Why get an A?

[Nebusj]

So ... I understand why in the Prime Universe the successor USS Enterprise got an NCC-1701-A designation. It'd been the center of a major controversy, a cadre of its officers had just saved the Earth from an extinction-level event, and they apparently had a duplicate to spare and kind-of ready-ish to go. Fine enough.

But why in the Kelvin Universe? I understand wanting to build a new Enterprise, and keeping at least some of the core staff together for it, sure. And building one that's close to the original again makes sense. But what's the in-universe reason for preserving the NCC number?

I can get behind preserving a number in honor of a ship (or crew) that's performed extraordinary service. While the Kelvin Enterprise's crew did an extraordinary job in stopping a fearsome peril, the peril doesn't seem so immediate or intense or urgent as the Prime Universe had. Yes, it'd have been horrible to lose the Starbase Yorktown and whatever other Federation assets were nearby, but that's not like literally saving the life of everyone on Earth. (Which, admittedly, this crew and ship had done, but like six years before.) It's hard to see, given what we know of that era of the Star Trek universe, that every ship hasn't done at least as much. So why get a fixed registry number?

Perhaps I should frame the discussion by saying I'm fond of numbering scheme anomalies. They're surprisingly common in the real world. It's hard to see what role registry numbers serve that isn't satisfied by weird numbering schemes full of exceptions. If I'm fine with Apollo Command and Service Module number 115A --- and I am --- I'm also fine with suffixed (and prefixed) letters to the NCC numbers. I'm just wondering why this ship rated this anomaly at this time.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Saved the Federation from some pretty powerful enemies three times.

 

[PixelMagic]

But what's the in-universe reason for preserving the NCC number?

There isn't one. The filmmakers did it because that's what they did in the original movies. /thread

 

[Tenacity]

^ Just that, the same way TPTB named their villain "Khan" instead of having Darkness' villain be a new character (which he essentially was) with a new name. They could have easily retained John Harrison for the entirety of the story, and the story would have played out the same.

But that wouldn't have been a tie-in with what is usual considered the most popular of the Star Trek original movies

Today we honor previous distinctive ships by re-using the ship's name, but we don't re-use the identifying number.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Saved the Federation/Earth from Nero
Prevented war with the Klingons and captured Khan
The crew saved millions of lives at Yorktown Base even without their ship

What is the required threshold for getting a letter after your ship? Because that's a pretty impressive resume.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Ship hull numbers are almost as arbitrary a decision as ship names. Starfleet could have easily just slapped NCC-1701 on the next Enterprise, but chose to add a suffix at the end simply because they wanted to. But if you want to overthink it, it could be that Starfleet wanted to both honor the original Enterprise and establish a direct successor to her at the same time.

 

[Takeru]

But what's the in-universe reason for preserving the NCC number?

There isn't one but there wasn't an in universe reason in the prime universe either, adding an A to the model was easier than changing the entire registry and the fans were familiar with 1701, that's it.

 

[Khan 2.0]

Shouldve looked exactly like this http://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/2016/07/star-trek.jpg

 

[Tenacity]

Saved the Federation/Earth from Nero
Prevented war with the Klingons and captured Khan
The crew saved millions of lives at Yorktown Base even without their ship

Wouldn't all those be reasons to honor the crew?

The (ship) Enterprise had no part in saving the Yorktown station, perhaps the new ship should have been named the Franklin?.

 

[The Wormhole]

The (ship) Enterprise had no part in saving the Yorktown station, perhaps the new ship should have been named the Franklin?.

The Prime Universe's Enterprise A was so christened in recognition of Kirk and crew saving Earth from the whale probe, despite the fact the Enterprise itself had no part in that. By your logic, the ship they transfer to at the end of Trek IV should have been named Bounty.

 

[CorporalClegg]

It's the exact same ship with the same senior staff with (presumably) most, if not all the same crew that's going out to complete the first's mission. They kept the same name and registry to establish the connection, but added the "A" to differentiate it from the original.

From strictly a practicality standpoint, it makes more sense than the original.

 

[Timo]

The suffix in the Prime universe could be seen as a form of punishment, relating to the exceptional circumstances: Kirk's "heroic achievements" were the work of a criminal who had stolen and destroyed a starship and betrayed his employer. Out of public pressure, he was nevertheless given a starship, but not a "real" one - he got but a replica of his old ship, a museum specimen of sorts.

However, the Prime universe appears to feature at least one other starship registry with a suffix, that of the Yamato. The mechanism might well be the same as with the Enterprise, "freezing" a number from bygone days (and since the Big Y is an -E while the Big E is a mere -D, it makes sense for the number for the Big Y to be lower/earlier).

This has two effects IMHO. For one, it would appear unlikely for two despised renegades to earn replica ships. For another, the NCC-1305-A would appear to have preceded the NCC-1701-A because NCC-1305 msot probably started her heroic service before NCC-1701, this having the effect of removing precedent value from Kirk's antics.

If Starfeet dishes out suffix registries left and right in one universe, the need for nuKirk or nuEnterprise to do something really exceptional is greatly diminished... One just wonders what slackers the assorted Intrepids and Exeters must be, for never warranting a suffix.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Galileo7]

J.J. Abrams Kelvin timeline Beyond made the same choice as the Prime with TVH, 1701-A. I think that it would have made more sense if in both TVH and Beyond they had a new number to go with the same "Enterprise" name. As in the real world, the WW2 Enterprise aircraft carrier, the recently retired nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise and the soon to be new Ford class nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise all have different numbers. The name should be enough. I guess the number is being treated like a star athlete's number, the name is not enough.

#6

#65

#8O

I wonder if when producing The Voyage Home, if they considered a new number instead of the A? Roddenberry was not in charge, but did he consider the A a good idea?

 

[Nerys Myk]

The numbers are iconic. Makes sense from a production stand point. In universe usually takes a backseat to that.

 

[Timo]

It should also be noted that none of the USN carriers were successors to the previous holder of that name - at best, they were successors to some in-between ship by a different name, with a gap of a decade between the first two Enterprises and a shorter one between the second two (but still with enough room for the launching of a couple of non-Enterprise "real successors" in the Nimitz class). And at worst, a CVN bears little or no functional relation to a CV, apart from both being flattops.

In contrast, the E-A was basically identical to the E in shape and mission as far as we could tell (said mission being Quayside Queen as far as we could tell). There'd then be a big jump to the E-B in design, size and probably also mission; an unknown gap between E-B and E-C in mission but again one in size; and a decades-long gap between the E-C and E-D. And then no gap in time from E-D to E-E, but a radical change in design and a slight reduction in size. Of the lot, most ships are not credited with anything significant, and while the E-C had a heroic fate, her name was initially retired rather than perpetuated.

Perhaps the suffix letter craze had its origins in something logical and then got out of hand?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[David Brown]

In the original crew movies, the NCC-1701-A felt like a reward. We'd had 20+ years of stories with that particular crew (and their ship). It felt like they earned it.
For the Kelvin universe, like the reversal of the Spock-Kirk death scene (spoiler alert), it just didn't feel earned. We hadn't had enough time with this particular crew that the new ship felt earned. I enjoyed the movie okay, but it felt like that was one of the "gimmies" you had to give the movie to enjoy it. It was another little tip of the cap to the original crew or perhaps a demonstration (like the above referenced Kirk-Spock scene) that even in an alternate universe, there are near constants, or perhaps a comment on fate or destiny.

 

[Mirror_Barclay]

Perhaps it's a function of the same effect that produces physically-identical people in Mirror Universes, even after their timelines have drastically diverged.