I had to check; in Manhunt #1, Gil Grissom does describe the native holder of hull number NCC-1717, UGS Yorktown, as "a Block I Constitution-class cruiser, one of the first twelve made." The way that's worded, it could mean Block I was at least a dozen ships, but I'm pretty sure my intent at the time was to imply that "the first twelve" and "Block I" were the same thing.

In the course of the original Star Trek, I can think of at least three other starships (not all shown on screen, IIRC, but all implied to be the same class as Enterprise) that were lost or destroyed (Constellation in "The Doomsday Machine", Defiant in "The Tholian Web", and Intrepid in... um... the one with the giant space amoeba, I forget the episode title. Also, I'm pretty sure at least one of the ones involved in the wargame in "The Ultimate Computer" was either destroyed or rendered derelict by the M-5, and the others were all shot up pretty bad. That's all just off the top of my head. It seemed at the time like anytime a starship other than Enterprise was mentioned in the original series, it was destroyed.

UF-wise, we know Yorktown was destroyed 50 years before Manhunt "at the Battle of the Kedaris Rift." Grissom never specifies who the enemy was (presumably he doesn't have to, since Lt. Adaji would know), but 2330 was around the time the UG was falling apart, so there's no shortage of candidates.

(I know the chronology doesn't really work there—if the original Constitution-class ships are that old, and Enterprise is one of them, a lot of things about Enterprise's appearance later in Manhunt and in this story don't make sense—but I'm not going to try and unravel that while I'm battling a sinus infection. I think we're going to have to chalk it up to the Exile existing in Weird Comic Book Time. :)

Anyway, the point is, being a UGN and/or Starfleet heavy cruiser was a dangerous business before the brass at Starfleet got the idea to deploy them on multi-year long-range missions, so it doesn't strike me as that unlikely that only one of the first dozen survived. We have to assume that not all of the twelve survived long enough to be sent on a five-year exploration deployment in the first place, is all.

--G.
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