Did we get short changed on the Refit Enterprise?

[Dukhat]

In terms of hero ships, I believe you are correct. But dang that Excelsior model was around for a LONG time.

To be fair, it was only around a long time because the producers of TNG were cheap and didn't build new filming models contemporaneous with the Enterprise-D, choosing instead to reuse the movie models despite them being outdated by TNG's time.

 

[Riley]

Ok, some of y'all don't like referring to the Enterprise as a character, and that's fine. Still, both TOS and TNG Enterprises are a long-standing location we are familiar with. They're comfortable. They're home. We feel like we could walk the decks blind folded and probably get around fine. We'd never get lost. We are as familiar with these locations as our own home or beloved public location.

But the Refit. The A? Nope. We might love this design. We might have poured over images and deck plans. But, honestly, how much time have we had with these ships? Same with the E. We barely saw them.

I'd love to have had more time with the Refit or even the E. What about you? Do you feel short changed. Feel like we've missed out?

The refit Enterprise was the same ship that was captained by April, Pike, Kirk, Spock, and Kirk again, though briefly. She may have been an "almost entirely new Enterprise," but a great deal of her was the ship that is, indeed, the central character in Star Trek.

Sadly, because of a feud between Gene Roddenberry and producer Harve Bennett, the latter decided the Enterprise "had" to be destroyed for the sake of "drama" in The Search For Spock's second act. (Read The Fifty-Year Mission for more).

This remains one of the greatest mistakes in Trek and pop culture history. Eliminating the Enterprise with the mentality that "ah, we'll just get them another one" betrayed the love that Kirk and his crew (and by extension, the viewer) had for the ship. (

Imagine if the Enterprise, which was forty years old (not twenty as stated in TSFS) had survived Khan, was headed for decommissioning, and then survived the destruction of Genesis, took Spock home to be reborn, and then was herself reborn after surviving the events of TVH? Imagine if she'd been pulled from San Francisco Bay and given a loving restoration (a new paint job and bridge would have been enough to sell it) and got to continue on with her crew after their exoneration and fresh start? Instead, she was destroyed by a petty man who had an axe to grind with another petty man and science fiction was robbed of its greatest space vessel.

The same goes for the Enterprise-E. It's not only one of the worst designs in Trek and science fiction history, but the film that introduced established the notion that these mighty ships aren't the central characters of these stories, they're just disposable machines that can be replaced virtually overnight.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

The Enterprise-D wasn't treated with any sentimentality either. I think the one character to speak of her in any terms other than sheer utility was probably Bones of all people.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, I always thought of the sentimental attachment to the Enterprise as more of a Kirk thing than a Picard thing. After all, Picard served on the Stargazer for 22 years and the E-D less than 8 years. Whereas Kirk, we now know, got to know the Enterprise pretty well years before he became its captain.