Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 3x10 - "The Stars at Night"

[Tosk]

Why would they retire the Enterprise-A if the entire class weren't being retired?

They weren't retiring the ship.

Kirk's final log entry:

"This ship, and her history will shortly become the care of another crew."

Edit: Although Star Trek Generations screws that up, and makes it explicit that the A was retired. The B was launched the same year as the assassination attempt on the President.

I stand corrected...by myself.

 

[cooleddie74]

To be fair, Uhura does say they've been given orders to return home to be decommissioned. The Enterprise-A wasn't getting a new Captain and crew. Kirk's "another crew" is a reference to those who will serve aboard the 1701-A's successor, the next Enterprise to be launched. The legacy of Kirk's ship and crew will be carried forward by others on a namesake vessel.

 

[Gilora]

But it’s famous and important?
Most of the other places from the ep are total unknowns on an international level.

The ships were named after actual municipalities. Hollywood is not one of those.

That this is unknown by non-Americans, and even non-Californians is irrelevant. All the ships were named for actual municipalities. Kudos to the writers for knowing the difference between cities and regions of cities.

 

[jackoverfull]

In the absence of any indication that it was a new ship, it makes more sense to assume that the Enterprise-A was a rechristened Constitution class of comparable age to the 1701.

there is no evidence either way.

 

[Starkers]

To be fair, Uhura does say they've been given orders to return home to be decommissioned. The Enterprise-A wasn't getting a new Captain and crew. Kirk's "another crew" is a reference to those who will serve aboard the 1701-A's successor, the next Enterprise to be launched. The legacy of Kirk's ship and crew will be carried forward by others on a namesake vessel.

That was always my reading of it, especially with the shot of Enterprise and Excelsior side by side at the end, and the implicit reference to TNG with Colonel Worf.

there is no evidence either way.

I remember reading somewhere that Ent-A was originally the Yorktown? I can't for the life of me remember where I got that from though!

 

[Stuart Wilson]

Why would they retire the Enterprise-A if the entire class weren't being retired?

I mean, sure, it's a work of fiction and anything could be established if later writers wanted to. But nothing about the events of TUC make sense unless the entire Constitution class was being retired.

There is no dialog or evidence that suggests the entire class is being retired. As others have pointed out, we have seen very little of Starfleet in the decades after TUC to know what ships were being used.
To take your first question the answer is that retiring an entire class at the same time is a bad way to operate. in the real world ship classes are ideally built over a long period, this allows a crossover period where one class is entering service with the usual teething problems, resources issues (lack of spares etc) training of crew members and so on. It also provides steady work for the shipyards and allows for incremental improvements. Meanwhile the retiring class has vessels remaining in service to provide cover with a proven platform that both the service and the crews know how to operate and to use up spares. In a widely deployed force such as Starfleet is shown to be, you would also need distant bases to work up to having the knowledge and resources to adequately support a new class.
Also ships are usually retired when they have become old and components are wearing out. If a class is built over a long period then retirements would also be staggered as newer members of the class would reach the worn out stage later. USS Nimitz is planned to retire in 2025. at which point she will be 50 years old. Her sister George H W Bush will be 16 years old at that point. I don't think the USN is planning to retire her at the same time. The only reason to retire a class at the same time would be if there was either a major obsolescence issue (moving to a new fuel, retiring the main weapons system/sensors) or if the class proved a failure (witness the planned retirement of the first nine? Freedom class LCS). The Constitution class are definitely not failures as a design, whilst the long service of the Mirandas which seem to use similar components mean that the former explanation is unlikely to hold true.
In the real world the main reason classes are retired over a short period is because they were built over a short period, usually due to a major war. Even then, in many cases some ships remain in service much longer than other members of the same class (Essex class carriers, Sumner/Gearing class destroyers, Baltimore class cruisers) Particularly if some have been upgraded to a better, or more modern standard than others.

Stuart

 

[jackoverfull]

remember reading somewhere that Ent-A was originally the Yorktown? I can't for the life of me remember where I got that from though

it’s an old fan theory also supported by Roddenberry, but it’s not canon.

 

[The Wormhole]

I remember reading somewhere that Ent-A was originally the Yorktown? I can't for the life of me remember where I got that from though!

Off hand, the first official source I remember seeing this was the old TNG video game for the Sega Genesis. In the game, you can access the Enterprise's bridge computers and read up on all sorts of things, including the histories of the other Enterprises. It's there they say the Enterprise A was a renamed Yorktown.

So, the idea does, or did, have some sort of official backing in behind the scenes circles, but as noted is not actually canon. Indeed, given a ship named Yorktown is in service at the start of TVH (a transmission from the ship's Captain is shown at Starfleet Command in which he talks about the ship being disabled by the Probe and that the crew are attempting to rig a solar sail) it would seem the decision to rename the Yorktown and give it a new registry would have been made extremely quickly, if that were the case.

 

[Farscape One]

Also likely a nod to the idea that the Yorktown was originally going to be the name of the ship when TOS was being developed.

 

[Stuart Wilson]

The Ent-A being the Yorktown was supported by the ST:TNG Technical Manual which I believe was considered canon at the time. IIRC however it had the registry listed as 1704 which was the Franz Joseph registry from the TOS tech manual and not 1717 as it is now usually listed as.

Stuart

 

[Tuskin38]

which I believe was considered canon at the time.

It wasn't.

AFAIK only books to be ever considered canon were Jeri Taylor's Voyager novels Mosaic and Pathways, but once she left Voyager's writing team, they were ignored.

 

[UssGlenn]

So, the idea does, or did, have some sort of official backing in behind the scenes circles, but as noted is not actually canon. Indeed, given a ship named Yorktown is in service at the start of TVH (a transmission from the ship's Captain is shown at Starfleet Command in which he talks about the ship being disabled by the Probe and that the crew are attempting to rig a solar sail) it would seem the decision to rename the Yorktown and give it a new registry would have been made extremely quickly, if that were the case.

I do have a morbid fascination with the idea that the solar sail didn't work, and the entire crew died. Thus Starfleet had an empty Constitution class "death ship" that no one wanted to serve on.

 

[IRW Bloodwing]

That's cool, but none of it is applicable to the fictional world of Star Trek.

Why wouldn't it? The concept is valid enough for any organization that operates fleets of ships.



I

 

[IRW Bloodwing]

there is no evidence either way.

There is no on-screen evidence. There is plenty of behind the scenes evidence, namely the statements by production personnel to the effect that she was another ship that was renamed.

 

[IRW Bloodwing]

I remember reading somewhere that Ent-A was originally the Yorktown? I can't for the life of me remember where I got that from though!

According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia (4th ed., vol. 2, p. 509), "Roddenberry reportedly suggested the second USS Enterprise-A, launched at the end of Star Trek IV, had previously been named USS Yorktown since it seemed unlikely that Starfleet could have built a new Enterprise so quickly. If this was the case, the Yorktown may have made it safely back to Earth and been repaired and renamed, or perhaps there was a newer, replacement Yorktown already under construction at the time of the probe crisis." The latter scenario could be supported by dialogue from Star Trek V where the Enterprise is described as a "new ship" by Scotty, whereas the former scenario serves as a convenient rationale for the difficulties Scotty had of getting the apparently recently refitted ship (therefore also fitting his "new ship" remark, akin to a similar remark Will Decker had already made on the refit-Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture) back in operational order after the debilitating effects the Whale Probe had inflicted on it.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(23rd_century)#Background_information

 

[IRW Bloodwing]

To take your first question the answer is that retiring an entire class at the same time is a bad way to operate. in the real world ship classes are ideally built over a long period, this allows a crossover period where one class is entering service with the usual teething problems, resources issues (lack of spares etc) training of crew members and so on.
Stuart

99% of the time this is true, but it has happened a few times in naval history, notably in the first quarter of the 20th century when ship technology was advancing by leaps and bounds. Entire classes were technically obsolete before the first ship left the slipways.

Another instance where this happens is if a class as a whole has some sort of serious issue that is deemed unfixable, (such as what has happened with the US Navy's Littoral Combat Ship program), or the class becomes too expensive to build out (such as the Seawolf-class submarine).

It wasn't.

AFAIK only books to be ever considered canon were Jeri Taylor's Voyager novels Mosaic and Pathways, but once she left Voyager's writing team, they were ignored.

The TNG manual was never formally canonized in toto, but the writers used it as a technical reference, much the same way the older Franz Joseph maanual was used in the 70s to inform the dialogue for TMP.

 

[jackoverfull]

There is no on-screen evidence. There is plenty of behind the scenes evidence, namely the statements by production personnel to the effect that she was another ship that was renamed.

roddenberry had zero involvement with any of the movies after the first, he was hardly “production personnel”.

And in any case, there are plenty of *opinions* of production personnel that were later contradicted on screen.

 

[fireproof78]

It wasn't.

AFAIK only books to be ever considered canon were Jeri Taylor's Voyager novels Mosaic and Pathways, but once she left Voyager's writing team, they were ignored.

Which is understandable. I would not hold a writer to a book they may not have read.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Y'all must be talking about SNW, 'cause she didn't seem that enamored with "kinky human alien ****" in TOS.

She was a bit busy planning a divorce/murder.

 

[dswynne1]

My head-canon is that not every ship-class is automatically decommissioned. Some are still active as training vessels, or moved over to be helmed by civilians (like UESPA). And those ships that are mothballed are maintained as back-up vessels during a crisis (like the Dominion War). Some of the more famous vessels are placed in fleet museums. Only those vessels that are damaged beyond the cost to repair them are scrapped for parts or recycled.