USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

"All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."
 * - James T. Kirk, 2268

The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) was a Federation heavy cruiser that was in service with Starfleet in the mid-to-late 23rd century. In the course of her career, the Enterprise became the most celebrated starship of her time.

In her forty years of service and discovery, through upgrades and at least two refits, she took part in numerous first contacts, military engagements, and time-travels. She achieved her most lasting fame from the five-year mission (2265-2270) under the command of James T. Kirk.

The Enterprise was destroyed over the Genesis Planet in 2285 when Kirk activated the ship's auto-destruct sequence to prevent the Enterprise from falling into the hands of the Klingons. 

Lineage

 * See Enterprise history

Early history
In the early to mid-23rd century, at least twelve heavy cruiser-type starships, the Constitution-class, were commissioned by the Federation Starfleet. The vessel registered NCC-1701, which was constructed in San Francisco, was christened the Enterprise. Larry Marvick was stated to be one of the designers of the Enterprise, Dr. Richard Daystrom designed her computer systems,  and Captain Robert April oversaw construction of her components, then commanded her during her trial runs and early missions. Sarah April served as the chief medical officer and designed several tools for the ship's sickbay. 

Captain Christopher Pike commanded the Enterprise from the early 2250s into the 2260s. His missions included voyages to the Rigel, Vega, and Talos systems. Pike's half-Vulcan science officer, Spock, who served under him for over eleven years, would become the starship's longest-serving officer. 

Kirk's five-year mission
In 2265, the Enterprise was assigned to a five-year mission of deep-space exploration, and command passed to James T. Kirk. The ship's primary goal during this mission was to seek out and contact alien life. Captain Kirk's standing orders also included the investigation of all quasars and quasar-like phenomena.

Beyond her primary mission, the Enterprise defended Federation territories from aggression, aided member worlds in crisis, and provided scientific expeditions and colonies in her patrol area with annual examinations and support. 

Discoveries
From 2265 to 2270, the Enterprise visited over seventy different worlds and encountered representatives of over sixty different species. More than twenty of those were first contacts with beings previously unknown to the Federation, including stellar neighbors like the First Federation and Gorn, voyagers from the Kelvan Empire in distant Andromeda, and powerful non-corporeal entities like the Thasians, Trelane, and the Organians. Two discovered species were the first known examples of silicon-based lifeforms, the Horta and the Excalbians. 

The Enterprise was the first Federation vessel to survive an encounter with the galactic barrier. The ship's warp drive and other systems, however, were critically damaged and casualties totaled twelve crewmembers and officers. By Stardate 4657.5, the Enterprise was traveling through space in a region of space hundreds of light years further than any Earth starship has explored. 

The reality of time travel, externally influenced, had been known for over a century, but following two accidental temporal displacements, the Enterprise became the Federation's first deliberately-controlled timeship. Observing the death-throes of Psi 2000, the crew suffered from polywater intoxication and the Enterprise nearly lost orbit after an engine shutdown. A previously untested "cold start", via controlled matter-antimatter implosion, saved the ship, but the high-speed escape from the planet's gravity well caused the ship to travel three days into the past. 

In 2267, while escaping the gravitational pull of a black star, the Enterprise was hurled through space and time to Earth of 1969. The crew developed and executed a method to return to their own time, by warping around the sun's gravity well in a slingshot maneuver. A year later, the Enterprise was ordered to repeat the recently-proven slingshot effect, and returned to Earth's past on a mission of historical observation. 

Some missions of discovery confronted Enterprise with entities and mechanisms that threatened great swaths of Federation and neighboring space.

An ancient "planet killer", fueled by the consumption of planets it destroyed with its antiproton weapon, approached Federation population centers in 2267. It required the combined efforts of the Enterprise and her sister ship, USS Constellation (NCC-1017), to destroy it. 

One year later, a single-cell organism of colossal scale emitted negative energy, toxic to humanoid life, killing the entire Vulcan crew of the USS Intrepid (NCC-1631). The Enterprise penetrated the cell interior and destroyed the organism before its imminent cell division threatened to overwhelm the rest of the galaxy. 

Battles
The nature of her mission of exploration meant that the Enterprise was frequently the only Federation military asset in a little-known, otherwise undefended frontier. When she was called into harm's way, she regularly did so with little chance of immediate support against previously unknown enemies and threats.

Happily, her earliest engagement of the five-year mission, against the deceptively powerful starship Fesarius, ended with an amicable first contact with the First Federation in 2266. Following the destruction of the colony on Cestus III, a surprise attack from a previously unknown species led to the battle and pursuit of an evenly-matched Gorn starship in 2267. 

The Enterprise played fox to the hounds of her four sister starships in a war game exercise on stardate 4729.4. Equipped with the new M-5 computer and stripped of most of her crew, the Enterprise became a killing machine – crippling the USS Excalibur (NCC-1664) and killing her entire crew – before Kirk could re-assert control. 

Klingon engagements
The warships of the Imperial Klingon Fleet were frequent opponents of the Enterprise. Commander Kor held the Enterprise and Kirk in high professional regard, and relished the prospect of battle. Lower ranks chose to mock the starship; on one such occasion, Korax compared her to a "garbage scow" before he corrected himself, adding, "It should be hauled away as garbage."

While Starfleet rallied its forces at the outbreak of the Federation-Klingon war in 2267, the Enterprise was sent forward to secure a border region anchored by the planet Organia. She destroyed a Klingon attack ship and prepared to engage an approaching Klingon fleet, before the Organian Peace Treaty precluded a full-scale war. 

The Enterprise sporadically engaged Klingons throughout her voyage. A warship failed in an attempt to blockade the Enterprise from Capella IV in 2267. Sabotaged during a diplomatic mission to the Tellun system in 2268, the ship successfully fought off the assault of an harassing D-7. In 2269, the Enterprise was forced to destroy Kang's abandoned battle cruiser and the rescued Klingons (influenced by the Beta XII-A entity) subsequently attempted to wrest control of the Enterprise from Kirk. 

Romulan engagements
The Romulan Star Empire reemerged from a century of isolation to antagonize the Federation with the Neutral Zone Incursion of 2266. The Enterprise responded and was victorious against a new Romulan Bird-of-Prey equipped with a cloaking device and plasma torpedo system. 

In later encounters, the Romulan fleet used strength of numbers in their efforts to overwhelm the Enterprise. When Commodore Stocker took temporary command and violated the Neutral Zone in 2267, up to ten Birds-of-Prey swarmed and pummeled the starship until Kirk's "corbomite" bluff inspired their withdrawal. 

In 2268, the Enterprise again violated the Neutral Zone – for the purpose of espionage – and was quickly surrounded by three Romulan battle cruisers. She escaped by becoming the first Federation vessel to install and successfully utilize a (stolen) Romulan cloaking device. 

Near Tau Ceti in the following year, Kirk employed the Cochrane deceleration maneuver, allowing the Enterprise to defeat Romulan forces. 

In the final year of Kirk's original mission, the ship was ambushed by a trio of Romulan battle cruisers while on a routine survey. The Enterprise managed to escape through an energy field that adversely affected the ship's main computer. The malfunctioning systems were corrected by another pass through the field, this time with the Romulan ships in pursuit. The attackers then became incapacitated by the same computer malfunctions, and the Enterprise was able to escape. 

Casualties
Service aboard the Enterprise proved to be hazardous duty. At least fifty-eight officers and crew were killed between 2265 and 2269 – 13.5% of the standard complement of 430. Incidents with multiple fatalities included five security guards killed by the dikironium cloud creature on Argus X in 2267 as well as four security guards killed by Nomad in 2268. An outbreak of Rigelian fever, in 2269, killed three crewmen and imperiled the rest until a source of ryetalyn could be obtained. 

See also: Redshirt

Refits and further service
The Enterprise's first documented refit occurred sometime between 2254 and 2265. Minor changes were made to the ship's exterior (most notably the impulse engines, warp nacelles, running lights, and hull markings). More substantial changes were made to the interior color scheme and layout of the ship.

A second, more extensive refit occurred at some point after her encounter with the "galactic barrier" in 2265. It involved replacing the bridge module, a newer, smaller deflector dish, and refinements to her warp nacelles. The ship's interior was also upgraded. The new bridge module included consoles with triangular and circular resin buttons as well as white-colored rocker flip switches. There was another small refit sometime in early 2266 too. The white-colored rocker flip switches seen on bridge consoles and on various places on the ship were replaced with multi-colored rocker flip switches.

In the late 2260s, a new bridge module added a second turbolift, and the design moved toward a completely smooth circular configuration, both standard features on future starships. At the same time the translucent overhead dome was obscured, not to return until the Galaxy-class bridge. 

At the end of her five-year mission, the Enterprise returned to Earth in 2270. Following her success, the ship had become a recognized symbol of Starfleet and the Federation. Starfleet's array of unique assignment patches were abandoned for the universal adoption of the Enterprise delta symbol, previously used on the assignment patch for the USS Kelvin. 

The stalwart vessel herself was by then twenty-five years old and returning from a deployment that included an unprecedented number of warp-speed records, hull-pounding battles, and frame-stressing maneuvers.

System upgrades with new technologies after long deployments were far from unusual in her history, but the Enterprise's overhaul of the early 2270s became a nearly keel-up redesign and reconstruction project.

The very heart of the ship was replaced with a radically different vertical warp core assembly, linked to new, and heavier, warp engine nacelles atop swept-back pylons and integrated with the impulse engines. The new drive system allowed for an expanded cargo hold in the secondary hull, linked to the shuttlebay.

Weapons system upgrades included nine dual-phaser banks with power channeled directly from the warp engines. A double photon torpedo/probe launcher was installed atop the secondary hull.

Multiple egress points now included a port-side spacedock hatch, dual ventral space walk bays, four dorsal service hatches, and a standardized docking ring port aft of the bridge on the primary hull; four more docking ring ports, paired on the port and starboard sides of the launcher and secondary hulls respectively, and service hatch airlocks on the port and starboard sides of the hangar bay's main clam-shell doors.

A new bridge module reflected the modern computer systems, operating interfaces, and ergonomics that ran throughout the ship.

Following Kirk's promotion to rear admiral and posting as Chief of Starfleet Operations, his hand-picked successor, Captain Willard Decker oversaw the refit, assisted by Chief engineer Commander Montgomery Scott.

After two-and-a-half years in spacedock for refit, the Enterprise was pressed into service, weeks ahead of schedule, in response to the V'Ger crisis, once again under Kirk's command.

Decker was temporarily demoted to commander and posted as executive officer because of his familiarity with the new design. Incomplete systems had to be serviced during her shakedown cruise en route to V'Ger, including the first test of the new warp engines.

A matter/antimatter intermix malfunction ruptured the warp field and led to the Enterprise's entry into an unstable wormhole. Commander Decker belayed an order from Admiral Kirk to destroy an asteroid in their path, which had been dragged into the ruptured warp field along with them, with phasers. The refitted phasers now channeled power directly from the main engines at a point beyond the dilithium/magnatomic-initiator stage. Because of this, the intermix malfunction, and the antimatter imbalance within the warp nacelles that had resulted, caused automatic cutoff of the phasers, a design change of which Kirk had not been aware. Decker ordered the use of photon torpedoes instead; as a backup, they had been designed to draw power from a separate system in case of a major phaser loss. The timely arrival of Commander Spock brought correction to the intermix problem. 

Once the V'Ger threat was averted, Captain Decker was listed as "missing in action" and the Enterprise remained under Admiral Kirk's command for an interim period. At some point, Kirk passed command on to Captain Spock.

The new designs and components tested and proven aboard the Enterprise influenced a generation of starship design, from the to the, as well as other retro-fitted Constitutions.

Final days
In 2285, the Enterprise was in a low-tempo training cycle, based in the Sol system. Admiral Kirk boarded his old command to observe a cadet training cruise.

Meanwhile, Khan Noonien Singh had escaped from his exile on Ceti Alpha V and hijacked the USS Reliant, leading to his theft of the Genesis Device from the Regula I space station.

The Enterprise was tasked to investigate, and Spock deferred his command to Admiral Kirk. The subsequent engagements with Reliant left the ship badly damaged with cadet and crew deaths, including Captain Spock. 

Upon her return to Earth, Starfleet Commander in Chief Admiral Harry Morrow announced that the starship, now forty years old (although Morrow mistakenly claimed it was twenty years old), would be decommissioned. When Morrow denied Kirk's wish to return to the Mutara sector, Kirk conspired with his senior officers and stole the Enterprise from Earth Spacedock, in order to recover Spock's body from the Genesis Planet; to bring it, and his katra, possessed by Leonard McCoy, to Vulcan. As part of the plan, Kirk had Scott rig up an automation system to run the Enterprise so easily that "a chimpanzee and two trainees" could have handled her.

At her destination Klingon Commander Kruge's Bird of Prey's attack left the Enterprise disabled; Scotty's automation system was not designed for combat and overloaded when the ship was attacked. After setting the auto-destruct sequence, Kirk and his crew abandoned the ship for the surface. Demolition charges in place in the bridge and elsewhere throughout the ship's saucer section exploded, killing the Klingon boarding party. The secondary hull (with what was left of the saucer) fell from orbit and streaked across the planet's atmosphere, to the unknown. 

Crew

 * List of USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) personnel

Commanding officers

 * Captain Robert April (2245)
 * Captain Christopher Pike (2250s through early 2260s)
 * Captain James T. Kirk (2265-2270; as rear admiral in early 2270s and again in 2285)
 * Captain Willard Decker (during refit and shakedowns in early 2270s)
 * Captain Spock (2285)

In 2267, just months apart, two commodores also temporarily assumed command of the Enterprise after the relief of both the captain and first officer. These were:


 * Commodore Matt Decker
 * Commodore Stocker

Command crew under Kirk's command

 * Commanding officer
 * Captain/Rear Admiral James T. Kirk (2265-2270, Late 2270's, 2285)
 * Captain Spock (during cadet training runs, 2285)
 * Captain Willard Decker (recommended by Kirk himself after Spock's Kolinahr retirement, early 2270s)
 * Executive/First Officer
 * Lieutenant Commander/Commander Spock
 * Captain/Commander Willard Decker (briefly in 2273)
 * Second Officer
 * Commander Spock (briefly in 2273 when outranked by Decker)
 * Lieutenant Commander/Commander Montgomery Scott (2266 – 2273)
 * Chief engineer
 * Lieutenant Commander/Commander Montgomery Scott (2265-2270s, 2285)
 * Chief medical officer
 * Doctor Mark Piper (2265)
 * Doctor Leonard McCoy (2266-70, 2270s, 2285)
 * Doctor Christine Chapel (after McCoy's retirement and during refit of 2273)
 * Helmsman
 * Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell (2265)
 * Lieutenant/Lieutenant Commander/Commander Hikaru Sulu (2266-2270s, 2285)
 * Lieutenant Leslie (2266-67)
 * Lieutenant Hansen (2267)
 * Lieutenant Hadley (2267-68)
 * Lieutenant DePaul (2267)
 * Lieutenant Spinelli (2267)
 * Lieutenant Kyle (2268)
 * Lieutenant Rahda (2268)
 * Ensign Dawson Walking Bear (2270)
 * Communications officer
 * Lieutenant Alden (2265)
 * Lieutenant/Lieutenant Commander/Commander Uhura (2266-2270s, 2285)
 * Lieutenant John Farrell (2266)
 * Lieutenant Palmer (2267-69)
 * Lieutenant Angela Martine (2269)
 * Lieutenant M'Ress (2269-70)
 * Navigator
 * Lieutenant Lee Kelso (2265)
 * Lieutenant Dave Bailey (2266)
 * Lieutenant John Farrell (2266)
 * Lieutenant Kevin Riley (2266)
 * Lieutenant Stiles (2266)
 * Lieutenant Hadley (2267-69)
 * Lieutenant DeSalle (2267)
 * Lieutenant DePaul (2267)
 * Lieutenant Osborne (2267)
 * Lieutenant Leslie (2267)
 * Lieutenant Painter (2267)
 * Ensign Pavel Chekov (2267-69)
 * Ensign Jana Haines (2268)
 * Lieutenant Arex (2269-70)
 * Lieutenant Ilia (2273)
 * Chief Petty Officer DiFalco (2273)
 * Lieutenant Saavik (2285)
 * Security chief
 * Lieutenant Commander Giotto (2267)
 * Lieutenant Pavel Chekov (2270s, 2285)
 * Tactical Officer
 * Lieutenant Sulu (2266 – 2270)
 * Ensign Pavel Chekov (2267 – 2270)
 * Science Officer
 * Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu (briefly in 2265)
 * Lieutenant junior grade/Lieutenant Commander/Commander/Captain Spock (2250s – 2270, 2273 – 2280s)
 * Captain/Commander Willard Decker (briefly in 2273)
 * Commander Pavel Chekov (briefly in 2285)
 * Records officer
 * Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Finney (2267)
 * A&A officer
 * Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas (2267)

Appearances

 * Star Trek: The Original Series (every episode, only the exterior appears in )
 * Star Trek: The Animated Series (every episode, except )
 * (recording only)
 * (bridge shown on holodeck)
 * (corridor shown in montage)
 * (closing montage)
 * (recording only)
 * (bridge shown on holodeck)
 * (corridor shown in montage)
 * (closing montage)
 * (closing montage)

Background information

 * The Enterprise and its interiors were designed primarily by Matt Jefferies. A three-foot demonstration model was completed in by the Howard Anderson Company to show to Gene Roddenberry. After getting his approval, an eleven-foot model was then constructed by Richard C. Datin, Jr., Mel Keys, and Vern Sion at Volmer Jensen's model shop, and was finished in . The eleven-foot model was modified for  and again for the regular series effect shots. Re-used footage of all three stages of the eleven-foot model's appearance are seen mixed together in TOS.
 * For Star Trek: The Animated Series, the color of the Enterprise was limited. D.C. Fontana commented, "For the purposes of animation you can't do the light white, silver kinds of colors. So they made the Enterprise gray and it came off all right." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 16, p. 68)
 * Some distinctive effects shots of the Enterprise from TOS were recreated in animation for Star Trek: The Animated Series. Depicting the ship performing any new, impressive maneuvers would have been too costly for TAS and would have taken the animators too long to show, despite frequent TAS director Hal Sutherland later implying that a desire to portray the ship doing "barrel rolls and that kind of thing" was quite common. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 16, pp. 63 & 64)
 * The refit was designed by Andrew Probert, based on the designs for the vessel made by Matt Jefferies for Star Trek: Phase II.
 * The design for the Enterprise refit was the basis of a design patent issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
 * The Enterprise was to have appeared in Star Trek: The First Adventure that revealed the design on the show was a refit; the original design resembled the created years later.
 * The Enterprise was recreated as a new physical model for the DS9 Season 5 episode . The CGI model of the USS Defiant (NCC-1764) created for  was relabeled as the Enterprise for the final scene of, the last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise.
 * A new CGI model, built from caliper measurements of the original eleven-foot physical model, was created for use in the remastered and recreated version of Star Trek: The Original Series (for a more detailed treatise on the studio models, see the appropriate article Constitution class model).
 * Visual effects artist Gabriel Koerner created a re-imagined version of the pre-refit Enterprise. The design is more contemporary, while keeping the design of the original ship.  A video showing the ship from various angles can be seen on YouTube. The model was also featured as the August image for the 2007 Ships of the Line calendar, as well as in the Ships of the Line coffee-table book, placed between TOS and TMP images, which included text from Michael Okuda suggesting it as one of the ideas on how to refit the ship.
 * The Enterprise was pictured on three paintings during the Star Trek franchise. On a painting in the recreation deck of the refitted vessel in, on a painting in the waiting area of the sickbay aboard the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) in the Star Trek: The Next Generation fifth season episode , and on a painting on the wall of Kirk's kitchen in the Nexus in.