Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The USS Excelsior

The USS Excelsior began life as early as the script for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan which featured dialogue (ultimately excised from the final film) stating specifically that Sulu was slated to take command of the new ship. This eventually came to pass between Star Treks V and VI and Sulu's time as captain of the Excelsior was depicted on screen in both The Undiscovered Country and Voyager's "Flashback".

Despite the easily recognizable and iconic nature of the USS Excelsior, her missions outside of these fleeting appearances (and in Star Trek III) remained mostly off screen, though a campaign by fans and actors George Takei and Grace Lee Whiney in the 1990s pushed for Sulu, Rand, and the Excelsior to be given a series of their own.

The Captain Sulu spin-off never came to pass, but the USS Excelsior did go on to star in several non-canon novels by Pocket Books. These "Lost Era" novels depicted the death of the Excelsior's original commanding officer, Captain Stiles, at the hands of Deep Space Nine's "The Albino" and portrayed the ship's ultimate destruction in a temporal rift.

But don't worry, Captain Sulu, Commander Rand, and (most of) the rest of the Excelsior crew were rescued by Demora Sulu and the USS Enterprise-B, the subject of its own entries in The Lost Era series.