look carefully in the background of the Battle of Sector 001, you can still see retrofitted B-52s and Tu-95s in battle with the Borg cube.
if another show comes around, it having an Excelsior class ship as the main would be great. of course it being retrofitted. but perhaps it's near its decommission.
@@destronger5313 Could even go the route of the Shenzhou, and have her destroyed heroically fighting a superior enemy early in the season, and replaced with a more advanced starship class. This is kind of how I would start a Dominion War series.
No offense to the Lokota but in the fight with the Defiant, Worf who was in command pulling his punches & wasn't trying to destroy it, while the Lokota, whose entire crew except the captain thought was under Dominion control was trying to destroy the Defiant. On the other hand the Defiant was only try to disable the Lokota
The original Enterprise was supposed to do this, but when Starfleet realized how much the VFX shots would cost for their documentary films, and how many minutes of screen time would be eaten up in each documentary with the separation and landing of the saucer, they decided to use the newfangled "transporter" instead.
The _Archimedes_ isn't a refit, it's a new upsized design. Apparently Starfleet wanted to draw on a historically very successful design for a new class.
@@Sephiroth144 indeed... And if ever there was a case of 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts', the Archimedes is certainly it... They took parts from 2 of the least aesthetically pleasing ships in all of Starfleet history and 'kit bashed' them together to make a solid looking ship...
The Transwarp drive of Excelsior was not a failure. Before that drive existed starships had to go to warp and slowly climb up to their cruising warp speed. In the TOS they would have to start at warp 1 and then climb to whatever speed they desired slowly. The Excelsior transwarp was a new design warp field that would allow a ship to go to warp at whatever speed they wanted. So in TNG when Picard orders the ship go warp 9 the Transwarp drive from excelsior is what allows that. There is no connection between 23rd century Federation Transwarp and Borg 24th century Transwarp. Two different cultures from different ends of the galaxy calling two different techs the same thing in common language would happen quite often if you think about it. Just like Klingon and Romulan disruptors. One is anti-matter based and the other is plasma based, both are called disruptors yet the tech is very different.
I would question your analogy with disruptors. Antimatter and plasma have nothing to do with the actual particle stream created by a disruptor. Antimatter is, however, as we all know, used as a reactant in most space-faring civilizations' warp cores, and plasma, being one of the outputs of the reaction, is used both as a medium for energy and to be fed to the warp coils which bend space-time. Romulus, of course, derive that same power by siphoning off rotational energy from the artificial black holes they use instead. I'm honestly not sure where you got the idea of disruptors being different in the way you suggest. While Romulans are also known to use plasma weapons, their disruptors function just like everyone else's. They are particle weapons that disintegrate a target at the subatomic level. If you're suggesting a difference in how they're powered, then that doesn't make sense either. I doubt a simple power cell uses Antimatter. Everything above that is pretty spot-on, but I don't see the analogy fitting or working at all.
Also while some of these ships had people at the rank of Captain commanding them, the Excelsior class was kinda a status symbol since a lot of Admirals command these ships.
the Excelsior transwarp drive turns out to be Infinite Improbability Drive form the hitch hike guide to the galaxy. Since trans warp makes the ship go thought every point in space at the same time . Alot of excelsior were put in moth ball but were refitted during the dominion war by the rouge adirmal Leyton (DS9: "Paradise Lost").The problem with the Enterprise B saucer Impulse engines isthe they fire(thrust ) straight into the narcelles
The shades of night were falling fast, Cardassian’s firing another blast. As through an Alpine village passed. A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice. A Starfleet banner, her grand device, Excelsior! I hear him cheer and knew her help will soon be here. Thank you Longfellow.
When i first saw USS Archimedes in lower decks, i thought it was just a Starfleet refit & upgrade, like how constitution got upgraded & refit between the 3 seasons and the 1st movie
@@paulmyles5101 It technically is that but according to Mike Mcmahan, it's a new class. Starfleet does that if the variant is different enough from the original clasd
it possible that A. the upper square holes were hybrid shuttle-bay/torpedo-launchers. B. the upper launchers were still awaiting installation (Tuesday I presume) and they were using it as cargo-offloading-point in the interim. C. the MSD might have been based on an early draft of the refit. (perhaps the deck-size was unworkable with the level of miniaturization available at the time, which would also make the deck-count issue moot)
I always thought it was funny when RED ALERT sounded right when the tea fell off the table, like there was a sensor for that RED ALERT, THE CAPTIAN'S TEA FELL OVER
I love this era of design, where they bothered to make the ships look like the designs evolved from each other, but were still significantly differnt, right through to the enterprise d. Then along comes the sovereign with no relationship to its predecessors, and ever since then its just the same ship squished around a bit.
The Galaxy class is the one that doesn’t fit. It has tiny little nacelles that look tacked on with a gigantic saucer section. It’s stubby and ungainly. Sovereign looks like a ship! It’s balanced and sleek (although I’m a Luna class fan; Titan forever!). 🖖🏼
@@keirfarnum6811 The Galaxy class always struck me as more of a Liner design with adaptions that made it into a long-range Explorer than a serious design that was expected to double as a defense vessel also suitable for long-range exploration. Apparently, after the Federation's near-total rout at Wolf 359, Starfleet thought the same, hence the later Akira, Norway, Steamrunner, and Sovereign classes. 😉
While my father was in the Air Force in the 1950's & 60's he worked on the B-52 , B1-B and the XB-70 bomber projects while part of the Special Weapons Project and Defense Atomic Support Agency. I always thought it was cool I knew more about these planes than my teachers.
Thank you for this. As an older Trek fan, I have always felt that the Excelsior was one of the best ships ever designed and that it deserved a much better reputation that it has. Thanks for making the point that the original Excelsior's Transwarp Drive failed because it was sabotaged by Scotty. (I would say, though that just because it was sabotaged by one of its primary designers doesn't mean that it should have been considered 'Easy' to sabotage) This video gives an underrated vessel some very much needed love and respect, and as a fan, I thank you very much! Subscribed!
Finally watched this video and it was SO worth it. Interesting to see the forward-facing shuttle bays. Star Trek Fleet Command III shows the Exelsior in its original form with the ability to fire four forward torpedos and two aft, with very limited aft phasers and type IX phasers all around. It could be upgraded to forward quantums. It also had phaser rows like the Galaxy, not phaser turrets.
According to the tech manual for The Next Generation the length of the Excelsior class is 467 meters and not 500 something, also the bridge set from STI-IV was redone as the battle bridge for the E-D and last the big section at the back of the saucer of the Excelsior DOES have a pair of impulse engines. PAY attention!!
What the manual says is one thing. Unfortunately, scale has always been wildly inconsistent in Star Trek. The Excelsior is most likely between 500 and 550 meters long.
They should have left the original model as it was. The fins look ridiculous. Also, it would have been nice in TNG to see the inside of those ships which were not a reuse of existing sets. Doctor Who also had a bad habit of redressing the Tardis control room set for other Tardis ships.
Fantasy extrapolation based on books, movies, and other publications. You said it right how producers frequently mess up continuity. It really messes with the minds of us Star Trek nerds. Sacrifices that are made for dramatic license irritate the true fan and is the reason for so many bad reviews when they do that. Gene Roddenberry had a high regard for continuity. It helped him grow the franchise. Too bad the current and past producers don't value that. They don't see it as a part of the reason the franchise is failing. They are more concerned with inputting current political agendas and scripts focusing on an insider villain rather than our hero's fighting a common source enemy. They are so "Hollywood woke" they will never get it.
I don't hate the Excelsior class, but the Constitution-refit Enterprise is still one of the best looking ones IMO...though not gonna lie, the Sovereign class is damn sexy too. Galaxy's proportions always looked a bit weird to me ( giant saucer, weird little engineering hull/stardrive hull ) The Ambassador class looked pretty good too IMO, liked it better than Excelsior to be honest
I certainly agree, the Galaxy class looked pretty weird when the saucer section separated from the Stardrive section, where it looks like they actually require each other to look right. I know the Excelsior class has the ability to separate, but as he says in the video, that would be semi-permanent. And the sovereign class actually has sections that look like they could be separate ships, although the Stardrive section would be stuck with maneuvering thrusters and warp power to move around and the saucer section would be stuck at impulse trying to play catch-up with the Stardrive section if it used the warp drive or vice versa if the Stardrive section was using thrusters as propulsion, like if the warp drive was shut down to avoid a core meltdown which could've led to a core breach. I actually agree with the Sovereign class being a beautiful looking class, but it does have its weaknesses as well, like without the neck, it may be less vulnerable, but you would be sacrificing a few decks in the middle. I know the Sovereign class is larger than your Galaxy class Enterprise D, but you kind of lose that classic Star Trek look of the Enterprise A from the J.J. Abrams movies and from the original series. I know that the original series Enterprise wasn't able to separate as far as I know, but at lease J.J. Abrams was able to create a refit of the original Enterprise with the ability to separate, albeit with manual locks and levers that needed to be actuated manually, but still, it's pretty cool. Also, the Sovereign class has less weaponry facing directly forward, so you'd have to fire at your enemies with either the top or bottom facing towards them. I know it has those fancy class 12 phaser strips that can fire at zero elevation, but you would need to have them at a flatter angle for a more devastating and narrower beam to cut through their shields, hit their shield generators and knock out their warp nacelles/engines, weapons, impulse drive, tractor beam, whatever you need to knock out.
@@Game_Blox9999 Maybe the stardrive section of the Sovereign Class uses the same impulse drive technology as the Nebula Class. The latter even has no visible impulse engines on the whole starship alltogether. They even removed the impulse engines that were originally on the Galaxie‘s saucer section when they adapted it for the nebula. 🤔
Personally, I think the decision to put cargo bays/torpedo launchers in the neck section of the ship is a bad idea. The ship would loose nothing in the looks department if the doors/launchers/whatever weren't there to begin with.
Another possibility: They started off with 4 torpedo launchers, then somewhere about the time of Enterprise-B, upgrades made it so they could fire multiple torpedoes from a single tube, so they converted two of the tubes to shuttle docks.
If memory serves and I may be going senile so for give,but in the original series didn't the original constitution class have the ability to separate the saucer section to use as a life boat because Kirk ordered if something went wrong to blow the bolts and leave in the saucer
I suppose the lifetime of a starship is defined by how easy it is to upgrade the ships power plant. A bigger and more efficient power plant would allow them to add faster warp drive and more powerful weapons which I guess the Excelsior design lends itself to
I don't think they even changed much of the Warp Core. The experience they got from the Transwarp Project was good enough to produce a warp core, that was a beast of its time and was still able to fight well in the 24th century. What makes the Excelsior class so remarkable is that it was so well adoptable to new hardware like computers, hologram emitters etc. But well, the ship was designed by a japanese and a scot. That helped: The scot guy said: "I don't want to spend too much when changing this ship" and the Japanese guy said: "great - and I will make it look great while having cheap technology inside" ;) And before the japanophiles or scottophiles complain: Cheap technology don't mean bad technology, japanese products are known for being designed in a quite basic but still good looking fashion while pushing all they can out of the technology they have available and scotting people are not stingy, they just prefer to not invest more than needed for the success. So they are the best combination.
Okay Ben, I have a crazy hypothetical for you. Transporters. First, some context; We've seen people in mid-transport get shot and the phaser beam just goes right through them, implying that during transport a body isn't solid matter. Hypothetically, what would happen if someone walked into an active matter stream while the transporter is actively transporting another person? Would the transporter grab some of the second person's matter and beam it away, leaving that person incomplete? Would that extra matter then get added to the pattern for the person who was already beaming out? What if you stood on the spot where someone was beaming-in? Would their body materialize into your body, or is there some kind of emergency system that prevents these types of mistakes? Love the videos. Cheers.
Nah, much like IRL Torpedo Launchers they're large enough to be Multipurpose, so using a Mag Launcher in a Shuttle Bay to yeet torpedoes and shuttles would make sense on a refit.
Just when I thought I couldn't love this ship anymore than I already did thank you British ben for justifying my love for the excelsior she's still a beauty
While the Galaxy class had two launchers, the forward launcher was seen launching five torpedoes at once very often. Most other ships couldn’t do that.
He mentioned my favorite aircraft of all time... the B-52 Stratofortress. I used to love watching them fly low overhead coming in to Kelly AFB. They would raise goose bumps on my arms. Awesome!
The reason why Ent-B had the fins had nothing to do with making it appear new. They added these fins so that they would be able to "destroy" that part of the ship (for the Nexus scene) without actually damaging the model, which they assumed would be required for future productions. This worked fine, but when they intended to remove the fins to return the Excelsior to the original configuration, the area below the fins had been damaged severely by the glue - thus, all future appearances of the Excelsion-class had those fins.
What happened to the Original USS Excelsior. Was it finally Retired . Did Sulu ever make Admiral. I saw the movie it is in for the first time on opening day. I temember it in Star Trek 6 In 1991. I saw it on Opening Day
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Do you think of Bashir and Miles o''brien rebuilding of a spore drive from section 31 Sloane brain?
In the first TNG episode Picard says something about Riker being able to Reattach his the last ship he served on Saucer section . If memory serves Riker last Assignment was a Excelsior class . It would seam that by the 24 th century the Excelsior class could Reattach it’s own Saucer section
Galaxy-class photon torpedo tube can fire five torpedos per volley or in continuous rapid-fire mode. You can't compare Excelsior class's torpedo tube to Galaxy class's torpedo tube when the launch rate is different.
"Free to play" 😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@haroldchase1881 I have heard that he did that on a previous ship. I'm not sure if it was in the episode, it may have been in a novelisation.
One of the best-looking ships in Starfleet, slim and sweeping without looking frail. The Sovereign class looks like it takes more design influences from the Excelsior than the Galaxy, but that may just be me.
I agree. The Sovereign is basically a 24th century Excelsior descendant. Constitution spawned Miranda and Excelsior offshoots. Miranda descended to Nebula and similar designs. Excelsior descended to Sovereign and possibly some earlier unnamed classes. Constitution obviously directly descended to Ambassador and Galaxy, as well as a number of lesser known classes. The 4-nacelle ships like the Constellation may also have had their roots in the Miranda design.
You're not seeing things. John Eaves has specifically said that he was advancing the Excelsior class lineage with the Sovereign instead of the Galaxy.
Galaxy class looks like they strapped engines on a convention center.
It's a combination of both.
I still run one of these as my flagship in Star Trek Online.
"My God, that's a big ship."
"Not so big as her captain, I think."
-- Leonard McCoy and Montgomery Scott
Oh MY!
Actually there are two reasons for the “fin sections” on the Enterprise B: firstly to differentiate it from the Excelsior, and secondly to have an area on the model to damage where Kirk gets sucked out without damaging the original model; at least according to one of the designers (I can’t remember which.)
True, I heard the same, long time ago but it was from the official dudes who designed it
Also, in reference to the cutaway, it is utterly impossible for the Enterprise-B and other Excelsiors to have 34 decks, unless each is like, 4 foot high. Only if it was around 700 meters long would they be full sized.
24, on the other hand, fits nicely.
But then the irony was, they damaged the original model when trying to remove those fins.
I don’t think they actually damaged the original. I think they realized they would before any damage was done.
They never removed the 1701-B addons. That's why the Lakota is of the 'B' subtype. They filmed it with the addons, just changed the name decals. When the filming model was sold, it still have the Lakota name and the 'B' addons.
You are, a tad, confused, on the 'Impulse' Engines of Excelsior. They are the 'inboard' Impulse engines, but Directly Aft IN THE SAUCER Section.
Yeah, that was just a baffling error.... like... where does he think the seperation plane for the saucer is that those impulse engines would stay with the engineering hull?
I have seen some CGI artwork floating around online where they had an Ent-B style Excelsior saucer separating where the impulse section stayed attached to the neck and engineering section. Maybe that's where he got it. Looks really bizarre though, and makes no sense given there's no separations points visible on the top of the saucer to support that kind of breakaway.
Glad somebody caught it. These kinds of videos always seem to fumble the ball hard with basic audio or visual information somewhere along the line that stands in stark contrast with the in-depth technical info that was otherwise gathered.
But it must be true somehow or the stardrive would have no impulse engines after separation nor aux power. Maybe the bridge stays with the stardrive section and there's a battle bridge in the saucer? 😆
@@michaelcroff7097 OK, one , more , time... The saucer is a sub-light 'lifeboat' with Impulse engines, one small Hangar Deck bay, and is (in theory) able to land in an atmosphere. Without a Warp-Core, it cannot re-arm + fire Photon Torps, but it could launch those previously armed and 'held-the-Tube'. It cannot go-to Warp speed, but does retain 50% Shields. It has most=of the Ships Transporters for crew evac/supply shipping. It contains the MAIN BRIDGE, the one IN THE CENTER OF THE DISK, (which, BTW, is "WHY" a Saucer was chosen as Form; You can GET TO & FROM most ship Sections Quickly by going Thru the Center. Doh... The Engineering Section has the WARP CORE and Nacelles, NO IMPULSE DRIVE, but a 'Battle Bridge', Main Shuttle Bay, a Photon Launcher both Fore & Aft, and 1/3rd of the Phasers, most able to fire in a planar 360* with a conical 120* arc. This section also has a Cargo transporter station, and at-least two other 'light-duty transporters. IT is NOT able to Land in an atmosphere, and can only handle 1/3rd of the total Crew. IT IS NOT the 'Life-boat' but, it can FIGHT until it's warp drive is Toast. It has 75% of the Shield capacity at separation, but, since 'something' will likely be damaged by then, expect only 50% of normal shielding. Use your Shuttles if needed for transport evac if you've lost Transporter capacity. Shuttles can also use tractor-beams to stabilize a near-approach Orbit if needed, since you've no Impulse Drive to maneuver with.
Ok, 2 things. A) Taking a moment to laugh at Oberth, excellent. B) Star Trek 5, the gang goes to sleep while camping, everything happening after that is a dream Kirk is having, which explains oddities such as the rocket boots scene and whatever the heck that "god" is supposed to be. In conclusion, excellent video.
“Fly her apart then”… one of my favourite Trek quotes…
"Target that explosion and fire" My fav.
Best ship class Starfleet ever put in service. I'd love a series about a sister ship of the 1701-B.
Why not the B? It's been to long since we had a good Enterprise centered show.. looking forward to "Strange New Worlds"!!👍🖖
Isn't that the USS Repulse? Or am I wrong.
Nah that'd be the Miranda class
@@Mrterran no 1701 is Enterprise exclusive.
@@landenherteux2350 sister implies the same class and construction date
My mom walked into my room to see me and my trekkie buddies watching a clip of the oberth class getting blown up on repeat. She slowly closed the door and asked why she couldn't of had a normal kid
The main reason for the "fins" on the Enterprise-B's hull was that they wanted to show the ship taking damage without actually damaging the Excelsior filming model. Unfortunately, when they went to remove them after the film, they found that the glue had damaged the finish anyway, so the pieces were left on for the Lakota.
you appear to be sitting on my bridge🤣🤣
I think you need to have another look at the ship and where the impulse engines are actually located. Even on the original, they're on the saucer section, so the refit would have four impulse engines on the saucer leaving none on the engineering section. Would make perfect sense to use the separation as a last ditch effort to escape if necessary if the engineering section is badly damaged. Honestly the ship would just look very strange if it separated in a way that the original impulse engines remained with the secondary hull...
The engineering section also has to have in both engines or once or saucer separation the battle section is now inoperable because it can only go into warp
Hope akira class has things we don’t know about
As a fellow Brit the excelsior class with its tea table and starfleet tea cup
Is a must
you see you see if the rainbows are pretty and the ships saying full power available but your not moving when you give the order to go you know somethings broken badly on your ship🤣🤣
Always loved how the TNG show runners built an entire ready room near the battle bridge and only used it once.
When the Excelsior class was originally made torpedo tubes only could launch 1 torpedo at a time. By the time of TNG and the Galaxy class ships, torpedo launchers could launch multiple torpedos, I think 7 or 8, at a time so there was only a need for 1 fore and 1 aft launcher.
Great info
Until Worf was ordered to fire a spread and only one comes out. Lol
@@GenerationFilms Star Trek ships USS Vengeance Class, USS Excelsior Class, USS Excelsior Refit Class, USS Excelsior study I Class, USS Excelsior 4-nacelled study I Class, USS Excelsior 4-nacelled study II Class, USS Excelsior vaeiant 1 Class, USS Sovereign Class, USS Sovereign Class Variations, USS Obena Class, etc
Since the Enterprise-D was a Galaxy Class ship outfitted for deep space exploration, it made sense to me to have one forward and one aft torpedo tube that could fire a cluster of torpedoes and probes. A purpose-built combat ship would do better to have multiple launches facing forward and aft for combat-survivability. You don't want to lose your ability to fire torpedoes because your only forward facing tube got damaged. I figured they could put multi-launchers on Excelsior-class ships as upgrades, though there are probably different styles of the newer tubes that maybe can do multiple, or rapid fire, but not the staggering 5 we've seen Enterprise D launch at the same time. If you look at how big the Enterprise D's tubes are, fitting that into a much smaller ship would be tricky.
@@walteradrianmoyano3054 I just have to ask, what are u babbling about?
"The Transwarp Drive was easy to sabotage"
Oh yes, it only took one of the best, legendary status engineer in Starfleet history, a man who helped design said drive, to do it.
"Strange how the Excelsior had four fore torpedo launchers when the Galaxy had one"
Oh yes, because obviously the Galaxy did not have the very first auto-reloading, programmable spread pattern, variable yield torpedo launchers that were part of the Galaxy Design Program.
This is a Beautiful ship design, loved it the first time I laid eyes on her! And still love her to this day!
My “head cannon” for the misnumbering of the decks in Star Trek V is Scotty had fun 🤩
Or maybe they were flying horizontally but that section of the ship has wonky gravity.
NOPE. it clearly says DECK. i just accept is as more crappy writing.
If Discovery can have a turbolift world bigger inside than the entire ship (bigger on the inside like a Tardis), I guess the Enterprise A can have a 75 deck interdimensional turboshaft too....
@@76TomD 31st century Federation certainly has that technology (subspace manifold or whatever you want to call it). Kirk and co. may have obtained it in one of their adventures?
My head canon is that the “transwarp drive” is simply called warp drive once it’s finalized and deployed fleet wide, like how cellular phone, mobile phones, or what have you are simply called “phones” these days.
I've been head-canoning it that way myself for decades. My other head-canon tidbit is that the TNG warp scale is different precisely because it's a transwarp scale now, hence a reason for the warp scale to change that makes sense.
My own idea is that Star Fleet just used the new name to distinguish between the old Constitution Class Refitted updated warp drive with the newest, faster warp drive in the Excelsior. The biggest difference besides being faster is that it had its own computer core: hence Scotty "borrowing" those parts from it to disable the Excelsior. Older ships just had one central computer core, not a separate one for the warp drive - which may make sense, given the tech of that time, the new warp drive needing a single purpose computer core to control it. The other reason of course could have been shear publicity - the Klingons and the Romulans may wonder what this new type of drive is that Star Fleet had come up with. And then be worried enough not to go to war with them if they had some type of faster, unknown drive, rather than just an updated warp drive.
@@krisgonynor689 I could see that as well. Prior to the refit, warp cores were more boxy things, and then after the refit we see this tall perpendicular multi-deck approach that becomes the new norm
That's how I've always seen it, transwarp drive is just the Next Generation warp tech on it's prototype vessel and became the new warp scale once it became normal. Like how High Definition has been used at multiple levels of resolutions. Also explains why the Excelsior is still in use in TNG era, literally the backbone of the fleet as every following ship is based on it's systems.
Trans- is a Latin prefix meaning "across", "beyond", or "on the other side of". to me, "on the other side of" is what ever the current warp limit is. So in the movies, the transwarp warp barrier would we what the current warp speed limitations would be. When the scale changes, and puts warp 10 at the very top, the new barrier, or transwarp, became what we see in Voyager.
The Excelsior class, from what I recall reading somewhere, years and years ago, was supposedly the first starship that could actually reconnect on its own. Granted, that could be in later incarnations of the ship. The novelization of "Encounter at Farpoint" mentioned that Riker had performed manual dockings on the Potemkin and the Hood, and that was Excelsior class by then.
One other thing about separation, as I understand it, all Federation ships have some form of separation ability, even if it's just detaching the warp nacelles. I don't remember where I read that, it was as long time ago, but it stuck with me, for some reason.
Scotty on the Excelsior: "Why would you want to fly on that bucket of bolts?"
100 years of service doesn't mean each ship served for 100 years. If they built 125 of them over 63 years, that could reasonably put the ships' service LIFE at around 50 years or so including refits and upgrades, as originally stated. Thus, you could have Excelsior classes still in service fighting the Borg that are not actually 100 years old, but as young as 35-40 years old, as The Next Generation took place in 2369 while the last Excelsior class was built in 2335.
I love the Excelsior-class because it's an elegant yet powerful design (big boned, you could say) that's outlasted even the Constitution class.
If I may humbly add, the remark about "fins" got my interest going. The addition to the fuselage are some sort of conformal add-ons and not "fins". For reference, look up "F-16 conformal tanks" which are bulky yet sleek addition to the aircraft.
"Where does the shuttle go? That's right. It goes in the square hole."
I still argue that Transwarp did not fail. Scotty sabatoged it. It's likely that TNG warp is the same as transwarp in the later TOS era. They just shortened it to warp. That ties in to the recalibrated warp scale.
My impression was the transwarp system the Excelsier was equipped with wasn't an entirely new warp system, but merely one that allowed a starship to jump instantly to a specific warp factor, rather than leveling up speed like the original Trek did.
The fact it's the B-52 of Star Trek is a good design in itself.
THERE ARE FOUR LAUNCHERS!
Plus 2 more on the rear of the neck.
The Galaxy was severely under-gunned because Starfleet thought it was only going to be doing long distance exploration and diplomatic missions from then on out. With the Klingons being good allies and the Romulans almost completely absent from the Quadrant, there was no one at the time of developing the Galaxy class that was a real threat to the Federation. However the Excelsior class was developed at a time where hostilities with both the Klingons and Romulans were at their peak, then Praxis happened and everything changed almost overnight.
'Are you certain? I'm sure there are 5...' 😉
Subbed, notified, and (obviously) commented. Great channel, Guys. Keep it up.
IIRC from "Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise" The enterprise class, a.k.a. Constitution - Refit class, has the ability to separate as well. Notice 4 squareish patches on the underside of the saucer. Those are the landing gear, with a landfall ramp at the dorsal inside. Explosive bolts separate the 2. Enterprise class also had an Auxiliary bridge as backup, in the secondary hull. Also, the1701-a refit brought with it Transwarp. Though this may have been retconned out later. Looking closely at the TOS Enterprise, an OG pre-refit Constitution class, you can see 4 triangular patches, implying it also can make landfall with the saucer, implying separation even back then.
I have the same book and I loved it. I was huge into the mechanics behind things at that age, and Mr. Scott's Guide was very good at scratching that itch.
The Lakota was an experiment to see how the cost in time and resources of upgrading an Excelsior as far as they possibly knew how vs the cost of building new ships for battle like the Norway, Steamrunners, and Defiants would compare. They had a lot of Excelsior ships with experienced crews that knew their ships well flying around, but certainly not all of them were upgraded in every way, and none were as upgraded as the Lakota which was an attempt to push the old ships as far as they could.
The Defiant won the exchange, which doesn't mean it's not worth it to upgrade more Excelsiors, but it means the Defiant is better at fighting (which could have been due to it being commanded by our "high level" hero characters as much as it being a tough ship).
There could be tons of reasons you'd want an upgraded Lakota-style Excelsior over a Defiant class ship, even if Defiants fight better. Lakota-style Excelsiors have a bigger gas tank - they can operate without external support for much longer periods of time. They can carry more troops and supplies, they can evacuate more people, they have bigger sickbays to treat more wounded, etc. An upgraded Excelsior is a much better all-arounder than the tough-but-tiny Defiant could ever be. I think all of the Excelsiors we see getting blown up in the big battles might not have benefited from all of the same upgrades as the Lakota (refits take a long time, and there simply wasn't enough time).
I think you confuse the operation life of a vessel for how long the program was continued. An Excelsior-Class vessel built on a given date, can be expected, unless destroyed, lost, or otherwise decommissioned, to remain fully operational, with upgrades and proper maintenance, for 100 years. The Excelsior program however remained for over 150 years and so ships of the Class Lineage were built for 150+ years. Starfleet just built more Excelsiors for 150+ years because the ship was that good.
Right. Sort of how they were still building new VW bugs and Pintos in Mexico until the '90s. With the B-52, though, those are the same actual airframes still in service; the last ones built are from the '60s..
That never gets old... just like the crew of an Oberth class, actually =P
According to Mr. Scott's Guide, the only semi-cannon resource for the movies at the time, Transwarp Drive did to warp drive, what breaking the Sound Barrier did to aircraft back in the mid-1900's. Styles, the Excelsior's original captain bragged the ship would blow past the Enterprise and pick her up on the way back. Why the Transwarp Project was then abandoned, is still a mystery. The most logical theory is that while it looked promising on paper, the actual results were far too modest for all the effort put into it.
In the novelization of Generations, Sulu was conducting Saucer Separation Drills on the Excelsior, when he got the message Kirk had died on the Enterprise- B. And the Saucer had warp capability. So weird.
I can explain the torpedo tube discrepancy between the B and D.
The Excelsior class was designed to be useful and Badass, where as the Galaxy was designed to ugly enough to make everyone rip out their eyes. There was a cameo of the Galaxy class in Event Horizon, the Hell part
In beta canon, in the 25th century the Excelsior class is upgraded to *similar specifications as the Odyssey class* Enterprise-F.
Called the _Archer class Excelsior refit_ (which is confusing as there's a 23rd century Archer class Scout ship as well) it is definately more than a just a _minor refit._
Amongst the upgrades;
Quantum slipstream drive (naturally) - the over-engineering for the original transwarp concept payed off.
Quantum torpedoes and tricobalt devices.
Multi spectral phasers.
Deployable armour generators.
The Galaxy class style Saucer separation and in field docking system was retrofitted a while back.
And the shuttle bay is enlarged, which is nice.
To this day, the excelsior refit is still one of my favorite designs for starfleet ships. From the Crazy Horse to the Lakota keep flying you old workhorse!
One of my favourite ships love using it in sto that and the ambassador
@@mattp2557 absolutely its a dream to fly in st0!
I think Transwarp Drive was "new warp scale." Transwarp Drive appeared on Enterprise-A's console, onscreen. In both Star Trek V and VI, the Enterprise seems to reach amazing speeds, both to the center of the galaxy, and making it near Klingon space before Kirk is even done packing.
The Excelsior Class had impulse engines. They are right behind the saucer. The Enterprise B had additional impulse engines on the sides of the saucer. The Excelsior refit was built for deep deep space exploration.
Good old reliable work horse, one of my all time favorite ships from any sci-fi show! Loved how Sulu confidently sat up in that bridge on the captain's chair sipping his tea 😉 wish we could've seen more with him in command of the Excelsior! Great video 💘
My favorite starship in Star Trek, ever since I saw ST6(I know it first appeared in ST3, but it had more action in ST6).
but the two original impulse engines are part of the saucer as well. They don't seem to be connected to the top of the neck & they seem to be connected to the same uninterrupted deck as the deck below the Bridge!
And they added the wings to the deflector decks so they could physically "damage" the ship without permanently damaging the model... which didn't work out as planned, so they kept it.
A nice looking ship. Another rcample of a long lasting design is the C-130. A design still in use today and if I recall almost ad old.
Yes, but isn't the modern one an all new plane?
Originally in the Enterprise B MSD the Extra Impulse Engines were supposed to be the Upper Shuttle Bays.
The MSD was done by Doug Drexler if you're wondering.
The Excelsior is my favorite starship design from Star Trek, followed closely by the Sovereign.
I love how you compare the very long service of the Excelsior class to the B-52 Stratofortress. Tying a fictional vehicle to something from the real world really adds depth to the lore, and helps to make the it feel more real.
I do wish that we could have seen the Excelsior class sport actual upgrades, such as modernized phaser arrays, color schemes that matched that of the Ambassador class, and perhaps warp nacelles that shared design motifs linking them with the Ambassador and even early Galaxy era.
I'm pretty sure that current Strato Fortresses do have small physical differences distinguishing them from their 20th Century cousins.
I would imagine if they had the 3D modeling abilities that we have now (and had the time/budget), perhaps that is how they would have been depicted in the 24th Century.
Whenever someone talks about the long life span of the B-52 Stratofortress as well as the Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers in how they refuse to be retired, I often joke that if you look carefully in the background of the Battle of Sector 001, you can still see retrofitted B-52s and Tu-95s in battle with the Borg cube.
This. I knew about this, as I enjoy needing out ocrt military aircraft. But I bet most people didn't...
Take a look at The Expanse and specifically what they have done with the Truman and Morrigan class ships for a great example of this.
if another show comes around, it having an Excelsior class ship as the main would be great. of course it being retrofitted. but perhaps it's near its decommission.
@@destronger5313
Could even go the route of the Shenzhou, and have her destroyed heroically fighting a superior enemy early in the season, and replaced with a more advanced starship class.
This is kind of how I would start a Dominion War series.
No offense to the Lokota but in the fight with the Defiant, Worf who was in command pulling his punches & wasn't trying to destroy it, while the Lokota, whose entire crew except the captain thought was under Dominion control was trying to destroy the Defiant. On the other hand the Defiant was only try to disable the Lokota
Am I the only one who hears Stan Lee saying the name of this ship class every time it is mentioned?
No I just picture Jeff Bazos
"Excelsior!"
A _"minor refit"_ of the Excelsior class allowed it to do a Saucer separation and reattachment in field, just like the Galaxy class.
The original Enterprise was supposed to do this, but when Starfleet realized how much the VFX shots would cost for their documentary films, and how many minutes of screen time would be eaten up in each documentary with the separation and landing of the saucer, they decided to use the newfangled "transporter" instead.
Only thing I don't like is that the Excelsior went from big, bold, new, hero ship to background dressing so quickly.
The Excelsior refit as seen in ST: Lower Decks is truly stunning and I hope we get an Eaglemoss model of it
The _Archimedes_ isn't a refit, it's a new upsized design. Apparently Starfleet wanted to draw on a historically very successful design for a new class.
Obena-class; essentially a kitbash of an Excelsior and a Sovereign.
@@Sephiroth144 indeed...
And if ever there was a case of 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts', the Archimedes is certainly it...
They took parts from 2 of the least aesthetically pleasing ships in all of Starfleet history and 'kit bashed' them together to make a solid looking ship...
The Transwarp drive of Excelsior was not a failure. Before that drive existed starships had to go to warp and slowly climb up to their cruising warp speed. In the TOS they would have to start at warp 1 and then climb to whatever speed they desired slowly. The Excelsior transwarp was a new design warp field that would allow a ship to go to warp at whatever speed they wanted. So in TNG when Picard orders the ship go warp 9 the Transwarp drive from excelsior is what allows that. There is no connection between 23rd century Federation Transwarp and Borg 24th century Transwarp. Two different cultures from different ends of the galaxy calling two different techs the same thing in common language would happen quite often if you think about it. Just like Klingon and Romulan disruptors. One is anti-matter based and the other is plasma based, both are called disruptors yet the tech is very different.
I would question your analogy with disruptors. Antimatter and plasma have nothing to do with the actual particle stream created by a disruptor. Antimatter is, however, as we all know, used as a reactant in most space-faring civilizations' warp cores, and plasma, being one of the outputs of the reaction, is used both as a medium for energy and to be fed to the warp coils which bend space-time. Romulus, of course, derive that same power by siphoning off rotational energy from the artificial black holes they use instead. I'm honestly not sure where you got the idea of disruptors being different in the way you suggest. While Romulans are also known to use plasma weapons, their disruptors function just like everyone else's. They are particle weapons that disintegrate a target at the subatomic level. If you're suggesting a difference in how they're powered, then that doesn't make sense either. I doubt a simple power cell uses Antimatter. Everything above that is pretty spot-on, but I don't see the analogy fitting or working at all.
Also while some of these ships had people at the rank of Captain commanding them, the Excelsior class was kinda a status symbol since a lot of Admirals command these ships.
To be fair about one being destroyed at Wolf 359... not much came out of that fight in a repairable state.
Why can't I watch a series with you his ship? This is the ship that deserves the most screen time!!!!
the Excelsior transwarp drive turns out to be Infinite Improbability Drive form the hitch hike guide to the galaxy. Since trans warp makes the ship go thought every point in space at the same time . Alot of excelsior were put in moth ball but were refitted during the dominion war by the rouge adirmal Leyton (DS9: "Paradise Lost").The problem with the Enterprise B saucer Impulse engines isthe they fire(thrust ) straight into the narcelles
I like the episode of DS9 where the Defiant tangled with an Exclesior class on there way to Earth. "Tough little ship" as someone put it!!
Yeah the USS lakota was a refit upgraded Excelsior.
There is only one thing I don't like about the Excelsior class ships in Star Trek: We never got a full series onboard one!
That Bird of Prey that blew up the Oberth class ship sounds like a TIE Fighter as it is pulling away...
The shades of night were falling fast, Cardassian’s firing another blast. As through an Alpine village passed. A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice. A Starfleet banner, her grand device, Excelsior! I hear him cheer and knew her help will soon be here.
Thank you Longfellow.
They love this design so much they made a new variant uding Sovereign era parts, thr Obenna class as seen in Lower Decks.
When i first saw USS Archimedes in lower decks, i thought it was just a Starfleet refit & upgrade, like how constitution got upgraded & refit between the 3 seasons and the 1st movie
@@paulmyles5101 It technically is that but according to Mike Mcmahan, it's a new class. Starfleet does that if the variant is different enough from the original clasd
Loved they brought Ensign S. Gomez back as the Captain, she's come long way from spilling hot chocolate on Captain Picard. :D
it possible that
A. the upper square holes were hybrid shuttle-bay/torpedo-launchers.
B. the upper launchers were still awaiting installation (Tuesday I presume) and they were using it as cargo-offloading-point in the interim.
C. the MSD might have been based on an early draft of the refit. (perhaps the deck-size was unworkable with the level of miniaturization available at the time, which would also make the deck-count issue moot)
I always thought it was funny when RED ALERT sounded right when the tea fell off the table, like there was a sensor for that
RED ALERT, THE CAPTIAN'S TEA FELL OVER
I believe it's mentioned in some reference material that the enterprise-d had a 3rd torpedo launcher. Under the saucer section where it separates.
That table for a single cup of tea tho what a brilliant sophisticated important design feature for any bridge 🤦♂️😂🤣🤷♂️ that should be number one 😂🤣😂
I liked Excelsior class and the Ambassador class also. Excelsior's "neck" was a good change in design made it look more of a fighting ship though.
I love this era of design, where they bothered to make the ships look like the designs evolved from each other, but were still significantly differnt, right through to the enterprise d. Then along comes the sovereign with no relationship to its predecessors, and ever since then its just the same ship squished around a bit.
The Galaxy class is the one that doesn’t fit. It has tiny little nacelles that look tacked on with a gigantic saucer section. It’s stubby and ungainly. Sovereign looks like a ship! It’s balanced and sleek (although I’m a Luna class fan; Titan forever!). 🖖🏼
@@keirfarnum6811 The Galaxy class always struck me as more of a Liner design with adaptions that made it into a long-range Explorer than a serious design that was expected to double as a defense vessel also suitable for long-range exploration.
Apparently, after the Federation's near-total rout at Wolf 359, Starfleet thought the same, hence the later Akira, Norway, Steamrunner, and Sovereign classes. 😉
Your videos have really grown on me, way to go man, great stuff as usual
Most ships that have a connecting dorsal are set up to separate. It was a safety measure.
While my father was in the Air Force in the 1950's & 60's he worked on the B-52 , B1-B and the XB-70 bomber projects while part of the Special Weapons Project and Defense Atomic Support Agency. I always thought it was cool I knew more about these planes than my teachers.
British Ben: (Mispronounces Malinche multiple times)
Generation Films: (Immediately plays clip with Sisko pronouncing the name correctly)
Thank you for this. As an older Trek fan, I have always felt that the Excelsior was one of the best ships ever designed and that it deserved a much better reputation that it has. Thanks for making the point that the original Excelsior's Transwarp Drive failed because it was sabotaged by Scotty. (I would say, though that just because it was sabotaged by one of its primary designers doesn't mean that it should have been considered 'Easy' to sabotage)
This video gives an underrated vessel some very much needed love and respect, and as a fan, I thank you very much! Subscribed!
Remember that the turbo lifts go front to back as well so it may very well have been in sections not decks
I always thought of transwarp as not about speed but more about faster acceleration.
Finally watched this video and it was SO worth it. Interesting to see the forward-facing shuttle bays. Star Trek Fleet Command III shows the Exelsior in its original form with the ability to fire four forward torpedos and two aft, with very limited aft phasers and type IX phasers all around. It could be upgraded to forward quantums. It also had phaser rows like the Galaxy, not phaser turrets.
You're awesome! This was great!!
According to the tech manual for The Next Generation the length of the Excelsior class is 467 meters and not 500 something, also the bridge set from STI-IV was redone as the battle bridge for the E-D and last the big section at the back of the saucer of the Excelsior DOES have a pair of impulse engines. PAY attention!!
What the manual says is one thing. Unfortunately, scale has always been wildly inconsistent in Star Trek. The Excelsior is most likely between 500 and 550 meters long.
10:27 Correction, that's blown out.
They should have left the original model as it was. The fins look ridiculous. Also, it would have been nice in TNG to see the inside of those ships which were not a reuse of existing sets. Doctor Who also had a bad habit of redressing the Tardis control room set for other Tardis ships.
Fantasy extrapolation based on books, movies, and other publications. You said it right how producers frequently mess up continuity. It really messes with the minds of us Star Trek nerds. Sacrifices that are made for dramatic license irritate the true fan and is the reason for so many bad reviews when they do that. Gene Roddenberry had a high regard for continuity. It helped him grow the franchise. Too bad the current and past producers don't value that. They don't see it as a part of the reason the franchise is failing. They are more concerned with inputting current political agendas and scripts focusing on an insider villain rather than our hero's fighting a common source enemy. They are so "Hollywood woke" they will never get it.
I don't hate the Excelsior class, but the Constitution-refit Enterprise is still one of the best looking ones IMO...though not gonna lie, the Sovereign class is damn sexy too. Galaxy's proportions always looked a bit weird to me ( giant saucer, weird little engineering hull/stardrive hull ) The Ambassador class looked pretty good too IMO, liked it better than Excelsior to be honest
yea the Sovereign is one hell of a hot lady ......
I certainly agree, the Galaxy class looked pretty weird when the saucer section separated from the Stardrive section, where it looks like they actually require each other to look right. I know the Excelsior class has the ability to separate, but as he says in the video, that would be semi-permanent. And the sovereign class actually has sections that look like they could be separate ships, although the Stardrive section would be stuck with maneuvering thrusters and warp power to move around and the saucer section would be stuck at impulse trying to play catch-up with the Stardrive section if it used the warp drive or vice versa if the Stardrive section was using thrusters as propulsion, like if the warp drive was shut down to avoid a core meltdown which could've led to a core breach. I actually agree with the Sovereign class being a beautiful looking class, but it does have its weaknesses as well, like without the neck, it may be less vulnerable, but you would be sacrificing a few decks in the middle. I know the Sovereign class is larger than your Galaxy class Enterprise D, but you kind of lose that classic Star Trek look of the Enterprise A from the J.J. Abrams movies and from the original series. I know that the original series Enterprise wasn't able to separate as far as I know, but at lease J.J. Abrams was able to create a refit of the original Enterprise with the ability to separate, albeit with manual locks and levers that needed to be actuated manually, but still, it's pretty cool. Also, the Sovereign class has less weaponry facing directly forward, so you'd have to fire at your enemies with either the top or bottom facing towards them. I know it has those fancy class 12 phaser strips that can fire at zero elevation, but you would need to have them at a flatter angle for a more devastating and narrower beam to cut through their shields, hit their shield generators and knock out their warp nacelles/engines, weapons, impulse drive, tractor beam, whatever you need to knock out.
@@Game_Blox9999 Maybe the stardrive section of the Sovereign Class uses the same impulse drive technology as the Nebula Class. The latter even has no visible impulse engines on the whole starship alltogether. They even removed the impulse engines that were originally on the Galaxie‘s saucer section when they adapted it for the nebula. 🤔
@@bn23daveHuh, I never thought of that.
I am partial to Intrepid Voyager
Personally, I think the decision to put cargo bays/torpedo launchers in the neck section of the ship is a bad idea. The ship would loose nothing in the looks department if the doors/launchers/whatever weren't there to begin with.
i think excelsior having 4 launchers makes perfect sense. bear in mind they are single shot launchers. not burst fire like we see in TNG.
Another possibility: They started off with 4 torpedo launchers, then somewhere about the time of Enterprise-B, upgrades made it so they could fire multiple torpedoes from a single tube, so they converted two of the tubes to shuttle docks.
If memory serves and I may be going senile so for give,but in the original series didn't the original constitution class have the ability to separate the saucer section to use as a life boat because Kirk ordered if something went wrong to blow the bolts and leave in the saucer
Yes that is true. And you see it in action in Star Trek Beyond
EXCELLENT DESIGNS!
ENTERPRISE B-52!👍👍👍
I suppose the lifetime of a starship is defined by how easy it is to upgrade the ships power plant. A bigger and more efficient power plant would allow them to add faster warp drive and more powerful weapons which I guess the Excelsior design lends itself to
I don't think they even changed much of the Warp Core. The experience they got from the Transwarp Project was good enough to produce a warp core, that was a beast of its time and was still able to fight well in the 24th century. What makes the Excelsior class so remarkable is that it was so well adoptable to new hardware like computers, hologram emitters etc.
But well, the ship was designed by a japanese and a scot. That helped: The scot guy said: "I don't want to spend too much when changing this ship" and the Japanese guy said: "great - and I will make it look great while having cheap technology inside" ;)
And before the japanophiles or scottophiles complain: Cheap technology don't mean bad technology, japanese products are known for being designed in a quite basic but still good looking fashion while pushing all they can out of the technology they have available and scotting people are not stingy, they just prefer to not invest more than needed for the success. So they are the best combination.
Kirk was..."Blown out, it's a common mistake".
Okay Ben, I have a crazy hypothetical for you. Transporters. First, some context; We've seen people in mid-transport get shot and the phaser beam just goes right through them, implying that during transport a body isn't solid matter. Hypothetically, what would happen if someone walked into an active matter stream while the transporter is actively transporting another person? Would the transporter grab some of the second person's matter and beam it away, leaving that person incomplete? Would that extra matter then get added to the pattern for the person who was already beaming out? What if you stood on the spot where someone was beaming-in? Would their body materialize into your body, or is there some kind of emergency system that prevents these types of mistakes? Love the videos. Cheers.
Or worse, what if a fly, (or some other small, possibly alien insect), somehow got inside a transporter bean during the re-materialization process? 😱😉
"Fly her apart then!"
IMO, best one-liner of STM6
The second two tubes were to be installed on Tuesday.
She's a noble battleship, an esteemed workhorse.
You could say Riker experienced separation anxiety!
Nah, much like IRL Torpedo Launchers they're large enough to be Multipurpose, so using a Mag Launcher in a Shuttle Bay to yeet torpedoes and shuttles would make sense on a refit.
Just when I thought I couldn't love this ship anymore than I already did thank you British ben for justifying my love for the excelsior she's still a beauty
While the Galaxy class had two launchers, the forward launcher was seen launching five torpedoes at once very often. Most other ships couldn’t do that.
I believe it's mentioned off-screen in reference books that there was a third torpedo launcher under the saucer section where it separates.
He mentioned my favorite aircraft of all time... the B-52 Stratofortress. I used to love watching them fly low overhead coming in to Kelly AFB. They would raise goose bumps on my arms. Awesome!
Saucer separations are the apple pie of starfleet, but hardly ever used.
The reason why Ent-B had the fins had nothing to do with making it appear new. They added these fins so that they would be able to "destroy" that part of the ship (for the Nexus scene) without actually damaging the model, which they assumed would be required for future productions. This worked fine, but when they intended to remove the fins to return the Excelsior to the original configuration, the area below the fins had been damaged severely by the glue - thus, all future appearances of the Excelsion-class had those fins.
That is possible too, but there are quotes from John Eaves and Michael Okuds talking about it, to make it a new looking ship
What happened to the Original USS Excelsior.
Was it finally Retired .
Did Sulu ever make Admiral.
I saw the movie it is in for the first time on opening day.
I temember it in
Star Trek 6
In 1991.
I saw it on
Opening Day