Talk: USS Excelsior (NCC-2000)

Other USS Excelsiors

I've found that there are several starships bear the same name:

• USS Excelsior (NCC-77246)

Galaxy-class with the third nacelle and the large phaser cannon, similar to the alternate USS Enterprise-D

• USS Excelsior (NCC-78943)

Sovereign-class - Given that the similarities of the Sovereign class and the original USS Excelsior prototype are similar to the USS Sovereign prototype.

Template:Unsinged-anon

Its great that someone created these, but unless they are canon or appeared in a licensed Star Trek release that can be cited, they really can't be added to Memory Alpha. Is there a source for these? -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk

Google does wonders in this type of situation:

• USS Excelsior (NCC-77246) - hidden frontier
• USS Excelsior NCC-78943 - did not match any documents.

-- Alan del Beccio 16:49, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Those two Excelsiors are uncanon to the Star Trek timeline. The first Excelsior, as mentioned above, is part of the fan-made Hidden Frontier series, which we do not include information of. The second Excelsior is also uncanon and incorrect, as we only know of two canon Sovereign classes: Sovereign and Enterprise. Thus, both of those should not be mentioned/linked. - Adm. Enzo Aquarius 19:44, 17 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Which is essentially what I said. ;) --Alan del Beccio 04:18, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Arms on the chair

I was watching search for spoke the other night and something occured to me. As the USS Excelsior was preparing to enter transwarp drive, I've noticed that all the arms on the chairs on the bridge were closed, as in grabbed by the crew and brought in closer, almost in a seat belt like fashion. My question is why? Don't inertial dampeners make seatbelt like device in a starship useless? – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lt Colonel Huljev (talk • contribs).

This exact same thing was shown in Star Trek: The Motion Picture when the USS Enterprise encountered a wormhole effect after entering warp. James Kirk put on the restraint as the circumstances could've provided unknown turbulence (which was visible). As the crew was about to use a brand new form of faster-than-light travel, it would be unknown what kind of turbulence could be encountered, hence why restraints were used. - Enzo Aquarius 02:35, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Internal dampeners are supposed to protect the crew from shocks, however as we've seen many, many times, even on newer starships (Defiant, Voyager etc) they do not compensate quickly enough in battle or unforeseen events, so seatbelts were quite a good idea, and still were when the Enterprise-E was refitted after it's battle with the Scimitar. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.38.129.240.

Origin of the Name

Does anyone know how the Excelsior got its name? Is there an official source, like Enterprise was named for the American carrier of WWII? Or is it just a pretty-sounding word that Roddenberry found while browsing the dictionary? - Spatula 22:54, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Excelsior is the Latin term for "even higher", which fits pretty well for the ship. Other sources for the name could be: a short poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a 1950s skydiving project known as Project Excelsior, the city in Minnesota, the town in Wisconsin, a district of San Francisco, a town in South Africa, a motorcycle manufacturer, the signature of Marvel Comics writer Stan Lee, and the official state motto of New York. For the record, though, Gene Roddenberry wasn't the one who came up with the name, but more likely Harve Bennett. --From Andoria with Love 01:04, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I also found those. (wikipedia, right?) So we don't know for certain if there was an official source? - Spatula 21:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The name was part of the "Constitution class starships" list from behind-the-scenes TOS material -- from there, the name was mentioned in Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual as a Constitution, and also on model decal sheets, before the name was used for the NCC-2000 ship. -- Captain M.K.B. 21:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Appearances

I removed Star Trek Generations from the list of USS Excelsior appearances, because the ship isn't in that film. Is it? Igotbit 17:03, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of, either someone got confused, or they were referring to the studio model, which is a partial reuse of one of the Excelsior miniatures(I think)--monkey²:twice the monkey 17:05, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Voyager appearance

Isn't this a bit weird? How can we be seeing the Excelsior if this is all taking place in Tuvok's mind? -- Deep Space Nine Forever 20:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

We are seeing his memories of being on the Excelsior. --OuroborosCobra ^talk 21:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Thorndyke

The following is in the Background Information section:

"Curiously in the German dubbing of Star Trek III Uhura's comment on the new Excelsior provides and insight into who was material to the creation of the ship and reads (re-translated) as follows: "Look at that: Thorndyke's [or Thorndike's, respectively] idea!" This was obviously done for lip-sync reasons. It is, however, in rather blatant contrast to Uhura's original words, which did in no way include such a hint."

Who or what is Thorndyke? Please explain. --Topher 21:45, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Having written the aforementioned paragraph I can only say this: I do not know. Thorndyke was in my view unmistakably made up in order to create an adequate adaption of Nichelle Nichols' very emphasized 'th' in "Look at that!" for the German dubbing. To come to the point: In German there is no letter and no word that would cause a person to use their tongue like anglophones do with 'th'. Since Nichols' 'th' is very strong in her brief comment it could not simply be translated and dubbed like in most other sentences. Therefore the 'Thorndyke solution'. It's rather elegant compared to other occasions of 'interesting' dubbing in that particular movie. For example: Dubbed and re-translated Kirk's simple "Enterprise confirms." when approaching the spacedock would read like this: "I thank you in the name of the whole crew." Fascinating. Let alone the cheeriness those words are spoken with - strong contrast to the original. But that was simply the established way of dubbing at that time in history. It has gotten a whole lot better since (to a point where one can say that an English sentence is mostly simply translated and spoken in German) but I want to share a few other examples of this "troubleshooting" with you. To all those who know the Original Series in German and English it is funny and makes them smile at how silly dubbing (especially in the Sixties and Seventies) could be at that time - for no reason. (At the time of TNG this trend has virtually wound down.)Re-translated, the German dubbing comes up with the following solutions for (don't ask me why) apparently untranslatable English sentences (well, in fact they must have been simply too boring for the studio):

• Kirk: "Don't you piss in your shirt, peewee."

The following examples are all taken from "That Which Survives" (or in German: "Dangerous Planet Girls")

• Spock: "I banged my noggin against the edge." (after unintentionally colliding with a console)

• Kirk (to Spock): "What do you know about women, you frigid?!"
• Kirk: "Mr. Sulu, you're too often with Checkov. He's only telling you penny dreadfuls about Russia."

There are tremendous amounts of other examples. I hope you got a little insight. :) – Ambassador 11:14, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like some people got lazy when it came to dubbing Star Trek. They decided to make the lips match rather than the words and/or intent. Having said that, and now understanding the situation a bit more, I would suggest the background note be changed to:

• "In the German dubbing of Star Trek III, Uhura's line, "Look at that!" was changed to "Look at that: Thorndyke's idea!" This could provide insight into who was responsible for the creation of the ship. Done for lip-syncing purposes, common practice when translating Trek into German, the name Thorndyke was invented solely for this purpose and did not come from any other canon source."

This would make it more explicit that Thorndyke was not some minor character that they didn't remember from another episode or movie, but simply an addition of the people who dubbed the film. It is actually quite interesting that this information would be canon on the German Memory Alpha, but here it's just a background note. — Topher 21:56, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I just changed it (with a few variations). It really sounds better than my original paragraph. :) – Ambassador 17:50, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Removed

I removed this:

• It shall be noted that common bunkrooms were shared by both genders. A DVD viewer could see in the scene where everyone sleeping is thrown off of their bunks when the ship is hit by Praxis' shock wave, that a man and a woman are rolling on the floor. This is possible to view carefully by pausing the DVD and pressing Fast-Forward to review frame-by-frame.

Aside from not being in the wrong point of view, it really doesn't fit into the article anywhere. A footnote, perhaps, but not a whole paragraph and the means of finding it. Otherwise, it really has nothing to do with the ship itself in the current 'flow' of the article. --Alan del Beccio 22:26, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

You usually never hear of both genders sharing a common bunkroom. Even if co-ed bunkrooms were regular setups within another Federation specie, I don't think the other species (including especially us Terrans) would have been comfortable with that setup. Being that Excelsior was made on a Terran construction facility, and most of the command are Terrans, would they not permit that? --K. Shinohara 01:24, 9 January 2008 (UTC)