Starship Enterprise
| First appearance | Star Trek, September 8, 1966 |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | United Federation of Planets, Starfleet |
| General characteristics | |
| Armaments | Phasers, photon torpedoes |
| Defenses | Shields |
The Enterprise or USS Enterprise (often referred to as the "Starship Enterprise") is the name of several fictional spacecraft, some of which are the main craft and setting for various television series and films in the Star Trek science fiction franchise.
According to The Star Trek Encyclopedia, the registry number NCC-1701 was devised by Matt Jefferies, art director of the first Star Trek series, inspired by an old science fiction cover that Gene Roddenberry liked, with a starship flying through space. Jefferies, who was a pilot, based NCC on 20th century aircraft registration codes. In such 20th century usage, an "N" first letter refers to an aircraft registered in the USA. A "C" for a second letter refers to a civil aircraft. Jefferies added a second "C" because he thought it looked better.
The Franz Joseph Blueprints, the book The Making of Star Trek, and a handful of Star Trek novels state that NCC is an initialism for "Naval Construction Contract".
In an interview with the BBC, Jefferies explained that NC is the designation for U.S. commercial aircraft and the Soviet Union's space program used the designation. He concluded that any major future space projects would likely be a combined international effort, thus he invented the combined designation NCC. The 1701 had two functions, it represented the first (01) ship of a 17th federation cruiser design, and that the digits were unlikely to be misread, unlike 6, 8, or 9.
In Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek pitch, the starship is described as a "United Space Ship", and in two episodes of The Original Series (TOS), Kirk refers to the "United Space Ship Enterprise".
Before Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Paramount had planned a new Star Trek television series to have been named Star Trek: Phase II. Early in the production, Ralph McQuarrie had been hired to redesign the ship. The major feature of the redesign was to replace the cigar-shaped secondary hull with a larger, triangle-shaped "delta wing" section. McQuarrie's design was discarded in favor of keeping the general shape of the ship intact.
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