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What is the class of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 as seen in the original Star Trek television series (1966-1969)?

The Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) first-season episode "The Naked Now" establishes, in dialogue, the class of Kirk's Enterprise. Written by original Star Trek alumni D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry, "The Naked Now" first aired on October 5, 1987. In the episode, as the crew of Captain Picard's USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D suffers from a strange medical condition, Commander Riker recalls that the crew of an earlier Enterprise suffered a similiar condition. As Riker, Picard, and Data read records from that earlier ship, Picard says, "The Constitution-class Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk commanding." Longtime fans would recognize the earlier incident on Kirk's Enterprise as having been depicted in the 1966 original Star Trek first-season episode "The Naked Time."

Since TNG "The Naked Now," the overwhelming majority of subsequently produced Star Trek television episodes, feature films, and licensed merchandise have consistently described Kirk's Enterprise from 1960s Star Trek as a Constitution-class starship.

Prior to TNG "The Naked Now," the class of Kirk's Enterprise from 1960s Star Trek was a more difficult question to answer.

Recently artist Christopher Cushman, who like his brother Matt has illustrated several cutaway posters of various Star Trek vehicles, contacted me, asking about a diagram that appears in Greg Jein's T-Negative 27 April 1975 fanzine article "The Case of Jonathan Doe Starship," and whether that diagram was the first-ever reference to the phrase "Constitution class." I did my research before I replied, and this article is another result of that research. I thanked Cushman for inspiring me to write this article, my first self-authored Trekplace article since 2009.

In Jein's "Jonathan Doe Starship" article, the diagram provides two orthographic drawings, and the diagram has the following text in the top left corner:

PRIMARY PHASER L,R
STAR SHIP MK IX/01
CONSTITUTION CLASS

Henceforth, this diagram will be referred to as the primary phaser diagram.

The diagram, shown below, has the following caption in Jein's "Jonathan Doe Starship" article: "The Space Seed," Scene 44. Enlargement of a portion of a film clip. This indicates that the U.S.S. Enterprise (MK IX/01) is a Constitution Class vessel.

The primary phaser diagram (Click image to view full-size.)

A curiosity about the primary phaser diagram is that, despite its attribution to "Space Seed" in Jein's "Jonathan Doe Starship" article, the diagram does not appear in "Space Seed." "Space Seed" does feature a diagram, and while its content is out-of-focus, it does not match the primary phaser diagram from Jein's "Jonathan Doe Starship" article.

Screen capture from "Space Seed," featuring a diagram on the display screen near the sick bay bed. (Click image to view full-size.)	Close-up of actual "Space Seed" diagram, adjusted for perspective. (Click image to view full-size.)

The primary phaser diagram from Jein's "Jonathan Doe Starship" article is featured in Star Trek -- not in "Space Seed," but rather in "The Trouble With Tribbles," as shown below.

Screen capture from "The Trouble With Tribbles," featuring a diagram on the display screen that Scotty is using. (Click image to view full-size.)	Close-up of "The Trouble With Tribbles" diagram, adjusted for perspective. (Click image to view full-size.)

Regardless of which Star Trek episode features the primary phaser diagram, it does appear in the show, although its "CONSTITUTION CLASS" text is partially obscured and not legible. Additionally, strictly speaking, this diagram does not explicitly state that the Enterprise herself is a Constitution-class starship. Perhaps Scotty was examining a design for some other class of starship. On the other hand, the only type of Star Fleet starship shown in 1960s Star Trek was that of the Enterprise and her sister ships.

One might wonder how Greg Jein had access to the full, unobscured primary phaser diagram, when it is cropped and out of focus in "The Trouble With Tribbles." The "Jonathan Doe Starship" article states that the diagram is an "enlargement of a portion of a film clip." Jein is known to have owned an enormous collection that included film clips from the original Star Trek television series. Perhaps Jein owned a film clip from a deleted shot. Lincoln Enterprises, originally Star Trek Enterprises, sold Star Trek film clips for many years, and they were widely collected by Star Trek fans of the time.

A curiosity is why Greg Jein associated the primary phaser diagram with "Space Seed." When Jein's "Jonathan Doe Starship" article was published in 1975, images from Star Trek were much more difficult to obtain than they are today. TrekCore did not yet exist. The Internet did not exist. Home video media such as videocassettes did not yet exist. Lincoln Enterprises sold Star Trek film clips, but it was not possible to buy any frame that you wanted from any episode that you wanted, and the clips were not accompanied by information about the episodes from which they originated.

Jein's collection is also known to have included scripts from the original Star Trek television series, so I decided to examine the "Space Seed" script for a possible reason why Jein attributed the primary phaser diagram with "Space Seed." The "Space Seed" script can be viewed on the Star Trek: TOS page of this "TV Writing" website. This excerpt below correponds to the scene when Khan views the actual "Space Seed" diagram.

The script's description of the camera's movement and Khan's actions do not align with what appears in the episode, but it is reasonable to assume that, if a person has access to a diagram with the text "CONSTITUTION CLASS," in a film clip from an unknown episode, and they have access to an episode script that describes a display that includes the text "CONSTITUTION CLASS," then that person might surmise that the diagram is from that episode.

The "Space Seed" script's reference to "CONSTITUTION CLASS" does seem to associate that class with the Enterprise herself. In an earlier scene, Khan tells Kirk, "I would be most interested in studying the technical manuals on your vessel." Kirk informs Khan that "they're available to any patient on the viewing screen. Doctor McCoy will show you how to tie into the library tapes."

This author is aware of one more Star Trek 1960s reference to "Constitution class": the original, 1969, pre-Ballantine, fanzine version of the Star Trek Concordance, written by Dorothy Jones and edited by Bjo Trimble. The relevant excerpt from the 1969 Concordance is shown below.

This article has identified three sources from the 1960s that reference the phrase "Constitution class:"

• The script from "Space Seed," which originally aired in early 1967,
• The primary phaser diagram from late 1967's "The Trouble With Tribbles," which Greg Jein featured in his "Jonathan Doe Starship" article and seemingly incorrectly attributed to "Space Seed," and
• The Star Trek Concordance from 1969. This source will be revisited later.

Collectively these 1960s references, like 1987 TNG's "The Naked Now," suggest that the USS Enterprise from the original Star Trek television series is unambiguously a ship of the Constitution class. References from the 1970s, most notably Franz Joseph's Star Trek Starfleet Technical Manual and Star Trek Blueprints, also support this supposition. 1980s references prior to 1987, such as Lora Johnson's Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise and the FASA Star Trek Role Playing Game, also support this idea.

The Enterprise was also referred to by other classes prior to 1987.

One frequently visible, although often out-of-focus, class reference in the 1960s Star Trek television series itself is the Enterprise's dedication plaque on the ship's bridge, near the turbolift exit. The plaque, shown below, has the text:

U.S.S. ENTERPRISE
STARSHIP CLASS
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.

Screen capture from "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," featuring the Enterprise's dedication plaque on the ship's bridge, near the turbolift exit. (Click image to view full-size.)

The dedication plaque can be interpreted to mean that the Enterprise's class is "Starship."

The previously mentioned 1969 version of the Star Trek Concordance attributes the Enterprise's "Constitution class" to WGIII -- Star Trek Writer's Guide, 3rd Edition. Strangely, the Guide does not mention the Constitution class.

The Star Trek [Writer's] Guide, 3rd Edition is available at the same link as the "Space Seed" script. The only "class" references in the Guide are:

• Page 7, which says the Enterprise's "official designation" is "starship class."
• After page 37, the pages renumber at 1, and within this sequence:
  • Page 2 describes the Enterprise as "Cruiser Class," and
  • Page 7 describes the Enterprise as "starship class."

Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry's 1968 book The Making of Star Trek refers to classes in multiple places, as listed below:

• Page 24 refers to the Enterprise as "Cruiser Class." Page 23 describes the Enterprise as "a naval cruiser-size spaceship."
• Page 163 includes a memo from D.C. Fontana to Gene Roddenberry, stating that "Star Fleet includes 12 ships of the starship class." Fontana suggests formally listing names, including Enterprise, for "starships of the Fleet."
• Page 164 includes a memo from Bob Justman to Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana, in which Justman continues the conversation "establish the names of the 12 ships of the Enterprise Starship Class."
• Page 178 features three orthographic views of the Enterprise. The bottom of the drawing states:
  USS ENTERPRISE
  SPACE CRUISER
  STARSHIP CLASS
• Pages 184 and 185 feature the Enterprise next to a Klingon battle cruiser. The Enterprise is described as a "space cruiser."
• Page 203 states that "the Enterprise is a member of the Starship Class (there are twelve of them)" and that "Starship Class vessels are the largest and most powerful man-made ships for space." Finally, the page refers to the Enterprise and its sister ships as "Enterprise-class starships."

The 1976, Ballantine-published version of the Star Trek Concordance no longer refers to the Enterprise as a Constitution-class ship. Page 156's entry for the Enterprise begins as follows:

Enterprise, U.S.S.: A starship of the Constellation class (somewhat larger than a twentieth-century naval battleship), the largest and most modern type of vessel in Star Fleet.

In 2002, I emailed Bjo Trimble, asking why the Concordance switched from Constitution to Constellation. She replied:

Gene Roddenberry started out just calling it a "starship class" until evryone realized that *all* the spaceships were, basically, starships. So then he went to Constitution class. Later, Constellation class was added.... I can't tell you if I made a mistake here, or was following Mike Okuda's lead. Whatever is in his encyclopedia is considered to be the correct answer today.

It is unclear why the Concordance pivoted from the Enterprise being a Constitution-class ship to a Constellation-class ship. The USS Constellation, as seen in the 1967 episode "The Doomsday Machine," has registry number NCC-1017, which is much lower than the Enterprise's NCC-1701. This might justify an assumption that the Constellation was the first of these ships to be built, and thus also the namesake of the class of these ships.

In conclusion, the answer to the question of the class of the USS Enterprise depends on when you ask(ed) the question, If you asked before TNG "The Naked Now" aired, then it also depends on how you interpret the often-conflicting information.

Many screencaps in this article were sourced from TrekCore.