Legacy Vessel Naming / Star Trek

Let's make sure history never forgets the name Enterprise.

Holodeck Panel: Please enter program.
Scotty: The android at the bar said you could show me my old ship. Let me see it.
Holodeck Panel: Insufficient data. Please specify parameters.
Scotty (irritated): The Enterprise! Show me the bridge of the Enterprise ya chatterin' piece of...
Holodeck Panel: There have been five Federation ships with that name. Please specify by registry number.
Scotty (slowly): N. C. C. One. Seven. Oh. One. No bloody A... B... C... Or... D.

— Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 6 Episode 4, Relics"

The Star Trek franchise has a long tradition of legacy naming of ships. Although many ships in sequel series have been named after ships from earlier series, the Original Series actually named the bulk of Federation starships mentioned in the series after Earth naval vessels, either directly (e.g. Enterprise, Hood, Potemkin) or indirectly (Defiant being derived from the HMS Defiance).

• Of course, ships named Enterprise have a long and storied history in Star Trek, both TV series and movies:
  • At the end of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock the original Enterprise (NCC-1701) is destroyed. At the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home the crew is assigned to a new Enterprise^note In actuality another Constitution-class ship that happened to be in spacedock when the Enterprise crew were going through their adventures in II, III, and IV. Starfleet Command simply renamed the ship and gave Kirk command, complete with the same registry number with an "-A" appended to it, starting a Starfleet tradition for ships named Enterprise.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation's main setting is aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, fifth Starfleet ship to bear that name and registry number, following the precedent set in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
  • The season 3 episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" where the previous ship, the Enterprise-C accidentally traveled forward in time in the middle of the battle that would see her destroyed defending a Klingon colony from a Romulan attack. The disappearance looked like flight from battle and thus cowardice to the Klingons, who are now winning an attrition war against the Federation. The episode's plot is about sending the Enterprise-C back to face her doom while fending off angry klingon warships in the present.
  • The opening of Star Trek: Generations takes place aboard the maiden voyage of the USS Enterprise-B and has Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov of the two previous Enterprises as honorary guests. At the end, the Enterprise-D is mostly destroyed (the stardrive section explodes from catastrophic damage, the saucer section lands on a planet and can't be recovered). At the beginning of the next movie (Star Trek: First Contact), the crew is aboard the new Enterprise-E. This is even lampshaded when the heroes decide to engage the self-destruct to kill all the Borg infesting her:
    Beverly Crusher: So much for the Enterprise-E.
    Jean-Luc Picard: We barely knew her.
    Crusher: Think they'll build another?
    Picard: (smiling) There are plenty of letters left in the alphabet.
  • A Time Travel in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Azati Prime" confirms that there have been at least 10 ships named after the original Enterprise: A—J.
  • The opening sequence from Star Trek: Enterprise features a montage of a number of historical ships named Enterprise, from the 1705 original through to the titular starship in 2151.
  • At the end of Star Trek Beyond, the Kelvin timeline Enterprise is a loss at about the end of the first act, and by the end, we see her successor, the Enterprise-A, get constructed in time-lapse speed.
  • In Star Trek: Picard, the third season finally introduced the Odyssey-class Enterprise-F to the canon (she was originally designed for Star Trek Online), but the fact she's scheduled to be decommissioned hints that there's an Enterprise-G in the works. The -G is revealed at the end of the season.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: During the push to Cardassia, after the destruction of the USS Defiant, the USS São Paulo is delivered to DS9 as a replacement. Along with the vessel came a special dispensation from the Chief of Starfleet Operations to change the vessel's name to USS Defiant.
• The first Defiant-class USS Defiant is itself an example of this, since it was named after the Constitution-class USS Defiant from Star Trek: The Original Series, the one that ended up getting sucked into the Mirror Universe.
• Sisko's previous starship, the Saratoga (destroyed in the Battle of Wolf 359), was named after one of the ships disabled by the alien probe in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
• Picard reveals the Excelsior and Stargazer get this treatment by the 2400s. Previous shows revealed the existence of multiple ships sharing the Space Shuttle orbiter names Endeavour, Challenger, Columbia, Atlantis, and Discovery across the centuries, among other names. The 23rd-century version of the latter became the “hero ship” of its own series.
• Interestingly, only the Enterprise is directly witnessed to get the "more advanced version of its predecessor, with a letter added" treatment. We never meet another ship with a letter suffix like the Enterprises, and we see many ships with the same name as a past ship but nothing in common design- or number-wise. Even DS9's second Defiant of the same class as the original gets the same number with no "A." (likely due to budgetary/convenience reasons: Stock Footage can continue to be used and models don't have to be altered.)
  • This is finally extended to other ships with the brief appearance of the 32nd century USS Voyager, NCC-74656-J, in the Discovery episode "Die Trying". Additionally, the USS Tikhov in the same episode has the registry NCC-1067-M and it's mentioned that the Tikhov has served as a seed vault since the 23rd century; this combined with its low registry number suggests that the ship is the latest (specifically the 14th) in a line of ships that have borne the same name, rather than the exact same ship from 900 years ago. Additionally, the Excalibur-M, evidently the legacy of the ship damaged in the TOS episode "The Ultimate Computer," can be seen. Finally, in the episode following, "Scavengers," the tradition is extended to DISCO herself, as the ship gets an -A suffix in addition to a thousand years of Mid-Season Upgrades. There's also a brief mention of an Enterprise operating in this time period, though what designation she has hasn't been revealed.
    • Speaking of Voyager, while the original was retired to the Fleet Museum, Admiral Janeway wasted no time in getting another one out the line. The Star Trek: Prodigy finale has a shuttle with the designation NCC-74656-A on her side, and Picard shortly revealed that there's a Voyager-B in operation by 2411.
    • Likewise, Picard also has the Titan-A, a successor to Will Riker's ship. The first Titan, as seen on Star Trek: Lower Decks, was a Luna-class vessel; the new one is a Neo-Constitution update to the same design Kirk's Enterprise-A used, but with a 25th-century spin. It gets renamed the Enterprise-G at the end of the series, in honor of the -D crew.
• When Archer mentions the history of the name Enterprise to Shran, he says the Andorians have the same tradition; Shran's own ship, the Kumari, is named after the first icecutter to circumnavigate Andoria.
• Star Trek: Armada has ships start getting letters added after their names when the name list runs out. Unfortunately, it can also make it possible for more than one ship of the same name (not counting the letter) to be in the fleet at the same time.