Refit Times

[MacLeod]

But it was NOT a refit (which basically means "fix damage and replenish supplies and stores") and it was not even an "uprating" (which means keep the ship largely as before but install some new equipment... which could mean new sensors, new engines, etc, but leaving the hull essentially unaltered). No, this was a near-total rebuild. But I'm sure that the Klingons would have raised a treaty-violation stink if they'd called it that. (On the other hand, I'm sure that the Klingons were hard at work rebuilding older D-7A TOS-style battlecruisers into D-7M TMP-style battlecruisers, under the same "refit" nomenclature, so....)

Your partially right, it depends if your using it as a verb or a noun. If used as a noun it means a thoroughy overhaul. Replacing damage and re-eqipping. As a verb like you say it is repairing damage and re-quipping.

So starfleet decideds to overhaul the ship, during the course of the overhaul it detects stresses, micro fractures etc.. throuought the hull. So it decides to replace them. It decides to replace the Warp core at the same time (just as todays ships have been converted from one source of fuel to another). Which means the warp pylons can no longer support the new nacelles. So they have to be replaced. In theroy a new propellor might require a new prop shaft.

 

[Timo]

I'd argue the NCC-1701 reworking was the experiment - what with the "risky" and "untested" engines and all. It got all the new bells and whistles, while later refits only got those things that were actually deemed necessary (hence the largely unmodified innards of the NCC-1701-A).

"Nonstandard equipment" is a bit of a problem in the Starfleet context, because we never really saw standardization there. Pains were taken to give each starship a distinct look, within the limitations of the budget and the schedule. The easiest parts to customize were those that were "nonstandard" in the E-A, too - the principal, Main Bridge set (because it was a logical target for the lion's share of the budget) and the only briefly glimpsed ship spaces (corridors, turbolifts) that by in-universe logic ought to be standard because of their very mundaneness, but by Paramount logic would have to be customized or borrowed because there was no budget for mundane things.

The end result was that the E-A innards were no less standard than, say, the innards of the Yorktown or the Grissom or the Excelsior. Somewhat ironically, we saw the best standardization in the first movie to feature more than one starship (and exactly one of those, seemingly an affordable opportunity for extra customizing!), because there was no budget for customizing the guest ship bridge or engineering, and no budget for showing any other spaces aboard that vessel. But after that, a pattern of customizing was established.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

As for the "A" I still think that must have been a prototype vessel of somekind, one that never was really meant to be an operational vessel which also explains its short service life, prototypes mainly have non standard equipment so even small repairs will be costly.

That's good, it jibes nicely with Scotty's comment in TFF that it is a "new" ship along with the hodgepotch of sets that made up the interior!

 

[The Librarian]

I always thought that this was a good explanation for why the Constitutions disappeared after ST-VI. The Khitomer treaty included some disarmament measures, possibly including a limit on "heavy cruisers". Shortly afterward, Starfleet looked at the Connie and the Excelsior and said, "one of you has got to go."

 

[Santaman]

^^ There was a Connie in "Best of both worlds" also I doubt they would decommison such a powerful class of ships.

The Connies disappeared because if they had shown one in TNG people would probably believe that it was Kirk's Enterprise and also the shooting model was quite a handful.

 

[NSTrekfan]

We don't know if the ship really was damaged beyond "losing all power". The nature of the power loss was never revealed, and apparently it was reversible for the installations around Earth (because the lights came back on as soon as the Whale Probe left). Perhaps the Yorktown was in pristine condition, only with five hundred corpses aboard because the ship had been completely without power for a day? Ripe for some redecorating and renaming to scare away the ghosts...

Timo Saloniemi

That's how I've always seen it. Perhaps a ship that loses all crew but is otherwise salvageable is refit and given a new name. I wonder if the same thing happened to the Exeter or even the Excalibur.

 

[Santaman]

^^ Usually its considered not done to rename a vessel after such an incident...

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I can only imagine the hue and cry from all the veterans who'd served on the ship which was "renamed." How about all the planetary populations who'd been rescued or assisted by the "renamed" ship.

No... despite Roddenberry's claim, the 1701-A was not a "refurbishment" of an older ship. That wouldn't even have made sense to HIM, except that his brain was, frankly, no longer fully functional anymore at that point. And remember, Roddenberry wasn't involved in that film at all, anyway (he got a credit and a small stipend, just to keep him quiet, of course, but wasn't involved in the creative process).

The ship may have been an under-construction ship, mostly done but not yet christened. Or, it may have been a ship which was an unnamed "testbed" which was brought onto active service.

OR... well, honestly, does ANYONE know just how much time passed between (a) the Mutara Nebula incident, (b) The return of the Enterprise to Earth, (c) the flight to Genesis (where the Enterprise was lost), (d), the stay on Vulcan and the return to Eaerth, (e) the trial, and (f) the flight through Spacedock where we see the 1701-A revealed?

What if they'd begun work on the 1701-A immediately after learning of Khan's attack on the Enterprise (knowing that the Enterprise was so heavily damaged that it was likely not worthwhile to restore it).

What if Admiral Morrow was just keeping the 1701-A as a surprise? If he wasn't being a jerk, and was actually playing "Santa Claus?"

Is that really hard to believe?

It took 18 months to "redesign and refit" the 1701 prior to TMP. How do we know that another 18 months didn't pass between the Khan battle and the launch of the 1701-A?

 

[Santaman]

I always like liked the idea that it was a testbed ship, makes it also easy to have it all the flaws we saw in Trek 5 and its early retirement, ah well I'm repeating myself..

I do like the "A" quite a lot.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I love the idea that the Enterprise-A was formerly the Yorktown.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Well, if you were a veteran of the Yorktown, or were in any way tied to the history of the Yorktown... how would you feel then?

 

[MasuPu'a]

OR... well, honestly, does ANYONE know just how much time passed between (a) the Mutara Nebula incident, (b) The return of the Enterprise to Earth, (c) the flight to Genesis (where the Enterprise was lost), (d), the stay on Vulcan and the return to Eaerth, (e) the trial, and (f) the flight through Spacedock where we see the 1701-A revealed?

According to Memory Alpha, the events of Search for Spock occur in 2285, Voyage Home is 2286. I'm not factoring in Wrath of Khan because I find it difficult to believe that they would start building a new ship after hearing of the damage from the battle with Khan, then lie about it to Kirk and Co. That strikes me as extremely unprofessional and simply petty. Keep in mind they had just gone through a horrible battle and Kirk had just lost his best friend. Now would the Admiral, knowing this, then decide to give Kirk more bad news just so he could 'surprise' him at the end?

"Yeah, sorry you lost your best friend and had to watch a bunch of trainees die in a battle of personal revenge between you and Khan. Oh, and we're going to decommission the Enterprise as a joke."

Now, 2285 -2286, that doesn't really give us much of a time frame. They may have had a whole year between the destruction of the Enterprise and the big reveal at the end of VH. The events of SS take place pretty quickly. As soon as Kirk knows he has to go back to Genesis, he immediately starts on it. And it appears that Saavik, David and Spock only spent a couple of days on Genesis (that is if Genesis has Earth standard 24 hour days). Spock was aging pretty rapidly, so not a lot of time could have passed.

At the beginning of VH Kirk says in his captain's log that they've spent about three months on Vulcan. Vulcan is a little over 16 light years away from Earth. I'm not sure how fast the Bounty was travelling, we could give them about a week or so, if they were rushing. Then the events of VH pretty much happen in no time at all, Kirk goes back in time then forward in an instant.

So VH gives us about four months, we can be generous and say five or six (we can add another month between the return from the past and the trial). I'm not sure how much time to give SS, maybe six months, but I'm not inclined to think that 18 months passed between the two movies. I tend to think that they did simply refit and rename the Yorktown, because there simply wasn't enough time to build an entirely new ship.

Or we can believe that they did the impossible and managed to build an entirely new ship in such a short time span, a rush job, and that was why Enterprise A was in such bad shape for FF.

 

[Timo]

- how would you feel then?

Who cares? Suck it up, soldier, and do your job! That's disgusting, I tell ya, weeping and complaining about the wise decisions made by your all-knowing superiors! Do you enjoy your work here, soldier? Hmh? Well, you shouldn't. You're not here for enjoyment!

I'm not inclined to think that 18 months passed between the two movies.

However, all the time in the universe could have passed between the penultimate and ultimate scenes of ST4:TVH. That is, the ship might have been built in the five years between Kirk's trial and his team's reassembling at Spacedock for the new assignment...

Personally, I favor the idea of renaming an otherwise expendable ship (and of perhaps a month, rather than five years, passing between the court scene and the delivery of the E-A to our heroes). Like you say, Kirk and Starfleet weren't the closest friends at the time of those movies; the E-A was probably not only a convenient gift by her class identity, but also fairly useless for Starfleet. Perhaps she was part of a stopgap batch refitted in unlikely case the Excelsior program would flop, and wasn't given prime attention for that reason?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

- how would you feel then?

Who cares? Suck it up, soldier, and do your job! That's disgusting, I tell ya, weeping and complaining about the wise decisions made by your all-knowing superiors! Do you enjoy your work here, soldier? Hmh? Well, you shouldn't. You're not here for enjoyment!

Timo Saloniemi

Those superiors wouldn't sleep well after making such a decission, again, its simply not done.

The Ent A was a former prototype and thats it!

 

[Timo]

Have there even been situations where a warship would suffer 100% casualties and then survive to fight another day?

In the civilian side of things, it's a relatively frequent occurrence that a ferry capsizes or burns down, killing basically everybody aboard, and is then raised, refurbished and put back to service under new ownership and new name. The types of accident that claim passenger or car ferries are less destructive on the hardware than on the passengers and crew... Military vessels in turn tend to suffer massive casualties only when the hardware is lost as well.

Aircraft carriers are probably an exception: fires raging on the hangar decks may well claim a large percentage of the ship's crew while the ship ultimately survives. Are there any examples of such in WWII?

(The Intrepid probably comes the closest - and she wasn't renamed at the 1952 recommissioning.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

In the age of sail some ships came pretty close to that actually.

Also, especially a navy will have pretty strong traditions and so on when it comes to ships, names and the like which is one of the reasons I do not for a second believe that they would rename Yorktown, its not done, if she survived the probe incident even with the loss of her entire crew then she would return as USS Yorktown not as Enterprise A.

 

[Timo]

a navy will have pretty strong traditions and so on when it comes to ships, names and the like

...But it is an urban myth that those traditions would be opposed to the renaming of ships.

There are times when renaming is done for reasons of propagandist necessity: in WWII, the Deutschland had to become the Lützow, lest the Fatherland be symbolically sunk, and Empress of Japan had to become Empress of Scotland, lest the ship aid and abet the enemy... Giving Kirk the Messiah a ship named Enterprise would easily fall under that category.

Ships are also renamed when changing ownership, which happens often enough in naval service. This would probably not apply here (even though Starfleet might well be the same sort of loose alliance as the one between the Royal Navy, the United States Navy and the Commonwealth navies where ship swaps and renamings were almost weekly occurrences in WWII), but proves that names aren't sacrosanct.

Of course, names also change when the ownership is forcibly changed, but the E-A doesn't appear to be a prize vessel (by any definition!).

Ships appropriated from auxiliary to frontline service or vice versa often get renamed, too. This might well be analogous to what happened to the E-A.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

It has been done now and then, usually after a mutiny which happened with HrMS De Zeven Provincien in the 20's or 30's, it was renamed into HrMS Soerabaja but otherwise ships only changed name if they had been sold off to a different country.

We Dutch have two ram turret ships, they were decommisioned and used as floating baracks but still kept their name, they've been restored to their original configuration and are still HrMS Schorpioen and HrMS Buffel.

Also, the Brits had captured many French ships back in the day and even those kept their name.

Anyway, I don't accept a renamed USS Yorktown, gut feeling, win win, ying yang etc etc..

 

[USS Jack Riley]

Both are non-canon, but it was either Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise or the FASA books (I think the former) that said the 1701-A was originally a new ship to be named the Ti-Ho. After the events in TVH, Starfleet decided to rename her before she went on her first mission (possibly before her trials). The TVH novelization had something about the last of the paint being applied/drying as the shuttlecraft approached.

YMMV.

 

[Gagarin]

I'd go with a new ship, not a Constitution rebuild, also.