USS Exeter (NCC-1672)

USS Exeter (NCC-1672)
Owner:	United Federation of Planets
Operator:	Starfleet

The USS Exeter (NCC-1672) was a 23rd century Federation Constitution-class starship operated by Starfleet. In 2267, the Exeter was under the command of Captain Ronald Tracey. (TOS: "The Omega Glory")

History

The Exeter's patch

In 2267, the Exeter was one of several starships undergoing repairs at Starbase 11. (TOS: "Court Martial")

Later that year, the Exeter was assigned to a mission patrolling the region surrounding the Omega system. While arranging preparations for a planetary survey of Omega IV, with the village elders, Tracey and his landing party contracted an unknown bacteriological disease. When the landing party, sans Tracey, transported back to the Exeter, they infected the entire crew. Tracey was able to survive due to remaining on the planet's surface where a natural immunization to the disease occurred due to the planet's atmosphere.

Six months later, after Starfleet lost contact with the Exeter, the USS Enterprise was dispatched to locate the missing ship. The Enterprise would discover the undamaged and apparently deserted Exeter in orbit of planet Omega IV; the ship's complement of four shuttlecraft was still present in the hangar deck. When boarded, the ship's helm was found left on automatic and the entire crew of four hundred were found dead, in the form of dehydrated crystals.

Upon reviewing the final log entry made by the ship's chief medical officer, Dr. Carter, it was discovered that the crew had died as a result of contamination from the, otherwise undetected, bacteriological disease. Captain Tracey would be located on the planet's surface, and eventually arrested for violating the Federation's Prime Directive.

With Tracey placed under arrest, and the mission over, Kirk declared the Exeter abandoned. (TOS: "The Omega Glory")

Exeter personnel

• See: USS Exeter personnel

Appendices

Background

The registry of the Exeter (NCC-1672) was not confirmed until it was seen on the CGI model in the 2007 remastered version of "The Omega Glory". Prior to that it had been seen without context on a list of starships in "Court Martial". The registry was first connected with the starship in Bjo Trimble's Star Trek Concordance and later in the Star Trek Encyclopedia by Michael Okuda. Both Trimble and Okuda took their cue from Greg Jein's influential "The Case of Jonathan Doe Starship" article, published in the April 1973 issue 27 of the T-Negative fanzine. In the article, Jein had made an attempt to "logically" couple the registry numbers as seen in "Court Martial" with the names listed in the reference book The Making of Star Trek. When the remastered series began its release, Okuda, then visual effects producer for the project, made use of the opportunity to elevate Jein's until then conjectural ship's registry to canon.

The name of the ship had already been established by the producers at the start of second season of Star Trek: The Original Series, when they composed a definitive fourteen ship list belonging to the Constitution-class, then still referred to as "Starship-class" by them, including the Exeter. The annotations of D.C. Fontana and Producer Robert Justman on their first two memo proposals, made it clear that the ship was named after the historical British World War II heavy cruiser HMS Exeter. (The Making of Star Trek, pp. 164-165) For some reason the ship was named USS Argentina in an early draft of the script according to The Star Trek Compendium – as was confirmed earlier by Jein who owned all the script drafts of the Original Series [1] – until it was decided to adhere to the list.

Exeter's dedication plaque on the bridge was quite a bit larger than the ones on the Enterprise or the USS Defiant.

Apocrypha

• The Exeter was listed in Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual under the registry NCC-1706.
• This episode was recreated by GAF as a three-disc stereoscopic View-master presentation. A booklet recounting the story accompanied the discs, but it was not completely faithful to the shooting script. A "Lieutenant Raintree" is featured, and he was killed in the same manner as Lt. Galloway; "Phil Raintree" was a character in an early draft of this script, one being considered for filming as the second pilot.
• In Star Trek Online, the Exeter-class line of ships are named after this ship.

External link

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