Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

Yeah, the picture only had the registry number on it, not the ship name.

 

Fair point. But there could be a myriad of reasons here. Like Ron Moore wanting to add an “A” to the new Defiant in DS9 season 7 but having that shot down because the budget wouldn’t allow them to redo existing exteriors to add it in.

 

According to Mike Okuda there was rule during TNG against adding letters to ship registries.
One slipped though, the USS Yamato in Season 2, but that was because the writer of that episode was unaware of the policy. Later episode had a number without the letter attached to the ship.

In possible that rule may not have been in effect in DS9, but we never got any ships with letters in that series either.

Dave Blass confirmed on twitter that they followed the same idea for Picard, only the Enterprise was special enough to get a letter.

 

Discovery be like

 

which is completely nonsensical

 

It's just a tradition for one ship, it makes perfect sense.

 

I disagree. We never really saw any other ships, other than maybe the Defiant or Voyager, do anything that deserved a letter honorific.

 

The Yamato was originally going to be the NCC-1305-E but when they changed the registry to a far more 24th century Galaxy-class number the idea that there had been six starships named Yamato and the first had been so important the registry continued over the decades was clearly jettisoned.

 

So if we never saw any other ships, how do we know they didn't do anything that deserved a letter honorific?

 

But when we did see fake ships that had letters, it never set off red flags. If letters *were* unique to Enterprise, we could expect people to know that and recognize the ship as fake. it's obviously not reasonable to expect them to know every designation number, but if one style of them (the letter ending) is unique to a certain line, then it is reasonable to expect them to know that.

dJE

 

Well, those were the ships in the shows they made. We never saw other ships do much of anything, because they weren't in a TV show.

 

I hear they're going to use emojis in the registries for Picard season 3. NCC - 47782 - Partypopper, slice of cake, puppy.

 

Because we never saw any with Letters?

 

There were only a few ships seen or mentioned in TNG, DS9 or VOY, relatively speaking, that had the same names as older ships from TOS. So for all we know, those ships with unique names were the first ones produced. Voyager certainly was.

 

So they dropped the alphabet for Excelsior, but clearly the Enterprises and Voyagers are far more important to keep the alphabets! Ha! What happens when they get to the 27th Enterprise or Voyager? Will that be NCC-1701-AA or NCC-74656-AA in the 41st century?

 

In terms of the timeline, until *after* the end of Picard, we haven't seen any ships other than the Enterprise with letters, so it's not a case of them "dropping the alphabet for Excelsior," they haven't yet *started* using letter suffixes. It's quite possible that by the time Discovery hits the 29th Century Excelsior, or Yamato, or Agincourt, or Defiant, or Excelsior.

dJE

 

I guess in the case of Excelsior and Stargazer, that one ship was not memorable enough to lionize the registry? But in the pantheon of Starfleet ships across centuries, only 1 Enterprise, 1 Voyager and 1 Discovery was vital enough to get the alphabet treatment? What did each of them do? Enterprise - First to complete a 5 year mission, the longest at the time. Voyager - First to completed an unscheduled 7 years mission in the Delta Quadrant. Discovery - First to have a spore drive and travel 900+ years forward in time?

 

We don't see any labels in Azati Prime.

 

As we come upon it in DSC, the Federation is very much on the back foot, having faced a massive disaster and the withdrawal of some of it’s most prominent, founding member worlds. They’re trying to preserve the institution, and appeal to tradition is a favorite trope of conservatism.