I would like to think that maybe the Enterprise-A was retired from active duty, and turned into a training vessel or maybe a museum vessel.
Not that I necessarily hate the notion... but why? Think about it. There was nothing particularly significant about the Enterprise-A that we're aware of. She met something pretending to be God and saved the Khitomer talks. Psh. That's a slow day for the 1701-nil. OTOH, she may have been made a showpiece, and later be the source of the apparent Constitution class wreckage scoped in BoBW...
I would say that because it was commanded by Kirk, would be enough. He is sort of like that era's John Paul Jones or Admiral Nelson and considering the original 1701 was destroyed, and since it seems that the entire constitution class was retired and presumably mothballed, the real question is why would you mothball the 1701-A, when you don't have to? Besides, it was mentioned that one of the NX ships (wasn't clear which one), according to Troi in These are the Voyages, was kept around as a museum ship, so it makes sense to me they might keep a constitution class ship around as a museum, too. And if they have to choose which one, well Enterprise-A would get it, at least in my world. I mean an Enterprise that DOESN'T get destroyed is a rare thing, so you best preserve one when it retires when you can!
But they do keep a Constitution as a museum piece - and she's not the E-A, as her bridge apparently is of the late 2260s standard still. Also, she's the only one. Unless I'm reading too much into "Relics", that is. Picard waltzes in on Scotty's simulation and recognizes it for Constitution class, which is fine, because we never saw the TOS design associated with the bridge of any other class. And then he says there's a Constitution class in the museum. Doesn't mean Picard recognized the simulation because it was identical to the museum piece - he could have recognized it because visuals from the 2260s adventures of various Constitutions were part of the public consciousness for some reason or another. Timo Saloniemi
Picard may have "cheated" a bit and either looked at the program before entering the holodock or drawing on knowledge of Scotty's career. His expression as he looks around seems like is isn't trying to identify the ship class so much as he's grappling with how to approach his conversation with Scotty and is just buying himself a few moments and testing the waters. Or at least that is how I read that scene. After all, I don't think Picard was there by accident. He knew Scotty was going through a rough adjustment, as anyone in his position would, and was trying to feel out how Scotty was feeling. That Picard walked in on Scotty's holodeck program instead of wating for another time to visit suggests that he already suspected Scotty was having difficulty, possibly having made discrete inquiries with Data or Laforge. The fact that Scotty was running a holodeck simulation of his old ship probably spoke volumes to Picard about Scotty's current emotional state. From the moment Picard walks into the holodeck, he knew full well it was the bridge of the Enterprise, which is Constution Class Ship, and the one Scotty's served on during the best part of his career. Anything he said and did was simply "blowing smoke" as he until he finds a way and a good moment to ask the to the question he REALLY wanted to ask, "What do you think about the Enterprise D", meaning "How are you REALLY feeling here." Point is, there were a lot of things going on with this scene, making it not a good one to glean how recognizable and distinctive the appearance of the bridge may be to that class.
It is a probability that the Enterprise-A isn't the Yorktown that was mention on screen. But most likely the Yorktown that Captain April had commanded before he had commanded the Enterprise. I'm conjecturing that the Yorktown that Captain April had commanded was a Constitution class starship that was decommission and put in moatball just before the Enterprise was commission. I'm basing this on what Captain James T. Kirk had told Captain John Christopher; Saying that there was 12 others like the Enterprise in the Fleet. The 12 other or: USS. Constellation USS. Constitution USS. Defiant USS. Essex USS. Excalibur USS. Exeter USS. Hood USS. Intrepid USS. Lexington USS. Potemkin USS. Republic USS. Yorktown The USS. Endeavour wouldn't had been commission at that time. But, because we had seen her registry number on the display wall at Starbase 11, that she was being built at that starbase. Then there is the USS. Eagle. Because she having a lower registry number? She was in moatball at that time. But later was taking out of moatball, refitted, recommission and put back on acting service in the fleet.
I have to wonder about the renaming, thing. Naval tradition has it to be EXTREMELY bad luck to rename a ship once she's in commission, though they've done it more than a few times (especially when they'd convert a wooden warship to something like a hospital ship, or receiving ship, or whatever). I suppose that might explain the whole "Gremlins" thing in TFF, but you'd think someone like Scotty might be superstitious enough to object.
Well, Scotty is an old merchant engineer, supposedly ("Operation: Annihilate!" and "Relics"). And merchant shipping is not particularly worried about renaming: merchant vessels today change name more often than they do laundry, as they frequently change ownership. Timo Saloniemi
Curious. Does making a run with the merchants as an "engineering advisor" make Scotty a merchant engineer or was he simply a Starfleet Engineer helping out the merchants?
To me, the implication was that Scotty worked on other, lesser Starfleet ships before working on the Enterprise, with perhaps a short civilian stint even earlier. YMMV.
His resume in "Relics" includes "freighters, cruisers, starships", eleven in total. Supposedly, he ever only worked on two starships (and was Chief Engineer on both, but never on any of the previous ships), unless there were assignments during the movie era that we aren't aware of, or pre-TOS assignments that go unmentioned. But we don't know for sure. FWIW, no lesser Starfleet vessels are mentioned in the "Relics" list. "Starships" in TOS parlance apparently are the same thing as "heavy cruisers", so the word "cruiser" here is likely to refer to pleasure cruiser instead. Timo Saloniemi
But, the Lantree was arguably a freighter, and was a Starfleet ship? And cruiser to Scotty's mind may've meant something different than Starship. If the Enterprise is a heavy cruiser, maybe he thinks of cruisers as smaller.
In the past, I've seen others refer to the Miranda class as a "light cruiser", as opposed to a "heavy frigate" (the latter originating from the Avenger-class schematics from either SSA or MDC back in the mid-80's, IIRC), neither of which are canon. It is still a "cruiser" in some people's eyes - an overused, ubiquitous and highly ambiguous term in Trek, to be sure.
Not really. Being a military vessel, she would have been a "transport", never a "freighter", and indeed never was called by the civilian term. Nor by the military one, for that matter - she was a "supply ship" instead, and while this may mean she was a regular starship that happened to be delivering supplies, the extra dialogue on her being "Class Six" and having a small crew suggest that she was a dedicated, special vessel instead. Timo Saloniemi
The TNGTM implies that "cruiser" is still a Starfleet classification, along with surveyor, scout, cargo carrier, and transport and those are also distinct from the "Explorer" class. It might make sense for "starship" to be a classification that was renamed explorer at some point. Presumably a freighter could probably fit onto those categories as a cargo carrier.
But in TNG, every Starfleet vessel is a starship (Sisko even pretends his runabout is one in "Vortex"!), so "cruiser" has an excuse to be a Starfleet subcategory there. Amusingly, Star Trek is almost as strict about the difference between "freighter" and "transport" as the real-world navies are. On the other hand, the TNG TM mentions "tanker", which is another civilian term. Navies don't have "tankers", they have "fuel transports" - it's air forces that have tankers (the flying sort), and armies (the people who drive tanks). Although that's nowhere as strict a thing as navies never having "freighters". Timo Saloniemi