What was the prior designation of the Enterprise A?

[BillJ]

If it's a veteran ship renamed I think that's disrespectful to the old one and its record.

I can see this line of thought, but it isn't like the record of what the old ship did was deleted. Like the Enterprise-A, if the ship is really on six or seven years old, seems silly to retire it, even if its name is being passed on to a new breed of starship.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Ar-Pharazon.

 

[General_Phoenix]

I think Starfleet knew Kirk and co. were about to retire anyway, so why not give them an old ship. If Starfleet was confident Kirk and his crew would be around longer why not give them the Excelsior, the brand new ship of the line?

 

[BillJ]

If Starfleet was confident Kirk and his crew would be around longer why not give them the Excelsior, the brand new ship of the line?

Because Kirk and Company made them look like buffoons during the Genesis affair?

 

[Dukhat]

Well, there's only three possibilities here.

1. The ship was new and literally only six years old when it was decommissioned for whatever reason. Then later the decision was made to build yet another new Enterprise. Logic factor 0-10: 2

2. The ship was an older ship that had reached its operational lifetime and was decommissioned, even though other ship classes of this era (Miranda, Constellation, Sydney, Jupp) were still operational as of the late 24th century. Logic factor 0-10: 5

3. The ship (either new or old) was decommissioned because they had just built the Enterprise-B, and wanted to use the name for that, so it was then either recommissioned under a new name, or scrapped. Logic factor 0-10: 8

 

[Timo]

...Or a dozen other possibilities, including

4. The ship was brand new but unsalvageable due to the crippling damage, and Starfleet could loosen the purse strings for all-new ships now that Klingons no longer were a problem.

5. The ship was brand new and salvageable and kept on serving - for all of three months until the new crew crashed her.

6. & 7. The same as above but the ship was older.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Er, yeah, there could be a million reasons why the ship was decommissioned. My point wasn't why it was decommissioned, but that it was decommissioned at all, and the relationship between that and the Enterprise-B.

 

[Timo]

But the basic premise of that seems unnecessary: Starfleet doesn't build or decommission Enterprises. It is in the business of operating starships, regardless of their names. Specific issues would affect why the E-A went and the E-B came, but only your point 3 relates to the presence of the name Enterprise there, and fundamentally only relates to the presence of some name there. And I'd give logic factor 1 or 2 at most to toying with a name.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nebusj]

Well, there's only three possibilities here.

You're overlooking ``they renamed the Enterprise-A to the USS Schweickart-C'', to honor the legacy of the NCC-104 line of vessels.

 

[Dukhat]

You're overlooking ``they renamed the Enterprise-A to the USS Schweickart-C'', to honor the legacy of the NCC-104 line of vessels.

Oops, my bad.

 

[Lance]

Many different sources suggest the Enterprise A was a renamed ship. Yorktown has for some reason become the most popular, despite the impossibility of this as the Yorktown was shown out on duty in the movie, it's captain is the guy who contacts Starfleet about his engineer rigging up a solar sail to restore functionality after their encounter with the probe. Other former names for the Enterprise A include the Ti-Ho (which was even recently used in the novel The Autobiography of James T Kirk) and the Atlantis.

Canonically, there's nothing confirming or debunking the theory.

I suspect the reason it's become a favourite among fans is that there's a certain romance to it: in 'the real world', USS Yorktown was the name considered by Gene Roddenberry for the hero ship of the series back in TOS before he settled on USS Enterprise instead. So, there's a kind of poetic symmetry to the in-universe 1701-A having previously been the Yorktown before being renamed Enterprise. Very "meta".

In-verse, the idea that the ship was an old vessel "rebranded" is usually used as a way of explaining why it has such a short service history as well. If 1701-A existed as another vessel entirely for many decades before Kirk assumed command of her, then it's got a service history far longer than its canonical one.

The alternative theory posed in (I think) 'Mister Scott's Guide To The Enterprise' was that it was a brand new build, and along with Excelsior was fitted with the new transwarp drive. But there's even less screen evidence to support this than the renamed-from-Yorktown theory.

 

[FormerLurker]

Another possibility is that it's an older spaceframe, decommissioned a few years ago, that is then retrofitted tout-suite with all-new insides and guts (new engines, new crew quarters, new sickbay, new corridor walls and floors, etc.) so Starfleet can send Kirk and co. out into the void with it, and the reason it has so many problems in TFF is because the new guts have never been tested as a complete assembly until their maiden shakedown. Scotty is essentially given the job of figuring out how to make it work correctly on-the-job.

 

[BillJ]

The alternative theory posed in (I think) 'Mister Scott's Guide To The Enterprise' was that it was a brand new build, and along with Excelsior was fitted with the new transwarp drive. But there's even less screen evidence to support this than the renamed-from-Yorktown theory.

Maybe that's why they were able to get to the center of the galaxy so quickly?

 

[saddestmoon]

Q: Prior designation, before becoming the 1701-A?
A: 1701-AWESOME!

 

[Galileo7]

Q: Prior designation, before becoming the 1701-A?
A: 1701-AWESOME!

Yes. https://31.media.tumblr.com/ae2943ffaf1e43538a412ca24144e190/tumblr_inline_netzuwDMvq1r079yu.png
https://31.media.tumblr.com/ae2943ffaf1e43538a412ca24144e190/tumblr_inline_netzuwDMvq1r079yu.png

 

[TommyR01D]

I'm going with the parts bin kitbash theory. It allows it to be a "new" ship (as the whole has not existed before), but also be old enough for retirement in TUC (the components are all worn down and obsolete). It would also explain why there was such a visual inconsistency with the TFF interior (Some bits looked like a TOS-era design while others were obviously TNG sets without even a minor redress.) and nothing worked properly (The ship used several generations of parts and they didn't fit together.).

 

[Shikarnov]

I think Starfleet knew Kirk and co. were about to retire anyway, so why not give them an old ship. If Starfleet was confident Kirk and his crew would be around longer why not give them the Excelsior, the brand new ship of the line?

At the end of Star Trek IV, would the Excelsior be the new "ship of the line"? At the beginning of III, Kirk describes the ship as a "great experiment" and "now ready for trial runs." Its NX registry indicates that its a prototype; a testing platform. Do we have any way of knowing when the class was accepted as viable?

Because Kirk and Company made them look like buffoons during the Genesis affair?

You think so? I mean, of course the writers amped up Captain Styles' arrogance to ridiculous levels -- and it was nice to watch him get taken down a peg or two -- but in the end it's really hard to imagine being prepared for your chief engineer to turn traitor.

Who knows, Scotty's sabotage may even have improved the class. "Laddie, if this old man can remove these wee parts so easily, you can bet a bottle o' scotch that a few torpedoes will shake 'em loose too. Now what ye need to do is..."

 

[BillJ]

You think so? I mean, of course the writers amped up Captain Styles' arrogance to ridiculous levels -- and it was nice to watch him get taken down a peg or two -- but in the end it's really hard to imagine being prepared for your chief engineer to turn traitor.

It goes beyond that. Only having a science vessel with no one watching out in the middle of nowhere, someone was an obvious traitor inside Starfleet for Valkris to get the Genesis tape, Kirk has no trouble breaking McCoy out of a Federation facility and they also stole a starship. Heck, they show no one even monitoring the space doors. Just an empty chair.

Starfleet comes across as bumbling idiots during the entirety of the Genesis Affair.

 

[Kemaiku]

"D.I.Y. Starship Kit. Requires: Glue, Paint, Handwavium Nitrate."

 

[Leto_II]

At the end of Star Trek IV, would the Excelsior be the new "ship of the line"? At the beginning of III, Kirk describes the ship as a "great experiment" and "now ready for trial runs." Its NX registry indicates that its a prototype; a testing platform. Do we have any way of knowing when the class was accepted as viable?

Some time between 2286 (at the end of The Voyage Home) and probably 2290-ish, which is when Sulu took command and commenced his three-year Beta Quadrant survey mission. At least we know that Starfleet felt confident enough letting it go off into the unknown at that point. We don't know for sure when the registry finally got bumped up to full "NCC"-status, but it was probably around that same time, I'd imagine.

 

[Timo]

Might also be the Excelsior was a preexisting ship that only accommodated the Great Experiment aboard for the mid-eighties.

Some of our heroes are impressed by her size, but that doesn't mean she would be new, or even new to them. She's just bigger than anything they have been flying so far. For all we know, Starfleet has already had behemoths like this waiting for the Big One at various starbases, and while the TOS camera follows the adventures of dashing heroes in a midget frontier scout, the Fleet in the deep background quietly replaces its Kelvins and Trumans with the Excelsior and her ilk...

In that scenario, the Excelsior would always have been a ship of the line, while the Enterprise never was. And Sulu would have gotten a much sweeter deal than Kirk, leaving the peanut gallery of starship captains and joining the more exalted community of battleship captains.

Timo Saloniemi