Registry

[Citizen Cook]

So the Enterprise A was the second starship to bare the name Enterprise. (Well before the whole NX thing) Why was it lettered A and not B then?

I've always found this a little confusing. Was it because the A was pretty much identical to the refit Enterprise?

Are there any other federation ships with additional letters at the end of their registrations? For example, was there an Excelsior A or B?

 

[Tarek71]

So the Enterprise A was the second starship to bare the name Enterprise. (Well before the whole NX thing) Why was it lettered A and not B then?

I've always found this a little confusing. Was it because the A was pretty much identical to the refit Enterprise?

Are there any other federation ships with additional letters at the end of their registrations? For example, was there an Excelsior A or B?

For some reason, keeping the registry number was important. In many Navies, there are ship names that have been used several times. There is no reason to keep the registry number. Naval ships honor the name by using it again. Just the name though, as far as I know, unless any one knows of a contrary example,

The added letters are for the registry number not the name. I don't know why 1701 needed to be used for subsequent Enterprises.

There may have been Enterprises in between the NX-01 and the 1701, no matter what the Holodeck computer told Scotty.

 

[Citizen Cook]

So if another ship called Voyager was built would it be the
NCC-74656-A or the NCC-74656-B?

 

[C.E. Evans]

There was an illusionary USS Yamato in TNG who appeared to have a registry of 1305-E, but this was later retconned in a later episode that featured the real ship. There was also the fake USS Dauntless in VOY with the registry NX-01-A.

Personally, countless fan fics and fan-made ships aside, I think the idea of continuing another ship's registry onto another namesake is just a unique Starfleet tradition with Enterprise. 1701-A may have just been a public relations thing in light of Kirk and the "Whalesong Incident," with the later decision for the third Enterprise to be 1701-B (rather than an all-new registry) being where the tradition really started.

 

[Citizen Cook]

There was an illusionary USS Yamato in TNG who appeared to have a registry of 1305-E, but this was later retconned in a later episode that featured the real ship. There was also the fake USS Dauntless in VOY with the registry NX-01-A.

Personally, countless fan fics and fan-made ships aside, I think the idea of continuing another ship's registry onto another namesake is just a unique Starfleet tradition with Enterprise. 1701-A may have just been a public relations thing in light of Kirk and the "Whalesong Incident," with the later decision for the third Enterprise to be 1701-B (rather than an all-new registry) being where the tradition really started.

Makes sense. Not too many ships save the earth after all. And the Enterprise did it on multiple occasions.

Still, one has to think that Captain Harriman must have felt immense pressure in taking command of the Enterprise B.
Did Starfleet consider him to be something special I wonder, a cut above your standard officer?

 

[C.E. Evans]

There was an illusionary USS Yamato in TNG who appeared to have a registry of 1305-E, but this was later retconned in a later episode that featured the real ship. There was also the fake USS Dauntless in VOY with the registry NX-01-A.

Personally, countless fan fics and fan-made ships aside, I think the idea of continuing another ship's registry onto another namesake is just a unique Starfleet tradition with Enterprise. 1701-A may have just been a public relations thing in light of Kirk and the "Whalesong Incident," with the later decision for the third Enterprise to be 1701-B (rather than an all-new registry) being where the tradition really started.

Makes sense. Not too many ships save the earth after all. And the Enterprise did it on multiple occasions.

Still, one has to think that Captain Harriman must have felt immense pressure in taking command of the Enterprise B.
Did Starfleet consider him to be something special I wonder, a cut above your standard officer?

I definitely think that was the case. The problem was that his first outing as captain of the Enterprise was nothing short of a disaster--an unprepared ship on an intended quick P.R. cruise that had to go into a life-or-death rescue mission with Kirk and a hound of reporters watching his every move (and he didn't come across looking good under scrutiny).

I think that not every captain starts off being great and wonderful. Some may become so after experiencing a very rough start. I like to think that's what happened to Harriman and he eventually went on to become a great captain.

 

[Forbin]

Since 1701 didn't have any letter after her registry, the next ship gets the first revision letter, which is "A". Why would it be "B"? How can you have a B if there was no A before it? How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

That's how we do revisions on engineering drawing numbers. Say you start with drawing number 123678. Then the first time you revise it, it becomes 123678 rev A. Etc. Sometimes we do alternate art for projects, to give the writers a choice for a particular figure. So art number 15027-001 will be followed by 15027-001A, 15027-001B, etc.

 

[Timo]

Not too many ships save the earth after all.

How can we tell? We saw Earth threatened half a dozen times within a couple of decades; if that's the standard frequency of doomsdays, who handled those before Kirk, or after him? Yet if not, why did the doomsdays coincide with Kirk's career?

The original Yamato that launched the other known letter-registry series carried a lower registry number than the Enterprise. An older ship, perhaps? Does that mean she did the letter-warranting heroics first, or merely that she did them while older than the Enterprise? Slapping letters onto heroic ships might have been standard fare already by the time of ST4:TVH, the equivalent of freezing a famous player's number.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

Yeah, since the alphabet starts with "A" it's makes sense that the altered registry would as well. It is unknown if other ships' registries are honored like that of the Enterprise. Personally, I like to think that the Enterprise has that singular honor.

 

[B.J.]

Engineer here, can confirm what Forbin said.

 

[Citizen Cook]

Since 1701 didn't have any letter after her registry, the next ship gets the first revision letter, which is "A". Why would it be "B"? How can you have a B if there was no A before it? How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

That's how we do revisions on engineering drawing numbers. Say you start with drawing number 123678. Then the first time you revise it, it becomes 123678 rev A. Etc. Sometimes we do alternate art for projects, to give the writers a choice for a particular figure. So art number 15027-001 will be followed by 15027-001A, 15027-001B, etc.

OK, but let me ask you this:

If Starfleet built a Voyager 2 but it wasn't a revision/or exactly the same as the original would it still have an A in it's registry?

 

[B.J.]

^ It's not an Enterprise, so no. But if they did go for the whole letter thing for Voyager, 1701-B wasn't the same or a revision of 1701-A. So yes, in that case the next Voyager would be NCC-74656-A.

 

[Timo]

We know pretty well how Starfleet "usually" does these things - ships with other names are registered one way, and there are many of those in evidence, while the Enterprise and the Yamato are in a minority.

Say, Starfleet has several ships named Intrepid or Hood or Constellation, and these are not related to each other in any sort of way - each Intrepid is of different design, different registry, possibly a completely different role in Starfleet.

That's how it goes in real navies, too: no ship gets a direct "successor" by the same name. Instead, a totally random future ship may get the name one day. And registries are unique (as it's their very purpose to uniquely identify!) and create no connections between ships of the same name.

Would there be any real world precedent for the Enterprise concept of ships inheriting a registry? Not to my knowledge.

Any precedent for a name being inherited? Sure: whenever a ship is given a name, a big fuss is made of whatever ships (or cities, or donkeys) also carried that proud name. It's unusual to see a name passing directly from a retiring ship to her functional replacement, though. But sometimes this happens, especially in navies using "thematic" names: if all the minesweepers in the navy are always named after cucumber plantations, then of course a replacement minesweeper may inherit the exact name of the retiree.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS Triumphant]

The Manticorian Navy in the Honor Harrington series of novels has something called the List of Honor - the names of ships that have done something extraordinary and have earned being on the List. Part of the honor is that the Navy keeps a ship with that name in active service at all times.

I can't at the moment remember where I read this, but I've read that Klingons take parts from their older ships that have served with honor and integrate them into new ship construction as a way of "carrying honor" to the new ship.

I like to think that what is going on with the registry carry-overs in Starfleet is something similar to these: Ships that serve with great valor and/or distinction earn having their registration contract kept open - a promise, of sorts, that there *will* be another ship to bear the name, always. And when a registration contract is open, each new ship added to it is considered an addendum to the same contract, similar to what Forbin was talking about - so A, B, C, etc.

 

[Steve Willis]

However, let's not forget the second Defiant, formerly Sao Paulo, I do not believe the second registry number was changed. Same class as the first Defiant, and the first Defiant was pretty heroic.

 

[Timo]

What ship wouldn't be? But in this case we could argue that Starfleet wanted to play tricks with the Dominion and make them believe that the original Defiant had not been lost at all. This would cost Starfleet nothing extra, after all. And the Dominion knows Captain Sisko is a demigod, potentially immortal to boot; messing with their minds might indeed make the Admirals giggle and sign the necessary documents.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Galileo7]

However, let's not forget the second Defiant, formerly Sao Paulo, I do not believe the second registry number was changed. Same class as the first Defiant, and the first Defiant was pretty heroic.

Based on the 1701-A, the Defiant really should have had an A added since they used the same registry number.

 

[Avro Arrow]

^ IIRC, didn't they just use the same registry because all the shots of the Defiant in the final episode were all stock footage? In universe, it would have made much more sense for them to keep whatever the Sao Paulo's original number was.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, perhaps NX-74205 is the registry assigned to the DS9 station, the way every shuttle of the E-D carries the registry NCC-1701-D? Runabouts might be outside assets with their own registries, but the station might feature shuttles numbered NX-74205/7 or NC-74205/224, while the principal support ship would go undashed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Steve Willis]

Problem, the Danube class runabouts each had their own registry numbers.