The Excelsior-class

Source: Encyclopaedia

The ship USS Excelsior gives her name to the Excelsior class of starship. By tradition the first starship names the class.

Excelsior-class starships have a long operational history that dates back to 2284 when the original USS Excelsior NX-2000 was designed to test the revolutionary transwarp drive. That experimental transwarp drive proved unsuccessful, leaving it to Tom Paris of USS Voyager to break the transwarp barrier in a specially-adapted Type-9 shuttlecraft in 2372 on stardate 49373 [#31 Threshold]. After Starfleet abandoned the transwarp experiments, the ship that carried out the trials was refitted with standard warp engines. It lost its NX- registry number and around 2290 was re-registered to form its own class, as NCC-2000, under the command of Captain Hikaru Sulu. The Excelsior class remains in service for Starfleet until 2375. A number of refits extend the life of the ships but the interior design remains basically the same for nearly a century.

USS Excelsior, both when registered as NX-2000 and later as NC-2000, is seen in two Star Trek films as well as 'Star Trek: Voyager' episode [#44 Flashback]. In the first film 'Star Trek III: The Search for Spock' Scotty (Montgomery Scott), its captain of engineering, sabotages the experimental transwarp drive. In the film 'Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country' Hikaru Sulu is the captain of USS Excelsior, and helps to thwart an attempt to collapse the Federation-Klingon peace conference at Camp Khitomer; the events of that film are partly replayed , from Sulu's point of view, in [#44 Flashback].

The interior decor of the Excelsior class follows on from the developments made during the refit of the Constitution class in 2270, incorporating a similar style in its overall use of materials and layout. There are shared quarters for ensigns and junior officers located on Deck 7, described on page 5 of this article.

The turbolift network is similar to other Starfleet ship classes, although the interior of the main turbolift which travels up to the bridge is larger than those of later ship designs such as the Intrepid class. Turbolifts consist of smooth light-grey flat bulkhead walls with raised brown panels on the upper half of the carriageway. The turbolifts are operated via touch-sensitive controls on large rectangular control panels on two sides of the turbolift, which also incorporate various monitors that provide up-to-date status displays.

Interior of the turbolift, note the two monitor displays.

Source: TOSTFF

The main bridge follows previous Starfleet design philosophies, namely a circular working area made up of a number of different levels, although the captain's position is not as central as that found on Constitution-dass vessels. The outside edge of the bridge houses the workstations and monitoring areas for ship's systems, incorporating the flat touch-sensitive control interfaces of the time. There are many individual readout screens located on the upper part of the workstations, which are separated by either a narrow bulkhead with an illuminated strip built into it, or by an open trellis-patterned support strut. The colour scheme is predominantly light grey, although the monitor units are built into darker grey-coloured mountings and there is a dark blue strip running directly underneath the lower edge of the control stations.

The large number of individual workstations means that some are left unmanned (one of my screenshots illustrates this, where Janeway and Tuvok are about to walk past an unmanned workstation). The bridge crew can move around the periphery of the bridge easily as the raised deck is relatively wide. Access to the lower centre section is via two steps to the left and right of the large main rectangular viewscreen, through gaps in the metallic support rail which runs around the lower section. A series of comfortable chairs, which are upholstered in a rich blue fabric, are left at the various stations. The chairs are on castors, allowing personnel to move from one station to another without getting up. Several workstations are designed to be operated from a standing position, and all workstations have monitor displays above sitting eye-level.

The viewscreen is in the usual position for Starfleet vessels, with the layout of the bridge of a practical design that allows the captain and the helm and navigation officers clear view of the main viewscreen.

The helm and navigation stations are built onto a raised step platform to the left and right of the captain's position which is directly behind them. These stations have the various controls and readouts located in large grey consoles that are supported by an illuminated pillar similar to those found on Galaxy-class ships.

The main tactical station is to behind the captain and to his right, with the master systems monitor for the ship located directly behind the captain. The captain's chair can swivel to give the captain an quick and direct view of the master systems monitor display.

With regard to bridge illumination, a raised illuminated hexagonal pedestal is attached to the non-slip dark grey floor in front of the captain. Lighting comes from large panels built into the circular ceiling. A number of support arms run toward the centre of the ceiling and terminate in a half-globe which glows white under normal operating systems, and which during a red alert changes to a strobe red while at the same time narrow red alert bars which run round the bridge at sitting eye-level at the workstations.

Next page: Pictures of USS Excelsior's bridge interior from [#44 Flashback]