DS9's producers wanted the Sao Paulo's registry to be NCC-74205-A when it was renamed Defiant, but since most of the time we saw it it was stock footage from previous episodes, it ended up keeping the NX-74205 registry.
Yeah, I know that. But "in-universe" though, we could say that the Defiant was the ship that could not die because Starfleet made it so. Personally, I'm glad it kind of worked out that way because I think it could get real silly if there were lots of ships out there with letters after their names. Bad enough that there's one out there doing that, IMO...
honestly, the re-use of the name itself is enough. there should never have been a B, much less a C,D,or E. 1701-A was only re-commisioned as such as a token of gratitude for the single handed efforts of the 1701's crew for rescuing the entire PLANET. i never understood how the tradition of re-using the registry made it past that! sure keep naming them Enterprise, but i think it's (already past) time to retire the 1701 moniker
I honestly don't mind there being NCC-xxxxxxx-A or E or V. I think it's neat and keeps a small tradition going for ships bearing the same name. HOWEVER, I don't like how the producers/writers are killing off Enterprises so quickly. As much as I like the E (it is one of my favorite ship designs), it was not needed. The ENT-E better be flying as long as the Excelsior's are. lol An that non-sense with the flying pizza cutter Ent-J in what only the 25th Century? So the E, F, G and H's are destroyed in like a 50-80 year time frame? Holy cursed ship, Batman!!!
To be fair, the Ent-J only existed in a timeline where the war with the Sphere Builders went on for centuries (indeed, it was *still* going on by that timeline's version of the 26th Century). I like to think that in this version of events, the war dragged on for so long that it held technology back a bit, that starship design didn't really advance that far (look at how the J doesn't look much more than an uprated NX-01). In the real timeline (either Abramsverse or prime), whichever Enterprise is active in the 26th century may or may not be a J. And even if it is a J, it probably won't look like this one.
I dont think they should get rid of NCC 1701, even they run out of letters in alphabet. Because that is legend and made history though out the years, why change some that lengendary? I just should say we keep NCC 1701 and just start using double letters at the end of it. But dont get rid of NCC 1701. Thats my oppion of course.
I just did up a quick list of what the registries might have been like if they didn't go with the 1701. I've tried to pick numbers as close to the Class ship as I could get and trying to avoid duplicating: Ent-B - NCC-2003 Ent-C - NCC-10529 End-D - NCC-70638 Ent-E - NCC-73813 If we saw this instead of 1701-? would it make any difference?
I remember some comic in Starlog that had one admiral telling some captain to be "...very careful with this one!" as it was the NCC-1701 Z.
I think it's just a mistake on the model; presumably they used the same one for the new Defiant (makes perfect sense, as there's no differences between the two ships), but forgot to changed the registration number. It's just not as easy to remember, that's all.
To be honest I don't think they're going to need to get further than Z. It's been 40 years and they're still on E. Aside from the one off appearance of J and the mention of F it dosn't look like it'll go much further. I'm a fan of trek but it's not going to last for ever. Hasn't been any for ages besides the film .
There's already been mention upthread of the real-world reason why the new Defiant had the same registry of her predecessor (to reuse stock footage).
Or Hebrew ones: "You have permission to enter Spacedock, U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-Gimel. Shalom, and welcome to Earth."
hmm, seems like XI with a twist... "the party runs all-day every-day in main engineering, we tap the warp-core at noon fella's!!!"