Personally, I subscribe to the theory that it's a brand new ship. Nothing in the dialogue from Star Trek V supports that it was a different vessel renamed Enterprise.
I just don't like the idea of Starfleet laying down new keels on what was already declared to be an old and useless design in a previous movie.
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock said:Jim, the Enterprise is twenty years old. We feel her day is over.
Personally, I subscribe to the theory that it's a brand new ship. Nothing in the dialogue from Star Trek V supports that it was a different vessel renamed Enterprise.
According to Gene Roddenberry, the NCC-1701-A was not a newly-constructed ship, but instead was the renamed USS Yorktown, a nod to the name of the starship in his original pitch for Star Trek.
It doesn't appear that "the Great Experiment" was in production, or about to replace anything much (although curiously enough, the "testbed" had apparently been built with full operational gear such as sensor and weapon emplacements). But we know of one new cruiser design from the 2280s already - the Constellation. And we saw the Miranda, which falls between the Constitutions and early Constellations in terms of registry numbers.In 2286, the Excelsior is still in its test-run phase and there's no way they'd already have them in production without knowing if transwarp drive was practical.
Nope - the ship is blown up, and her top officers are assigned a new ship.There was a ship called Enterprise, then it's blown up. So its crew are assigned a new ship.
That much was also pretty clear in ST4: Starfleet wanted to keel-haul the mutineers, but the public wanted to beatify them. So, they get a replica starship and avoid jail, but as soon as they have had their fifteen minutes of glory, they have to face reality again: they don't get promoted and they don't get good assignments.But it if was all a PR stunt, why did they send them to deal with the hotspot on Nimbus III?
And clearly the E-D was not the replacement of the E-C - there was a significant gap in between. We are given no reason to think there wasn't a gap between B and C as well. And the ship type represented by B was not retired when C was introduced. The ship type represented by E in turn is of humbler size than that represented by D. So essentially we only get a bunch of ships with the same name but no other connecting factor.Starfleet went on to have Enterprises B-E
They didn't change the name of the previous Enterprise in TMP, despite its extensive refit.
Most likely because the ship had a new name. Whatever she was before, she was the Enterprise now. Crewmembers who served on the ship under her previous name would really be the ones who would refer to that. Scotty would know her original specs, but even he would likely just refer to her as "the new Enterprise." Ships being renamed isn't totally unheard of in real life. The very first U.S.S. Enterprise (18th-Century) was a renamed ship.To me, it's an Occam's Razor thing. There was a ship called Enterprise, then it's blown up. So its crew are assigned a new ship. Also called Enterprise. Its a new Enterprise. If it was simply a refit, why wouldn't they call it by its old name?
They were keeping the name, so they weren't changing it.They didn't change the name of the previous Enterprise in TMP, despite its extensive refit.
The same was true of the old Enterprise after her refit. She had teething problems too--the transporter was unsafe to use and the warp drive created a wormhole moments after it was engaged.I mean, okay, there's nothing onscreen to say one way or the other but the other explanations seem awfully convoluted to me. And TFF certainly seems to support the idea that it's a new ship, with all the associated teething problems.
It would if the refit was a rushed job and not all of the systems were fully tested (or even fully integrated) when she was commissioned.For me I always believed that it probably was a rush build from existing segments (abandoned new build because of Excelsior class) due to Scotty's line about the ship being put together by monkeys. I don't think that makes sense if it is a repair or refit on an existing ship.
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