They stated how they got the name changed to Defiant and it was presented like a surprise gift to Sisko. Then we saw that the registry had been changed too, so the simplest explanation is they were both changed at the same time for the same reason.
Star Trek Picard Season 3 End Credits - Legacy Ships at Earth Spacedock?
- Thread starter Admiral Archer
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Oh, I know they mentioned the name change in dialogue. But you made it sound as if the registry change was also mentioned in dialogue when it wasn’t. Or perhaps I just misunderstood you. Either way, there’s still no logical reason why they would give the ship the exact same registry. At best, the most logical thing to have done was add an A to it like Ron Moore wanted. In-universe, it makes no sense.
The registry change was definitely not mentioned in dialogue, but for me it goes along with the name change as it's just another thing to identify it by.
We don't know how logical the change is, as none of us have worked in Starfleet's ship registry department. For all we know, Ross could've suggested adding the A and got the reply "Everyone always wants their ship to be an A, because it makes it seem special, but I'll tell you the same thing I told them: that's only for Enterprises. If your ship isn't an Enterprise, you can't have it. You can have the same registry if it matters to you that much, NX and all, but no A."
We don't know how logical the change is, as none of us have worked in Starfleet's ship registry department. For all we know, Ross could've suggested adding the A and got the reply "Everyone always wants their ship to be an A, because it makes it seem special, but I'll tell you the same thing I told them: that's only for Enterprises. If your ship isn't an Enterprise, you can't have it. You can have the same registry if it matters to you that much, NX and all, but no A."
I think the conversation went more like this:
“This ship can only perform the exact same flight maneuvers as your old ship, can only fire on and destroy the same ships as your old ship did, and can only do all that while sporting the same name and registry as your old ship. Because Starfleet didn’t have enough money to build you a new ship with a different class, name, and registry that can do other things. Oh, not to mention that our engineers are just lazy.”
Just as logical, amirite?
“This ship can only perform the exact same flight maneuvers as your old ship, can only fire on and destroy the same ships as your old ship did, and can only do all that while sporting the same name and registry as your old ship. Because Starfleet didn’t have enough money to build you a new ship with a different class, name, and registry that can do other things. Oh, not to mention that our engineers are just lazy.”
Just as logical, amirite?
Sounds like it makes sense to me.
That falls apart now there's about a dozen ship names that get letters after their registries.
Glad STO never went that route. Whenever they reuse a ship name it gets a new registry.
Edit: Well early on in development there were a couple like there was a Stargazer-A and Sao Paulo-A
But around 2011-12 or so they stopped doing that and just gave them new registries.
Like at launch the Exeter Class USS Exeter was NCC-1672-C (don't ask what A and B were *shrug*), now after its remodel it's NCC-91672 in reference to Picard S2 and the Stargazer.
Edit: Well early on in development there were a couple like there was a Stargazer-A and Sao Paulo-A
But around 2011-12 or so they stopped doing that and just gave them new registries.
Like at launch the Exeter Class USS Exeter was NCC-1672-C (don't ask what A and B were *shrug*), now after its remodel it's NCC-91672 in reference to Picard S2 and the Stargazer.
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Chronologically, the earliest non-Enterprise ship we see with an A (that I can recall) was launched 10 years after Sisko's second Defiant, so it's very plausible that letters were still off the table when that ship was renamed.
Retroactively speaking, the 32nd century ships USS Excalibur NCC-1664-M and the USS Tikhov NCC-1067-M imply that former ships with those names had letter suffixes starting with A at some point, especially the latter whose name Burnham recognizes from her pre-TOS time.
Disco doesn't give any hints to when the ships started getting letters though, especially as there's an Excalibur NCC-26517 in the TNG era.
That’s true, it’s completely arbitrary. For all we know, tons of ships have letter suffixes. There has never been any canon stated dialogue indicating why some ships get letters and some don’t.
Unless you consider Mariner's joke about there being a Voyager D in 2381 to be canon, which Memory Alpha apparently does.
I don’t think it’s so much that MA considers it canon, just that they are listing something Mariner said while also admitting that it’s highly unlikely she was telling the truth.
Regardless, they're taking the joke way too seriously. But then, that's just another day ending with Y for MA.
Hey if the USS Lollipop gets a page, why not the USS Voyager-D! Though in this case it's a ship we already knew about from Discovery (as they're up to J), so the joke is just a bit of trivia to add to its page.
Mariner's such an intelligent and intuitive Starfleet officer that she correctly predicted that Voyager would be one of the first ships to earn a letter in its registry for its successors like Kirk's Enterprise did. Then she made up an absurd letter for it because she's an idiot.
Mariner's such an intelligent and intuitive Starfleet officer that she correctly predicted that Voyager would be one of the first ships to earn a letter in its registry for its successors like Kirk's Enterprise did. Then she made up an absurd letter for it because she's an idiot.
That's true.
Some evidence that it may not be as abnormal is the Dauntless from Voyager. Sure, it was a fake ship... but the crew thought it was real. It had a registry of "NX-01-A" which in retrospect now doesn't many any sense but it didn't seem to raise any issues with the crew at all.
My guess as to why is that letter suffixes are uncommon, but not ONLY reserved for Enterprise. In this case, the crew may have taken the registry as being an homage to the spirit of NX-01 Enterprise in being an experimental ship with a new type of warp drive.
At the end of the day, I don't think just about anything is just outright "Doesn't make sense" or "This is how it always works" given an organization comprised of 150 worlds spanning thousands of light years over several centuries. Things just aren't always perfectly universal. I'm fairly certain there are at least a few examples of two ships with the same name existing concurrently with each other.
Honestly if someone sent me a new Porsche which can go twice the speed of sound I wouldn't be thinking too much about the unusual licence plate.
