Personally, I subscribe to the theory that it's a brand new ship. Nothing in the dialogue from Star Trek V supports that it was a different vessel renamed Enterprise.
That's my take on it as well. There was a new Connie being built, perhaps the plan was to name it the USS Ti-Ho or something else, but soon after Fleet Admiral Morrow decided to decommission the Enterprise (or maybe after its destruction at Genesis), the decision was made to name the ship in honor of NCC-1701. Kirk and crew had no knowledge of this and were suprised to see 1701-A because they'd been exiled to Vulcan for three months, during which the change in name had occured. Simple.
I found this searching the origians of the Enterprise-A This was listed on Memory Alpha:http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-A) According to Gene Roddenberry, the NCC-1701-A was not a newly-constructed ship, but instead was the renamed USS Yorktown, a nod to the name of the starship in his original pitch for Star Trek. This was based on the fact that it was difficult to believe that Starfleet would build a whole new ship in such a short time, and then decommission it a short while after, and the early retirement of the Enterprise-A could be justified if the ship had been in service for many years under another name. (I remember reading in Star Trek: History of the Future it also stated the information above) Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, released shortly after Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, cites the origin of NCC-1701-A as the USS Ti-Ho (NCC-1798), an Enterprise-class starship which was a test bed for transwarp technology alongside the USS Excelsior. The Ti-Ho was rechristened Enterprise after Kirk and his crew were exonerated. Interseting.....
I just don't like the idea of Starfleet laying down new keels on what was already declared to be an old and useless design in a previous movie. From what we see, the Constitution class indeed disappears right after the movie era. The appearance of a single example in "BoBW" doesn't mean the class would remain in service, as the anti-Borg flotilla seemed to feature quite a few "museum ships" or recycled study models from the pre-movie era. In-universe, we probably did see Starfleet Museum activate its orbital collection for a last-ditch defense... Timo Saloniemi
What? There is no evidence that Morrow is speaking for an entire class of vessel. The Enterprise herself is closer to forty years old, but the refit was introduced in 2271. Making the design itself around fifteen years old. In 2286, the Excelsior is still in its test-run phase and there's no way they'd already have them in production without knowing if transwarp drive was practical. So there's no doubt in my mind that Starfleet was continuing to produce Connies until, at least, the early 2290's.
Which means absolutely nothing. Roddenberry was paid a consultants fee for each film after the first and got to scribble notes on each films screenplay which were roundly ignored by Bennett and company.
^ Yeah, this was around the time that he was decrying the 'militaristic' depiction of Starfleet in the movies and insisting that they film his time-travel story about the assassination of JFK as the next movie.
It doesn't appear that "the Great Experiment" was in production, or about to replace anything much (although curiously enough, the "testbed" had apparently been built with full operational gear such as sensor and weapon emplacements). But we know of one new cruiser design from the 2280s already - the Constellation. And we saw the Miranda, which falls between the Constitutions and early Constellations in terms of registry numbers. In contrast, we never saw or heard of a Constitution that wouldn't have been a refit of a TOS era original. It's not as if we're left grasping at straws for ships to fill the gap left by Kirk's hero ship class retiring: to the contrary, this is one of the eras where multiple options present themselves. And this is one of the eras where we get the sense of something ending, as the TOS design aesthetic disappears in a very sharp cut. Dramatically, Kirk bows out, and so does his ship - twice! It thus feels wrong on multiple levels to think that nothing changed in the story of the Constitution class at large here. Timo Saloniemi
To me, it's an Occam's Razor thing. There was a ship called Enterprise, then it's blown up. So its crew are assigned a new ship. Also called Enterprise. Its a new Enterprise. If it was simply a refit, why wouldn't they call it by its old name? They didn't change the name of the previous Enterprise in TMP, despite its extensive refit. I mean, okay, there's nothing onscreen to say one way or the other but the other explanations seem awfully convoluted to me. And TFF certainly seems to support the idea that it's a new ship, with all the associated teething problems.
Nope - the ship is blown up, and her top officers are assigned a new ship. Basically never happens in the real world; crews don't get to hold together like that, not even small groups of top officers. But here we were rather explicitly shown that the troupe was transferred as a package because they were public heroes who deserved a reward. And part of that reward appeared to be that Starfleet agreed to paint a new name on a starship. In reality, ships don't get successors, not in the one-on-one sense. And ships certainly don't get replaced by new ships of the same name. Not in military tradition, and not for military reasons. But everything here fits well with the concept of a PR stunt, which then overrides all other considerations and negates the value of evidence. Timo Saloniemi
^ Bridge crew, then. And yes, we all know that ships' crews don't stay together like that in reality. But it if was all a PR stunt, why did they send them to deal with the hotspot on Nimbus III? As for the ships not being replaced with new ships of the same name, well, even if you disregard Jonathan Archer's ship, Starfleet went on to have Enterprises B-E (and beyond, according to Enterprise's third season). And the Defiant was also replaced with a namesake, when destroyed in the Dominion War.
That much was also pretty clear in ST4: Starfleet wanted to keel-haul the mutineers, but the public wanted to beatify them. So, they get a replica starship and avoid jail, but as soon as they have had their fifteen minutes of glory, they have to face reality again: they don't get promoted and they don't get good assignments. And clearly the E-D was not the replacement of the E-C - there was a significant gap in between. We are given no reason to think there wasn't a gap between B and C as well. And the ship type represented by B was not retired when C was introduced. The ship type represented by E in turn is of humbler size than that represented by D. So essentially we only get a bunch of ships with the same name but no other connecting factor. And this is with regards to the Enterprise, which everybody seems to agree is a venerable special case. Nothing of the sort seems to happen to the Hood or the Yorktown or the Intrepid. So, a PR stunt. (Much like the one with the Defiant, which was elemental in the early stages of the Dominion crisis and is likely to have achieved fame even outside the Starfleet circles.) Timo Saloniemi
Most likely because the ship had a new name. Whatever she was before, she was the Enterprise now. Crewmembers who served on the ship under her previous name would really be the ones who would refer to that. Scotty would know her original specs, but even he would likely just refer to her as "the new Enterprise." Ships being renamed isn't totally unheard of in real life. The very first U.S.S. Enterprise (18th-Century) was a renamed ship. They were keeping the name, so they weren't changing it. The same was true of the old Enterprise after her refit. She had teething problems too--the transporter was unsafe to use and the warp drive created a wormhole moments after it was engaged.
@Timo^ The E came soon after the D and the Defiant also followed its predecessor immediately. Ultimately, it's all in one's personal continuity or belief and there's nothing to prove anyone right or wrong. But I don't find the version you suggest convincing. I'm sure the reverse is true too!
For me I always believed that it probably was a rush build from existing segments (abandoned new build because of Excelsior class) due to Scotty's line about the ship being put together by monkeys. I don't think that makes sense if it is a repair or refit on an existing ship.
Would it help or hurt the issue to mention the USS Hornet and USS Yorktown, two WWII carriers lost in battle and then the namesakes re-used in new Essex-class carriers? Sure, different classes of carriers. But the names were given to new vessels right away. Something similar could have happened with Enterprise here?
It would if the refit was a rushed job and not all of the systems were fully tested (or even fully integrated) when she was commissioned.