Do you have a source for that? Only asking because I knew that the original plan was to give Kirk the Excelsior, but I didn't know it would have been renamed and re-registered.
It was when DC Comics was producing Star Trek comics from '84 to '96. Writer Mike Barr came up with clever ways to tell stories between the TOS movies. After Star Trek III, he had Kirk command the Excelsior and Spock command the USS Surak with an all-new crew of his own. He then had it where Spock relapsed back to his post fal-tor-pan state and had to be quickly returned to Vulcan in time for Star Trek IV. After getting in trouble with Starfleet again, Kirk and the gang would also leave the Excelsior and reunite with Spock on Vulcan, with command of the ship reverting back to Captain Styles.
It has been a long time, but I think it was mentioned in one of the knock off making of Trek books. DC first run, issues #9-36. Set between Trek III and IV. Great run.
Oh yeah I agree with that, and it wasn't a knock at "Parallels." I wouldn't have done anything differently because I love that episode, the image is so striking, and aside from maybe an ISS Enterprise-D there wouldn't have been any real D variants that would look different from the exterior anyway and that the audience or production would have any connection to. But if you made something like that today, set in say 2373 you could do a bunch of different versions of Enterprises or alternate universe counterparts existing at that point in time because they've been created in the interim. That's why I like thinking up alternate universe versions of ships and I like imagining they all exist in different quantum realities.
Naval vessels change registries all the time, why should Starfleet be any different? I think, eventually 1701 would be retired. After five or six variations there would have be a time to stop and retire the number. Which is why I think an Enterprise J would be ridiculous. (Let alone an Enterprise G) Better to have started off a new era with a new ship and registry after Undiscovered Country. Sure, Keep the 1701 - A; but end it there. Take Excelsior II for instance. Defiant changed ships and registries but not Voyager...which gets a J? Forget numerical legacies. The names alone IS the legacy itself.
Have we seen a USS Defiant post-Picard? Excelsior, for some reason got a new class or sub-class named after it with a new hull number with the original going to the Museum. It is possible that Sulu's Excelsior was famous enough being the first of her class and participating in the Khitomer Peace Conference. But we don't know for sure if the ship itself did anything legendary over the course of its service to warrant being given a legacy hull number. Or if that is even the criteria for getting a legacy hull number. For USS Enterprise, the trend seemed to spark with the Federation Council giving Captain Kirk a ship after the destruction of USS Enterprise NCC-1701 at Genesis. Given what we've seen, it is likely that Starfleet had already ordered a new USS Enterprise as an Excelsior-class starship prior to Kirk's trail. Thus the name would already be on the books with a hull number. But the Council gives Kirk a ship, and wants it named Enterprise for Kirk and crew's saving Earth again. So they take a Constitution-class starship rename it, but Starfleet already has an Enterprise on the books....so you have two starships with the same name, and soon hull numbering issues. So, someone decided to give the two ships numbers outside the regular hull numbering system. The legacy ships. NCC-1701-A and NCC-1701-B. Thus, the Federation and Starfleet can build starships outside their existing hull registry number convention system on a limited basis. For USS Voyager, I suspect that Starfleet at some point ordered a new USS Voyager after the loss of Janeway's ship. Then they get contact with their lost ship. It still exists, but it decades away. Maybe they hold off on the new ship for a while. Maybe they decide to start incorporating technology sent by USS Voyager in the Delta Quadrant into the new ship. Maybe even intending to launch it to send to Janeway to bring her crew home (maybe scuttle the original ship). But Voyager gets home way earlier than expected. The new Voyager is still on the drawing boards or under construction. Janeway's ship is pulled from the fleet to inspect all the new toys and other issues she brought home with her. With all this stuff and a legendary voyage, The Federation Council probably deems a new ship be built. Whatever plan Starfleet had gets tossed, and whatever new ship gets pulled and renamed USS Voyager outside the regular hull conventions due to just how much damage to the Borg Janeway pulled off on her way home. For USS Defiant? Well we know Sisko managed to earn a special waver to rename a starship to USS Defiant, and that ship is in the Starfleet Museum. But we don't know about any USS Defiants past that. So we don't know for sure if it got a Legacy number, or if Sisko just had the ship repainted to look exactly like his lost ship to intimidate the Dominion...like they never destroyed the original (The United States sort of did this in World War II, renaming new ships to replace ships sunk by the Japanese to give the impression the original ship wasn't lost in combat, and just was away for a year or so getting some massive upgrade.)
The thing about hull registries is that they're almost as arbitrary as ship names. Sure, certain starship designs of a particular era may fall within a a particular range of hull numbers, but even that can vary widely. I admit, I'm not too crazy about the idea of ships other than Enterprise having legacy registries. Prior to Kurtzman-era Trek, I liked to think that the Enterprise-A was a very special case and that it simply became a unique Starfleet tradition for subsequent ships named Enterprise to continue carrying the NCC-1701 registry. It's not so much that I think that the Enterprise should be revered above all other starships (past, present, or future), but I think the practice of legacy numbering can get out of hand at best and silly at worst. I guess I'm in the less is more/keep it simple camp.
That actually makes a case for why the Enterprise-B could have come into service seemingly soon after the Enterprise-A. I felt, as a kid, not knowing about how Jefferies had numbered the revisions to the design, that the second starship should have the "B" added and your idea explains how the one in movies 4-6 is "A." To me, the Enterprise, and Voyager (due to its surveying such difficult circumstances), are really the only ones that should get the distinction of new ships of the same name keeping the number. Maybe I would add the Defiant if it had not been that they kept the number even without a letter at the end, which I don't really agree with. That almost suggests that it means more to Starfleet than the Enterprise, and that I disagree with. I know that we now know the "Operation Retrieve" chart shows differently, but as a kid I assumed that NCC-1701-A was the last vessel of its class in service, and that it was only in service because they were honoring the crew by giving them a familiar ship. Really, the early part of "Generations" should have been set 20-30 years after ST:6, and the card altered from "78 years later" to like "50 years later" or something to make it fit better than the Enterprise "A" has been retired. You would not even need to change the dialogue. "The first Enterprise in 30 years without Kirk in command," could be reinterpreted to mean that it is has been 30 years since and Enterprise was in service that Kirk had commanded at some point in its lifespan. Then, the Enterprise-B goes into service only after the Enterprise-A has been in service under another crew.
Not too long ago, I liked to think that originally the Enterprise-A was a one-off thing, to both honor Kirk and the crew from saving Earth during the "Whalesong Crisis" and also something of a PR-stunt to the Federation public and the Galaxy at large (in yer face, Klingons!). In my own head canon, the next Enterprise afterward was originally going to get an all-new hull registry, but some big wig at the Admiralty made the decision not to retire NCC-1701 and thus we got the Enterprise-B. From that point, I like to think it just became a unique Starfleet tradition for starships named Enterprise to continue carrying NCC-1701, and that legacy numbering wasn't a big deal to the rest of the fleet. But if you ever visited fan Trek sites, you'll find almost every other ship in the fleet has legacy numbering. Even in one of the Trek novels, the Saratoga that Sisko served on at Wolf 359 was ultimately replaced with the Saratoga-A, for some odd reason. I know it's just me, but the more ships that get legacy numbering, the sillier and less special the practice becomes, IMHO.
Aside from the Enterprise, Titan, and Voyager, have we seen any other "legacy" starships with letter suffixes? Not counting the Yamato-E that wasn't real. And obviously the Dauntless-A that was also not real. Also brings up the interesting question as to what did Captain Riker do with his ship to earn that legacy hull number, but be perfectly willing to give that new starship the Enterprise legacy for even more achievements? There will likely be a Titan-B soon enough.
I think legacy numbering is ultimately a popularity contest. Some higher mucky-muck at Starfleet successfully campaigns for a particular ship to be honored. There are probably scores of starships that have done incredible and noteworthy things, but if they don't have an admiral wanting them to become a legacy vessel, then it simply doesn't happen. That also means it's possible that some ships may have legacy numbering with less outstanding achievements than others, but it's a case of who-they-knew more than what-they-did in such a case,
This reminds me of the suggestion - at one point - that they were planning on making the Enterprise-E another Galaxy-class by simply changing the decals on the filming miniature. Not sure if this photo is real or Photoshopped but, either way, I'm very glad they didn't do this. I get budget awareness, but that would have just looked cheap and contrived. Update: According to this article, the "E" decals were allegedly added immediately after VFX shooting of the Generations footage was completed, prior to being put away into storage. I guess someone assumed that they were going to do another TSFS-TVH reveal (hence my "contrived" remark). It was changed back to "D" for the Christie's auction. No idea if it's true or not, but there's something, anyway.
I always felt that Starfleet was ready to build a new Excelsior class Enterprise even before the damaged NCC-1701 limped back to Spacedock, and that it was going to be christened the Enterprise-A. But because construction wasn't completed yet, and because of the events of TVH, Starfleet instead tributed Kirk with an older ship renamed as a temporary command until the new Enterprise was finished being built (which would explain why the A had such a short operating life.) The new ship was then christened the Ent-B. But yeah, I can also see your take on the situation, and how that suffix might have developed because of TVH, not in spite of it.
It's real. I got this image and another from a different angle that I downloaded about 20+ years ago stored away on a CD somewhere. The story at the time was that after Generations, they didn't know if the Enterprise-E was going to be another Galaxy-class ship or not, so this was done "just in case."