Why the 20 year gap in Enteprises?

[Dayton3]

From the episode "Yesterdays Enterprise" we know that there was something like a 20 year gap between the destruction of the Enterprise-C and the Enterprise-D.

Yet, we've seen in Star Trek that Starfleet tends to slap the name Enterprise on a new ship as soon as the old one is destroyed.

So why the 20 year gap?

I can think of a few possibilities:

1) The long development of the Galaxy class was unexpected.

2) Given the heroic actions of the Enterprise-C, Starfleet considered retiring the name.

3) With no other newer ship available, Starfleet recommissioned an older Enterprise (the Enterprise-B) as a "place holder". Unlikely but Starfleet does lots of odd things.

4) Perhaps the Enterprise-C was not completely destroyed at Nerendra. Perhaps the crew was all killed or captured but the saucer section was recovered by Starfleet and hooked up to a new engineering hull, so the "C" stayed in service for years longer anyway.

Just some thoughts.

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

Picard speculated that the Enterprise-C's sacrifice battling the Romulans to help protect the Klingon colony Narendra 3 was see as an act that avoided the Klingon/federation war in the alternate timeline. In the real timeline, maybe the Klingons have a point of honor about their ships and reusing their name after the original's destruction is seen as downgrading the importance of the Enterprise-C's sacrifice. Maybe the Federation avoided reusing the Enterprise name right away so as not to imply that the Federation didn't value trying to defend the Klingons on Narendra 3. Eventually the Federation and the Klingons signed an alliance treaty and came to understand each other's cultures better which allowed them to finally reuse the Enterprise name. In retrospect, having Worf on board was a nice touch, too.

 

[JayTheTrekkie]

If it wasn't for the 20 years gap, the Nebula Class would have been a good one to use. I think the Nebula Class came around 2355 I think.

 

[Huntingdon]

I thought starfleet wasn't entirely sure how that the C was destroyed? They knew it disappeared but they may have waited quite a few years before it was finally declared lost in action. Although that contradicts the Worf's backstory slightly.

According to the Technical manula the design and build time of the Galaxy class was phenomenal so they probably waited to assign the Enterprise to this cuttinge dge starship.

 

[Dayton3]

In "Reunification II", Guinan IIRC asks Picard what he knows about the loss of the Enterprise-C. In particular potential "survivors".

I believe Picard says something to the effect that "there were rumors".

The tone of the ocnversation seemed to me that Starfleet knew all along that the Romulans destroyed the Enterprise at Narendra III but that. Presumably with all hands lost but that there were rumors about possible survivors.

 

[StarryEyed]

I don't think 20 years is that long, really. I would think that a lot of people would find it inappropriate to name a new ship any sooner because it would seem like trivializing 1701-C. This would be especially true if another Ambassador or a lesser ship assumed the name. Besides, time would only serve to add to the legend and prestige of the name. When the new Galaxies came on line, it was decided that one of these would be worthy of the name. The time was right.

 

[Dayton3]

I wonder how many of the Warbirds that the Enterprise-C destroyed at Narandra III?

I always figured that they took out at least three.

And that the fourth Warbird was the one that took prisoners and (probably) broke off the attack on the outpost.

 

[Steptoe]

Picard Swearing

Hi All, please excuse my ignorance, I am new at Forums and cannot find the new post button. I do recall in one episode recently, show on Foxtel in Australia. Picard was in a situation and he swore in French (Meard - Sh*t). Can anyone help with the name of the episode? Many Thanks

 

[Timo]

Re: Picard Swearing

He does that at least in "The Last Outpost", the first one to show us the Ferengi...

The "new post" button is cleverly hidden. Go up from this thread back to the the subforum page. Look at the line that shows the subforum tree - in this case Main Bridge >> The Next Generation. Shift your eyes to the right. Click the "POST" button there. Not very intuitive, I admit.

As for retiring the name Enterprise for a while, how about

5) After the loss of so many lives as the E-C went down, Starfleet wisely decided not to burden any more starships with such a horrendous jinx. "Out of respect to the dead" would be another way of putting it.

It's not as if the USN has a ship named Intrepid today, either. Or Indianapolis, for that matter. Jinxes count in the naval world.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cultcross]

Dayton3 said:
Yet, we've seen in Star Trek that Starfleet tends to slap the name Enterprise on a new ship as soon as the old one is destroyed.

The reason for this is that for the original-->A and D-->E transitions, we had a cast of our heroes established and ready to do more movies immediately. They needed a ship, and for reasons of good advertising sense it was called Enterprise. Those transitions which didn't involve our characters needing to rush off and save the universe again in a ship named Enterprise, such as B-->C and C-->D, didn't need to be so instant, and in fact the evidence you give suggests that, in-universe, they weren't.

 

[Timo]

..for reasons of good advertising sense it was called Enterprise.

The same reasons might apply on Starfleet, really. The E-nil and E-D losses would have been public relations disasters if not carefully spun to look like great victories for the Federation. The "We're so proud of the, uh, valiant final battle of this ship that we name our newest after her" trick would help there.

The transition from E-A to E-B would be similarly rooted in politics: Starfleet has to get rid of the idea that ships named Enterprise fight Klingons, their new friends. So Kirk's ship is actively forgotten by creating a new one "in her place".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unicron]

While this is not entirely on topic, it does remind me of an interesting little blurb in FASA's TNG Officer's Manual. There was a controversy over which class should represent the 1701-B. One group wanted it to be a Constellation in keeping with the ship's traditional explorer role, while the other wanted it to be an Excelsior (which was a battleship in the FASAverse) to better meet tensions from the Klingons and Romulans. The second argument won out.

The Enterprise C was also referenced, but since the manual was published during S1 it's said to be an entirely different class and the ship vanished without a trace. The Ambassador design that does appear is entirely different, because the authors had to design it themselves based on the reference in "Conspiracy."

 

[starburst]

The A>B transition was likely riding on the back of the heroics of the Enterprise and Excelsior at Khitomer, what better way to get good PR is to name a new ship of the same type of one of the ships after the other.

Do you think if the Enterprise had just been retired if the name would have gone any futher (if all the events of STVI never happened and dependant on if the ship was being mothballed and not just her senior staff)

 

[Timo]

There was a controversy over which class should represent the 1701-B. One group wanted it to be a Constellation in keeping with the ship's traditional explorer role, while the other wanted it to be an Excelsior (which was a battleship in the FASAverse) to better meet tensions from the Klingons and Romulans. The second argument won out.

One has to remember that getting a successor to a ship and getting a successor to a name are two entirely different things. Many, including FASA, may not fully comprehend this.

If Starfleet wanted a successor to fill the gap left in its ranks by the demise of E-C, it could order another Ambassador, or it could order a different type like Niagara, or perhaps two Excelsiors. The choice between the options would be tactical and economical. And the ship to succeed E-C could be named Ulysses or Serendipity or Black Prince for all Starfleet cares.

However, if Starfleet felt the political need to have a ship named Enterprise, it could choose launching a ship completely unrelated to the gap left by the E-C. The next Enterprise might be a fast scoutship or a giant colonization vessel, not an operational successor to the E-C. Indeed, there would be an inevitable delay in building the operational successor, but there need be no delay in painting the name Enterprise on whatever is coming off the production lines.

The E-C no doubt got an operational successor as soon as Starfleet managed to build or appoint one. She just wasn't named Enterprise. Whether the E-B was the operational successor of the E-A... Unlikely, seeing how dissimilar in size the two are, and how ships in the E-A size range still continue to serve beyond that date. But we could argue that the E-A was the operational as well as political/nominal successor of the E-nil, or that the E-D indeed was an operational successor to the E-C, only with some non-Enterprise ship in between in that chain of succession.

The E-E may or may not be an operational successor to the E-D. She shares the political representation mission of the original, at least in ST:INS; she also performs similar scientific errands in that movie. But she lacks the nice-looking interiors, doesn't seem to have children aboard (although that might just be camera bias), and is the first time a successor would be smaller than the predecessor...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cardinal biggles]

^^The only problem with that is by the time we saw the final voyage of the Enterprise-A, we were already four years into the voyage of the Enterprise-D, so obviously Starfleet decided to keep using the name again, and with the same registry number.

As to the long gap between the C and the D, Starfleet was probably already planning to make one of the new Galaxy-class ships an Enterprise, but they were also expecting the C to be around for retirement at the time the D was ready to launch.

 

[USS Excelsior]

The simplest explanation could be because they felt like it.

And that there's no particular rush to reuse a name.

Heck, there was an 84 year gap between the NX-01 and the first Enterprise.

 

[Son_of_Soong]

*imagines a group of ex-starfleet cadets stealing a time travelling device to go back in time to discover why there was such a large gap*... probably a season 47 episode.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Personally, I'd like to think that after the Enterprise-C was lost, Starfleet made the decision fairly early on that the one of the new proposed Galaxy-class ships wpuld be the Enterprise-D. The only problem was the Galaxy-class was still in the early research & development stage and wouldn't actually come into fruition for some time. At the time of the announcement, the actual spaceframe--what the Galaxy-class would look like--hadn't been decided upon yet. All that was done were the mission parameters and performance requirements. Many new systems--such as the new warp engines, the new computers, and the new phaser arrays, were still in the early stages as well.

So even if there wasn't an Enterprise in service during that period, everyone knew that there was one "under construction" the whole time...

 

[Son_of_Soong]

Of course that never happens these days. We all know the the Enterprise gets blown up quickly so they start building the next one the minute the first ones launched.

 

[DumbDumb2007]

it made the drama for the ep yesterdays enterprise. no one had established onscreen what had happened to eiteht the enterpriseB or the enterprise c.
I would have thought tha thad star trek 5 been succesful then star trek 6 would have been set on an excelsior class Enterprise-B with Kirk in command of a larger and more complex ship. shame the tos cast was retired. it would have bene worthwhile seeing Kirk and Spock command and all new crew out there. The remaining cast had more milage left in them