- 24/05/2025
A starship with an illustrious heritage that was gone before her time.
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00:00One of the great things that I get to do as a host here on Trek Culture is I get to go
00:04super super into detail about all of these ships that in my head I'm just flying around.
00:12That's why lists like this written by our own Clive Burrell is so much fun. With that in mind
00:18I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture and here are 10 secrets of the USS Enterprise F you need to know.
00:26Number 10 Verity on High. The arrival of the Enterprise F in Star Trek Picard wasn't actually
00:33the first time in canon that we saw an Odyssey class vessel. IDW's graphic novel prequel series to Picard
00:41featured the USS Verity NCC 97007. This was assigned to Admiral Picard to assist in the Romulan evacuation
00:52program the precursor to the supernova that would kickstart not only the Kelvin universe but also
00:58a lot of the action in Picard and beyond. As noted in an article for IDW itself Star Trek Online's
01:05Thomas Maroney the person who adapted the design to fit Star Trek Online stated that in this period
01:12of history there were two Odyssey class ships created. One was the USS Verity the other was
01:18the USS Odyssey. They were created as a direct response to the Riemann Scimitar. You all remember
01:25how big that was and this was Starfleet's version of a heavy cruiser. The further we look into this
01:32the backstory states that actually the Odyssey class was put on hold so that all of the resources for
01:38designing and building this fleet of ships could be put into the Verity to rush that into service for
01:44the Romulan evacuation. However with the subsequent failure of the Romulan evacuation and the destruction
01:51of Utopia Planitia shipyards the Odyssey itself was somewhat forgotten and the Verity was mothballed.
01:58We have a couple then of different backstories to the Odyssey class depending on whether you follow
02:02Star Trek Online or whether you follow IDW's story but it does remain that the Enterprise F is the only
02:10Odyssey class ship that has received any significant screen time in the episodes of Picard. Number nine
02:17thanks for the support. Taking inspiration from the Enterprise F's online heritage the one that we saw
02:23in the show did in fact feature a small docked support craft at the aft. In the spot that historically
02:31would see the shuttle bay on such ships like the Constitution class we get the Aquarius class support ship.
02:38This is analogous to the aero shuttle on Voyager and the Calypso captain's yacht of the Enterprise D
02:45and like those we never really got to see it do anything in the few minutes of screen time that
02:52the Enterprise F got. In Star Trek Online the ship was actually destroyed in 2410 by Captain Sean
02:59but naturally it was redesigned, rebuilt and redocked. The ship wasn't just a support craft in terms of
03:08getting people off the ship if needs be. It was different from a runabout in that way. It could
03:13actually enter a battle on the support side of the Enterprise F as well. Both the Aquarius and the
03:19Odyssey class actually got their names from the Apollo 13 space mission. They were named after the lander and the
03:27command module. Of course that would go on to make sure that we would all remember the phrase
03:33Houston we've had a problem. Number eight. Now for the stats. The best resource for information on the
03:39Enterprise F is Star Trek Online and the official breakdown that's given for the ship there. Built at
03:45the Utopia Planitia shipyard the Enterprise F was armed with 18 Mark 12 phaser arrays, four variable
03:51payload warhead launchers, two phaser turrets and two heavy phaser cannon mounts. A bit of beefed up
03:58firepower for the Enterprise F then. One thing that the design carried over from both the Galaxy and
04:03Sovereign class ships was that it had the ability to separate its saucer section. This was a little bit
04:08different where the Enterprise D's saucer section was used effectively as a life raft to help people
04:15escape a battle scenario. The saucer section of the Enterprise F was designed to become a separate
04:21fully operational battleship if the situation required it. It was in a way then closer in design
04:29to the experimental Prometheus class. There was of course an array of shuttles. There was also an
04:35Argo which you will remember from Star Trek Nemesis and there was several Yellowstone class runabouts.
04:41Now the Yellowstone was slightly different from the Danube class and was only seen once before
04:46in Star Trek Voyager's Non-Secataire. There is also a captain's yacht and of course the previously
04:53mentioned Aquarius. Number seven. Feeling shunned? It only took 33 years if you don't include the silent
05:03appearance in Star Trek Lower Decks but Elizabeth Shelby returned to Star Trek. She had gone from the
05:10promotion hungry Borg expert from Best of Both Worlds to become a full Admiral who was ceremonially
05:17at least in charge of the Enterprise F during the Frontier Day celebrations. The Picard logs that were
05:23released online suggested that the ship has had a variety of captains over its lifespan but in Star
05:29Trek Online the Enterprise F is commanded by the Andorian Captain Vakel Shon. This makes him the third
05:37non-human commander of an Enterprise after Spock in The Wrath of Khan and Worf if that little wink and nod
05:46is what we think it is in the episode Vox. There are of course other variations. In Peter David's novel
05:52Imzadi from 1992 it suggests the Enterprise F is in service around 2408 and is commanded by none other
06:00than Data. The later DS9 series Millennium would also suggest that there was an Enterprise F but this
06:06ship was a defiant class that was built after the destruction of the Enterprise E. It was initially
06:12commanded by Jean-Luc Picard later commanded by William Riker until it too bit the bullet. Number six.
06:19Competitive Edge. The Enterprise F design actually came about from a competition run by Star Trek Online
06:25to celebrate its first anniversary. This aptly named Design the Next Enterprise. This wasn't the first
06:32time that a competition like this had been run. The Pocket Books had actually run a similar competition
06:37with the Luna-class USS Titan coming from that designed by artist Sean Tarango. The success of the
06:45Luna-class competition contributed to convincing CBS that this Design the New Enterprise idea was a good
06:51one and so they ran with it and they got thousands of entries which were then narrowed down to about
06:5825 before eventually being narrowed down to a final four. The criteria for the design was relatively
07:04straightforward. Effectively when you looked at it you had to think iconic Federation starship. So
07:12two nacelles, deflector dish, primary hull, saucer section. With all of these aspects being included in
07:19his design, Adam Eel actually won the overall competition. Some of the other close to the
07:26close to the first place entries included Jason Vector Lee's four nacelled ship that would actually
07:34be repurposed and reused as the USS Chimera in Star Trek Online commanded by Captain Nog. Number five.
07:42Screen time. The Enterprise F just misses out on the honour of having the shortest amount of screen time
07:51of any of the Enterprises. That honour goes to the Enterprise J which we only really saw a design
07:58graphic of and a bit of the corridor that Daniels and Archer were standing in in Enterprise's third
08:04season. The Enterprise F appears in the last two episodes of season three of Picard, Vox and the last
08:11generation. Now it was shown quite heavily in the trailers and the marketing campaign but it was
08:17also very it was very quickly stated that it wasn't going to be the hero ship of the season so as to kind
08:25of tease audiences but also not set them up for well not seeing very much of it. BF was seen earlier in the
08:34season as a graphic on the file that Roe Laren gives to Picard but apart from apart from these few
08:42fleeting glimpses we don't really get to see very much of it. Also the return of the Enterprise D in the
08:50very last scene of Vox and of course the last generation does somewhat eclipse the Enterprise F just
08:57a bit and considering that the Enterprise F was to be decommissioned after Frontier Day it's unlikely
09:05that we're going to see her again for a while. Number four size of it now. The Enterprise F reflected
09:12the way Enterprises had been going you know when you think the Enterprise B was bigger than the
09:17Enterprise A, C to the B, D and then E is longer than D but D is technically a bigger ship. But yes it
09:26reflected the time of Starfleet's need for these larger vessels be they for exploration or with the
09:33advanced dangers of the Dominion and the Borg and I suppose the Romulans that Starfleet needed more
09:41battleships. The Enterprise G on the other hand reflected this new more peaceful era of Starfleet's
09:48history so it was deemed to shrink the size of the flagship and it would then become this new
09:56neoconstitution class which we had of course seen in the season as the Titan A. Things must have got
10:02a little hairy again as the years went on because the Enterprise J is roughly the size of Earth's moon.
10:10All right that's a bit of an overstatement but it is considerably larger. The Enterprise F is 1061 meters
10:16long as opposed to the Enterprise E which was 685 meters. The Enterprise D was only 641 meters long
10:24but as I stated it was rather larger in other respects. This makes the Odyssey class the largest
10:31class of ship that have been seen in the prime timeline up to that point. It does have fewer
10:37decks than the Enterprise D, 32 as opposed to 48. This however is in part due to its lengthier more
10:44streamlined shape. This makes the Enterprise F around two and a half times the size of the original
10:50Constitution class which itself only had 23 decks to fit 430 crew. As they state in Trials and
10:58Tribulations they really did pack them in on these old ships just for fun. If we hop over into the Kelvin
11:03timeline the USS Vengeance would still dwarf the Enterprise F. It is 1450 meters long.
11:11As a big ship. Number three. Crafty construction. One of the defining features of the Enterprise F is the
11:19double neck that it boasts as opposed to the singular neck of almost all previous ships. According to the
11:28bonus issue of the Enterprise F from Eagle Moss's Star Trek Starships collection Adam Eel's design was
11:35favoured because it was big and majestic. There were design cues from the Galaxy and Sovereign classes that made it
11:41feel familiar and the double neck was the icing on the cake. Eel himself had revisited the work of
11:47original Enterprise designer Matt Jeffries as well as the futuristic ideas of Doug Drexler for the
11:53Enterprise J and of course Andrew Probert's design of the Enterprise D. He kept the overall shape quite
12:00similar to what had gone before. The primary hull was raised and separate from the secondary hull via this
12:06double neck. The nacelles were attached with backward facing pylons. Quite simply put it looked like an
12:14Enterprise. Cryptic's Thomas Moroney then made a couple of slight alterations when designing the ship
12:20for Star Trek Online. He widened the neck for example and he swept back the saucer a little bit over the
12:27engineering hull. To date this is the only ship in canon that has this kind of distinct design.
12:33Number two. Short shelf life. According to Star Trek Picard the NCC-1701F was only in service for about
12:4115 years. It was being decommissioned in 2401's Frontier Day following a disastrous Monfet gambit
12:49that saw a catastrophic systems failure ship-wide. It was deemed easier just to decommission the ship
12:56than to repair it. Now if that sounds like a bit of a short life for a ship consider that the Enterprise
13:03A, B, C, D and E all came in under that 15 year lifeline. In fact D had the shortest lifespan at only 7 years.
13:15Whereas the original Enterprise, if we include the refit as well, was going around for about 40 years.
13:23That record is not likely to be broken anytime soon. The Picard logs that preceded Star Trek Picard revealed
13:30that the ship had been commissioned in 2386. Executive producer and showrunner Terry Metallus
13:35stated that Admiral Shelby's posting of the Enterprise F was purely for the ceremonies of Frontier Day only.
13:43There was a series of unnamed in the show captains who had command during the Enterprise's lifespan.
13:49In Star Trek Online however, the Enterprise F was only commissioned in 2409, which meant that the
13:57Enterprise E probably had a longer lifespan, although its final fate may still have not been Worf's fault.
14:05Number one, no to the upgrade. The Enterprise F's appearance in Star Trek Picard cements itself in
14:13prime canon that, you know, we have seen it. It has been out there and it got, well, seven layers of hell kicked out of it by the Borg.
14:23But we won't think about that for the moment. What it does is that with the decommissioning of the Enterprise F on screen,
14:31it means that what happened in Star Trek Online is very unlikely to happen.
14:37Well, it can't because the Enterprise G has already been commissioned.
14:41In Star Trek Online, the Enterprise F received a major overhaul and refit following the closing of the Iconian War.
14:48These refits included more prominent impulse engines, changes to the nacelles and the pylons and a change of the overall paint scheme.
14:56And that's just on the outside. These were seen for the first time in the episode Cilia and Charybidus.
15:03Now, Eagle Moss's Star Trek Starships collection did, in fact, release a model of this refit Yorktown class.
15:11Eagle Moss released two variants of the original Enterprise F, one in the largely black and white livery that's seen in Star Trek Online,
15:21and one in a more traditional Starfleet grey.
15:24The producers of Star Trek Picard decided to go with the online version, which means, fondly enough,
15:30that grey model of the Enterprise F can really only be found as an option within Star Trek Online.
15:37And there you have it. There is the secrets of the Enterprise F that you need to know.
15:41What did you think? Let us know in the comments below.
15:43Thanks so much again to Clive Burrell for penning this list, and thank you so much to Martin for making this video look pretty.
15:50You're all awesome and wonderful, folks. Please remember to follow us over on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on Blue Sky as well.
15:57We are at TrekCulture, we're at TrekCultureYT, excuse me, on Instagram.
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16:08Who knows? I have been Sean. You can follow me at SeanFerrick on the various socials.
16:13You are wonderful. You are awesome. Look after yourself until I'm talking to you again.
16:18Make sure that you live long and prosper.
16:20And in this crazy, crazy world that we're living in, remember, there are good people left.
16:27You might be one of them. Thanks very much.
16:29Heavy phaser cannon mounts.
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