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Where did the Enterprise A come from?

C

Citizen Cook

Lieutenant Junior Grade
Red Shirt
I've recently been re-watching the movies. At the end of IV, Kirk and crew receive possession of the Enterprise A.
I'm wondering if there is an in-universe explanation for this since we're told in III that the Enterprise is 20 years old, old-dated, and due for decommissioning.
Why did Kirk and crew not not get the Excelsior or a new Excelsior-class vessel?
From what Scotty says in V I get the feeling that the A is a brand new ship as opposed to an older Constitution-class ship that have been renamed to bare the name and registry of Enterprise.
So why are starfleet still making Constitution-class ships at that point? Was there nothing produced between the Constitution and Excelsior-class ships?
 
It's kind of a choose your own adventure at this point. Some ideas I've heard were:
  • It was the old Yorktown that we saw renamed to Enterprise at the end of IV or some other old ship, which was going to be mothballed too but got a reprieve and you just forget what Scotty is saying in V.
  • It's a new ship and the battle damage in VI is what got it canned or Starfleet demilitarised the Constitutions all around the same time or it had a hard life in 7 years. And there's precedent in real life because CVN-6 got booted after 13 years.
  • There might have been plans for a new Enterprise leading up to a planned NCC-1701 decommissiong but it might not have been named NCC-1701-A at first. The ship that came NCC-1701-B might have been the intended next Enterprise and named as NCC-2025 or whatever. NCC-1701-A came about because Kirk saved the Earth so they gave him a temporary ship in the lead up to the launch of the Excelsior class ship which was now renamed to NCC-1701-B to carry on a tradition.
  • I guess it depends on particulars of fandom but there's some of us who like the idea of these ships lasting quite a while before a new generation of ship coming to replace the old one. Nimitz class carriers lasted for fifty years in real life and the Star Trek Tech Manual suggested Galaxy class ships could last 100 years with upgrades every few decades. So I have no problem with Constitutions lasting 40 years or longer or Excelsiors production lasting over a century.
 
I'm sure I'd read that it was the Yorktown which was renamed NCC-1701-A.

Perhaps it was in drydock for refit or decommissioning then being recommissioned after the destruction of the Enterprise.
 
Citizen Cook said:
So why are starfleet still making Constitution-class ships at that point? Was there nothing produced between the Constitution and Excelsior-class ships?
Click to expand...

We had the Oberth, Miranda and Constellation (Crossfield?) classes that all seemingly launched after the original Connies and before the Excelsiors.
 
As already alluded to, there's no official story behind the origins of the Enterprise-A. Some folks do go with the idea that it was a brand-new Constitution-class ship that just happened to be lying around at the end of Star Trek IV while others (including presumably Gene Roddenberry, FWIW) favor the idea that it was a renamed older ship, perhaps just recently refitted and quickly launched without seeing if some of the new doors even worked properly.

I tend to favor the older renamed ship idea myself. Either way, I think Starfleet was in such a hurry to parade the Enterprise-A initially as a PR tool, that regardless if her systems were all-new or newly-upgraded, that when they took her out of Spacedock "to see what she's got," they discovered that she wasn't quite up to muster yet.
 
I think the E-A was a new ship, but originally never completed and left idle at a space dock during its construction. Starfleet decided to quickly complete the ship to replace the loss of the Enterprise.
 
Humm...

After reading all of your comments I think I like the idea of an older ship being renamed best. I can also square away what Scotty says in V with the knowledge I have from the motion picture where we see the refit resulting in numerous technical glitches occuring.

Still, I think the producers missed a trick. If they had created a new model enterprise for the end of IV they could have sold more toy models in real life :)
 
BillJ said:
We had the Oberth, Miranda and Constellation (Crossfield?) classes that all seemingly launched after the original Connies and before the Excelsiors.
Click to expand...


My personal assumption is that the Miranda-class was contemporary with the Constitution (And that the Reliant was listed on Commodore Stone's wall chart), and the the Oberth-class is actually a lot older than both, given the low registry of the Grissom. And I put the Constellation as being contemporary or even slightly post-dating the Excelsior, being one of the last of the "Class I" lineage.

YMMV, of course.

--Alex
 
Viper78 said:
I'm sure I'd read that it was the Yorktown which was renamed NCC-1701-A.

Perhaps it was in drydock for refit or decommissioning then being recommissioned after the destruction of the Enterprise.
Click to expand...
The only problem with it being the Yorktown is that Yorktown is prominently featured as one of the ships disabled by the whale probe (the captain is played by Indian tennis star and occasional actor Vijay Amritraj). Of course, we don't know how long a gap there is between Kirk and crew returning with the whales and resolving the crisis, and them traveling to the new Enterprise. Could be a couple days, or a month, or longer. If it's a longer time frame, then yeah, that gives Starfleet time to fix the damage done by the probe and paint a new registry number on the hull.
Nerys Myk said:
Well. When a mommy and daddy love each other very much...
Click to expand...
Damn, beat me to it. :lol:
 
I go with the idea that it was a new ship whose construction was underway during the whale probe incident and completed around the time of the trial. After the trial it was officially given the name Enterprise and had its hull markings applied.
 
BillJ said:
“Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise” has it as formerly being the transwarp testbed ship U.S.S. Ti-Ho. This is the one I go with.
Click to expand...
To be fair, the book is a totally non-canon fan production, and Shane/Lora Johnson says the name is in honor of a personal friend.
 
As a kid I assumed it was a new ship but now like the idea it was an old one to explain why it was decommissioned so fast. There's another Yorktown mentioned in Flashback I think, so that could be a new ship and the old one became Enterprise-A. I found it weird at first with old ships being renamed but it happens so much in real life when ships get sold to other countries and whatnot. Here in Australia our only aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne was the HMS Majestic and HMAS Kanimbla was the USS Saginaw for example. Another part of me likes it being a new ship so as to build an alternate timeline to Trek VI where the crew stepped down at the end of the film but the E-A was still in service in the early 24th century.

Here's an alternate Enterprise-A designed by Spencer J. Perdriau. https://www.deviantart.com/enterprisedavid/art/USS-Enterprise-NCC-1701-A-Perdriau-Class-632240981
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