Why No Enterprise-Class?

[Prometheus Unbound]

neither was the "E-A was the Yorktown" theory. You'd have to go by author's intent to consider that the official explanation, which is problematic seeing how the author in this case would actually be Harve Bennett, not Roddenberry.

Admittedly, it's still a better explanation than nothing, and probably the nearest we're ever going to get to a proper one, but it's nonetheless fanon rather than canon.

Which is cool

They're both on par with each other, "canon" wise - which is technically nothing.

I only lend credence to the Yorktown theory over the other two simply because the Yorktown was featured in ST4.

Essentially there's two possibilities:

1) It was a brand new ship. Sure, possible. Though it was decomissioned after ST6 which was only about 5 years after ST4 - (I think 2286 and 2293 officially but not sure if it's ever said). I can't believe they'd decomission it just because of that single fight in ST6. Surely? The damn thing could still fire weapons raise shields, go to warp, had sensors and shuttles and seemed structurally "ok". For a 8 year old ship? or even 10, 15? Nah, I don't buy it.

2) It was a recomissioned existing hull. I think this is much more likely. There were no ships shown in construction in ST3 (although this doesn't mean there weren't, as there are other facilities). It was available 3 months after ST3. It seemingly had no crew or anyone to command it (?). It was just... "there", in ST4.

So I pick option 2. If anyone disagrees at this point, feel free to yell!


So which ship was recomissioned / refitted / repaired / whatever? Well, There's the Colombia mentioned in ST1, but that had a registration NCC 631 or something - older than the connie by far. A replacement Reliant - possible. Though, ST4 is only 3 months after ST3, which was only 2-3 weeks after ST2, so that would mean a very, very fast construction time. I discount this. Grissom? See Reliant. The only other ship I know of from the films (again, correct me if I'm wrong - there was a lot of comm chatter in ST1 int he background of the epsilon 9 and spacedock scenes... and in st4 SFHQ) is the Yorktown - a ship we know roddenberry wanted as the original Enterprise name, a ship we saw featured in ST4, which we know lost all power and they had to resort to trying to make a solar collector "to generate power... to keep us alive". We have no idea if that worked or not - the ship is never seen or heard of again.


I quite like the idea of a bit of darkness in Trek so I personally vote for they all died, and the rescue ships had a load of frozen corpses floating around like Event Horizon. They all died, and after the defrosted blood stains from the shattered crew who splintered apart when artifical grav was restored and life support defrosted them, were cleaned up by that guy who was vacuuming the floor in ST3, whilst the Enterprise was being stolen, they renamed it Enterprise, put some new carpets in and gave it to Kirk.

Or it was the Atlantis.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm leaning towards it being the Yorktown I think. It explains why they had so many bugs with it in STV after all - disabled, left adrift etc. can't be good for the ship. It also explains why they decommission her only seven years later.

Ent-Nil is stated to be 20 years old (give or take) in ST3, which was 2286 apparently, which puts her launch in 2266, but we know from "The Cage" she was older than that, the official date is 2245. In other words, the E-Nil fights Reliant to a standstill despite no shields, heavy damage, a crew of trainees and being forty years old. Damn the Connies are tough.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Roddenberry apparently wanted the ship to be 40 years old at the time of TOS. I read that recently, but I can't remember where now. Maybe MA or DITL ... I can't say, if I find it I'll let ya know. But yeah Enterprise 1701 wasn't meant to be brand new, as far as I'm aware in canon.

[Borgholio]

Well even without the 40 year old number, the Enterprise wasn't brand new when Kirk took over anyways. She had already been through at least two prior tours under Captain Pike and Captain April. So that could be at least 10 years, assuming two previous 5 year missions.

[Elheru Aran]

Ent-Nil is stated to be 20 years old (give or take) in ST3, which was 2286 apparently, which puts her launch in 2266, but we know from "The Cage" she was older than that, the official date is 2245. In other words, the E-Nil fights Reliant to a standstill despite no shields, heavy damage, a crew of trainees and being forty years old. Damn the Connies are tough.

To be quite fair, the E-Nil wouldn't have come out of that fight as intact as it did if Kirk and Spock hadn't managed to disable the Reliant's shields by remote control to get a few good hits in and then out-maneuver Khan in the nebula. Without either of those, it would have been a much more one-sided fight thanks to Khan having the advantage of surprise on them and his initial overwhelming firepower.

[Eternal_Freedom]

True, but it still speaks volumes to the ruggedness of the design that they can take such heavy damage and be (mostly) combat-ready in a few hours, and ready for warp speed shortly after despite taking more damage.

[Batman]

Of course the Big E likely would never have taken that damage if Kirk had done the smart thing and raised shields, the drawback to which was...what again?

[Borgholio]

Yeah by the time Spock told him that they were lying about the comm system being down, he should have been on full alert.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Of course the Big E likely would never have taken that damage if Kirk had done the smart thing and raised shields, the drawback to which was...what again?

Yeah, true. As for why he didn't, um, hubris?

[Knife]

IIRC, when Scotty was looking at the deck plans in ST VI, looking for grav boots, the plans say Constitution Class. Anyway, as much as I like the Movie Connie Refit, it may well have been a failure in comparison to the original design. The Excelcior very much took over as seen the vast fleet of old Excelsior's in the TNG and DS9 shows showing old Excelsior's and no Connies. As much as fans love the ship, perhaps in Universe it was not as spectacular as it was meant to be and while the transwarp experiment with NX-200 was a failure, the space frame of the Excelsior was better than the Connie refit and quickly took over in favor of Star Fleet ship yards.

[Batman]

Or maybe it worked splendidly...as a refit. We see exactly two refit Constitutions in Trek-the refit E-nil, and the E-A. There's a plethora of possible reasons why they went with the Excelsiors over the refit Connies, one of them being the Connies being refits. Unless there's evidence refit Connies were newly built alongside the Excelsiors they might have simply been too damned physically old to be worth keeping.
Which DOES raise the question of why are the Mirandas still around?
Of course we don't see that design until TWOK, at which time the Connie is a minimum of 20 years old.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well logically the Miranda proved to be a design equally as successful as the Excelsior class for it's role, so was kept around for 90 odd years.

[Patroklos]

Out of universe reasons:

1.) It makes the universe lived in. Once you know the Enterprise isn't the first that means there is an unknown number of other vessels out there doing god knows what and this one is just one ship in a fleet of many. Maybe with more or equally awesome more senior crews doing equally awesome stuff (which made losses like the Odyssey and Yamato especially dramatic. How many untold stories were lost with them?).

2.) No bagage. While obviously we know the Enterprises and the crews of them we see are going to end up awesome (or at least intended to be) in universe because they are the subject of the show the Federation and the crews themselves don't know that. It lets the characters grow organically. The USS Enterprise versions became legendary from their adventures as we watched. We the audience, get to participate/be witness to it. It wasn't assumed the ship was going to be legendary so we better name a class after it.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Ent-Nil is stated to be 20 years old (give or take) in ST3, which was 2286 apparently, which puts her launch in 2266, but we know from "The Cage" she was older than that, the official date is 2245. In other words, the E-Nil fights Reliant to a standstill despite no shields, heavy damage, a crew of trainees and being forty years old. Damn the Connies are tough.

To be quite fair, the E-Nil wouldn't have come out of that fight as intact as it did if Kirk and Spock hadn't managed to disable the Reliant's shields by remote control to get a few good hits in and then out-maneuver Khan in the nebula. Without either of those, it would have been a much more one-sided fight thanks to Khan having the advantage of surprise on them and his initial overwhelming firepower.

If Kirk had followed regulations and raised shields before the Reliant got the first shot off....

[Prometheus Unbound]

Or maybe it worked splendidly...as a refit. We see exactly two refit Constitutions in Trek-the refit E-nil, and the E-A. There's a plethora of possible reasons why they went with the Excelsiors over the refit Connies, one of them being the Connies being refits. Unless there's evidence refit Connies were newly built alongside the Excelsiors they might have simply been too damned physically old to be worth keeping.
Which DOES raise the question of why are the Mirandas still around?
Of course we don't see that design until TWOK, at which time the Connie is a minimum of 20 years old.

There were others - there was a connie apparently sent to Wolf 359 - we see the secondary hull of one floating in space by the Enterprise D.

Now I know for a fact they didn't repaint the connie with a new reg number - so that must be the model from the movies. Which means it's the Enterprise.

I like to think the Enterprise A was used as a training vessel (like the E-nil was) or a museum piece. And they were so desperate, even the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-A was brought out to fight the cube.

[Simon_Jester]

...There would be a certain honor to that.

Aaaand head-canon-ed.

[Crazedwraith]

Reading memory alpha suggests the wrecked connie at wolf 359 was the model of the E-Nil used in its death scene in ST3 not the E-A model.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Reading memory alpha suggests the wrecked connie at wolf 359 was the model of the E-Nil used in its death scene in ST3 not the E-A model.

Yus - so it's the USS Enterprise. Clearly it can't be the one from ST3 (in universe) as that burned up over Genesis and then the planet exploded - don't think there's much left from there.

And since the Ent-Nil model was the same as the Ent-A (just with the registry altered)... it must be the Enterprise A at Wolf 359

[Tribble]

Yus - so it's the USS Enterprise. Clearly it can't be the one from ST3 (in universe) as that burned up over Genesis and then the planet exploded - don't think there's much left from there.

We're not absolutely sure that the Enterprise was destroyed, we just saw it burning. IMO The Feds were desperate enough to want the real Enterprise, so went over to where the Genesis planet was, recovered the secondary hull, rebuilt the ship and sent it at the Cube. They would have won too, if they had known that Kirk was in the Nexus. But at least we now we know that parts of the original Enterprise were tough enough to survive it's own self-destruct, the destruction of Genesis, and the Borg. Maybe they recovered it after Wolf 359 and had it fight in the Dominion War too. Perhaps it's still around after Nemesis, just being used for secret missions, which is why they let other ships borrow the name. Crazy plan, but I'm sticking to it

[Tribble]

Option 2: In return for all the times the Enterprise saved the Earth, the Federation secretly time-travelled, faked the Enterprise's death (Kirk and co just assumed that the burning fireball was the real ship) and brought it back for repairs. Then they cleared out personal effects and painted an "A" on it so no one would be suspicious, then claimed that they had a "new" Enterprise ready to go.

And Picard totally mentioned seeing a Constitution class in a museum. Obviously it's the Enterprise, what other ship would they have possibly wanted to put in there?

[Prometheus Unbound]

Yus - so it's the USS Enterprise. Clearly it can't be the one from ST3 (in universe) as that burned up over Genesis and then the planet exploded - don't think there's much left from there.

We're not absolutely sure that the Enterprise was destroyed, we just saw it burning. IMO The Feds were desperate enough to want the real Enterprise, so went over to where the Genesis planet was, recovered the secondary hull, rebuilt the ship and sent it at the Cube. They would have won too, if they had known that Kirk was in the Nexus. But at least we now we know that parts of the original Enterprise were tough enough to survive it's own self-destruct, the destruction of Genesis, and the Borg. Maybe they recovered it after Wolf 359 and had it fight in the Dominion War too. Perhaps it's still around after Nemesis, just being used for secret missions, which is why they let other ships borrow the name. Crazy plan, but I'm sticking to it

haha possibly... but it entered the atmosphere. and then Genesis did kinda blow up quite... a lot.



I don't think it survived, imo.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The point about parts of the E-Nil being tough enough to survive it's own self-destruct is a beat weak, sicen said self-destruct was fairly pathetic, it totalled the bridge and blew off the front half of the saucer, but the rest of the ship looked intact. If it hadn't crashed into the atmosphere it would probably have been salvageable.

As for the E-A being the wrecked Connie we see at Wolf 359...yeah I can agree with that

Hell, maybe the random Connie refit we see in a Dominon War battle was the erstwhile USS Yorktown...

[Darth Quorthon]

The "Ti-Ho" name comes from the book Mr. Scott's guide to the Enterprise. I think I still have my copy lying around somewhere, probably in storage. IIRC the book states that the ship is brand new and is "Enterprise-class" and also has Transwarp, lol. Of course, the dates in the book are way off, IIRC it says the E-nil launched in 2190, and the E-A was being taken out by Kirk and crew in 2222. Even after Kirk told Gillian he was from the "late 23rd century". It's actually kind of a cool book, all the floor plans and blueprints were fun to look at back when I was younger, but the E-A being a new ship wouldn't make much sense if they were going to decommission her after STVI, as stated earlier. In the Shatnerverse novel, The Ashes of Eden (another non-canon book), when Scotty is helping Kirk and Teilani get the decommissioned E-A going to Chal, he remarks that "this is an old design".

[biostem]

Given that we saw a starship salvage/bone yard in one TNG episode, I wonder if there are private citizens that would come together to buy/acquire an old ship and restore it...

I'd imagine that, given the advances made since TOS, it would probably be pretty easy to highly automate and modernize an old Constitution or similar era ship, so you would only need a few people to run it. If said people stuck to safe/heavily trafficked routes, they should be fine. Heck, it'd be a great tourist attraction: "Travel from Earth to Riza like a 23rd-century Admiral on board a genuine Constitution-class starship!"

Alternatively, it would be pretty interesting to see a show about a group of people who restored such a ship, and their adventures in the "modern" Alpha Quadrant - with a less capable ship, they'd have to rely on smarts, subterfuge, and diplomacy to win the day.

[Batman]

I can't see the Federation being okay with that. Sure, a Connie is antiquated by their standards (other than the fact that it's massively more durable and faster than TNG ships), but it's still got phasers and photon torpedoes. They probably can't bother Starfleet much...but what about the people who aren't? Sure, an Alabama or Des Moines is mincemeat when confronted with a modern day navy, but not everybody has access to a modern day navy. Do you really want random civilians to wander around in a (admittedly rather outdated) warship?