the 2nd Enterprise in the voyage home was only used in two movies.. i presume it was a older ship and it was renamed enterprise 1701-a was there any explanation of the short span of the enterprise a?
1701-A
- Thread starter lordsofelsewhen
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Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise suggests it was formerly the USS Ti-Ho. Another non-canon explanation (and the one that makes the most sense to me) is that it was the USS Yorktown, which was damaged by the Probe. After the plea deal, Starfleet just slapped a new name and a new number on the ship and called it good.
Makes the most sense to me.
In all honesty, Kirk is a figure head. Save the world a few times. However, he stole equipment, assaulted fellow officers (or his crew did) and he went against direct orders from Command. Basicly, his ass should be fired.
Suddenly....
Earth is under attack again, and here comes Kirk... flying a starship stolen from a sworn enemy, going back in time to not only save the world, but also try and repopulate a extinct species. Not sure how that works when you only have two of them, but hey...
So, here's Starfleet, with a PR nightmare. Honestly, they should have locked him and his crew away. But that would look pretty bad to the general public. So why not just make it a big press event, where Kirk and crew are not only acquitted them, but are given a new Enterprise. Sure, it's an older ship, one that was actually damaged in the attack that Kirk stopped. But atleast he's happy, the public is happy, no damages done, and let's all move on and be a happy Starfleet again.
In terms of what we saw and were told, none of the movies or other onscreen stories established that the E-A would have been too old or too damaged or otherwise too unfit to continue service. Indeed, at the end of the sixth movie, Kirk remains convinced that the ship will keep on sailing, now with an all-new crew (apparently Starfleet believes in NASA-style total crew swaps). And for all we know, this is exactly what happened.
It just also happened that Starfleet wanted to launch a new and expensive ship with the best possible publicity, so they named her USS Enterprise and registered her NCC-1701-B. Which meant that the previous ship by that name became USS Nonsuch... And keeps on sailing till this very day. (Plus 400 years, of course)
Timo Saloniemi
It just also happened that Starfleet wanted to launch a new and expensive ship with the best possible publicity, so they named her USS Enterprise and registered her NCC-1701-B. Which meant that the previous ship by that name became USS Nonsuch... And keeps on sailing till this very day. (Plus 400 years, of course)
Timo Saloniemi
It happens a lot in certain navies. Say, the Russians and previously Soviets liked to make the best possible use of names like Moskva, Slava and Varyag, and kept shuffling those from ship to ship, sometimes when a former holder was retired, sometimes when that predecessor kept on serving under some different name.
Ships also get renamed a lot in the early stages of their "life". Sometimes there are public/publicity campaigns for renaming at or right after launch, so that "there would always be a HMS Ark Royal" or "the world deserves a USS America" or whatnot.
And that's just the military world, and omitting cases where ships change owners through trade or capture. Civilian ships may change names more often than they do laundry...
There's a superstition or two about name changes, supposedly. But also ceremonies to appease the gods of sea in such cases.
Timo Saloniemi
Ships also get renamed a lot in the early stages of their "life". Sometimes there are public/publicity campaigns for renaming at or right after launch, so that "there would always be a HMS Ark Royal" or "the world deserves a USS America" or whatnot.
And that's just the military world, and omitting cases where ships change owners through trade or capture. Civilian ships may change names more often than they do laundry...
There's a superstition or two about name changes, supposedly. But also ceremonies to appease the gods of sea in such cases.
Timo Saloniemi
For all we know the Enterprise-A continued its voyages even when the Enteprise-B came along. Neither ship was destroyed on screen so it's up in the air what became of them. Might have been cute to see the Ferengi steal the A from a museum in the TNG episode Rascals instead of the bird of prey.
I like to think that at the start of TUC it was the Command crew who were planning to retire or move onto other assignments but the Enterprise herself would get a new senior staff (possibly with Spock in command, if not then a new CO).
Two assassination attempts (one successful) and a space battle to save a peace conference later and once again the Enterprise has saved the the galaxy or at least "civilization as we know it" once again, so along with the Excelsior being in the press it may have made sense to not refit the older design and instead assign the next of he newer ship on the scene the name and number when she rolls out of the construction line.
So like others have said probably a PR stunt, if not for Khitomer the A may have gone on for a number more years and the next ship with the name may not have been till some time long after with a different registry.
I like to think that the Enterprise ended up in the Fleet museum alongside the NX-01 and an original Constitution class ship.
Two assassination attempts (one successful) and a space battle to save a peace conference later and once again the Enterprise has saved the the galaxy or at least "civilization as we know it" once again, so along with the Excelsior being in the press it may have made sense to not refit the older design and instead assign the next of he newer ship on the scene the name and number when she rolls out of the construction line.
So like others have said probably a PR stunt, if not for Khitomer the A may have gone on for a number more years and the next ship with the name may not have been till some time long after with a different registry.
I like to think that the Enterprise ended up in the Fleet museum alongside the NX-01 and an original Constitution class ship.
The thing which is interesting about 1701-A, is that in both her appearances on screen we:
* Begin the adventure with the crew scattered about doing their own things, then being reunited when an emergency situation requires the particular skills of this ship and this crew.
and
* The Enterprise herself is in drydock, not (seemingly) on the active duty roster until it gets pulled out on it's mission.
Now, while there are straightforward explanations for this in STV (the crew are supposedly on 'shore leave' and the ship is just recently being retrofitted by Scotty), STVI basically suggests that the crew are semi-retired and haven't been together for years until the Quo'nos situation happens.
Plus, on both occasions there is a suggestion is that Kirk has only been sent into the fray for PR/political reasons, because it helps Starfleet to have 'James T. Kirk' leading the charge on those particular missions.
It's not too much of a stretch to suggest that the reason 1701-A had such a seemingly short life-span could be because she wasn't actively rostered as part of the fleet on a regular basis. Kirk and crew would ''1701-A Assemble!'' whenever Starfleet needed their particular skills, but otherwise both ship and crew did other things back at port.
For all we know, her other missions may have all followed the above line, and she may only have left Earth a half-dozen times total (and Starfleet probably had 1701-B under construction at the time anyway). Or else, 1701-A might've gone out on assignment under a different crew whenever Kirk and co were not specifically required for a specific mission, but we only got to see the 'Kirk Missions' ourselves.
* Begin the adventure with the crew scattered about doing their own things, then being reunited when an emergency situation requires the particular skills of this ship and this crew.
and
* The Enterprise herself is in drydock, not (seemingly) on the active duty roster until it gets pulled out on it's mission.
Now, while there are straightforward explanations for this in STV (the crew are supposedly on 'shore leave' and the ship is just recently being retrofitted by Scotty), STVI basically suggests that the crew are semi-retired and haven't been together for years until the Quo'nos situation happens.
Plus, on both occasions there is a suggestion is that Kirk has only been sent into the fray for PR/political reasons, because it helps Starfleet to have 'James T. Kirk' leading the charge on those particular missions.
It's not too much of a stretch to suggest that the reason 1701-A had such a seemingly short life-span could be because she wasn't actively rostered as part of the fleet on a regular basis. Kirk and crew would ''1701-A Assemble!'' whenever Starfleet needed their particular skills, but otherwise both ship and crew did other things back at port.
For all we know, her other missions may have all followed the above line, and she may only have left Earth a half-dozen times total (and Starfleet probably had 1701-B under construction at the time anyway). Or else, 1701-A might've gone out on assignment under a different crew whenever Kirk and co were not specifically required for a specific mission, but we only got to see the 'Kirk Missions' ourselves.
I've also heard the name Levant
http://starbase-23.wikia.com/wiki/Levant_sub-class
I would have liked to have seen the 1701-A refit made a bit sleeker, as I attempted with Balson and other parts on the web:
http://i.imgur.com/9TYY7iB.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NtKLDHU.jpg
Earth is under attack again, and here comes Kirk... flying a starship stolen from a sworn enemy, going back in time to not only save the world, but also try and repopulate a extinct species. Not sure how that works when you only have two of them, but hey...
Naw, there's three. "Gracie is pregnant."
Naw, there's three. "Gracie is pregnant."
Repopulation with George, Gracie, and Junior is probably doable with 23rd century science. It's not going to be the bestest life, but Gracie and her daughters could be surrogate mother to all sorts of recovered DNA from humpback and humpback-related whale species.
And there's probably a very big drive to do so, to keep Earth safe from another visit by the mysterious whale probe.
I've always had trouble reconciling the movie's implication of this with what we then later see onscreen in the film, with Kirk and company casually strolling onto the Enterprise-A bridge like they just left it, instantly going to their respective stations, like they just put in at Spacedock only a few days beforehand.
Granted, Kirk's crew now has literally decades' worth of experience working together, so a certain amount of "well-oiled machine"-ness is to be expected here, but in terms of how the whole "Captain on the bridge!" scene in TUC is written and shot, it feels like no time has passed at all since their last mission.
This notion does seem to be supported at least somewhat circumstantially by onscreen dialogue in TFF, when Admiral Bennett says, "[Other] ships, yes, but no experienced commanders -- I need Jim Kirk."
This implies that the Enterprise-A in particular tends to receive the very special, politically-sensitive missions from time to time, ones where Kirk's reputation can be an instant built-in asset, which then gets reiterated in TUC when Kirk gets selected as Starfleet's "olive branch" to the Klingon Empire.
I prefer the Ti-Ho explanation.
Being a transwarp testbed ship explains how it got to the center of the galaxy so fast.
Makes sense. Kirk and company worked out the bugs so a new crew could take it over with a new name. But it means some assignment officer somewhere is smacking his head about how it got shot up at Khitomer right before it was to be turned over.
Being a transwarp testbed ship explains how it got to the center of the galaxy so fast.
But it doesn't explain why any other ship can't do the same thing
The main problem with any theory about it being a new ship is that in Star Trek III (only a matter of months in screen time before 1701-A's ''launch''), Starfleet was talking about mothballing the Constitution Class, or at least Enterprise herself:
One can make a plausible case for why they do an about-turn on giving Kirk back command of his own ship in light of their saving the planet from the whale probe, but it seems unlikely, to me, that they'd be rolling out new Constitution Class ships when they already seem to be changing over to the Excelsior, and 1701-B would have to be in the planning stages anyway (for it to be fully prepped for launch not-too-long after the events of TUC, as seen in GENS).
The idea of them keeping this crew around, and giving them an old ship with new livery (NCC 1701-A), but keeping them all on a kind of 'reserve list' for troubleshooting particularly sensitive missions, tallies up with much of what we see on screen between 1701-A's two screen outings. Only Scotty's talking in ST5 about it being a 'new ship' that has been 'put together' has any real bearing on suggesting that the ship might be a new-build.... but he could just have been talking figuratively.
