I'd like to take a minute to apologize for what I said on this video. Most critically in regards to Crazy Horse. I am not as familiar with American history as I'd like to be and until a few hours ago I was not aware of who Crazy Horse was. Naturally the more research I did, the worse I felt about what I said here. Of course this isn't an excuse for not having done the research before hand, or at least during recording of the voice over. I offer my deepest apologies for the disrespect, inadvertent though it was, and I promise to be more mindful in the future.

The Excelsior class is like the B-52. No reason to change it, just give it new engines one every 10 years.

There's Tuvok, posing as a human officer and honing the infiltration techniques he will later use on the Maquis. Playing a real long game.

My headcanon has been that the transwarp experiment eventually did work. It's just what was yesterday's transwarp is today's regular warp drive. Also it gives a good reason why Starfleet recalculated the warp scale between TOS and TNG

The Excelsior class was a ship everyone was suppose to hate.. but it turned out to be a beautiful design anyway

I love how general Chang has his eye patch bolted to his skull.

I love how the excelsior class ended up becoming the backbone of the federation fleet along with the miranda class for almost a century after its launch. Goes to show it may have had a bumpy start but was certainly a capable and versatile class to be in service so long.

Love the vid - but I wish that you’d keep images of the variants on screen when discussing and describing the refits in detail. Seeing the OG or Enterprise B refit when discussing the other variants is a bit distracting.

Stealing the Enterprise was not only a great scene but had a great soundtrack. We miss you, Mr. Horner.

I still think the Transwarp Experiment was in fact a complete success. Remember how TNG uses a different Warp-Scale than TOS with equivalent Warp speeds being faster than the ones in TOS? What they called a "Transwarp Drive" in STIII was later just rebranded as a new warp scale for easier handling with Transwarp Drive being reserved for even more advanced technologies like the Borg conduits or Quantum Slipstream.

In the movie adaptation novels, Sulu was supposed to get command of the Excelsior but lost command due to the Khan/Genesis incident. It was one reason why he threw in with Kirk in stealing the Enterprise in TSFS.

You weren't even born when the Excelsior first appeared? Hah! You don't know what you missed. It was an awesome moment seeing this majestic ship make it's debut in Star Trek 3. Great review of her none the less.

Always loved the Excelsior, Found it really elegant in design. Like a luxury yacht

Funny enough, I was never a fan of the Excelsior class when I was younger. Now, it's one of my favorite classic designs. I love the Excelsior 2 class. My biggest gripe is how exposed the bridge is after all this time. If the Defiant can have a protected bridge, then so can every Fed ship. That was the same gripe I have with the Neo Constitution.

love your commentary - only complaint is that the naration often doesn't match the visuals, it's okay to replay the same clips over and over again especially when they're relevant, e.g. the 2nd half of the Excelsior 2 narration about specific secondary hull details - you showed the NX-2000 the entire time.

"....ribbed for her ...." I almost fell off my chair laughing!

Who else feels like USS vengeance deserves a nod in any excelsior video. I mean does everyone else feel like the vengeance is the Kelvin timeline excelsior? Or is that just me? It has enhanced warp capabilities, more firepower, it's bigger but retains the same shape as the Enterprise. It's experimental

Star Trek V, the Enterprise showed “transwarp” drive on its console. Excelsior was a success, and it’s tech was integrated into ships with a new warp scale (first onscreen in TNG). Ex. In the same film. Enterprise reached the center of the galaxy very quickly. Star Trek VI, the Enterprise reached the edge of Klingon/Federation space extremely quick. Sulu was in another quadrant, and reached Enterprise before it was destroyed.

There's a reason we have both a USS Lakota AND a USS Crazy Horse. Might want to google that and then prepare your apology.

I love how you anticipate your audience's objections to things you say in advance and address them immediately. I do this in my life as well. Often when writing something I would anticipate a reader's objection or rebuhtle in advance and address it in my writing. I love the snarky humorous way you anticipate our objections i.e. when you said "Calm down I'll explain" and later on "It was 1984 I wasn't born yet" LOL! Subscribing now!

Per Wikipedia: Crazy Horse (Lakota: Tȟašúŋke Witkó,[2] IPA: [tχaˈʃʊ̃kɛ witˈkɔ], lit. ''His-Horse-Is-Crazy''; c. 1840 - September 5, 1877)[3] was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band in the 19th century. He took up arms against the United States federal government to fight against encroachment by white American settlers on Native American territory and to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people. His participation in several famous battles of the Black Hills War on the northern Great Plains, among them the Fetterman Fight in 1866, in which he acted as a decoy, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, in which he led a war party to victory, earned him great respect from both his enemies and his own people.

You'll have to wait until Tuesday to find out what the moustache is for.

This is by far the ballsiest narration I've ever heard!

The Excelsior remains, to this day, one of my favorite Trek designs. The so-called balsa-wood nacelle pylons seemed more structurally sound to me than the Constitution-class style. Apparently, Starfleet shared my opinion for a time, considering the similar pylons on the Ambassador and Galaxy class designs.

They should have named the class "Workhorse" because thats what the Excelsiour class is.

Well, Crazy Horse is actually the ship I'm always flying on Star Trek Online, also an excelsior class, but it's the Crazy Horse B, since the in-game current events are at the year 2409.

Curly: Hey Moe! I finally figured out why we can't get any water from these pipes! Moe: Okay, you wise-apple... Why can't we get water from these pipes? Curly: Because they're full of wires! This is the joke that the electrician told me as he handed me the bill. Of course I paid the man immediately.

The Excelsior is my 3rd favorite ship design, right behind TMP Enterprise and the Miranda. I know it was done for cost issues, but I was always kinda taken out by Next Generation's use of ships that would be a century old, while in The Search for Spock, they said the Enterprise wouldn't be refit because she was 25 years old..

"By God, that's a big ship." -- Leonard McCoy

Think of this class as the P-51 Mustang of the Trek universe. Initially a good vessel saddled with a poor/non-functioning prototype engines. When fitted with a Merlin, it was transformed into the backbone of the army air corps. In this case, when fitted with standard warp engines, it became the highlight of the fleet.

Long story short....the Excelsior class would have gotten a lot more recognition if George Takei had his own spin-off as Captain Sulu...oh idk, couldn't have aired it in the 1990s or it would have been hard to keep it on the same network and compete with the TNG spin-offs.

I absolutly loved the USS Archimedes. It is such a good looking ship. It keeps all the great designs of the original Exselsior Class and giving it newer touches like the elongated primary haul, Sovereign style nacelles, etc. The Archimedes and Obena Class in general looks very modern and capable. I honestly have to say it´s my favourite Exselsior design and it makes more sense to me to create a new sub class like the Obena rather than just constantly upgrading the original Exselsior Class.

I always assumed the ridged neck could mitigate sub-space compression and drive stress. This would contribute to the vessel’s long life span as it meant major hull components would last longer. We never see it on any other design because improvements in structural integrity fields made the design obsolete in the next generation of heavy cruisers.

They should have sent the miracle worker Scottie to repair the ship since he took the parts that made the transwarp engine fail.

Correct me if I'm wrong.....but Didn't an Excelcior Class Save the Enterprise? "Oh, Myyyyyyy"

Nice presentation, HOWEVER, it would have been a better show if you had included side-by-side comparison pictures of each iteration of the ships. Having said that, I like the perpetual sustainability of this vessel. And, as you included the refit Miranda class ships, well done in that regard as well.

If the Excelsior failed why did they change the Warp Speed Scale?

⁠ From what I’ve seen from beta canon, the NX-2000 was much larger than the Constitution class because the NX-2000 had to hold a much larger warp core, TWO larger duotronic computer cores, and a transporter array directly tied into both the warp core and computer cores. Personally, I think the ship was over-designed because as soon as the transwarp tech was removed, she immediately set a new bar for federation ships. I also think there is an aspect of nostalgia for Excelsior ships. So many were constructed and served for so long, the crews and citizens of the federation and starfleet grew up with the class. I see it as a vote of confidence for the Excelsior class that admirals, captains, and veteran crews still wanted to serve on Excelsior even as newer ships entered service.

such a shame we wont be seen a model of Excelsior 2 Class anytime soon and other versions in xl edition

The original Master Systems Display the extra saucer impulse engines were ORIGINALLY meant to be shuttle bays. However, Doug Drexler had to change the MSD to show them as impulse engines when ILM at the last minute decided to make them impulse engines. In a way I can understand why they changed them to impulse engines but they should have kept them as shuttle bays. You can find the original MSD for the Enterprise-B with said configuration of the extra saucer "impulse engines". It took me some work to find it but never the less I did find it.

It was mentioned in the pod flight out to the Enterprise in Wrath of Khan. Sulu was to take command a few weeks after the training cruise. The scene was edited and the dialog was removed.

I had hoped that a new Trek series centered around Captain Sulu and the Excelsior would be produced. 26:52 TOS Unification part one? I think that should be Next Gen.

Transwarp drive was a failure and associated with the Excelsior Class because she was the test bed used to try and develop that technology. But the Excelsior Class herself was a very good design, over 125 years the class has been in service.

Correction. The Miranda class has only seen 14,899 refits!

Like to think the "Moustache" was outfitted with additional sensor arrays and possibly additional labs or storage bays. As for the Transwarp drive. Scotty sabotaged it leading to it's failures. Scotty's actions lead to a number of questions, from Starfleet engineers, that had them rethinking how Transwarp actually works and leading to them improving standard warp drive and changing the scale. Just my thought on it.

This really is my favourite ship… It looks like an American car from the 50s and 60s. With its ribbed neck, two tone paint and sharp edges… but it’s still an incredibly elegant silhouette long, slender and tapering. It’s relatively straightforward, but so wonderful. If it could have tail fins and copious amounts of chrome, it would! I especially enjoy the Enterprise B style engineering hull.

I stll say, Transwarp was not a complete failure. With the incredible speed the Excelsior had in ST 6 and the revamped warp speed scale in Next Gen.

Ah, the Excelsior class, at the ending of the Undiscovered Country and the Enterprise and Excelsior side side by side and then as they parted, it's like the one generation passing the reigns to the next one, with the new ships and technology, as the parents/grandparents, do what they do and disobey rules from command and go off on their jollies, going second star from the right and straight on till morning. Ironic as it was this was the trek movie I first watched, and it was at my granparents house on a Sunday afternoon... Anyway, lol, the Excelsior is a good ship, more than capable of surpassing lifetimes of even the flagships of the Federation it seems as well, a tried and tested design that the engineers know works for a majority of mission profile, from exploration, to the choice of ship for Admiral's to have as their vessels, all the way down to cargo duty, this class definitely fits the multi-purpose starship role. Admittedly I did like the experiment's bridge - I iliked the seating with the different alert levels as well shown underneath them, before we got the bridge that is familiar to when Sulu takes command of the vessel in it's NCC days. The Excelsior's neck looks much more capable of sustaining damage than those we see on the Enterprise 1701 and 1701-A, which with a decent amount of phaser power I am sure could be cut right off, which I was surprised hadn't happened to the Enterprise in The Wrath Of Khan, a sure weakness in construction, the Excelsior is like that bulked up bodybuilder with massive neck muscles.

Thank you Lieutenant Adam for this interesting look at this wonderful ship class, I hope we get to see your review on the USS Defiant

Always thought that the Excelsior's TransWarp project was successful privately but publicly Starfleet didn't want their enemies to be aware that Starfleet had already beaten them in transwarp. IMO, Scotty or Spock could had made the Kelvan's modifications to the Excelsior's warp engines to successfully travel by transwarp. It's just that the Excelsior class was developed to be more efficient in using those modifications compared to other starship designs. That might had been the Kelvan's cost for the Federation letting them have a colony inside their territory. It's likely that Starfleet Command took Captain Kirk's advice to MirrorVerse's Intendant Spock about expanding too fast&not having the resources to secure their own borders. With the prospect of war between the Klingons&Romulans, Starfleet didn't want to give those empires any idea that the Federation already has a tactical advantage over them especially with the Genesis Project being on the forefront of the news. Starfleet now has a tactical&strategic advantage with the development of transwarp&protomatter weapons. This might be the reason why Starfleet had mass produced the Excelsior class to have the numbers to protect the Federation's territory. So secretly Starfleet continued their research without the assistance of Scotty&Spock. There's probably a secret transwarp engine modification for each of the Enterprise starship since the Ent-B but the data needs to be collated and compiled so that the mods are specific for each class of starships. Also it's possible that Sulu's aware of this secret Kelvan mod to his ship but didn't had a situation for the need of using it.

" That is a big ship " ," Aye , but not as big as her Captain ..... " , " My apologizes , I was overwhelmed by nostalgia ..... " , " Live Long and Prosper , Peace and Long Life " 🖖

How is the Excelsior Class a "failed experiment", since they were still being used by the time of the Dominion War?

As someone who saw ST:3 TSfS in theaters as a kid, I thought that there was no way that they could make a design that could top the good ole Dame that was the Connie but I was pleasantly surprised at the sheer grandure of The Great Experiment. It seemed only fitting that that Ship would go to Sulu but I think they missed a chance in his best bud and camping partner not being his XO. I'm glad that they've kept the design alive and in new skin for generations to come.

I don't care what anyone says, the best Star Trek ship designs were the Constitution class refit, Miranda class and Excelsior class! Beautiful starships! Just my opinion! 😉

I'm a simple man. I see a Trek video about the Excelsior, I fave it before I even watch the whole video because the Excelsior, in all the flavors under the rainbow, is my favorite starship ever!

I love Excelsior... "ahhhh, the games afoot dah" ST:VI will always have the best depiction, "target that explosion and fire"

Thanks for making me feel old, I was a senior in high school in 1984

The Excelsior Class has been and ever shall be, one of the best.

The Obena class from lower Decks is actually much larger than the Excelsior.

Given how much Excelsior class ships showed up in TNG and DS9 episodes, the Excelsior class was a very successful design, like the Mirandas.

The Excelsior class is good. It certainly is a reliable ship class since it is used for a long time.

My favorite ship. I love it more than any other Trek ship.

Less than 2k to get to 100k!! Better get that Defiant video done!! Thanks for everything! Great job!!

I don't mind the ribs on the neck. . . .Call me biased, I guess! Bit odd for them to be above the mustache, but I'm willing to get over my humano-centric biological expectations! lmao I have to admit that as a kid who began watching Trek in the TNG era, I always imagined the ribs were designed as a cushion for docking and separating the saucer section, and would kinda flex and bounce as the parts were split and reattached!

120 years isn't bad, the US B-52 bomber was designed to last 50+ years and most of the US Carriers are 30+ years already

I think the Excelsior Class is one of the best looking.

I like to believe the Enterprise B was recovered and rechristened to the USS Lakota after its crew was wiped out by a illness. Ship was still useful, just a tarnished history and Starfleet covered it with a fresh name and coat of paint.

Did they ever add warp drives or torpedo launchers to the saucer section, or wise up and hide the bridge in a less obvious location?

120 years... *Laughs in B'Rel!*

Trek Central going goblin mode now. 😂

Don't fold the star charts. I didn't Well there's a crease right thru the neutral zone, roll the star charts.

How dare you! the Miranda Class only had 15,958 refits!!!

I always thought saucers WERE plates...what do you set your cup of coffee or tea on? And a simple in-universe explanation for the Obena class would be that they salvaged some of the wrecks from the dominion war where the engineering hull wasn't too far gone and strapped on a new saucer and nacelles. Quicker and easier than building a whole ship from the ground up(just build a modern saucer that mates up the same mechanically), and Starfleet is always swapping out the nacelles over time, almost like swapping your oil filter when you do an oil change on your car....

It seems to me that the Enterprise-B type refit would be applied to the few ships preceding her (including the Excelsior herself), and built into the multi-mission Excelsior-class ships to follow. These dozen ships remained the flagship class until replaced by the Ambassador Class in the 2320-2340s. With the retirement of the original multi mission-class Excelsiors, its space frame design was repurposed for the much more numerous general-purpose Excelsiors, with the original Mk I design, in the 2330-2340s.

When the Excelsior was first seen a fair number of Trek fans in my circles called it the Pregnant Guppy Class.

I love Star Trek both in terms of its look and evolution of its ships and technology development and its story structure enriched with philosophy & ethical questions. It is the historical parallels I appreciate and the references made that help keep me engaged in the franchise over the decades. The what-if scenarios, social commentary and mind puzzles of how to creatively troubleshoot their various problems they encounter adds to the layer of intrigue already present in other forms. However as much as I love Star Trek and the characters and their often complicated relationships to one another I can never memorize the different classification of ships but I do admire the attention to detail that goes into the universe building of Star Trek and the Trek historians that take the time to learn pretty much every facet of all things Star Trek!

Excelsior class was the only reason the Federation didn't collapse between 2280-2340. It was the only heavy cruiser built in sufficient numbers and was the backbone of Starfleet even in the Galaxy class era.

4:25 “Khan yourself!” 🤔 I mean, I can see some advantages…🤷‍♂️

To me the Excelsior is not a failure it stayed in service over 100 yrs and then had another version of it introduced in Picard, just some aspect of the technology introduced didn't pan out

Nice overview, but.. there's large sections of the video where the voiceover is talking about some ship feature and the video is showing something totally different, even a different class of ship, making it difficult to follow along with what's being said. Would be really helpful to have the video and script match up somewhat. The subtitles are often out of sync too.

its called a swagger stick :D

It's been theorized that the bulges on the Enterprise-B were a cloaking device. The ship being commissioned before the Treaty of Algeron, and being the most advanced ship, and flagship, would make sense. It would also make sense to lise them on kater ships, since The Federation wasn't allowed to have cloaking devices any more.

Thing is…it wasn’t meant to be ‘trans warp’ as in the Borg etc- this trans warp was literally the ability to directly go to a warp speed without starting at warp 1 and accelerating to desired warp factor

Fun fact: the _Excelsior_ was supposed to be what the artist believed the _Enterprise_ would have looked like had she been designed by the Japanese back then.

Funny that, since the Excelsior class lasted for a century and a quarter at least, that the two most famous ones were noooot quiiite ready when featured. I really like the mustache bumps as well as the Enterprise B's 90s teal color scheme. Teal Body Glove windsuit, teal Ford Probe, teal swooshes in your wallpaper, teal Enterprise B. Ah, 1994.

Lol... The big come away gained from this video... your a kid to me! Live long and prosper, you've got years of catching up to do! I'm a Model 073-73'... Which is a striking fact I was born on the 73rd day of 1973... Thank the Julian Calendar for that insight...

a great video. the B is my 2nd favourite Enterprise, next to the D. Just got the eaglemoss model (regular, not XL) in the mail today.

I remember thinking that they were trying to evoke cruise ships with the design. The theme from Love Boat played in my head every time that damn ship turned up.

The best part of Excelsior wasn't the ship. It was Sulu. If you're having hearing problems mister, I'll say it again. It was Sulu.

Does Captain Styles not have a Starfleet Command regulation issued sceptre?

I'm in with the "the transwarp experiment is the reason why TNG used a different scale" folks. Calling the whole thing a failure just because Scotty sabotaged one vehicle is insanity. It is kinda funny that a ship originally designed to be hated would end up becoming one of the most used and beloved ships though.

Long live mrs Badcrumble.

Since 1965 and my 1st viewing of TOS as a kid I loved the series but thought all the ships were laughable if not just wildly misdesigned. The 1st decent ship with real aesthetics and panache were the klingons in the 1st movie!

You know it's sad starfleet didn’t have the common sense to repair the Transwarp after Scotty fucked it up. I mean come on!

Excelsior class always felt WAY to bulky looking to me, sleek yes.. but...far too heavy looking to be a cruiser... and since we all know that Star Fleet is not a military organization they couldn't call it a battleship or battle cruiser. Probably the one reason why i think the Enterprise J from ST: Enterprise was so absurd...too damn big, even the Enterprise D (galaxy class in general) while a good design just felt off due to the size of it's saucer.

Who's Star Fleet's most important engineer of all time? Zefram Cochrane?

The term trans-warp really never made sense to me. The term "trans" implies the shifting between one state and another. When talking about speed in the real world we have sub-sonic and super-sonic (ie slower than the speed of sound and faster than the speed of sound) The term Trans-sonic is the speed at which you transition from sub-sonic to super-sonic speeds. To go a little further down this rabbit hole - Hyper-sonic is denoted as speeds above Mach 5 (5x the speed of sound) Speed in Star Trek is kind of odd because speeds on most starships are achieved using one of 2 types of drive systems Impulse and Warp. With Warp-drives that generate speeds in excess of the speed of light (c)(Warp 1) and impulse drives providing sub-light(sub-warp) speeds. The other big oddity here is that even the most efficient impulse drives are only capable of sustaining 0.5c (half the speed of light) leaving a speed gap between the impulse drives and the minimum warp speed. Using real-world nomenclature since light is the known factor of speed impulse drives would be "sub-light(sub-warp)". "Trans-light(Trans-warp)" would be the point at which you exceeded the speed of light (c). And anything over Warp 1.5 would be considered "Hyper-light(Hyper-warp)" since Warp 1 is light speed and Warp 2 is 10x lightspeed. In the grand scheme of things, all of this really means nothing but it was a good thought exercise that allowed me to burn an hour off my current shift.

For its time, the excelsior class was a very LOOOOONG style of ship. In both longevity AND it’s length.

Very cool to hear about all that lore. Thank you. I’ve always liked the Excelsior class. Thought transwarp was a failure, but Excelsior class was huge success. I look on Excelsior and defiant as two times Starfleet decided to get serious building a radically different tough ship. Whereas the Akira and steam runner and other classes meant to fight the Borg, or more based off of the explorer type ships.

I cannot wait to see more of the excelsior 2 class!