Jean-Luc Picard is most well known for captioning of the Galaxy-class USS Enterprise-D
and the Soverign-class USS Enterprise-E
ut there is another ship which he Captained for almost 20-years which was his first command!
his would be the USS Stargazer, a ship that we know is going to become very relevant again in the upcoming Star Trek: Picard Season 2,
airing on Marchn 3rd 2022!
Today, we’ll learn more about the ship to further connect It’s legacy to the upcoming series.
Welcome to Trek Central! I’m your host, _Captain Jack_, and let’s get into it!
Picard is such an Important character for the history and future of Star Trek.
Therefore, exploring his first command and one of the ships that turned him into the honorable and much respected Captain
and later Admiral that he currently is, will be very key to enjoying the character.
It’s a no brainer that we’ve come to explore the Constellation-class USS Stargazer once again.
Especially with Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard on the Horizon and the reveal of an even more interesting starship for the future of that series…
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central!
You can also follow us on social media for daily updates on the Star Trek Universe!
As always, please let us know your thoughts in the comment section below, because if you’re talking about Star Trek, then we want to hear about it!
So, the Constellation-class?
designed to be a vessel for not only deep space exploration, but for defensive patrol duty as well.
The vessel may be smaller than the iconic constitution classes, which were being phased out at the time,
with a length of only 310 metres, but still could fulfill the duties of a constitution.
The style of the ship mirrored a move to a miranda ship style of ship design, with no notable secondary hull and saucer section separation,
with the nacelles of the ship merely being attached to the rear of the saucer section.
However, differing from the Miranda, the constellation had four nacelles, two above the saucer, and two underneath the saucer.
The Constellation Class of vessels was active during the early 24th century.
The ship came to a length of 310 Metres, spread across 15 decks.
The crew complement was 535 crewmen. Several of these vessels were constructed at the Starfleet San Francisco Shipyards.
The Constellations max warp Speed, was Warp 9.
However due to the change of the warp scale at the time, it is unknown whether this max speed was using the TOS scale,
or the TNG scale,
a change necessitated by the increase in warp speeds between these two times.
The armaments of this ship class were of standard fare for Starfleet ships of the time, namely that of Photon Torpedoes and Phasers.
The ship was capable of firing as many as 6 photon torpedoes in a single spread.
From at least the year 2333 Jean Luc Picard served as a bridge officer aboard the USS stargazer.
However at some point the ship's captain and first officer were killed and Picard took command of the vessel.
Due to how well Picard had handled the situation and took command of the ship,
Starfleet Command appointed him as the vessels new commanding officer, thus Jean-Luc would become known as Captain Picard.
Many crew members on Jean-Luc Picard’s USS stargazer included Jack Crusher,
the husband to Beverly Crusher and father to Wesley Crusher,
a weapons officer named Vigo, and a Chief Medical officer called Moritz Benayoun.
Not much is known about some of the missions involving the USS stargazer you know that the stargazer was involved in the Secret Mission to the fire forest of callux.
the stargazer was active during the Cardassian-Federation boarder Wars where the ship was involved in a truce offering by the federation in sector 21503.
However this Truce Offering was not received well by the Cardassians
who managed to take out most of the stargazers weapons and it's impulse engines are the stargazer managed to to escape intact.
However there were casualties during some of the missions that the USS stargazer went on as any good starfleet captain would suffer the,
main casualty being Jack Crusher who was killed on an away mission in the year 2353.
The biggest incident for the USS stargazer was in the year 2355, when the Stargazer was attacked and severely damaged by an unknown vessel in the Maxia Zeta system,
, this would be known as the “Battle of Maxia”.
During this battle the USS Stargazer was able to destroy the attacking vessel using what would be later known as the Picard manoeuvre. The Picard manoeuvre was when a vessel would suddenly Accelerate into high warp directly towards the enemy and drop out of warp.
This would cause two vessels to appear on the enemy's sensors, due to data still being received from the vessel's former location.
Picard was able to destroy the Unknown at attacking ship using this manoeuvre firing at it as soon as they dropped out of wool while the enemy ship was still attacking the data ghost.
The USS Stargazer may have won the “Battle of Maxia”
but the ship was extremely damaged and it had to be abandoned.
After this Incident, Picard was court-martialed for loss of the stargazer and prosecuted byattorney general Phillipa Louvois,
however in the end he was absolved of all charges.
Even though the USS Stargazer was presumably destroyed it would return,
salvaged by a Ferengi known as DaiMon Bok who desired revenge against Picard.
The mysterious ship that attacked the USS stargazer at the Battle of Maxia was a Ferengi ship and DaiMon Bok’s son was in command of the ship.
Bok falsified the logs to make it look like the stargazer was the aggressor
The Legacy of the Stargazers still lives on with Picard Fondly recalling his time on the ship especially to that of Montgomery Scott the former chief engineer of the USS Enterprise.
Even after years of catching the flagship of the fleet the USS Enterprise D he would give almost anything to command the stargazer again.
A model of the Stargate that could be seen at picards section of the quantum archive at the Starfleet archive museum in the year 2399 however after the incident it would seem like he has taken his memories out of storage and put them in his house of Chateau Picard.
That may be the end of the story of the USS stargazer but as We Know no no ship is ever truly gone so might we see a USS stargazer a on the horizon to continue the Legacy of this overworked underpowered vessel that's always on the verge of flying apart at the seams.
That maybe the lore of the USS stargazer but let's look at the background information and behind the scenes look at the USS stargazer and where they came from.
Originally Jean-Luc Picard was going to be called William T English,
and which we are very glad he wasn't,
but according to Gene Roddenberry in Notes from him in 1986 this William the English was given the name of Stargazer at the Academy.
Originally the USS Stargazer was going to be a constitution class vessel, the same vessel of the USS Enterprise which Captain Kirk had captained.
However it was eventually decided that there should be a new model, however they had already recorded lines referring to the stargazer as a constitution class ship,
so the new vessel had to be of a type that sounded close to constitution to make it easier to overdub therefore it was called a constellation class vessel.
According to a Starfleet Tecnical Database Aticle, written for an older magazine by Rick Sternbach,
, the USS Stargazer was eventually repaired after being towed back to endi Starbase 9.
The Starship would then return to limited active duty for eigh years. It would then be mothballed and installed as a museum ship at the Copernicus Yard Musem on Luna.
Picard Season 2 is on the horizon and thanks to a Ready Room Featurette and Star Trek Dot Com,
we’ve got confirmation that Admiral Picard’s new starship is indeed the USS Stargazer as we originally expected last year.
It looks like Captain Chris Rios will take the stage as the ships commanding officer, but given It’s close relationship with Jean-Luc Picard,
I imagine it will always be his home away from home in a sense.
Personally, while the bits we have seen of this new Stargazer are fantastic, I hope we see some bad-ass battle scenes.
Along with that, finding out what class this ship is would be fantastic. Perhapas it is indeed a Stargazer class? A man can dream…
Are you excited to see the upcoming USS Stargazer in Star Trek: Picard Season 2?
Later this week we’ll know more about the ship and get a full breakdown of what we can expect from it in the upcoming seasons.
I’m personally super excited to have that organic and original Starfleet feel back to the show.
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central!
You can also follow us on social media, or join our Community Discord Server!
For now, I’ve been Captain Jack, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!