What Was Starfleet's Interim Flagship?

Okay, first off, I know the idea of there being a flagship of Starfleet is against established naval protocol, and that in reality a flagship is just a ship carrying a flag officer, but whatever. Star Trek from TNG onward has always maintained that a ship named Enterprise is Starfleet's flagship, so let's just go with this for the purposes of this thread.

Since there was no referance in TOS to the original Enterprise being the flagship, what would have been the flagship at the time? For that matter, when did the Enterprise become Starfleet's falgship? For some reason, I like to think this began with the Enterprise B. Mainly because when the Enterprise A was commissioned, the Constitution class was already on its way out, so it doesn't make a lot of sense for Starfleet to name a ship that's close to retiring its flagship.

Now the fate of the Enterprise B is still a bit of a mystery, so for all we know, there was little to no transition between the B and the C to warrant the need for an interim flagship.

However, after the Enterprise C was destroyed, Starfleet went 20 years without an Enterprise. What ship served as Starfleet's flagship during this period? Same goes for the year between the Enterprise D's destruction before the Enterprise E was launched?

Any thoughts?

 

Nope.

 

...some other ship.

 

It may very well be that the term "Federation/Starfleet's flagship" is a fairly new invention and that the Enterprise-D may have been the first to ever hold that title, IMO.

I've always kinda believed it was just an honorific given to the ship that would represent the Federation the most in affairs with other governments, and that it really had no earlier historical precedent prior to TNG.

 

So... you're trying to rewrite TOS to force it to comport with the less verisimilitudinous sequel series.
mmmkay.

 

Oh please, I'm just trying to have some harmless fun and get a discussion going.

If anything rewrote TOS to force it to comport with the less ... big word ... it would be Trek XI, where the Enterprise was referred to as the flagship, despite this not being the intent in TOS.

 

Given ST09's reference to the Enterprise as the Federation flagship, I'd assume that Starfleet originally designated its first starship Enterprise as the flagship in honor of the role the NX-01 played in establishing the Federation. (I don't think that the designation of the Enterprise as the Federation flagship would have been affected by the changes introduced in the new timeline by Nero's incursion.)

From there, I imagine that the accomplishments of the NCC-1701 and 1701-A continued to justify a ship named Enterprise retaining the honor designation of Federation flagship, and that the subsequent accomplishments of subsequent Enterprises continued to prompt the honor.

I would imagine that Starfleet had no flagship between Enterprises; it's not like it needs one, as it seems to be a purely honorary position.

 

'Xept we're not given that sort of a reference in the movie, not quite.

What Pike calls his new command is "our newest flagship", quite possibly with "our" meaning Starfleet rather than the UFP. Which is acceptable military parlance, and might suggest that Starfleet as of 2258 operates, say, four or five ships that have been specifically built for flag duties, and now adds another to its arsenal. The new NCC-1701 does look "flagshippy" enough, in the military rather than civilian sense of the word: she has much more bridge space and more bridge stations than other designs known from the era, possibly for purposes of fleet command.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Of course, there can be many flagships within a fleet. Any smaller unit commanded by a flag officer - a numbered fleet (7th fleet, 10th fleet, etc), or task force commanded by an admiral will have its own flagship.

 

Somehow, I believed the term flagship had no real significance, and the Enterprise was just a typical ship in Starfleet, until Riker's comment to Ro when she transferred aboard:

 

I suppose it could be argued that in this particular instance, that some would consider serving aboard a ship named Enterprise to be a special honor, to be part of a legacy of distinguished, history-making vessels that stretched back at least to Kirk's ship.

There could be some "braggin' rights" to have a tour of duty on the Enterprise on your service record...

 

And the nuEnterprise could well be that sort of a flagship; at one time, it was customary to have one's biggest and baddest fighting units serve in that role, and this starship could well qualify in that respect.

Well, the term "flagship" ought to have a very specific significance as such. "Federation flagship", perhaps not.

We know the E-D was one of those Enterprises that represented Starfleet's biggest and more advanced ship type and served on an interesting deep space mission. We have no such knowledge of other ships such as Kirk's original Enterprise (might have been small and insignificant, even if on an interesting mission), the E-A (definitely was small and insignificant by design, and probably didn't have too many interesting missions, either), the E-B (was on par with Starfleet's supposed best at the time, but was never credited with important missions), or the E-C (might have been big and advanced in her time, but again wasn't considered for an entry into the history books).

It's no wonder, then, that people would be rushing to serve aboard the E-D, just like Elizabeth Lense was thrilled to be serving aboard the equally large Lexington. The E-D's "flagship of the UFP" status would just be icing on that cake, I guess. Back in the days of the E-C, people might have held a similar fascination for, say, the Yamato-D or the Scharnhorst or the T'Vran, provided those were the biggest and flashiest ships of the day (and perhaps the "UFP flagships" of the day, too).

Timo Saloniemi