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

Alongside the DeLorean from Back to the Future and the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, the refit USS Enterprise – and her identical successor the USS Enterprise-A – is one of the most iconic vehicles from 1980s cinema.

Debuting in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the refit USS Enterprise served The Original Series cast in six films until the Enterprise-A's decommissioning in 1990's Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. But the ship dates back even before the highly successful movie series, originally conceived for the aborted Star Trek sequel series, Phase II.

Designed by original Enterprise creator Matt Jefferies along with Mike Minor, Joe Jennings, and Andrew Probert, the refit Constitution-class USS Enterprise (slash Enterprise-A) incorporated subtle Art Deco elements, copious amounts of detail, and an elaborate lighting scheme designed by Douglas Trumball – a major collaborative effort worth every second of the glorious six minute introductory dry dock sequence.

But what mysteries does her pearlescent hull contain?

With six movies and 30 years of hindsight to draw from, we're here to tell you every secret of the refit Enterprise and Enterprise-A that we found out there, that-away.

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.