Enterprise-A (SLEP gone wrong?)

[Al-1701]

I said the Excelsior was the replacement for the Constitution-class. The Miranda was designed for missions where a Constitution would be excessive.

[Zatman]

If you want to think of it in terms of a modern (21st century) Naval fleet. The Constitutions, Excelsiors, Ambassadors, Galaxies, Sovereigns are the aircraft carriers of their era, the glitz and glamor, front-line ships. In the TOS movie era, the Mirandas are like the destroyers, Oberths are like frigates. In the TNG era, Ambassadors were like cruisers, Excelsiors were like destroyers, Mirandas and still Oberths are like frigates. It's not a perfect match, especially since the modern Navy is very much primarily a fighting force and not as much exploration and science (most of that is NOAA for the U.S.). Though I would say that the "trickle-down" of classification is not unprecedented. Though I don't know of any particular classes of ship that were re-categorized, today's frigates are even bigger than WWII destroyers, and today's destroyers are the size of WWII cruisers. So in theory, a cruiser that stays active for 80+ years, might be far outclassed by cruisers built late in its life, but a pretty even match for destroyers built late in its life.

[McAvoy]

It's an interesting idea. Afterall what we know later on chronologically (real world and in universe) that Star fleet did keep hundred year old ship designs. It's a good reflection of the old sailing days when a ship of the line from 1700 would be almost just as good as a ship from 1800.

Maybe the common theory is that it's the USS Yorktown (since it was Gene's idea) and the ship suffered more issues due to the Whale Probe, could be used. The ship was renamed thd Enterprise and went out to do some missions for a couple of years. Brought in for a refit since the Yorktown was out on its own five year mission or whatever. So it was brought in, and was in the middle of that refit.

But a failed SLEP would also explain why the interior of the ship doesn't exactly match up between movie 5 and 6.

The Connie refit itself is of course always harder to explain since that ship between the Motion Picture and TOS are so different that they are different ships. Maybe the Enterprise was a one off or part of a small program for a small number of ships. The rest of the Connie refit fleet were new build.

[Nealithi]

First the reason for no longevity is the producers didn't want a constitution around with the galaxy class. Too many would clamor for it and they want to sell the new stuff. But models of Reliant and Excelsior were cheap. With the effect team some times buying off the shelf models to bring costs down.

But if I had to make an in universe reason? Enterprise and Yorktown were the last surviving connies. The newer Miranda class could handle most of what was needed. As they carried the improvements of the Enterprise upgrade in their hulls. Then the new Excelsior line would would be the next leap ahead. Recall the connie is the oldest of the three here. And they seemed in short supply all the time. Enterprise herself was sent to be a training ship. Get to know how to work on a ship in a piece of history. Those cadets would graduate out to the Miranda fleet. The best of those going on to the Excelsiors. With Enterprise a wreck they decide to just put another Miranda as a training ship and decomission her. Yorktown was in refit when the decision to keep two older ships around was pointless. So she was set to be scrapped. Then Kirk steals the Enterprise, brings captain Spock back from the dead and save the Federation from something they could not even touch. So they reversed the scrap call and got to putting her back together.
And with any bureaucracy things hit snags. The ship looked good for when the captain and famous crew did a flyby. But she was in no way ready to be out of dry dock beyond that.
When she finally retired, she was the last. Probably made her the museum Picard mentioned seeing.

[McAvoy]

That is true. By the second movie, the Enterprise was a training ship. This was before of course the Excelsior. We don't know really if there was other Excelsior class ships but at least maybe one or two being built. Though you can easily say the Excelsior was a prototype and Star fleet didn't want to build more until the ship was thoroughly tested. Obviously it was a fine ship even without Transwarp Drive.

So I guess you really could say despite the fact that the Enterprise did go under a extremely extensive refit, it was a tired and old design even for the 2280's. And you are right, the Miranda class despite being shorter did have similar internal volume and similar weapons setup. Even better if you believe in the megaphaser idea.

I think it was a given that the Connie refit class was a small batch of ships.

If CGI was available during TNG's early seasons we would probably never have seen the Miranda's and Excelsior class ships in the show. Probably would have been Probert's version of the Ambassador class along with other new classes we never would have seen.

[Link8909]

I think it was a given that the Connie refit class was a small batch of ships.

Indeed, and as Nealithi pointed out the Enterprise and the Yorktown could well have been the last surviving Constitution-Classes, considering that these were ships meant to go boldly into the unknown with all the dangers that come with it, the other ships like with the U.S.S. Constellation simply came across something or a crisis that they couldn't handle, this could be as well why the Constitution-Class was retired even after an extensive refit, that the class itself wasn't up for the role it was built for.

[Admiral X]

Bit of a tangent here, but I kind of wished in some ways that the initial "refit" version of the ship had been more obviously based on the original hull, somewhat like the Phase II design. Like, I would have kept the shape of the main engineering hull but redid the main deflector/navigation dish, the shuttlebay, nacelles and pylons, rebuilt the interconnecting hull and given it the same torpedo/probe launcher pod, and the same impulse engine pod and superstructure as in the movies. And with the saucer I would have just redid the rim structure to enlarge it some as well as upgrading the maneuvering thrusters and just generally giving it a look that was very similar to what we ended up getting. The thing is, there would still be enough of the saucer and engineering hull left to visually connect it to the original. And then the version Andrew Probert designed for TMP would be the "Constitution-Improved" class, with those ships having been built new that way, which is what the Enterprise-A would end up being.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]