I was busy having a post-lunch doze while one of the many Star Trek films was on’t telly when, about 40 minutes in, the Starship Enterprise was obliterated. I mean it was shredded. Only the big round disk was more-or-less intact and that crashed on an inhospitable planet.
Anyway.
That set me thinking. Jim Kirk seems to have been a bit frivolous with the Starfleet hardware. He must have written off three or four Enterprises (or so I thought). A quick google fetched back that, according to Gizmodo, there have been 18 different versions of the Starship Enterprise. But that number includes several alternate reality Enterprises which I don’t think we can count.
So, over on Reddit I found an expert who says the list of Starfleet Enterprises begins with the XCV-300 Enterprise, the NX-01 Enterprise, and then the NCC-1701 series which began with the NCC-1701, then hit a regular naming convention with the NCC-1701-A through to the NCC-1701-J.
That’s a lot of Starfleet hardware. But delving deeper into the cobwebby corners of Reddit it turns out that Jim Kirk has only been at the helm of two Enterprises when they’ve been destroyed.
It seemed like more.
I like that you managed to find an ‘expert’ in something that doesn’t actually exist, in reality.
Being a bit of a fan, I can remember three films where the Enterprise has been destroyed:
The Search For Spock
Star Trek Generations
Star Trek Beyond
I just checked on Google and I am right. However, Ryker was in charge of the ship in one of them (Beyond, I think), so Kirk’s kill count does stand at just two.
Nonetheless, I was unaware that the naming convention went all the way up to 1701-J
Fascinating.
Just because something doesn’t exist that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Erm. There are all kinds of geeks hanging out on Reddit