At the end of TUC, the E-A was decommissioned. Would the ship be deconstructed and the materials used in the consturction of other ships? Or would the E-A just be relegated to the Starfleet Museum? If the latter, could the ship be reactivated, renamed and put back to work during a time of need (for example during the Dominion War)? If she was a new build at the end of TVH then she would have some life left in her, or even if she was another ship renamed then she might still be of some use by the 2370s.
I think I read somewhere that the A was actually just another ship that they renamed, which makes sense. You couldn't see them building a brand new ship from scratch then decommissioning it just a few years later. It also adds up with Scotty having so many problems with it, perhaps it was quite an old, worn out ship. As to if it was used later on in the dominion war, I could see it as a transport ship or something of that nature. It's likely that the weapons and shield system of the 2370's would require WAY more power than a ship of that class could generate, unless they ripped everything out of it and rebuilt it from scratch on the inside... which seems possible but very costly at the same time they would probably have to tear the exterior apart too, upgrading the hull plating and just about everything else, basically all they would use in my opinion would be the chassis. To me there would be something bad ass about a custom built constitution class in the 2370's, with bio-neural gel packs, quantum torpedo, ablative Armour and all the other modern tech. I guess they still had the excelsior and miranda class around, so it's possible it could be retrofitted, albeit as i say i'd imagine at great expense.
Memory Alpha says it was a completely brand-new ship, commissioned and released specifically to celebrate Kirk's saving the planet by retrieving whales. Apparently whoever had been put in charge of building it was a moron, because all the systems promptly failed on the first shakedown voyage. How could Starfleet's shipbuilders be so comically inept? Well, we ARE talking about Star Trek V here. That movie...
The idea that she was an old but recently refitted ship works just as well, though. She would still be the new Enterprise for Kirk and the gang. As far as the fate of the ship after Star Trek VI--I go with her being scrapped, especially if we go with the idea that she was a renamed older vessel on her last hurrah. Starfleet may even had long planned to decommission the vessel in lieu of the new Enterprise-B which could have been nearing completion at the time.
Perhaps, except that all the references specify her being specifically built in 2286 at the San Francisco Fleet Yards. That doesn't really leave much wiggle room, yes?
Who actually said that in any of the movies? As far as onscreen material is concerned, all we know was that the Enterprise-A was christened and launched at the end of the Star Trek VI, so it's as valid an idea as any for the ship to have been another vessel previously. While some consider it bad luck to rename a vessel, it actually has happened quite a lot throughout history. Even the very first USS Enterprise (18th-Century) was a renamed vessel.
I don't see them scrapping Kirk's ship, renamed, new or otherwise. Even if it wasn't the original. I could see it going into a museum with most of it's usable systems stripped out.
I trust Memory Alpha as my main source for ST references. To me, there's little, if anything, better as a source.
I even thought that once, but not anymore. Memory Alpha is a good source, but there's quite a bit of it that's purely conjectural on their part and they even point out such things. As such, the idea of the Enterprise-A being an older renamed ship is still plausible as other ideas.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that then. Given the ship's stated build date, the fact that the official StarTrek.com site gives the same launch date as well, plus the lack of a nudge towards there being an older history with the ship, I can't really reconcile the idea. The ship was basically totaled in STVI, which would have given StarFleet a reason to decom her anyway. Chang really did a number on her.
It's really easy for me, since the ship's build date was never stated on screen, and those given from Memory Alpha and the official StarTrek.com site are conjectural. Oh, we can all agree that the Enterprise-A was launched at the end of Star Trek IV, but it's still plausible that the ship had another name and even a service record long before that.
IMHO, it's another matter of perspective and how to interpret the onscreen dialogue. ST IV: Our protagonists arrive on what looked to me like a shiny new, polished Bridge (= new ship?). The floor carpeting was quite a mess, but I'd believe it hadn't been in usage yet. ST V: Several pieces of dialogue still suggest a new ship (although the Bridge module had been replaced), IMHO. SCOTT (OC): U.S.S. Enterprise, shakedown cruise report. I think this new ship was put together by monkeys. Och, she's got a fine engine, but half the doors won't open, and guess whose job it is to make it right? KIRK: I miss my old chair. And then there was this piece about Scotty complaining that they don't build them anymore like they used to. The ship travelled to the center of the galaxy which probably took quite some toll on the engines. With baryon-sweep technology not yet available in the late 23rd Century (my theory) Starfleet was left no choice but to eventually scrap the ship. Bob
Indeed, it's interesting how much conjecture gets posted as fact there. And the way they treat illegible background graphics on par with the stories themselves... That said, I've always assumed the Enterprise-A was new. Aside from the transporter, the malfunctions all appeared to be software glitches. And the ship wasn't ready to launch when she did, after all.
Oh yeah, I'm totally not discounting that the Enterprise-A could be an all-new build, because it can definitely work that way too.
It would just mean we would all have to accept that for some unknown period of time every single person at that particular shipyard just spontaneously forgot how to build a working starship... Hmm... You know, I'm liking your "old ship quickly pushed back into service" idea more now...
Hardly totally, she took a few bad hits (including a total breach through two decks) but really nothing that could be fixed.
They wouldn't have to forget how to build a starship, they'd just have to forget how to build that particular class. The Boeing plant in St. Louis is still cranking out F-15s and F/A-18s, but I wouldn't count on anyone there still knowing how to build an F-4, at least not without a lot of defects.
Given the incredible amount of standardization and automation present in design install, do you really believe that so much difference existed (shell design notwithstanding) between classes? The Enterprise A wasn't built as an experimental design- StarFleet had been (and continued to build) the C-Class Heavy Cruiser for a long, long time along with its internal components. The only rational explanation for the way the A behaved out of spacedock was that SOMEONE... or perhaps a lot of someones... were drunk at the assembly station. For all we know, if this problem repeated itself enough it could have pushed StarFleet to start outright trying to eliminate alcohol altogether. I'm sure one of their geniuses could have created a substitute that tasted and smelled like the real thing without the intoxicating effects... And yes, the A was pretty much totaled after its battle. After all- StarFleet didn't feel it was worth it to repair the damage, which is the basic criteria for determining if a vehicle IS totaled or not. Would it cost more to repair a vehicle than the vehicle is worth? To the Feds, that answer for the A was obviously "yes". "Drag 'er home boys, we'll scrap 'er in the junkyard."
Again though, the ship worked fine, aside from minor (software) glitches like the doors and alert siren, and the transporter. And although the basic layout was the same as the TMP Enterprise, the internals were almost all new as was the computer system (first Okudagrams!)
Since there is no canon factual information about the history of the ship, there are only two possibilities here: 1. The Enterprise-A was a brand-new ship. 2. The Enterprise-A was an older ship that was renamed. Let's analyze the first possibility. It's highly unlikely that the ship was built specifically for Kirk and to replace the previous Enterprise. The former ship had only been destroyed three months prior, and in that time Kirk and his crew were considered renegades. There would be no reason whatsoever for Starfleet to "honor" Kirk with a new Enterprise, even considering the Whale Probe incident. That would mean that it was just a coincidence that the new ship had just completed construction and was ready to be launched after Kirk was exonerated. Plus, this brand new ship would have gone from construction to decommission in only 7 years, with no explanation actually given for why it was being decommissioned. So, the second possibility. We have a ship that presumably had been built at least after the original Enteprise's refit in 2270, which would mean that it could have been at least 20 years old by the time of its decommissioning. Ironically, even though Admiral Morrow's math is off, he stated that the original Enterprise was going to be decommissioned because it was "twenty years old." So we have proof in dialogue that the late 23rd century Starfleet considers ships two decades old to be worthy of decommission. We also see an older-style TMP bridge interior at the end of STIV, before it is replaced by a newer bridge, presumably after a refit between STIV and STV. So here's my take: The Enterprise-A was originally another, older ship, which was simply renamed and re-registered after Kirk was exonerated and demoted to captain. Starfleet was probably going to build a new Enterprise (presumably an Excelsior class) after the TOS Enterprise was decommissioned (and that ship would have been the Enterprise-A), but changed circumstances dictated what we eventually saw happen. As for the ultimate fate of the ship, I would assume based on my above interpretation that it was probably scrapped.