At the time (ST3-5), the Excelsior was still experimental and until that class proved itself the Enterprise's and Reliant's would've been the go-to types. It could very well be the Enterprise-A was the last of a new construction batch that was ordered and re-named at the last minute from whatever previously assigned name to the E-A. It's not unheard of for such things to happen in Real Life and it seems like it happened in DS9 where the Sao Paolo was re-named the Defiant. It's possible, but less likely, that the crippled Yorktown was the donor ship as dialogue seems to support the E-A as a new build versus a repaired ship, IMHO.
^ Additionally, it would be rather humiliating for Starfleet if it turned out the Excelsior was a complete lemon and consequently the proud name of Enterprise was assigned to a lemon right off the production line. We know that Excelsior's transwarp project was shitcanned and once refitted with decent conventional warp drive the class served admirably, but we don't necessarily know when all of this took place. ST3-5 all occurred within a short time of each other and I am of the impression that Excelsior problems and solutions were all rendered between ST5 and ST6.
^^^ I thought the same thing. By the time of Star Trek VI, Excelsior now had a NCC registry. I always took that as a sign that the design was no longer experimental and was in mass production (there were probably a couple of other Excelsior-class ships in service at that time, IMO).
We also have an "in-between" design, the Constellation class: old technology applied in all-new quantity, apparently just before a new type of quality enters the picture. Probably the limits of the TMP style of tech were reached when it was applied in duplicate on the Constellation (two pairs of warp engines, two impulse engines, two bridges...), but it was a delaying action that paid off as it allowed the Excelsior technology to mature and apparently spawn a family of applications (mainly, the kitbashes seen in DS9). We know the commissioning date of one vessel, the Hathaway, and it's later than any Constitution commissioning date on screen. And we have an Okudagram saying the Constellation herself was still of NX status and doing tests out there as late as ST6:TUC. This sort of supports the "intermediate design", "stopgap" or "placeholder" status of the class, as opposed to status as a mere stablemate and parallel to the Constitution-refit and Miranda(-refit). Timo Saloniemi
Regarding giving Kirk the Excelsior: DC Comics did that right after TSFS, so even if the studio considered it, they probably scrapped the idea - but that may have been part of the reason for the scene where the shuttle heads towards Excelsior, before overflying to reveal the E-A. Personally, I really wish that they'd just given him Yorktown or Victory, and NOT renamed it. I'm sick of the "Bloody A, B, C, or D!" nonsense.
Agreed there - and ST5 would probably have benefited from having the crew struggle with a lemon of a ship named, say, Invincible! Timo Saloniemi
From a pragmatist's in-universe POV, I would agree. But in all honesty, how many long-time Trek fans got emotional seeing the old girl again with Kirk saying, "My friends, we've come home". I for one wanted to cry into my empty popcorn bucket on that final scene when I saw it in the theater the fist time, and it still gives me a lump in my throat to see it, almost 30 years later. That's what the scene was for, to be an emotional reward for the hell our characters went through during the course of the TWOK-TVH trilogy, and it was a mother of a pay-off, still to this day.
I chose Yorktown because it was the originally intended name for TOS, and Victory because that was the ship Kirk was trying for at the beginning of the Lost Years trilogy, and both are cool names. But as long as it was a good, cool name with some naval heritage, it would have worked, and better, IMO, than having every single hero ship be named Enterprise!
Love the Enterprise. All of them. From NX-01 to NCC-1701-E. But space is big and there are quite a few other ships in Starfleet. Some of them have adventures that are just as big as the Enterprise, but we really don't hear too much about them because Trek stories that focus on the Enterprise tend to, well, focus on the Enterprise. The only way you can escape it is if there are movies or TV shows that don't feature a starship named Enterprise.
I don't think that the Constitution class starships Endeavor, Ahwahnee and Emden had been refited. I think they were built using the new design that the Enterprise and Yorktown were refited into. The reason is, that those three starships registry number are higher then the Reliant. And the Emden had a registry number higher then the Excelsior.
Yes yes by refit I mean the new design. Not meaning that it was "refitted" from something old, but not sure what else to call them. Constitution version II perhaps? but yeah I agree that the Endeavor and the rest were probably part of a line of newly constructed ships, which is why I see no reason why the Enterprise A couldn't have been from that line
The Enterprise-A being a renamed older Constitution-class ship would probably be the easiest way to explain why Starfleet decided to decommission the ship rather than repair her, but there are other ways to explain that as well (one theory I came across years ago was that while the Enterprise-A was retired, the actual ship itself was repaired, renamed, and relaunched as something else--a variation of the Yorktown theory, in a way).
Assuming they had anything to do with the Constitution class, that is. I mean, we only have the names and registries of those ships, not class identities - and then (supposedly) some silhouettes that may or may not represent the Constitution class. The silhouettes could be generic "this is a heavy cruiser" signage, covering half a dozen classes, or then these modern ships happen to look a bit like the Constitution refit when viewed from above. Timo Saloniemi
The TNG Technical Manual says that the Enterprise A was "originally named Yorktown" but "redesignated Enterprise" after Kirk and his crew saved Earth from the Probe.
I believe that the Enterprise A was originally the Defiant. It somehow had return back to the prime universe. They saw it drifting and tolled to a shipyard, refitted it and got a order from starfleet command to rename it Enterprise.