Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Kelvin Enterprise You Need To Know
3. A Short Life
Depending on how you look at it, either in spite of or because of the upgrades she received after Star Trek Into Darkness, the Kelvin Timeline's USS Enterprise sadly meets her untimely demise in the first act of Star Trek Beyond.
Thematically, it makes total sense to lose the Enterprise and tell a story about Kirk and the crew banding together on a hostile alien planet to save themselves and the Federation. But for those of us who love Star Trek starships, the death of the Enterprise in Star Trek Beyond is as heartbreaking as the time the Enterprise was destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, or the time the Enterprise was destroyed in "Cause and Effect", or the time the Enterprise was destroyed in "All Good Things...", , or the time the Enterprise was destroyed in Star Trek Generations...
Okay, it happens a lot but it's still aways sad to lose an Enterprise.
What makes the destruction of the Enterprise even more upsetting in Star Trek Beyond is that fact that we hardly knew this version of the iconic Federation vessel.
While this Enterprise served in a total of three motion pictures, the same as the Enterprise-A (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) and the Enterprise-E (Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Star Trek Nemesis), her life was actually shorter than those other ships.
In-universe, the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise was launched in the year 2258 and destroyed in 2263, making her the shortest-lived "hero" Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise.