Skip to main content

star trek - Why was there a 20-year gap between Enterprises C and D?


As can be confirmed via Memory Alpha, the service years of the ships named "USS Enterprise" in the original timeline beginning at 2245 are:





  • NCC-1701 (Captains April, Pike, Kirk, Decker, Kirk, Spock), years 2245-2285 (destroyed under command of Admiral Kirk, acting captain)




  • NCC-1701-A (Captain Kirk), years 2286-2293




  • NCC-1701-B (Initial commission under Captain Harriman, later captain(s) unknown), years 2293-?




  • NCC-1701-C (Initial captain(s) unknown, final commission under Captain Garrett), ?-2344 (lost to Romulan Star Empire under command of Lt. Commander Castillo, acting captain)





  • NCC-1701-D (Captains Picard, Riker, Picard, Jellico, Picard), 2363-2371




  • NCC-1701-E (Captain Picard, later captain(s) unknown*), 2372-?




We all know that the Enterprise-A was a gift to Kirk for saving Earth — hence, this Enterprise was quickly recommissioned for him (it had been the USS Yorktown until then).


However, the Enterprise-B was rapidly commissioned in 2293, the same year the A was decommissioned.



I cannot find canonical data regarding the decommissioning of the B and the commissioning of the C. However, why was there a two-decade gap between the loss of the Enterprise C at Narendra III and the commissioning of the Enterprise D, given the prestige and general continuity of the Enterprise in Starfleet?


*Captained in and around 2387 by Captain Data / B-4, if you believe Countdown....



Answer



With regard to the NCC-1701-A, there are three likely possibilities, none of which has ever been canonized:



  1. Fleet Admiral Morrow, in Star Trek III, makes it clear that Enterprise NCC-1701 was already seen as slated for decommissioning (although he gets the age wildly wrong). This is consistent with the ship's status in Star Trek II as a training ship. Therefore, it is possible that NCC-1701-A was already being built under that name.

  2. A new Constitution Class ship could have been renamed Enterprise to suit the occasion.

  3. A recently re-fit Constitution Class ship could have been so renamed.


In Star Trek V, Scotty does refer to the A as a "new ship", which seems to weigh on the side of 1 or 2.



In real navies, though, this is something of an aberration. Ships are planned years, sometimes decades in advance, and their names planned along with them. As one pertinent example of this, USS Enterprise CVN-65 was retired in 2012, but was still nominally in commission while it was being dismantled, only being finally deconmissioned in 2017. However, CVN-80, the next planned holder of the name Enterprise, has only just (as if 2018) begun construction, and won't be afloat until at least 2025.


My supposition, then -- and I'll stress that this is just surmise, because we simply haven't been told, canonically -- is that NCC-1701-B was the originally planned replacement for Enterprise NCC-1701. The need to give Kirk and his crew a ship changed the plan.


We know very little, canonically about the NCC-1701-B or -C, but we know that the C was lost with all hands (plus one temporally displaced Lt. Yar) at Narendra III. The circumstances were thus entirely different from the loss of NCC-1701, where the (famous, high-profile) crew survived and giving them a new ship seemed the best way to keep them out of real trouble! There would have been no reason to accelerate the inheritance of the name from the -C to the -D if it was already planned to give it to a member of the next advanced starship class, even if that was going to be 10-20 years in the future.


NCC-1701-E, on the other hand, could be seen as a similar situation to the -A. Once again, a famous, proven crew had survived the destruction of their ship and needed a new one, at about the time the Sovereign Class was having its keels laid.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more