From the original series to Picard, we’ve ranked every starship Enterprise [Updated]

[Karlston]

In honor of this week's Picard, a list so exhaustive that it's a little silly.

These are the voyages...

Memory Alpha

 

Update: The events of the Star Trek: Picard finale has required a slight re-ordering of our list. Accordingly, the list contains some major spoilers for Star Trek: Picard. We've left most of the original text as-is.

 

Original story: It's the day Star Trek: Picard fans have been waiting for all season: this week we finally get to Frontier Day! A fleet-wide celebration of the Federation and Starfleet, where everything goes according to plan and nothing surprising happens!

 

As part of the festivities, the episode gives us a good look at USS Enterprise-F, a ship which has existed for a decade-plus in Star Trek Online but is only making its first canonical appearance in Picard. It is, depending on how you count, the newest and most advanced version of the Enterprise we've seen in action in any Trek movie or TV show (yes, we talk about the Enterprise-J later).

 

A new Enterprise means a new opportunity to re-evaluate the many canonical Enterprises that have existed in the last half-century; to that end, we've assembled a completely scientific and objectively correct ranked listing of every starship Enterprise, from the original '60s show to Picard. For good measure, we've also ranked various versions of different Enterprises from reboots, updates, and alternate timelines, plus a few Enterprises that didn't log much screen time but did deserve a quick mention.

#12: Alternate future anti-time Enterprise-D

A far-future Enterprise-D caused by an "anti-time disruption." God, I do love Star Trek.

Memory Alpha

The Next Generation has a nearly perfect finale episode, one that nicely wraps up the week-to-week televised adventures of the crew while leaving the door open to what looked like (and, on rare occasions, actually was) a promising movie franchise.

 

It also gave us a look at an "anti-time" far-future version of the Enterprise-D, where it was still in service after extensive refits rather than being crashed into the surface of a planet. And it... just has a bunch of extra stuff stuck to it? Including a third weird centrally mounted nacelle? It certainly makes it easy to tell the difference between the regular Enterprise and the future Enterprise when they're both in the same shot, but it's just way too busy and slapped-together looking.

 

Fun fact: The events of Star Trek: Picard are taking place even later than the events of this anti-time future. If anyone sees a Galaxy-class ship with three nacelles flying around, let me know.

#11: Kelvin-timeline Enterprise

It's just not for me, is all.

Memory Alpha

The first of a few different riffs on the original Enterprise that will appear on this list, the J.J. Abrams "Kelvin-timeline" version of the Enterprise leaves me cold. I think it's mostly the gigantic, bulbous nacelles, which are each nearly as big as the secondary hull (the part below the saucer with the circular deflector dish attached to the front, for people who don't spend a ton of time on Memory Alpha studying starship designs). They make the whole ship look top-heavy and bug-eyed.

 

Every light on the ship is also a glowing whiteish-blue, giving it a monochromatic appearance that just isn't as fun to look at. It's a slick, sterile, Apple Store Enterprise. I don't hate it, but I can't defend it, either.

#10: NX-01 Enterprise

It's been a long road.

Memory Alpha

The retconned “first starship Enterprise” is a flat little thing. It does look like an old, simple predecessor of the starships that would come later, and the red tips on the nacelles do a little spinny thing that calls forward to the nacelles on the '60s Enterprise model.

 

I understand that they couldn't make this forerunner to Kirk's Enterprise look more fancy and advanced than the ship that replaced it, but understanding why the NX-class Enterprise looks the way it does isn’t enough to make me fall in love with it.

#9: Enterprise-F

The Enterprise-F makes its first onscreen appearance, though it has been flying around Star Trek Online for years.

Paramount+

The Enterprise-F doesn't land on the bottom of our list, but it's not near the top either. It loses points for looking a lot like the Enterprise-E with some extra racing stripes. It takes some elements of the Enterprise-E a little too far—its saucer section is a bit too pointy, and there's not enough definition between the saucer and the engineering section. There's space between them, but from most angles, it looks like there isn't since there isn't one central "neck" that connects the two.

 

The ship looks more like an advanced version of Voyager than an advanced version of any Enterprise. Which is OK, I guess! If you really like Voyager. (Voyager is fine.)

In Picard’s defense, the show did just reuse a ship that had been introduced in Star Trek Online more than a decade ago. You can tell the show’s designers had a bit more fun with the Titan-A’s creative melding of TOS- and TNG-era starships (more on that in a moment).

#8: Enterprise-D

"You hear that, Jean-Luc? No one wants the fat ones."

Memory Alpha

Though it's probably the most familiar Enterprise, appearing in 176 episodes of The Next Generation, one movie, and here and there in other Trek series, the Enterprise-D is not one of my favorite designs. The whole thing looks kind of squat and ponderous, whereas the original Enterprise was narrow and sleek. That's a sentiment shared in-canon with Federation citizens buying ship models at Guinan's bar.

 

"Oh, the fat ones? Nobody wants those," deadpans a bartender, to the amused frustration of an aging Captain Riker.

 

Let's have some respect for the challenges of developing the Enterprise-D, though. When TNG started airing, you could still count the number of existing Trek ship classes on one hand (Constitution, Miranda, Excelsior, Oberth), and those were all crafted to be contemporaries of the TOS movie Enterprise. The Enterprise-D had to use the same basic visual language while also communicating that TNG was set a hundred years later. The result was something that definitely looked newer, but it looked “newer” in the way that a hulking, clumsy Carnival cruise liner is newer than a functional, minimalist World War II-era battleship.

#7: Enterprise-B

It's a ship that Connor Roy is the captain of, and I just think that's neat.

Memory Alpha

A contender for the Enterprise with the least screen time—it appears in the opening scene of Star Trek Generations and nowhere else—the Enterprise-B loses points for being a reused version of the then-decade-old USS Excelsior model. This model, along with the USS Reliant model from Star Trek II, were endlessly reconfigured and reused throughout TNG's run because they were high-quality camera-ready models that already existed, all huge benefits when dealing with limited TV budgets and tight TV schedules.

 

The Enterprise-B has two saving graces. One is that, reused or not, the Excelsior is a neat ship—from the first glance, you understand that it is related to but also technologically superior to the older Constitution-class Enterprise. The other is that it's captained by Alan Ruck, of Succession/Spin City/Ferris Bueller's Day Off fame. You've got to hand it to a guy who appears once for five minutes in one of the lesser Trek movies and is then game enough to reprise the role in a fan production over a decade later.

#6: The Original Series Enterprise

Pew pew!

Memory Alpha

It was thoroughly outclassed by cooler, more detailed versions later, but you have to put the original '60s USS Enterprise in the top half for simply existing. It's toylike, but it's iconic and instantly recognizable. There's a reason why most Federation starships never get too far away from the basic template established by the first Enterprise.

#5: Enterprise-G

The newest Enterprise lands pretty high on our list.

Memory Alpha

One of the final scenes in Star Trek: Picard's final season opens the door to a whole new show packed with new adventures. The "Neo-Constitution-class" Titan-A has been rechristened Enterprise-G, under the command of Captain Seven of Nine (a crewmember calls her Captain Seven, but shouldn't it be Captain of Nine? I digress.)

 

I much preferred the look of the Titan-A to the Enterprise-F earlier in the season, and the new name fits. It's a modern Enterprise designed by people with a lot of affection for the original, and whether you like it or think it looks like a slapdash combination of parts depends on how highly you rate the old Constitution-class Enterprise design. Luckily for the Enterprise-G, we like the original ship and ships that look like creative combinations of older ones, so the Enterprise-G lands pretty high on our revised list.

#4: Discovery/Strange New Worlds Enterprise

This Enterprise was a more straightforward visual refresh of the ship than the one from the J.J. Abrams movies.

Memory Alpha

First seen at the tail end of Discovery's rough first season, this is canonically the original Enterprise as seen in The Original Series, a few years before Kirk sits in the chair. With that in mind, it's not really a Trek 2009-style "reimagined" Enterprise so much as it is a modernized refresh for the old ship. Its more dramatic lighting and the additional detail on the hull plating make it look a bit more like a spaceship and less like a toy spaceship.

 

The design is everything Strange New Worlds' production team does well in a microcosm. The show has updated the cheesy orange TOS-era sets and pajama-y uniforms to look higher-quality and modern without losing the essence of the original sets, ships, and props. Some may prefer the route that latter-day Star Wars productions take, meticulously re-creating '70s-era blinking lights and wireframe models to make a show from 2023 look like it took place in the exact same continuity as a movie from 1977. But Star Wars had a budget that TOS never did, and updating that goofy old low-rent stuff for modern TV screens keeps things from feeling too campy.

#3: Enterprise-E

We won't hold most of the Enterprise-E's adventures against it.

Memory Alpha

First Contact is the best of The Next Generation movies, and it's not close—it may be the only one that holds up to repeat viewings, though there's something interesting lurking under the tangled wreck of Generations and the dull slog of Insurrection—and the shiny new Enterprise-E is one of the reasons why. It was a movie that carefully evaluated and addressed the things about TNG that didn't translate well to a movie screen, like the uniforms, the '80s-living-room vibe of the Enterprise-D bridge, and the stocky, compact design of the Enterprise-D itself.

 

If the Enterprise-D is a 4:3 starship formatted to fit your TV screen, the Enterprise-E is a 2.35:1 ship that was made for film. Everything about it is sleek and elongated, but it still feels powerful rather than delicate. The Enterprise-D is a peacetime cruise ship, which is fine for week-to-week adventures where you're attending trombone recitals or getting de-aged or quietly contemplating the nature of sentience. The Enterprise-E is for cinematic world-saving, built by a Starfleet that was being squeezed by the Dominion and the Borg.

 

Granted, most of the adventures the Enterprise-E went on weren't that great. We'll try not to hold that against it.

#2: Enterprise-C

The Enterprise-C.

Memory Alpha

Seen only as a battle-damaged wreck in a single episode of The Next Generation, I still really like the Enterprise-C. It incorporates elements of the Galaxy-class Enterprise-D but with saucer and engineering sections that make it look less wide and squat than the Enterprise-D does.

 

Unlike most other Enterprises on this list, the Enterprise-C's Ambassador class wasn't being made to appear in a major motion picture or launch a new TV show, so some of the things I like about its design are intentional (the crossing of the Galaxy-class with older starships), and some were expeditious decisions made to get the model ready for shooting on time (the mostly circular saucer, engineering section, and nacelles were apparently just quicker and easier to construct than other shapes). It's a combination of intent and serendipity-born-of-necessity that Trek has frequently benefitted from over its half-century of existence.

#1: Enterprise-A/TOS movie Enterprise

Movie Enterprise, refit Enterprise, Enterprise-A, whatever you want to call it, it's the best one.

Memory Alpha

"Well, this one is my personal favorite," gushes Jack Crusher, in Picard's fan-service-y visit to the Starfleet Museum. "Kirk's Enterprise. All those perfectly clean retro lines. Yep, I'm definitely a Constitution-class man."

 

Look, when you're right, you're right.

 

It's a close call, but in the end, it always comes back to this one for me. Originally created as a refit of the original Enterprise for 1979's The Motion Picture and used in five other TOS movies between then and 1991, this Enterprise takes the basic shape of the original and gives it a glow-up. The cool, glowing-blue circular deflector dish, the streamlined nacelles, and the tapered nacelle supports all make the ship look more futuristic and elegant, enhancing the attractive profile of the original design.

 

Obviously, the Enterprise-A doesn't exist without the original '60s TV model. But for the next 40-plus years of Star Trek, the starting point for any starship was the movie Enterprise. It's just about worth the five-minute flyby sequence in The Motion Picture's thuddingly dull opening act. Just about.

Honorable mentions

These starships Enterprise are all canonical, in one way or another, but for one reason, it doesn't feel fair to judge them against all the others. Because we're nothing if not committed to the bit, here's a mini-ranking of all the lesser Enterprises.

#4: ISS Enterprise

The mirror universe Enterprise (and the mirror universe NX-01 Enterprise) looks exactly the same as its prime universe counterpart for some reason, even though the differing societal incentives and goals of the Terran Empire would surely have birthed different starships than the exploration-and-diplomacy-focused ones of the Federation. But scrutinizing the mirror universe is a fool's errand, and we won't engage with it.

#3: Enterprise-J

The Enterprise-J as imagined for a mid-2000s calendar.

Memory Alpha

We only see a tiny representation of the Enterprise J on a small screen in a single time-travel-y episode of Star Trek Enterprise, and we never get an exterior shot (it was later rendered in more detail for a 2005 wall calendar, seen above). It looks spindly. But technological progress in the early 2000s was defined by how small you could shrink your Motorola flip phone or your iPod; it makes sense that people living through that era designed a hyper-advanced Enterprise that’s basically a circle on a stick with nacelles stuck to it.

 

Chronologically, this is still the “newest” Enterprise on the list—at least until Star Trek Discovery’s final season decides to give us a 32nd-century glimpse of the Enterprise-W.

#2: XCV-330

A desk model of the XCV-330 Enterprise. We never actually see it in this much detail onscreen.

Memory Alpha

The XCV-330 is a pair of rings with a little rod jutting out of it. In-fiction, it exists mostly as either a painting or a desk toy celebrating past starships Enterprise. Its design is kind of neat and its history is kind of cool—it's based on Matt Jeffries' early pre-TOS Enterprise concept design circa 1964—but it's clear why the cleaner, more futuristic-looking Constitution-class Enterprise won out.

#1: The real-life-but-also-fictional space shuttle Enterprise

Gene Roddenberry and the TOS crew (perhaps unsurprisingly, sans-Shatner) attending a ceremony for the space shuttle Enterprise in 1976.

NASA

One of many places where a half-century-old media franchise begins eating its own tail, the real-world NASA Space Shuttle Enterprise was named for the fictional Enterprise following a fan letter-writing campaign. It was then absorbed into Trek canon as a forerunner of the fictional Enterprise by various in-universe paintings and dedication plaques, and the Star Trek Enterprise title sequence.

 

The space shuttle Enterprise is at the top of the honorable mentions list because of all the ships here, it's the only one that has actually existed as an operating vehicle. Ironically, as an early prototype for the Space Shuttle program, the Enterprise never had the parts it would have needed to go into space and plans to retrofit it were delayed or scrapped continuously until the shuttle program ended in 2011. Like some other Enterprises on this list, today it is a museum exhibit.

 

Listing image by Memory Alpha

 

 

From the original series to Picard, we’ve ranked every starship Enterprise [Updated]