The ship was probably cobbled together from surplus parts made for other ships and perhaps didn't have the same fit and integration as the others did. (There's some precedent for this in historical shipbuilding, for example, the HMS Blonde was a 38-gun ship built from timber frames constructed for a 36-gun Euryalus class frigate) Some of the secondary sources like the TNG:TM suggest that there are things as "fit" of components, such as in the fact that the Enterprise and Yamato swapped phaser arrays on the nacelle pylons because they fit better on each the other ship. In which case the Enterprise-A might have suffered from that sort of neglect if assembled from various components meant for different ships. Or possibly the Whale Probe stuff had messed up her computer when it was undergoing final tweaks.
Maybe I should have rewritten my post the moment I came across this dialogue quote from ST V. So here we have Montgomery Scott (shouldn't he know best?) clearly stating "this new ship". I really can't see how this could be possibly ambiguous. Bob
If the E-A was a new ship, there is no evidence to suggest (or contradict mind you) that it was built to be an Enterprise. It could have been lined up to be the U.S.S. T'Plana-Hath for all we know, but with the loss of the original Enterprise it was decided to rename the ship in her honour for a new crew to carry on her good work. It was then only after Kirk saved Earth again that he was given command.
Wow, I coulda sworn we did this just a few months ago... http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=220135 When Scotty said "this NEW ship", I always thought that he was referring to it in the context of the ship to which he and his shipmates were newly assigned. You know, like when you buy a used car, you will still call it your NEW car regardless of its history. Fandom at the time of STIV figured it was a renamed ship too. "Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise" suggested it was the newbuild USS Ti-Ho; later sources (including Sternback and Okuda) said it was the Yorktown, hastily repaired after being shut down by the probe and with a new coat of paint, and no apologies to Captain Vijay. At the time "canon" was a fun thing people modified all the time. Those were the days... Mark
If anyone has read Shatner's The Ashes of Eden, you'll know the Enterprise-A has a very different fate to becoming a museum
He could easily have been referring to this new Enterprise, which would still be "this new ship" to Kirk and the gang even if it had an earlier history as another vessel. If it was a hurriedly slapped together refit that still had some bugs to work out, Scott's comments about it being built by monkeys and "they don't build them like they used to" would still be valid. So there is more than one way the Enterprise-A can be looked at.
If they'd built a brand new ship for Kirk rather than refitting an older one, why didn't they build an Excelsior? I mean, According to Memory Alpha, the original Enterprise was launched in the 2240s. The refit program in TMP was around 2270s, so by this point the class was already 30 years old. The launch of the E-A was in 2286. So we are looking at a class that is reaching close to half a century in service. Now, if you are going to build a new ship to serve as flagship, a command for one of the most decorated officers to ever serve, do you build him a ship that is more than 40 years old? Of course not. You build him something shiny, new, with all the latest technology. And anyway, even if the E-A was a brand new ship, does it make sense that they'd commision it in 2286 and then retire it in 2293? Only seven years later? Would Starfleet really use the resources to build a brand new ship knowing full well that the class was going to be retired in less than a decade? So the only reason I could see that they would give Kirk an Connie is if it is a renaming of an already existing ship.
^ The NX-01 was decommissioned after 10 years, given how rare Earth ships seem to be at that time it seems a little wasteful.
What book was it that had Scotty stealing a Constitution class, complete with the original Enterprise saucer, from the museum? ETA: Found it, it was Crossover.
DECKER: "Admiral, this is an almost totally new Enterprise. You don't know her a tenth as well as I do." So yes, there is some ambiguity to Scotty's statement.
The NX-01, after 10 years, probably saw wear, tear and stresses beyond what the designers thought. Perhaps after all of that it wasn't economical to keep rehabbing the ship. I'd imagine that advances in technology - both from field experience/tweaks and information from new races - were easier to put in a new ship rather than shoehorn into a well-worn spaceframe.
I do not read STAR TREK novels, usually. As a matter of fact, all I've ever gotten is a total of 4 of them. So, I can only go by what I see in the movie(s), and I see everyone looking really bad in The Undiscovered Country. Shatner's even wearing a greying wig (!!!) for the first time, ever and he was as old as the trees, even then. Everyone's talking about retirement and the passage of time. So, I always took it as read that TUC was meant to be several good years after The Final Frontier. Probably still too "young" to mothball, but even in STAR TREK III, "they" were showing Excelsior as being the way starships were heading within StarFleet. That, basically, the Constitution class had become obsolete. Which is a shame, because I think The Motion Picture model's pearlescent finish and its Art Deco design worked out brilliantly. It's not a mess of CGI detail like Enterprise-E ... which strangely got rebuilt, instead of decomissioned. Whatever ...
Ships are often decommissioned, put in reserve and recommissioned later, so the A could have been pulled out of a mothball fleet, handed over to Kirk, and put back in mothballs again.
Not to nitpick, but if I am remembering correctly, when Scotty is drowning his sorrows on the Holodeck, I believe the "first love" he was talking about was the original Enterprise- "No bloody A, B, C or D".
Yep, but if the man was standing there trying to return to something familiar, and you knew that another Enterprise that he served on was still around, wouldn't you have mentioned it specifically, not vaguely?
You mean if a sad man was lamenting to me about how he felt like a useless old relic... would I go out of my way to mention that a ship he served on is sitting collecting dust in a museum? "Hey Scotty- That Enterprise A you served on? The one that didn't get blown up? It's obsolete and useless now and SO ARE YOU! Har har har!"
Because telling him that the only example of the class of ship he was standing in was in a museum was any different?