Encyclopedia
The
USS Enterprise is a fictional
starship in the television series
, the
USS Enterprise, was the ship in the original NBC TV series
, which chronicled the vessel's most famous assignment, a five-year mission of exploration and diplomacy under Captain
James T. Kirk's command. It is the first Federation starship to bear the name
Enterprise, and possibly the most famous spaceship in history .
The
Enterprise was a
Constitution-class heavy cruiser that was commissioned in 2245.
During the 1966-1969 run of the show, the ship's dedication plaque listed it as "Starship Class", since the show's creators originally intended ships of the
Enterprises configuration to be "Starship Class" ships . However, the episode later officially revealed that the ship was a
Constitution class starship .
The particular combination of letters and numbers for the ship's registry, NCC-1701, was chosen because it would be easily readable at a glance by television viewers. "NCC" was chosen by analogy to modern civil aircraft identification codes.
Fictional history
The first officially known commanding officer of the
Enterprise was Christopher Pike, who served as captain for more than a decade prior to Kirk's fabled voyages.
revealed a previous captain, Robert April, however as
TAS was not considered canon by
Gene Roddenberry or
Paramount Pictures, owners of the Trek franchise, April's tenure as captain remains a matter of fanon, not canon, until a future live-action film or TV series establishes otherwise.
The second captain of the Enterprise was Captain Christopher Pike which was chronicled in the original pilot episode "The Cage" and the later episode "
The Menagerie". A Vulcan science officer, Mr. Spock, came to serve on the Enterprise under Captain Pike's command.
The third captain of this ship was Captain James Tiberius Kirk. It should be noted that although Tiberius has been established as Kirk's middle name, the second pilot episode "
Where No Man Has Gone Before" lists his name as James R. Kirk on a tombstone that is created for him by his powerful nemesis and former friend, Lt. Commander Gary Mitchell .
Following Kirk's five-year mission, as explained in the 1979 film
, the
Enterprise was out of service for two-and-a-half-years, undergoing an extensive rebuild and upgrade while in dry-dock orbiting Earth under the command of Willard Decker. When it was recalled to service prematurely in order to deal with the
V'ger threat, Kirk, now an admiral, took command of the vessel from Decker who subsequently disappeared with V'ger.
It is a commonly held belief among fans that, following the events of
Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Admiral/Captain Kirk commanded a second mission , and a number of novels and reference works have assumed this. However, official canon has never indicated that a second mission occurred. All that is known is approximately 5-9 years after the V'ger incident, the
Enterprise was under the command of Captain Spock and being used as a training vessel.
In
,
Khan Noonien Singh stole the
U.S.S. Reliant and used her to disable the
Enterprise. The ship had been on a training mission under the command of Captain Spock. Kirk, who once again took command of the NCC-1701 at the urging of Spock, employed a strategy to equally disable the
Reliant. Khan planned to use a weapon called Genesis to destroy the
Reliant and the
Enterprise, but the
Enterprise and her crew were able to survive, partly because of the self-sacrifice of
Mr. Spock. The vessel, heavily damaged and with a skeleton crew, limped back to Earth.
In
, which immediately followed
Khan, Starfleet decided to scrap the ship, thinking that the age of the ship wouldn't make a repair worthwhile. Nevertheless, the command crew stole the ship and took it to the Genesis planet, to bring Spock's body back to
Vulcan. At the Genesis planet, the
Enterprise was attacked by a
Klingon Bird Of Prey under the command of Commander Kruge. Despite being able to inflict some damage on the Klingons, the control systems of the
Enterprise began to fail, and a torpedo from the Klingons disabled the ship completely. Faced with being captured by a Klingon boarding party or being killed, Kirk,
Chekov, and Scott set the ship to auto destruct. The primary hull was blown apart, and the secondary hull fell into the Genesis planet's atmosphere and was incinerated, taking with it all of the Klingons except for Commander Kruge and one officer, Maltz, who remained on the Bird Of Prey.
Following the destruction of the NCC-1701, Kirk and his officers were instrumental in saving Earth from a mysterious probe . As a reward, Kirk was given command of a new U.S.S.
Enterprise, a virtually identical vessel with the registry number NCC-1701-A. This began a long tradition of continuing the NCC-1701 registry number through successive generations of
Enterprise which in some timelines continues until at least the 26th century .
Filming miniatures
The original
Enterprise was designed by
Star Trek Art Director Walter M. "Matt" Jefferies. The first miniature built for the pilot episode "The Cage" measured approximately 3 feet long. It was unlit. It was modified during the course of the series to match the larger miniature and even appeared on set during "Requiem for Methuselah". The second miniature built for the second pilot "
Where No Man Has Gone Before") measures 11 feet 2 inches long and was built by Richard Datin The ports and running lights were internally illuminated except on the port side of the model which was unfinished. When the series was picked up and went into production, the model was altered. The alterations indluded the addition of translucent domes and blinking lights at the forward ends of the engine nacelles, smaller round domes at the stern end of the engine nacelles, a shorter bridge dome, and a smaller deflector/sensor dish. Save for re-used footage from the two pilot episodes, this was the appearance of the ship throughout the run of the series. The larger model, restored by Ed Miarecki in 1992, is currently in a display case on the lower level of the gift shop of the
National Air and Space Museum in
Washington, D.C. The smaller model was presented to Gene Roddenberry after the series was cancelled. It was later loaned to someone who did not return it and its present status is unknown.
Another model of the original
Enterprise seen on screen was Greg Jein's, built for the episode "Trials and Tribble-ations." Jein's model was built to be exactly half the size of the larger of the two original models, and has since appeared in the 1998
Star Trek wall calendar . In addition, a
CGI model of the ship made a brief cameo at the very end of the final episode of .
The
Enterprise as it appears in the first three
Star Trek films was designed by Mike Minor, Joe Jennings, Andrew Probert, Douglas Trumbull, and Harold Michaelson, all based on conceptual sketches done by Matt Jeffries for the never-filmed TV series. It is approximately 5 feet long.
For the "Director's Cut"
DVD release of , a highly-detailed accurate CGI model of the ship was built to add footage as envisioned by director
Robert Wise during the original 1970's filming, but never shot because of budget and time constraints. This CGI model can be seen most notably at the end of the "wormhole" sequence, when the "Ilia Probe" stops outside the hull of the bridge before entering, and just prior to the "V'Ger Bridge" scene, where V'Ger creates a landbridge between its command center and the saucer section of the Enterprise.
Trivia
- The NCC-1701 may or may not have had a bowling alley for the recreational use of its crew. Such a feature is mentioned by Lt. Riley in the first season episode "The Naked Time" though it's hard to tell if this was intended a joke since Riley was under the influence of an alien virus at the time. In 1973, an officially licensed set of of the ship, drawn by Franz Joseph, was published, and a bowling alley was indeed included on the plans. Whether this makes the bowling alley canonical or not is a matter of debate.
- The age of the vessel at the time of its destruction has never been firmly established, although there have been some non-canon and semi-canon conjectures. The first on-screen reference to the age of the ship occurs on ; just prior to its destruction when the ship is said to be 20 years old which is given as Starfleet's rationale for scrapping the vessel. This, however, is clearly erroneous since the film takes place roughly 15 years after the events of the original series episode "Space Seed", and it is known that Christopher Pike commanded the vessel for at least a decade prior to Kirk taking command. And this does not take into account the conjectured command of Robert April. It can be safely speculated that the age of the NCC-1701 at the time of its destruction was closer to 40 years, a fact later confirmed by the episode "In a Mirror, Darkly" during which a computer screen displays the commissioning year for the NCC-1701 as 2245. It may be that "20 years old" referred, in round terms, to the time since the ship's last overhaul and refit after Captain Pike's mission .
- Space Shuttle Enterprise is named after the spaceship Enterprise.
- Before the era of the Federation & the NCC-1701, the first deep-space starship named Enterprise was the smaller, warp-5 capable NX-01 of the 2150s.
- According to The Making of Star Trek, by Stephen Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry, the bridge design of the NCC-1701 was once considered for use by the real-life United States Navy, due to the efficiency of its style and layout. The Navy has acknowledged in recent years that the design for the bridge layout of its Aegis-class destroyers was influenced heavily by certain design elements of the Enterprise bridge.
- The Enterprise makes a brief appearance at the end of pilot miniseries to the new Battlestar Galactica is a franchise of American science fiction [i] film [i]s and television series [i] ...
. The ship appears in the background of a shot featuring the rag tag fleet in the upper right of the scene. The reuse of the shot as stock footage for the series has led to the Enterprise appearing in many Galactica episodes. The presence of the ship is an in-joke on producer Ronald D. Moore, who previously worked as a writer on , and . - In a similar brief appearance, an AMT model of the Enterprise appeared as one of the derelict ships in the "Spider's Web Graveyard" in the episode Dragon's Domain, along with the TARDIS from Doctor Who. Although filmed, these scenes were cut from the aired version of the episode. Pieces of the Enterprise model kit were used as "kitbashing" parts for many of the miniatures used in , most notably as the underside of a landing pad on the Centuri Space Dock in the episode Breakaway.
- The Enterprise can be very briefly glimpsed among some floating space junk in the film Heavy Metal.
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