THE CONUNDRUM: Is the Ambassador Class as old as its prototype's registry (NX -10521) suggests?

MY THEORY: I believe that it probably has to be, but because there isn't any canon information as to when the class was first commissioned I've had to take a guess at its first launch date by referring to its registry, which is NX -10521. This is a canon number, and from it we can determine an early 24th century time frame. Realistically we're looking at 2300 - 2315, but I'd prefer a more comfortable date of around 2320. I say this because there seems to be quite a lot of Ambassador Class ships around in the 2370's, even though they'd be fairly advanced in age by now (to say nothing of the multitude of Excelsior Class ships still in service!). The strange thing is, that although we know of about 10 ships of this class, none have registries anywhere near the prototype's, except the Horatio, which is NCC 10532. The others all have numbers in the NCC 25***, and 26*** region. My theory is, that these ships are from a newer upgraded line of vessels first commissioned in about the 2320's, this would be same type of thing as the Excelsior upgrades of about the same time. This would explain the plethora of NCC 26*** vessels, leaving behind the first wave 10*** vessels, most of which would have been decommissioned by now, and hence, this is the reason why we've only known of one (so far) still in commission.

THE CONUNDRUM: I'm confused. What exactly is up with the Niagara? It looks and seems like an older ship, and the registry is definitely an old one, yet it has modern Galaxy Class style nacelles..

MY THEORY: Well, the Niagara certainly is an older ship. There are many things going for it that suggest this. Firstly its general design style which suggests it's of the Ambassador family, and indeed an Ambassador secondary hull was used on the model. Secondly, the earliest known ship of this class, the Wellington, had a registry in the NCC 28*** region. So this indicates a rough commission date of no later than 2320. The nacelle issue can be easily explained away. They are simply up to date nacelles for either a new Niagara batch, or simply for the upgrade/refit. After all, the other known Niagara to exist is the USS Princeton, destroyed at Wolf 359. This had a registry of NCC 58904, which suggests a new batch of Niagara's were commissioned some thirty years later than the originals. Another thing going for this theory is the elliptical hull of the Princeton. This is a newer design style, synonymous with the Galaxy family, and a trend which didn't seem to appear until around the mid 24th century, with the likes of the Galaxy project and Springfield Class. So this could be an alteration in style, which only the newer Niagara's had.

This image below portrays one speculative vision of how the original pre-refit Niagara may have looked like (More).

THE CONUNDRUM:  Was the T'Pau as portrayed in 'Unification' really an Apollo Class ship as The Encyclopedia suggests?

MY THEORY:  I would have to say no, the T'Pau was probably not an Apollo Class ship, even though it is listed so in 'The Star Trek Encyclopedia'. The T'Pau was a Vulcan ship, and did not at all resemble a traditional Federation vessel. The small preview below was discovered on the net portraying a standard Vulcan ship. In comparison is my speculated appearance of what the Apollo Class looks like, along with the fair assessment by many that the Phase II Enterprise study model for the aborted 1970's Star Trek television revival could be attributed the Apollo classification.:

THE CONUNDRUM:  Regarding Challenger Class, exactly which era does it come from?

THE CONUNDRUM:  At first we were led to believe the believe that the Galaxy Class was special, that only a few of them were ever built, maybe only 6 or 7. But in DS9 we get to see loads of them... So, how many are there?

So what evidence is there for a large Galaxy fleet? Firstly, the Galaxy was meant to be Starfleet's new, chief Explorer ship, spearhead of the fleet. To stop at 6 would indicate it was a massive failure, and also belies multiple pieces of onscreen evidence. At least six Galaxies alone can be identified in the same frame in 'Sacrifice of Angles'. Secondly a piece of dialogue from the TNG 3rd season episode 'Menage a Troi', in which Data states:

"Actually, there is no guarantee
Wesley will be reassigned to the
Enterprise. Eighty-four per cent
of Starfleet graduates are not
posted to Galaxy class starships
for their first assignment."

We obviously have no idea precisely how many graduates there are in an average year. A fair few I'd imagine. Let's say, for arguments sake, that 16% of the total graduates equals 200. There are going to be a large amount of possible assignments. From many classes of starship, to starbases, outposts, Starfleet institutions and so forth. So if 200 lucky graduates are assigned to Galaxy Class ships, one would think that there would be a large number of these ships to cater for the distribution of these graduates...  If there were about 50 operational Galaxies, then each one would receive 4 cadets. 

THE CONUNDRUM:  What's the deal with that Sao Paulo/Defiant name change?

MY THEORY:  Oh yuck, this conundrum bothered me the most. As you can see on the Defiant's page, I tell the same woe begotten tale I tell here:

For those that don't recall, or haven't witnessed the event, the USS Defiant, having been destroyed was replaced by the USS Sao Paulo, which was conveniently renamed USS Defiant... The reason this was done was so that the creators could get away with using stock footage of the old Defiant in supposedly new battle scenes -which weren't, for the battle scenes used in 'What You Leave Behind' were actually originally from 'Sacrifice Of Angels', A total cop-out really, especially as this was in the series finale. It's unusual enough for a ship to be commissioned that is in the same class as its same-named predecessor, but let alone have the same registry number! I can only imagine that Starfleet top brass, on feeling sorry for Sisko, and the loss of his favourite ship pulled some mighty strings -offered numerous apologies to the people of Sao Paulo and renamed it Defiant. Dumb. Really Dumb.

Other than the Enterprise and Enterprise-A, the other known example of this dual naming in a class was the two Saratoga's, which were both Miranda Class variants. 

(Another problem with this class is the size. Remember the Borg battle in 'First Contact', that shot of the huge Sovereign Class Enterprise swooping by the tiny Defiant? Well, if the Defiant really was 120M in length, then that Enterprise would have to be at least 1500M by comparison. We're yet to get an adequate screen comparison between actual class sizes, because the creators are invariably less than meticulous when in comes to relative scaling).

THE FIRST CONUNDRUM:  This class, first seen in 'First Contact' looks like a brand new addition to the fleet. Yet, it carries a registry number that conflicts with this?

MY THEORY:  A Thru-deck Carrier is what you probably imagine it to be. The Akira has been speculated to be this by some. If it was such a ship it'd have an large open deck that extends from the front of the ship to the rear, like a huge continuous shuttle bay, that would in this case contain squadrons of Fighters ready for deployment in tight combat situations. There is no evidence to suggest Starfleet employs Carriers or Thru-Deck Cruisers, but the idea is not lost on me. (The the Akira Class being a Thru-Deck Cruiser was brought up in Star Trek Communicator magazine.) The key discussion point regarding this theory is that the Akira has insufficient internal space to cater for many Fighters, and a typical 30m long Peregrine Fighter would most certainly NOT fit through the bay doors.

THE CONUNDRUM:  See title above!

MY THEORY:  This has been thrown around fandom for some while. I don't know when the confusion as to how this class is spelt, will end. Is it Saber (American spelling) or Sabre (UK spelling). The only way to know for sure is to view the prototype vessel in an episode and see what it says on the hull. For the sake of argument I refer to it on this site as Sabre.... But it really could be either.

THE FACT: The basic fact is that the effects guys got it wrong, mislabeling the hull, because the Prometheus dedication plaque states a registry number of NX-74913. This in my book is the official, correct registry figure.

If those who are susceptible to being pedantic about canon registry issues, especially as the Prometheus clearly displays a registry of NX-59650 on hull, I've had to do some serious thinking to come up with an explanation. For if we adhere to the sequential order of registries, we'd have to say that the Prometheus Class prototype (with a registry of NX-59650) comes from around the 2350's, but that just can't be so for it's virtually brand new, for in 2374 we observe it under trial (in the Voyager episode 'Message in a Bottle'). So, other than the real explanation that's its a special effects modelling error, what could be going on here? My theory, stretching it a little is this: We know from canon that the 'Galaxy Class Project' was in development for about 20 years before the first ship was finally commissioned. So perhaps this is what happened with Prometheus. Because it is so radically high-concept and advanced in many areas, perhaps it took a long period of time to fully develop and refine. We could say that it's registry number was initially processed in the early days of its construction in the 2350's, and after a period of refits, modifications and a number of field trials we finally got to see it years later during the final series of test flights in 'Message in a Bottle'. Anyway, this is my conjectural supposition to explain away this registry oversight by TPTB. But I am a lot happier to accept the registry stated on the Prometheus' dedication plaque, that of NX-74913.