Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Enterprise A You Need To Know

10. Another Used Starship

Following the destruction of the refit Constitution-class USS Enterprise in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and the crew's time travel adventure in The One with the Whales, a new Enterprise was commissioned: The USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-A.

However, as established in Admiral Kirk's log in Star Trek IV, only three months elapsed between the Enterprise's self-destruction and the unveiling of her successor, far too little time to build a whole new ship from scratch. While it's possible the final scene in Star Trek IV took place some time after the rest of the events of the film, both fans and the producers have chosen to believe the new Enterprise wasn't actually all that new.

According to Gene Roddenberry himself, the Enterprise-A was in fact already in service under the name USS Yorktown. Unfortunately, this doesn't account for the fact that the Yorktown was also lost during the events of Star Trek IV, discounting that possibility. The non-canon tech manual, Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, gives the USS Ti-ho as the ship that was rechristened "Enterprise", a testbed for the new transwarp drive alongside the USS Excelsior.

A similar predicament in story logic would arise a decade later when Star Trek: First Contact introduced the Enterprise-E, presumed by writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga to have been an existing Sovereign-class ship before being given the honor of being called the Enterprise.