I don’t get why people put so much stock in Scotty’s line being literal - it’s not necessarily a brand new ship made from scratch, the ship was simply new to them as a crew. It’s an offhand comment on how much better the Enterprise was in comparison, not a declaration of the A’s origins. People are really overthinking it.

> People are really overthinking it Trek fans *never* do that! What are you on about?? /s

Right, what's all this then!?

My own personal theory about why the A was such a mess was that Starfleet had recently rolled out the first version of LCARS to the fleet (notice the A had the new touchscreen consoles whereas the 1701 still had buttons and sliders), and the Constitution-class was simply too old and outdated to handle the new system so Scotty had his work cut out for him in upgrading the computers and integrating the new software. There's a good chance the Enterprise-A was the last remaining Connie in the fleet at that stage, running on pure legacy.

They took away buttons and Scotty didn't have any muscle memory. Very upsetting.

I can just picture him going to town on the nearest computer bank with a wrench trying to use the tried and true "smack it until it works" technique while his team looks on in absolute horror as he smashes all the LCARS displays in across three decks before they talk him into actually trying to fix the problem instead of "fixing" it

"He's going to let the magic rocks out again"

Didn't the LCARS displays have screens made of transparent aluminium to make them shatterproof?

Your phone screen is made of transparent aluminum. The glass that is most commonly used for phone and tablet screens (and some laptops too), Corning's gorilla glass, is literally an aluminosilicate glass. And as anyone knows, not exactly shatterproof. We can only imagine that the screens in Star Trek are some future version of what we have today.

As long as he doesn't ever have to use a mouse for input, everything is fine ;)

Scotty was raised on an IBM ThinkPad, and could only control things by manipulating the red nubbin-stick thingy.

Haha, this gave me a good laugh imagining Scotty playing with a ThinkPad. I wonder if that is how he was able to use the keyboard so easily in ST4 ?

Scotty only uses his ThinkPad to shell into the IBM Z-series mainframe. Now that's ENTERPRISE computing!

\*picks up mouse\*

But he knew that ship like the back of his hand!

Don't forget all the ships from Operation Retrieve : * USS Ahwahnee NCC-2048 Constitution-class * USS Eagle NCC-956 Constitution-class * USS Emden NCC-1856 Constitution-class * USS Endeavour NCC-1895 Constitution-class * USS Excelsior NCC-2000 Excelsior-class * USS Potemkin NCC-1657 Constitution-class

Nice to see an *Endeavour* in there!

Tbf, the Potemkin only was a collection of scrap made to look like a functional constitution class on the surface.

The ship was new. He was tearing out systems and components, not just a computer/interface upgrade.

I’m working off the prevailing theory that it was an older Connie renamed, and that tearing out huge chunks of the system was part of the upgrade!

When the bridge on the A was briefly shown at the end of ST:IV, it was buttons and sliders.

Yup! Then by the beginning of V it had been updated to LCARS and the whole thing was a clusterfuck.

Which is why you don't leave expensive sets outside, even if the weather says it'll be good!

“Sorry Scotty, we left the Enterprise outside Spacedock overnight and the paint got ruined”

"Why is the Enterprise up on cinderblocks?!"

Can't have shit in LA.

Which is why they went back to buttons and sliders in VI.

Exactly!

”’Let’s see what she’s got’, said the captain. And we found out, didn’t we?” -Scotty

No, it actually wasn't. All touchscreen. https://wrathofdhanprops.blogspot.com/2018/06/okudagrams-part-4-seven-seconds-that.html

Ah, you are correct. It was touchscreens, but the bridge itself looked mostly like it did in ST:II, not the huge redesign seen in ST:V. I guess that's what threw me off, that a ship would leave spacedock and then have the entire bridge replaced.

Yeah. The same set was supposed to be used for Trek V, but the walls and consoles that were saved (after they converted it into the battle bridge for TNG) were left outside and during a severe rainstorm the tarps covering them came undone. The wood framing warped and the set pieces no longer fit together causing the crew and production designer Herman Zimmerman to come up with a new design last minute for Trek V. The only things left from the original were the two door alcoves, the helm console, the railings and the platforms. I liked that white look much better, as well.

Maybe the writers of the original series had some experience with actual Navy ships and had an idea of what engineering complains about.

Roddenberry was in the US Navy in WWII so you’re probably on to something there

Taps forehead.

US army air corps, NOT US Navy.

Were those screens *ever* called LCARS? I get that it makes sense for it to be that, but its just never named that. Also the Bozeman had it in 2278 so it wasn't exactly new by 2285/6/7/whatever.

>Scotty’s line being literal I take it as 100% literal - the Enterprise-A was put together by hyperintelligent monkeys, but on a Friday.

Tuesday. Everything is installed on Tuesday in the future.

They schedule all of the work around the tacos. 😋🌮

If tacos don't motivate people, nothing will.

u/underbloodredskies, when the taco truck comes.

Found Drax lol.

He must not have been standing still.

But he did have his boots on the couch.

I'm so old I thought that was a *Moonraker* reference.

Friday-built ship, suckers...

I do understand that point, as Scotty spent years tweaking the Enterprise no-suffix and having to start all over again with another ship. All valid arguments....

Overthinking it? I once created an entire spreadsheet to track the NCC numbers on all known ships so that I could possibly predict what the next ship would be numbered. Star Trek fans don't overthink things. We take pride in analyzing every data point in order to maximize its potential importance to the show.

The ship had a modern bridge and a TNG era engineering room. To me what Scotty said and these facts it's a newer ship.

Spock also mentioned the NEW brig design as "escape proof". It was a NEW ship.

Well a refit could have given the ship a new brig as well.

Everyone also seems to forget the Yorktown was contacted during VOYAGE HOME and it was already a refit.

I didnt mean THE Refit, i meant a normal refit that ships go through time to time where things are upgraded and/or replaced. Enterprise-D got some refits during its service life, as did the Enterprise-E.

I’ve always been curious about the previous brigs that were somehow *not* designed to be escape proof

Right it was clearly just a ship renamed. Not everything needs some big origin. I prefer that to some big origin story

Based on beta canon, it had been decommissioned and turned into a museum piece over a decade before The idea that the admiralty gave Kirk a museum ship because he insisted on a Constitution class really works for me given he stole the last one and then promptly blew it up.

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Joke's on them when a few years later that junker manages to sneak past their lines, bust out some prisoners from their prison planet, and then avenge their fallen Chancellor by going toe to toe with the most advanced ship in their fleet and besting General Chang at his own game.

I don't like the idea of renaming existing ships (so long as they aren't brand new). That said, the confusion will come from the issue that the ship was scheduled for decommission at the end of The Undiscovered Country. It would make no sense to decommission a ship after less than a decade, considering the original Enterprise flew for decades before being blown up. Only if the ship had significant previous history to suggest it was age related.

I still subscribe to the theory that the Khitomer Accords stipulated a reduction in "Heavy Cruisers," and since the Excelsiors were coming off the production lines, the Connies got the axe. Enterprise was simply the first to be retired as she had suffered severe damage during the battle with Chang, and a chunk of her command crew were retiring or moving to other assignments. This is why there is an overabundance of Excelsiors, Mirandas, and Oberths during the TNG era, as Mirandas (and later Constellations) were heavy cruisers under another title.

> This is why there is an overabundance of Excelsiors, Mirandas, and Oberths during the TNG era, as Mirandas (and later Constellations) were heavy cruisers under another title. If we classify them as light space trucks we don't have to regulate the warp plasma emissions!

>It would make no sense to decommission a ship after less than a decade, considering the original Enterprise flew for decades before being blown up. Only if the ship had significant previous history to suggest it was age related. If it had been built from spares and then rapidly superseded by a newer design - why not?

>If it had been built from spares and then rapidly superseded by a newer design - why not? The spares should have been like new in terms of condition, otherwise what's the point in keeping spares that are showing signs of deterioration? And similarly, we know they kept all sorts of older starships about. There's a constitution at Wolf 359, which must have been getting on 80 years old plus all the Mirandas and Excelsiors in the Dominion war. It's a new ship, maybe constructed from older parts. Even if it's not the newest or best in terms of technology. It could easily serve as a training vessel, a patrol vessel, or whatever role for decades. The only possibility is that the design or parts had significant issues only identified after ST4 that could not reasonably be fixed. Otherwise, it's a lot of effort to build, test, tune etc a ship for it to be taken out of operation in less than a decade. But if the ship had a history of service prior to being renamed the Enterprise, it could have been showing its age. It may have been parked there in dock for a while and this was a gesture to give Kirk something to do.

If you crashed your cherished 1999 Ford Mustang in 2014 and they said "we have some old Mustang Parts, we can build a brand new 1999 Mustang" and gave you a "brand new" 1999 Mustang, you probably still wouldn't drive it for another 15 years until 2029. Maybe after four or five years of wear you'd say "This thing doesn't have a phone charger or Carplay, it doesn't get nearly as good mileage as a 2020 car, there's no heated seats or satellite radio. The new ones have better traction control and adaptive AWD. Perhaps you want an electric vehicle these days. So at that point you decide "well, it was nice having my 1999 back, but it's time for a modern car". I can imagine Starfleet might progress its ships in the same way - 2286 - put out the 1701-A Constitution class, then 7 years later, for whatever reasons, technology is such that the ship is considered outdated and they'd rather put the crew of the ship on a more modern ship. Perhaps the damage from the Klingon attack was a catalyst - they felt it not worth the resources to repair the ship at that point. Perhaps with the Khitomer accord being signed was itself a catalyst for Starfleet feeling that it doesn't need as many ships in service.

It's not just the usage/wear on the components, it's also the supply chain needed to maintain it probably.

But then you wouldn't build them in the first place. Are Starfleet as bad at asset management as people in the 21st century You'd keep the spares to maintain the existing supply rather than adding additional ones.

Sure, just saying that as spares and hardware are consumed, you eventually need to make even more of them and who knows how hard that is if the last time folks made them was a decade or two earlier? So a new Connie has a great supply chain for parts. Replacements are being actively made when consumed because the folks who made them in the first place are still there and there's a demand. A 40 year old ship that's one of just a few left after decades of ships running into planets, being eaten by space amoeba, shot by supercomputers with phasers, running into other planets, being eaten by doomsday devices.... at some point the factories that made the spares have moved on because the fleet that uses them has gotten small and there's not enough demand. So they start to draw on the spare parts that were stockpiled and eventually those start running out. Now you've got to refit the ships with new replacements that can take the new model space filter or phase discriminator but how long will THAT mod last and is it worth it to keep updating the ship? Think about what a pain in the ass it was when the Horta ate that ancient reactor component, they had a heck of a time coming up with a replacement. Now imagine that happening every day across the ship. There's just a gradual tech debt that accumulates and has to be a point where it becomes less economical to keep a ship running than to decommission it to space museum and replace it with something newer that has a newer, resilient supply chain of its own.

It's mostly symbolic, of course, but you could take Kirk's log entry about the ship belonging to another crew literally and say that at the end of *VI*, only *Kirk* and his command crew were to be decommissioned, and the *A* would be given a new crew. (Obviously, again, symbolically, this is not what happens in *Generations* but...)

I definitely prefer this to the *Yorktown* theory. Renaming ships that have a history isn’t something that I like.

Well i dont like the rechristening idea either, but we have seen Starfleet do it before (ie; Sao Paulo and Titan-A).

As far as I remember from the episode, the Sao Paulo was a brand new Defiant-class, so while it had (probably) been christened, it hadn't done anything "historically" speaking that would make a re-christening problematic. I seem to even recall a line from O'brien that implied it was in a similar state to how the OG Defiant was when Sisko first brought it to DS9 - in need of all of the modifications he made that actually made it a workable craft. This (might) imply that it hadn't even been through a shakedown cruise, which is highly likely given how late in the war it was. Fresh off the line with the paint still wet.

I think you are correct. Memory Beta said the ship was launched from Utopia Planitia shipyards in 2375, which is the same year it was turned over to Sisko in Dogs of War.

Adrift but salvegable

According to Matalas, the Titan-A is being replaced by a more advanced Titan-B, so the renaming thing worked out for them. I wouldn't be surprised if the successor class to the Odyssey is on the drawing board but won't be ready for many years, so the Enterprise-G is a stopgap model until a more advanced H can be commissioned.

Yeah given that Shaw said some of the Titan-A's components were 20 years old, i dont see it having a much longer service life.

I can't imagine a starship only having a twenty year service life. They’re Corollas from 2003 still on the road.

Well the Enterprise-F was only in service 15 years. But i get what you are saying, especially when Starfleet can have an 80 year old USS Lakota giving Sisko's Defiant some bruises....

Although the Excelsior-class is 90 years old at the time of the Dominion War, that doesn't mean each individual ship of the class was built then and served for that long. The OG *Excelsior* NCC-2000 was retired in 2320 after \~30 years in service and replaced by the NCC-21445 *Excelsior* (in service as late as **TNG** Season 7), which was then replaced by the NCC-42037 *Excelsior* (an Excelsior II-class ship, destroyed in **Picard**). The *Lakota*'s number (NCC-42768) is a bit anomalous in that regard (it's not newer than the third *Excelsior*!), but it suggests it was very new at the time it appeared.

I was just using it as an example that older classes of ships can still perform critical duties for Starfleet without having to be discarded for the newest bestest ship that comes along. I still dont know why Starfleet would retire 100-year rated spaceframe Galaxys that have tons of onboard resources that rival even the Sovereign class when they could still do all sorts of missions. Recolonization, evac and transport would be key ones....

I think the Galaxies that were in service saw heavy action as battleships in the Dominion war, taking heavy damage on multiple occasions. I'm sure Starfleet decided that it wasn't worth the resources to rebuild these ships from scratch when they had brand new designs ready to go that were more efficient in their intended roles. The Galaxy seems to be a big cruise ship in space and a pretty expensive generalist ship. I think Starfleet realized they were flying the equivalent of a 747 into every single spaceport when a little Cessna will do.

It depends what they do. Kirk's OG *Enterprise* lasted 40 years, but that included almost a complete base-up rebuild with the refit to extend (double?) its lifespan. It was considered antiquated after 40 years in service and 15 years after its refit and ready to be retired. Apart from the *Enterprise*\-B, which lasted \~30-40 years as well, all of the other *Enterprise*s had shortish lifespans: 7 years (A), \~12 years (C), 8 years (D), 13 years (E) and 15 years (F). That may extend to other ships, as we're also on the third *Voyager* in 30 years despite the original one being intact. Matalas suggested it's not the years on the clock but how much of a pounding they take in that time through battles, travels through subspace distortions, being flung across the galaxy (and back) by Q, the warp core almost breaching six times etc.

If the SNW Enterprise is any indication, that ship has taken huge beatings even before being given to Kirk and company. The spaceframe warranty has expired long ago.

It doesn't get mentioned much and it's not canon, but the Next Generation tech manual points out that the Galaxy class was intended to remain in service for around 100 years. Sorta like how the Excelsior class ended up. . I like seeing new designs and there's always going to be attrition, but I've got to think that Starfleet vessels last longer than my old Honda Accord (or current naval vessels like the CVN-65 Enterprise that was in service for 51 years).

I think they are built to last that long under normal conditions, but since every ship we see are the hero ships, they definitely don't serve under benign conditions. Imagine how long your Honda would last if every 2 or 3 months you wind up in a high speed police chase, get critters eating the wiring, and purposely crashed into another car.

The Tech Manual is not canon? I thought it used to be as it was written by Rick Sternbach. Hmmm

I'm not entirely sure, but I would lean toward it not being canon. Canon is basically anything that's depicted on screen. Tie-in material like the books usually aren't canon. The tech manual is interesting, given it was written by Sternbach and Okuda. In the intro, they write that it can be viewed as official, but the viewers' imaginations and whatever future writers contribute are valid as well. No one says Galaxy class ships can't last 100 years, but "Picard" really made it sound like the Galaxy ships were considered passe.

Those aren't incompatible ideas, though. If Starfleet had intended them to last 100 years, but their operational needs and priorities shifted in that time, they could still be decommissioned.

That's fair, especially since one could argue the Galaxy spaceframe wasn't built to accommodate the warp geometry changes needed to mitigate any damage to subspace as depicted in TNG: "Force of Nature". However, after the Dominion War, the attack on Mars and myriad other incidents, I would think Starfleet needs all the ships it can get, especially if they're ships designed to last a century. Part of my sentiment is that some things are explained off-screen in non-canon ways but appear nonsensical on-screen. For example, taking the Titan and turning it into the Titan-A after a relatively short amount of time isn't really explained on screen, but apparently an Instagram post indicated the earlier Titan suffered some extensive damage prompting the refit.

My annoyance at renaming the *Titan-A* is a major reason for my comment. It didn’t seem like the *São Paulo* had much of a history.

FSVO “before” :)

Sao Paulo was brand new out of the construction yard, though. She didn’t have an established history or crew unlike the Titan-A.

But at least Sao Paulo was brand new, wasn't it?

Especially when you consider that if she is the Yorktown, her previous crew may well have suffocated to death during the Whale Probe incident. I don't think a makeshift solar sail is going to generate enough power to keep 400 crew breathing, even if they'd all been tranquillised to take shallower breaths.

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The Whale Probe dampened all power sources, even small ones on board the shuttles in Spacedock and so on. I bet even backup oxygen on Starfleet ships is probably regulated by tiny computers. They probably never anticipated a dampening field that powerful was possible.

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If an EMP gets through your shields you just lost your antimatter containment. Not really much more you need to worry about if that happens. If you somehow survive, but don't have power for your engines or communications then without a rescue ship you're dying in space anyway, suffocating from CO poisoning isn't a bad way to go out peacefully in that situation. Starfleet never really planned for everything in Earth Orbit going dark at once.

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Maybe so. I'm only conjecturing here. But I do see an over-reliance on technology by Starfleet. Remember when Pulaski had to show the rest of the medical staff how to make a splint?

"They're letting us have a Constitution Class ship, but they said we have to "clean it out", whatever that means."

They weren't out of power for all that long from their perspective though. Adm Cartwright and PotUFP were speaking with Yorktown's Captain, who describes the solar sail work. Then we cut back to Vulcan, where HMS Bounty is preparing for departure. Ten minutes or so to get into space, Sulu reports an hour and a half to get to Earth. They discover the disaster en route, Spock deduces the whale song, and they contact Cartwright to inform him of their time travel plan. The transmission cuts out, "Get him back, get him back!" Cartwright demands. Bounty slingshots around the sun and ends up in 1986. Fast forward to their return. We see Cartwright again, "Get him back, get him back!" as Bounty arrives back in the 23rd century. Probe drains the BoP of power, it crashes into San Francisco bay, releases the whales. Probe and whales exchange DMs, probe restores power to everyone and leaves. The whole sequence, from Yorktown's pov, is about two hours from the time they report the solar sail experiment to Starfleet to the probe leaving. The only real question mark is how far from Earth Yorktown is. It can't be that far, since the probe is travelling at sublight speeds. Even if Yorktown had been without power for days and were on their last gasp with the solar sail, Saratoga at Earth Spacedock had its power restored and could warp to Yorktown in a matter of minutes to render aid. All of this to say, it's unlikely that the crew of Yorktown suffocated and died, then their ship was rechristened Enterprise and handed to Kirk (this would be a pretty callous thing to do anyway). More likely that Ti-Ho was rechristened, or OP's theory of a ship being thrown together with spare parts. OP's theory is supported by Scotty's difficulties as well, not even the 'new ship' comment (which I tend to interpret as 'new to us' not 'brand new'). TL;DR - Yorktown's crew probably survived, 1701-A isn't that ship.

Another thing to potentially consider is that Tuvok said that his dad served on the *Yorktown* at the time of *TUC* (though it could’ve been another *Yorktown*).

Yeah, in universe, TUD takes place 7-8 years after TVH. Perhaps they felt enough time had passed to commission a new Yorktown by then.

We lack the information to say this is what happened, but I think renaming after a crew wipe out would also makes sense. Who wants to fly on a ship that killed its entire crew, even after the insides are hosed off? But rename it and don't tell anyone? There you go.

Aside from the Yorktown ,It has been said The Enterprise A was a new build named USS TIHO she did not do well on her Shake down as a lot of her Tech was experimental and untested .After the loss of the 1701 Tiho was renamed Enterprise A .

“What should we do with this experimental, untested, unstable ship that failed its shakedown testing?” “Give it to Scotty, he’ll figure it out.”

For some reason I just love the idea of someone looking at a ship design they had trouble making work and going "give it to Scotty/La Forge/ O'Brian. They'll figure something out."

Hate to say it, but that is sometimes how it works in real life. We joke that we send our jets on deployment to get them fixed in my field.

There’s always multiple ways of solving issues, but often engineers don’t have the right vantage point / experience for understanding differences between trade offs. Ship to field finds best trade off for real-world conditions.

Well, it worked 😁

Sort of like Sisko giving O'brien a couple weeks to iron out all the bugs in the Defiant. A ship that had previously almost torn itself apart during shakedown.

This is what I remember the background given back when the movie came out.

The USS Tiho is the correct answer, per the reference book "Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise" which far too few Trekkers these days have read, imho. :)

That one isn't even Beta Canon, it's based on the FASA Star Trek RPG sources, same as "Worlds of the Federation". Still a cool read, though. I think all the stuff based on that timeline is out of print.

None of the 2270 Consitutions are newly built ships. They are all refit hulls. Keep in mind that Starfleet wanted to completely sunlight the entire class. They wanted to fully invest in the Excelsior's mass production. The Shang Ri-la class was on the drawing board as well it'd go into production itself by 2280.

> The Shang Ri-la class was on the drawing board as well it'd go into production itself by 2280. This ship didn't exist in the 1980s movie lore. So I wouldn't take that as the intent of what's going on.

>None of the 2270 Consitutions I'm crappy with dates - what's the context here? Is this pre-TMP or post-TMP?

ToS starts in 2266. We only get to see 3 out of the 5 years Kirk is command of the ship. Queue 2270. The Consitution class gets a refit. A project that took a year. In comparison, the Consitution class got a previous refit back in 2264. That project took 2 years. Pike has his accident, and that's how Kirk gets the captaincy when the Enterprise is ready for service. (Strange New Worlds is set in 2259, and can only go to 2264 unless there's a retcon) TMP takes place in 2371.

Queue? Do you mean 'cue'?

Queue as in lining up for it turn. Not Spanish for what

Sorry, I don't understand how you're using it, then. I'm confused. It seems like you're saying "Cue 2270", as in "Let's cut now to the year 2270". Spanish for "what" is "que".

Actually had to Google to figure out which one would be correct, because "Queue 2270" could technically be correct if it was adding the year to a form of backlog. However, in the context, you're correct - "Cue" is the one they meant to use. As in an actor and their cues. From M-W.com: > Cue - 1: a signal (such as a word, phrase, or bit of stage business) to a performer to begin a specific speech or action (there's actually like four different meanings for the word "Cue". English...what a mess)

I had to look it up too, because I couldn't even explain it to myself at first. English is the worst language, I swear.

No. It means that English has a glorious wealth of vocabulary to use in our language. It's beautiful.

It's C H A O S

I've never seen it spelled cue 🤷‍♀️ your usage is odd to me.

They're actually right - you're dealing with a homonym. [Cue vs Queue](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/cue-vs-queue-what-is-the-difference#:~:text=Cue%20and%20Queue%20as%20verbs,they%20did%20not%20notice%20her.).

Maybe it's cultural preference then. I'm married to a Brit 😅

I'm a Brit, Cue is correct. You do something on cue, you cue something up, you join a queue :D

So, 'cue' is to call for an action, like a stage direction, and 'queue' is to line up or join a line. When you're saying "Cue 2270" or "Cue the tears" or something, you're calling for that action as though it's part of a play. They're very close in meaning (and they're homophones), I can see why it would be confusing.

Que?

For the TOS series and movies it's 300 years ahead. So 2270=1970. The date IRL at release generally matches the date in universe.

>its crew dispersed That's one way to describe removing the corpses

I just kind of assumed it was named Enterprise to fit with the naval tradition that the names of ships with distinguished actions are never retired; when one is destroyed or decommissioned, then the next new ship available is given the name regardless of what the ship was originally supposed to be named so the name is always in service. That's why there have been dozens of real-world ships named *Enterprise*. And, even in contemporary navies, they don't immediately retire one design and replace it with another. There's overlap and they could have had a Constitution refit coming out of the shipyards at the right time to accept the name *Enterprise*.

I'm gonna say it was an older ship that was rechristened. When we saw it at the end of Voyage Home and the beginning of Final Frontier, it had obviously gotten a new bridge module. There would have been little reason for Starfleet to do this if the ship was already brand new. As for Scotty's comment about the ship being "put together by monkeys", i assumed he meant the refit it received between the 2 movies (also explaining the new bridge).

>I'm gonna say it was an older ship that was rechristened. When we saw it at the end of Voyage Home and the beginning of Final Frontier, it had obviously gotten a new bridge module. There would have been little reason for Starfleet to do this if the ship was already brand new. I think this also supports the "spare parts" hypothesis - made from spare parts isn't quite the same as brand new.

> made from spare parts isn't quite the same as brand new. Tell that to the DeLorean Motor Company out of Texas, who has been building "new" DMC-12's from spare parts since the 90's 😁

Time works ... *differently* for DeLoreans.

It's a little different, in that there aren't DMC 13 or 14 with compatible looking parts. I imagine most of the components by then were mainly tested against other modern Miranda parts.

Well thats certainly true, we saw exactly that with the Enterprise-D resto being cobbled together from spare parts.

That was less spare parts and more just reattaching the stardrive and painting it to match the registry of the Enterprise D. I'm sure some of the Saucer was repaired with parts from the Syracuse as well.

Yeah, there's just some debate about LaForge's wording of "engines and nacelles" during Vox when he could have said "stardrive" or "secondary hull". Who knows. Maybe the USS Syracuse was trashed and he could only scavenge specific useful components before she was scrapped. Other parts could have come from anywhere he could get his hands on.....

It's kinda funny to think that Geordi took peices from every Galaxy in the fleet to restore his Enterprise, like he was scavenging the scrap yard for Mustang parts. I would think with the bunch left over from the Dominion War there would be enough spare parts around. Would also explain why it took 20 years.

Well Starfleet was phasing out all the Galaxys for whatever reason, prolly why we didnt see any in Picard. Even hearing Raffi's comment about a Galaxy Class being picked up on sensors at Jupiter and it being an old relic or something (i dont remember the exact quote)...

Something most of the comments are overlooking is that we see the Yorktown in TVH - it's the ship with the indian crewmember telling Starfleet Command that they're out of power and trying to rig up a solar sail. He's short of breath, implying life-support has failed. I always took that to mean the crew died. In order to give a ghost ship a better legacy, Starfleet swiftly cleared out the corpses, gave it a hasty systems refit and painted Enterprise on the hull.

The USS Yorktown NCC-1717 was already quite famous ship. It was also upgraded to Constitution-refit. Can't really rename a legend with another legend.

I think it might be a bit of a stretch to call the Yorktown a "legend". Maybe it was, but there's nothing to indicate that. Also, sailors are a notoriously superstitious bunch so I think Starfleet would have a big morale problem trying to assign a new crew to a ship where the previous crew all died. Renaming it would go a long way towards mitigating that problem. Yes that's irrational, but so is superstition.

I always presumed that the *Yorktown* was renamed *Enterprise A* for two reasons, one being that the *Enterprise* was destroyed and that there was an immediate need for a still active *Enterprise* in the fleet to deal with the threat of the Klingons as the name carries a lot weight by this point and they couldn't wait for construction to finish on a new ship. Secondly, it also freed up the name *Yorktown* for a new Excelsior class ship that was under construction. This is why in 2293 the *Enterprise A* was retired in favor of the brand new Excelsior class *Enterprise B* to be launched and commissioned that same year. The *Enterprise A* was just a stop gap until Excelsior production picked up and a newer ship could be constructed. I base all this head cannon the US Navy, where ships are renamed during construction and during commission to either free up names or reuse names that have significance. The prime example of ship changing names during service is the USS *New York* (ACR-2), which was renamed twice in it's lifetime. First it was renamed to USS *Saratoga* (ACR-2), to free up the name for the new battleship USS *New York* (BB-34), the lead ship of her class which served with distinction during WWII. The next renaming was to USS *Rochester* (ACR-2) to free up the name for a shiny new Lexington class battlecruiser later turned aircraft carrier USS *Saratoga* (CC-3/CV-3), which also served with distinction in WWII. Renaming during construction was also common during WWII. Aircraft Carriers were a big part of this. Four Essex class carriers were renamed for sunken carriers lost early in the Pacific War (*Yorktown*, *Hornet*, *Lexington* and *Wasp*). This also had the distinction of screwing with Japanese intelligence, as they believed these carriers to be sunk (whether that's completely true or not idk). A fifth Essex class was renamed *Leyte* after construction started to commemorate the battle of Leyte Gulf.

Much like the rebuilt Enterprise-D, the Yorktown was the sacrificial lamb that gave us the Enterprise-A. The chassis had to come from somewhere. Your theory doesn't preclude the use of the Yorktown, necessarily, either.

I've always preferred the Ti-Ho explanation, largely because I read it when young and it imprinted on me. According to the semi-canonical *Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise*, the ship was originally the U.S.S. Ti-ho, an *Enterprise*\-class ship built from the keel up to test transwarp drive alongside the *Excelsior*. When transwarp failed, and Starfleet decided it would give Kirk a new Enterprise, they rechristened the *Ti-Ho* and put it into full service. Unfortunately for me, *Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise* lost it's canon status years back (2002), and is now regarded as apocrypha.

Also the Enterprise a was in such shabby condition throughout the entire Star Trek V movie. That certainly lends Credence to your theory

There is precedent in many navy histories for stopping production of a hull part way through and mothballing it. Then continuing construction years later.

That makes sense!

Renaming an existing ship never sat well with me. Unless it was a brand new ship about to roll off the production line and was rechristened at the last minute. Seems disrespectful to an existing ship and it’s crew’s legacy. That aspect of “Picard” was my least favorite part of an otherwise fantastic season, IMO.

My take is similar, with the twist that it was made of a combination of stored and modern parts. It probably is more similar to a TVH era Miranda than any other Constitution was.

I like this take - especially as refit Constitutions and Mirandas are my favourite ships in all SF (with the exceptions maybe of the ISD and the pre-2014 TIE Defender). Watching the Wrath of Khan was a truly formative experience to a young SF fan.

I thought it was canon that it was another ship that was about to launch that was quickly renamed.... EDIT: Ok some quick searching says that Roddenberry claimed it was originally going to be named Yorktown, and then got quickly renamed Enterprise, but obviously this isn't any canon.

The Yorktown had just finished its 18 month refit like the 1701. It had no command crew as they got reassigned during the refit.

Wasn't the Yorktown seen earlier on in the movie with Captain [Vijay Amritraj](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijay_Amritraj) about to rig a solar sail?

It was the Yorktown setting the solar sail but it was not seen just the communication. It was the Miranda class Saratoga that was shut down when the whale probe passed by. Still could have been the newly refitted Yorktown renamed Enterprise once the whale probe left. Rethinking my theory and rather macabre thinking. Adding that it was the Yorktown that did the solar sail but it did not work and the whole crew died. They had to rename it something to give it a new lease on life after that event.

That would certainly explain why it had so much trouble in Star Trek V. A renamed ship would've had a shakedown by then

I'm a long time Trekkie and for years all I had to sate my Trek Starship hunger was fan-made tech manuals of varying quality such as Jackills, Ships of the Star Fleet, Starfleet Dynamics, and Starfleet Prototype, and licensed tech manuals like the classic Franz Joseph Star Fleet Technical Manual, Mister Scott's Guide to the Enterprise. and the TNG Technical Manual. As well as the novels telling new Trek stories through the 80s when there was no televised Trek. As such I am very heavily invested in TOS & TMP-era ship design and lineage, and in "preserving" the Fleet listing. Reminder that we also have from VOY: Flashback a U.S.S. Yorktown that Tuvok's parents are serving on while he's on Excelsior (i.e. 2292/3). I go for the Enterprise-A being the final new-build Constitution-class, completed in 2286, and was originally named the Ti-Ho but was renamed on the loss of the Enterprise. This is from Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, but Ships of the Star Fleet also has heavy cruiser construction continuing. Bear in mind the Yorktown herself is the same age as the Enterprise and would have the same bridge, not the fancy new one the -A has. (I know, I know, bridge *module*. Shh) And also that the Excelsior is still an experimental ship in 2285 and only loses her NX in 2290 so the technology is not proven for the new design yet, so a class is perhaps only just under construction at this time. The Constitution is a tried and tested design that's only 40 years old. The US is still building F-16s and F-15s, which first flew in the 1970s! It's my take that by the 2280s Starfleet has a hundred Constitutions in service, and.while the Enterprise-A was to be decommissioned in 2293, the class still served into the 2330s as front-line starships.

Yep. NEW ship, thrown together in a hurry to honor Kirk & crew. She was literally shiny white & new at the end of THE VOYAGE HOME.

My guess was that it that the Enterprise A was already scheduled to be constructed, but hadn't yet got a name.

I always just assumed they were still building upgraded Constitutions, it was a proven design, I mean they have been known to build a class for many decades. And I assumed this one was almost ready when the OG was destroyed, and names aren't finalized til launch. Am I *under* thinking it?

I like your origin. Similarly with the Enterprise-D resurrection, I wish Commodore La Forge hadn't said the secondary hull and nacelles had all come from the *Syracuse* \- if he'd gathered them from three separate sources it would been more respectful to that other ship's legacy.

During World War II when a capital ship was sunk the U.S. would rename one that was nearly completed after the sunken ship to confuse Axis forces.

The Yorktown's crew wasn't dispersed, they were all dead after their life support failed due to the probe.

I do like the idea, but I’m not sure it would work lore wise. I don’t think they’d have a spare saucer section or secondary hull sitting around and I don’t think they could build one fast enough to explain the “A”’s appearance. Maybe combining the 2 ideas? USS Yorktown was completely fried from the probe worse than other ships and had to be stripped to the bulkheads and rebuilt. Spare parts and planned upgrades were used to rapidly rebuild and resulted in essentially a new ship (explaining the problems seen in V). Old crew were offered to be reassigned after such a traumatic ordeal of the near death experiences of being stranded on a dead ship. Command staff/senior officers got promoted and being a survivor of the Yorktown was viewed as an impressive mark on your resume. **edit** as for the renaming, a quick look on Memory Alpha shows there is a USS Yorktown in service during TNG so they did reuse the name. So what about the idea that the 2nd Excelsior class became the Yorktown so they had an excuse to rename the constitution class. If the one from TNG is the same is irrelevant for this idea.

I assumed that there are always ships under construction, and the naming decision is made immediately prior to launch. So, the Enterprise - G was not actually the Titan renamed, rather a new ship of the same class.

The Enterprise-A being the renamed USS Ti-Ho was the story I always remembered. I think it was in Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise.

If it was the damaged yorktown why did it have a new bridge and engineering room like that? Wouldn't it look like the original enterprise?

Isn’t it bad luck to change the name of ship? I thought that was generally something that just isn’t done

Oh no! Another Enterprise!?!?

According to "Star Treks Mt Scotts guide to the enterptise" written by Mr scott himself actually released in 1987. Page 114 of the book states The Enterprise NCC1701-A is a re-christened USS Ti-Ho the last of the constiution class ships to under go the reift process. She was on a shake down cruise when the "whale song" crisis happened. She was returned to earth and re-christened after that crisis. Edit: spelling

In an episode of TOS (I forget which) there was a chart on a wall behind an admiral or commodore which listed the names and registry numbers of the Constitution class ships. (There are only 12 like it in the fleet).

It always seemed to me that 12 ships was an awfully small fleet with which to both protect the worlds of the Federation and explore strange new worlds at the same time. Maybe Starfleet had several fleets, each with different remits?

There may have been loads of other ships that were different.

Mirandas, Soyuz, Constellations, Oberths, and probably a bunch of beta canon ships we never saw on screen.