"The"

[Dick_Valentine]

The. The the the the the the the. THE. THE THE THE THE THE THE THE!

I may be new to this bulletin board so I'm not naive enough to think this isn't a topic that hasn't been covered before, but when I watch Enterprise the thing that grates on me is when they refer to the ship doing things or when they tell other crew members to return to the ship without using the prefix "the"

Every time I hear "you should get back to Enterprise", "Enterprise is powering up" etc it makes me should "the" at the screen.
EVERY time, I'm shouting "THE Enterprise", which is an odd thing to shout and has got me a few curious looks in my time.

I've heard the excuses that it's actually naval traditions and yadda yadda yadda but I grew up on Trek hearing "The" before the names of the ships involved so for them to suddenly switch the "house style" for the final Trek series seemed bizarre and confusing.

PLEASE say this isn't just me....

 

[Skywalker]

They didn't use "the" in Voyager, either. Good thing, too, because "Welcome aboard the Voyager," or "Get back to the Voyager," would have sounded dumb.

I like the change. This is supposed to be a different era, after all.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I did notice it. It didn't bother me.

It started with Voyager, not Enterprise. Tom Paris called the ship "The Voyager" once in "Parallax", but from then on it was just "Voyager". Enterprise followed suit.

 

[Seven of Five]

For some reason I thought you were going to reference how many of the episodes begin with 'The,' and I would have been all, 'I KNOW!"



It's something I sort of noticed throughout the show's run, but I think it was a habit that was started on Voyager - they hardly ever to their ship as 'The Voyager. I think I remember somewhere it was decided by higher ups that just plain and simple 'Voyager' was a more pleasing sounding name, which I would agree with. And then I guess the tradition carried on with 'Enterprise.'

 

[ChristopherPike]

Yes, that's how all the other Star Trek shows spoke about their ships.

For Enterprise they decided to take their lead from NASA and their way of referring to Space Shuttles, space probes etc.

Trying to reflect something from the modern day, I suppose.

Never really bothered me.

 

[star]

I never noticed. But, honestly, when I've written fanfic for ENT, I've always included "the" when referencing the ship. It's intuitive (I think more from being a fan of TOS than anything).

 

[Dick_Valentine]

Funnily enough I agree that "The Voyager" sounds clunky but "Enterprise" without its "The" sounds equally as clunky to me.

I have dim memories of Uhura saying it this way in one of the Trek movies too (probably 5, as that's the one I've seen the least and with good reason ) but aside from that in all of Star Trek, all of THE Enterprises have been "The Enterprise"

I don't think it's a starfleet ship thing, it's an Enterprise thing, we all know how special those ships are supposed to be above and beyond anything else in the fleet.

Glad to say the new movie didn't continue this tradition too...

 

[iguana_tonante]

Archer's Enterprise wasn't yet "the" Enterprise. The legacy was not established yet.

Well, that's a good way to rationalize it.

 

[JiNX-01]

I have no issue with dropping "the" when referring to Enterprise.

 

[ChristopherPike]

To be honest, only Kirk should've been allowed to call it THE Enterprise.

As far as every other Starfleet crew is concerned, it's just a piece of machinery that gets them from A to B.

Kirk had an auto erotic fetish.

Gives a new meaning to Uhura saying: "It's gotta have a tail pipe, right?"

Picard felt more that way about the Stargazer.

Archer about the first ship to break Warp 2 - the NX-Beta perhaps, while his Enterprise is more or less home to his Father's creation and wrong on a 'part of the family' kinda level.


What I think happened in Enterprise, is how they switched THE to go in front of ship's number during conversations.

It's The - N X - OH - One.

The - N X - OH - Two.


Enterprise. Columbia. Just like: Endeavour. Discovery. Atlantis.

 

[SFRabid]

I never noticed it. But then, I don't visit THE Disney World, have lunch at THE Wendy's, leave work and head to THE home, or live in THE Kentucky.

 

[Dick_Valentine]

When used in other series, though, I always kinda assumed if they kept saying "I'm x from the Starship Enterprise" then any other time they were saying "The Enterprise" was shorthand for that.

No-one ever introduced themselves as "Hi, I'm x from Starship Enterprise"

 

[Captain Robert April]

Dropping "the" actually started with TMP ("Enterprise is the only Federation starship that stands in its way."), but even through TNG, they went back and forth on that.

 

[C.E. Evans]

There were a few times NX-01 was referred to as "the Enterprise," most notably in Dawn and Shadows of P'Jem, IIRC.

And naturally in TOS, NCC-1701 was commonly addressed simply as "Enterprise" when people were directly talking to the ship through their communicators (i.e., "Kirk to Enterprise").

And the only reason why "the Voyager" sounds funny (if not flatout wrong) is because the ship generally wasn't called that, so there's a kind of conditioning in place to hear it addressed only as "Voyager."

 

[Captain Robert April]

It's also vocally easier to say "the Enterprise" than "the Voyager", i.e., going into a vowel as opposed to going into a consonant, even one as soft as a "v".

 

[Tiberius]

The. The the the the the the the. THE. THE THE THE THE THE THE THE!

I may be new to this bulletin board so I'm not naive enough to think this isn't a topic that hasn't been covered before, but when I watch Enterprise the thing that grates on me is when they refer to the ship doing things or when they tell other crew members to return to the ship without using the prefix "the"

Every time I hear "you should get back to Enterprise", "Enterprise is powering up" etc it makes me should "the" at the screen.
EVERY time, I'm shouting "THE Enterprise", which is an odd thing to shout and has got me a few curious looks in my time.

I've heard the excuses that it's actually naval traditions and yadda yadda yadda but I grew up on Trek hearing "The" before the names of the ships involved so for them to suddenly switch the "house style" for the final Trek series seemed bizarre and confusing.

PLEASE say this isn't just me....

The Dick VAlentine has a point. The Brannon Braga and the Rick Berman should have called it The Enterprise.

Seriously, it's a proper name. There's no more reason to call the ship THE Enterprise than there is to say the president is THE Barack Obama.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Actually, they started it in TOS.

"Kirk to Enterprise."

When you hear "Captain Kirk to the Enterprise," you know something's wrong with him, he's been taken over by aliens, or whatever.

But back on point, I noticed what the OP is talking about too. There are certain contexts when "the" was used in TOS, but also some at least in which it was not used, and that was changed or gone against in later movies and series. I have the intuitive feel for when "the" is supposed to be used, and when not, according to the usage in TOS, as do many Trek fans I see, but I'd be hard pressed to explain that pattern in precise grammatical or semantic detail.

 

[RandyS]

I noticed it on both VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE, and did find it strange, but no stranger than on TNG when the crew referred to their Enterprise by name ALL THE TIME, even when they were aboard her. THAT was really strange.

Properly, the ships would be referred to with the "the" prefix first.

 

[Dick_Valentine]

There's also a chance there's a cultural thing at play here,
(I'm English and maybe "the's" are more common over here, I certainly raise an eyebrow during American news reports etc I hear an event being announced as taking place "Monday" instead of "On Monday" which is the way I'm used to hearing things)

As well as the fact I grew up with TNG and that's when "The" was seemingly standard.
The Defiant also got the same treatment. (And hearing The TOS era Defiant lose its "The" in the mirror episode eps sounded EVEN WORSE to my ears, if possible!)

You can maybe also chalk it up to merely different production crews or writers having their own unique take on things, its just as I said before, hearing it done one way for long then suddenly switched quite late on seemed to stand out and I was just wondering if there was a reason for it.
(Though I'm assuming we've maybe thought about it in greater depth in this thread than they ever did behind the scenes! )

 

[The_Baroness]

It doesn't say "THE Enterprise" on the hull. It says "Enterprise" (Well, U.S.S. Enterprise but still).

Therefore, Enterprise it's name. To call it "the" enterprise, is a 'description' for want of a better word, so it doesn't need to be called "The" Enterprise.