It looked like a ship that had some kind of computer virus raging through it, considering the disparate stuff that was affected.
Where did the Enterprise A come from?
- Thread starter Citizen Cook
- Start date
It looked like a ship that had some kind of computer virus raging through it, considering the disparate stuff that was affected.
If you run with the notion that the 1701-A was originally the Yorktown, it's possible that their encounter with the whale probe really screwed up their systems in ways not immediately caught by running some system diagnostics.
And made worse with the installation of the new bridge module and other systems.
If we look at the overall situation, at the time of Search for Spock, Starfleet was already looking to decommission NCC-1701, and I think that the damage she sustained in Wrath of Khan only put her to the front of the line of a larger standing-down of the Constitution-class as a whole. With Excelsior already spaceworthy and moving on to speed trials, they clearly thought they had their next frontline cruiser ready, with the Miranda class providing greater hull volume at half the manpower cost of the all-singing, all-dancing Connies. So where do I think the Enterprise-A came from? I think she came out of mothballs, a decommissioned ship hastily brought back into service to put Kirk on for the half-decade before he decides “I’ve done my bit for king and country” and retires.
By the time of TWOK the Enterprise was 40 years old and being used as a training ship, so her replacement could well have been on the books for a while. Maybe Starfleet had planned to transfer the name to the 'A' (like was done with the Sao Paulo 90 years later) and rename the original as something else (perhaps the April, Pike or Kirk) and keep her as a designated cadet ship.
Really? That's FanTAStic!! It's about time Miller got a ship named for him.
So there’s really only two possibilities:
1. The Enterprise-A was a brand-new ship as of 2286 and was decommissioned 7 years later for no apparent reason.
2. The Enterprise-A was an older ship that was renamed and re-registered in 2286 and then decommissioned 7 years later, ostensibly because it had lived out its design lifetime.
There’s also a 2.(a) scenario: The Enterprise-A, whether it was new or old, was decommissioned in 2293 specifically because the Enterprise-B had finished construction, and the A needed to be decommissioned so that it could be recommissioned with another name and registry.
1. The Enterprise-A was a brand-new ship as of 2286 and was decommissioned 7 years later for no apparent reason.
2. The Enterprise-A was an older ship that was renamed and re-registered in 2286 and then decommissioned 7 years later, ostensibly because it had lived out its design lifetime.
There’s also a 2.(a) scenario: The Enterprise-A, whether it was new or old, was decommissioned in 2293 specifically because the Enterprise-B had finished construction, and the A needed to be decommissioned so that it could be recommissioned with another name and registry.
Didn't Chang shoot a bunch of holes in her, too? Old design plus holes equals decommission.
There are two conflicting statements towards the end of TUC as regards decommissioning: one, that "we" are to be decommissioned as per surprise Starfleet orders, and two, that the ship will get a new crew and go on serving.
Perhaps Starfleet had no plans on decommissioning the ship at all, but merely intended to strip the officers of their rank and commission for their most recent crimes? Perhaps the decision to stop having an E-A had nothing to do with the condition of the ship, which was deemed fully spaceworthy and merely got renamed at some random point between the sixth and seventh movies. The decision to strip Kirk of his commission in turn apparently got reversed - or then not, and he was merely allowed to keep his old uniform.
Timo Saloniemi
Perhaps Starfleet had no plans on decommissioning the ship at all, but merely intended to strip the officers of their rank and commission for their most recent crimes? Perhaps the decision to stop having an E-A had nothing to do with the condition of the ship, which was deemed fully spaceworthy and merely got renamed at some random point between the sixth and seventh movies. The decision to strip Kirk of his commission in turn apparently got reversed - or then not, and he was merely allowed to keep his old uniform.
Timo Saloniemi
It seems as only Kirk was really retiring, we don't know what the immediate future held for the rest. Spock merely says it is his final mission as a member of the Enterprise crew, Scott was buying a boat, but could've still been on active duty, Uhura was chairing seminars at the Academy, Chekov makes no mention of his future. McCoy was ready to stand down as a member of the Enterprise crew, but in TNG he ends up an Admiral.
The novels have Uhura and Chekov going on to be Admirals.
Decommissioned seemed to be pointed directly at the Enterprise. As it doesn't make sense in context of what we know about the characters.
Picard rammed his ship into Shinzon’s, taking out 1/3 of the saucer section, and it wasn’t decommissioned. Plus, you mean to tell me that all those TNG Excelsiors and Mirandas never got shot at during their operational lifetimes?
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This inspired me to add a bit to my head-cannon about the Enterprise A. She was the Yorktown but the Solar Sail didn't work and everyone died horribly. Every time someone stepped on the bridge they got creeped out, so Starfleet replaced the entire bridge module. It would have been the only room where people actually died at their posts.
What, all 430 crew members were on the bridge?
In the real world, the original plan was to move everyone on the Excelsior and call it a day, but it soon became clear that the fans would not accept that and that even a new excelsior-class enterprise wouldn’t be welcome. Gene Roddenberry himself hated the idea and let people know of the studio’s plans, starting petitions against it.
Since the new enterprise appeared in Star Trek IV only for a few seconds and there was no guarantee of a fifth movie, designing and building an expensive new model was deemed unnecessary, especially as the refit-enterprise was much loved and a perfectly good model of that was available, so the studios decided to just change the lettering and go with it, even if it ended up condemning the VFX crew of the next two movies to the duress that that model involved: it was huge, heavy, and very hard to work with, it’s a beautiful model but everyone hated working with it.
Something similar happens with the reboot enterprise-a, which also got a minor redesign that helps differentiating it from her predecessor, something useful to sell toys, but doing that back in the 80s would have been expensive and was never really considered.
In universe, we never know if the E-A is a new ship of an old design or an old ship with a new name, but it’s quite obvious that christening her with Kirk in command was a big publicity stunt while also being a way of getting rid of Kirk himself and his command staff.
In Star Trek II/III we see Spock being captain of the Enterprise, Scotty being put in charge of a very important project, sulu on the verge of getting his own ship, Chekov being first officer on the Reliant and Uhura being able to request any post she wanted, by Star Trek V their careers were back to the positions they had some 15 years earlier, with no possibility of advancement, on a figurehead ship that’s sent mediating a dispute on an unimportant planet, seven years later, with most of them on the brink of retirement, very little has changed, only Sulu having managed to get his own command.
After the battle with Chang it doesn’t seem like the ship is about to be decommissioned, so it’s possible it served under another senior staff for a few more years. I find it also very believable that it was deemed too damaged to be worth repairing and mothballed (or sold off to an independent planet on the Klingon/Romulan border...nah, that’s not canon), with a few years passing before the launch of the B.
Since the new enterprise appeared in Star Trek IV only for a few seconds and there was no guarantee of a fifth movie, designing and building an expensive new model was deemed unnecessary, especially as the refit-enterprise was much loved and a perfectly good model of that was available, so the studios decided to just change the lettering and go with it, even if it ended up condemning the VFX crew of the next two movies to the duress that that model involved: it was huge, heavy, and very hard to work with, it’s a beautiful model but everyone hated working with it.
Something similar happens with the reboot enterprise-a, which also got a minor redesign that helps differentiating it from her predecessor, something useful to sell toys, but doing that back in the 80s would have been expensive and was never really considered.
In universe, we never know if the E-A is a new ship of an old design or an old ship with a new name, but it’s quite obvious that christening her with Kirk in command was a big publicity stunt while also being a way of getting rid of Kirk himself and his command staff.
In Star Trek II/III we see Spock being captain of the Enterprise, Scotty being put in charge of a very important project, sulu on the verge of getting his own ship, Chekov being first officer on the Reliant and Uhura being able to request any post she wanted, by Star Trek V their careers were back to the positions they had some 15 years earlier, with no possibility of advancement, on a figurehead ship that’s sent mediating a dispute on an unimportant planet, seven years later, with most of them on the brink of retirement, very little has changed, only Sulu having managed to get his own command.
After the battle with Chang it doesn’t seem like the ship is about to be decommissioned, so it’s possible it served under another senior staff for a few more years. I find it also very believable that it was deemed too damaged to be worth repairing and mothballed (or sold off to an independent planet on the Klingon/Romulan border...nah, that’s not canon), with a few years passing before the launch of the B.
At the end of TUC, everyone seems surprised that the ship is going to be decommissioned. So this implies that the crew didn’t know this beforehand. Just because some of the crew were retiring, that has nothing to do with the status of the ship. And I also don’t think the amount of damage the ship received would have been a valid reason for its decommissioning.
And before anyone mentions Kirk’s line about “this ship and her history will shortly become the care of another crew,” that line was specifically alluding to TNG, not to the eventual fate of the Enterprise-A (unless the ‘crew’ Kirk is referring to is the decommissioning crew.)
And before anyone mentions Kirk’s line about “this ship and her history will shortly become the care of another crew,” that line was specifically alluding to TNG, not to the eventual fate of the Enterprise-A (unless the ‘crew’ Kirk is referring to is the decommissioning crew.)
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No, in a situation where life support is failing due to lack of power, you shut it down everywhere you can and cluster the crew in the rec deck. The only other place with people are the Bridge and wherever the engineers are working. Hence people died elsewhere, but the only place where you would sit down at your station and say "someone died in this chair" is the bridge.
Ok, but I'm not sure why dying at your post would be any less problematic than dying anywhere else on the ship. And would a Starfleet officer really get the willies when he's sitting in a chair that someone died in? Would he really complain to his superior officer that they need to replace the chair or he won't be able to do his job?
