Sorry for the late response, I've been out and about and shit.
Uraniun235 wrote:But most of the systems are supposed to be under the hull; Matt Jefferies explicitly suggested that the original Enterprise was meant to have as many systems within the hull as possible, so as to allow maintenance to be done without having to send crewmen outside the ship.
Yeah, and most systems in a CG are under a hull too(5 inch gun system, VLS, engines), but generally there are SOME differences externally after the vessel goes through major upgrades, even if it's adding new radomes/comsat stuff and taking off other stuff. It would have made more sense if we saw Excels that had different colored deflector dishes...some kind of visual indicator that major work had been done on them. That there is zero change externally doesn't bode well for the "well they just did a lot of INTERNAL upgrades!" hypothesis.
Also, unless the sensor suite is located well within the hull, crewmen ARE going to be outside doing routine maintenance, no matter what Matt Jefferies says.
(The other concept was that the nacelles were supposed to be basically plug-and-play; they could be relatively easily swapped out with replacements at a starbase if need be.) If the shield generators and antimatter reactor get swapped out, there's no reason to assume we'd see a noticeable external difference. Heck, look at Enterprise (TMP) and Enterprise-A (ST 5); we see two completely different shuttlebay arrangements within an identical outer hull. Same with the torpedo bay (ST 2, ST 6) and the bridge.
The -A was also re-christianed from a different ship that was undergoing a upgrade cycle. Who knows that the original interior of the
Yorktown looked like to the -Nil?
Enterprise-D got several system upgrades through the course of TNG (including a whole replacement antimatter reactor, and better phasers) and yet we never see those changes manifest on the exterior.
My understanding is that the "upgrades" came about because of the damage it took during BOBW and the repairs at earth station McKinley, not because of a planned upgrade. I didn't know about the better phasers, but honestly that doesn't mean anything. That could be like a 5 inch gun getting a new barrel that has twice the shots before it has to be replaced.
Enterprise-B and Lakota may have been part of a subtype which proved to be not cost-effective and canceled in favor of further standard Excelsior-class ships. We see a lot of Excelsior-class ships throughout TNG and DS9, but there's only a short span of a few years between the prototype and the introduction of Enterprise-B; were so many really built so quickly before producing a handful of sideboob-Excelsiors and then shutting down the line? (in favor of Constellation, no less... bleh!)
Hmm...possible. I'm actually starting to favor the idea that an order of, say, 100 Excelsiors was made, the Khitomer Treaty was signed, and while personnel costs went way down it was decided somewhere to finished building the Excels, and stick them in a graveyard somewhere and demilitarized subject to weapons inspectors. So after the first group of Excels are retired at the 50 year mark an equal number is pulled out of the mothballed fleet in nearly "like new" condition.
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