Chrono-Volumetrics Addendum: The Court Martial Chart

 At Starbase 11 in "Court Martial", Commodore Stone had a chart entited "Star Ship Status" with NCC numbers and percentages of completion, presumably of repairs like those for the Enterprise. 

Due to the focus, angle, and the font itself, folks have had issues distinguishing the digits even in the age of enhanced resolution from the Remastered show.   However, there's a very simple fix for that, as many programs allow a deskew option these days, especially on mobile operating systems where a "scan" of a document via photograph may need to be straighted up.

With it deskewed, something should become quite evident.   Those sixes and eights that have so confused folks for so long are of different widths in whatever font is used, there.   Look down at the second to last entry, NCC-1685, for an obvious example.   The 6 is 11 or 12 pixels in width, while the 8 is approximately 14 pixels wide.   Similarly, 1697 shows a 9 that is obviously wider than the number to its left.

If we go by this standard instead of straining to decide if there's any gap between the upper right and center right on a possible 6 or 8, it suddenly becomes more obvious.   NCC-1631 is definitely the Intrepid, for example, and not 1831 as sometimes argued.

In the deskew, one number actually looks rather higher than the others.  The fifth entry seems to have a second digit slightly wider than the third, which would imply that it is an eight compared to the six next to it.  

While it's generally been concluded that the fifth number is 1664 (which has been assigned via fanon to canon as the USS Excalibur), this method might seem to point to the number being 1864.   That, of course, is the Reliant from Star Trek II.  

However, the appearance of it being an eight there is more illusory or 'artifactual' than anything . . . compare that faux eight with the wide nine in the next entry or the monster eights in the second- and third-to-last.  Additionally, the top collage wider shot (blown up to the lower left of it) seems to show a six more evidently.  Finally, consistency with the rest of the chart, which seems to exclusively contain 16xx and 17xx, would suggest it should be a six and not an eight.

In conclusion, there are a lot of different lists and takes on that chart overall.   I myself have previously stated that the chart had numbers above 1800 based on a misread of the once-super-low-resolution digits.   However, the chart reads as follows:

NCC-1709
NCC-1631
NCC-1703
NCC-1672
NCC-1664
NCC-1697
NCC-1701
NCC-1718
NCC-1685
NCC-1700

Or, in NCC order:

NCC-1631
NCC-1664
NCC-1672
NCC-1685
NCC-1697
NCC-1700
NCC-1701
NCC-1703
NCC-1709
NCC-1718

These would later be mashed together with a backstage ship name list for Enterprise sister ships (as if they were all at Starbase 11 at the same time) by Greg Jein, and that info would be adopted by Mike Okuda and, eventually, canonized visually for most of the vessels.  I've covered that story, but discussing the results of it will have to wait for another time.