# USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E)

The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E), or Enterprise-E, to distinguish it from other vessels with the same name, is a fictional starship belonging to the United Federation of Planets, commonly known as the Federation, in the Star Trek franchise. It appears in the films Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis, where it serves as the primary setting. It also has cameos in Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Lower Decks. It is the sixth Federation starship to carry the name Enterprise. The ship's captain during the 2370s and early 2380s was Jean-Luc Picard. He was transferred to the Enterprise-E after the Enterprise-D was destroyed in The Next Generation spin-off movie Star Trek Generations.

## Origin and design

Ronald D. Moore, the co-writer of Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact, has suggested that construction of the Enterprise-E began during the final season of The Next Generation (2370), and that the ship was renamed USS Enterprise, which would become the next flagship of the United Federation of Planets after the Enterprise-D had been destroyed.

## Depiction

The Enterprise-E is a Sovereign class starship, launched in 2372 from the San Francisco Fleet Yards under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and most of the key officers from the Enterprise-D. According to the non-canon novel Ship of the Line, the originally planned name for the vessel was USS Honorius, and Montgomery Scott was part of the team of engineers that designed the Enterprise-E.
In the film Star Trek: First Contact, the Enterprise participates in the Battle of Sector 001, a Borg attack directly on Earth, the capital of the Federation, using a Borg Cube. Picard's haunting memories of his former experience as a Borg drone in The Next Generation granted him knowledge on a vulnerable spot on the seemingly-indestructible cube, which he passed on to the other participating Federation ships and they subsequently attacked the spot and destroyed the cube. The Borg cube launches a smaller vessel prior to its destruction, which travels back in time in an attempt to stop Zefram Cochrane's first contact with the Vulcans, thus preventing the Federation from ever being formed, although the Enterprise crew are as yet unaware of this plan as they follow the vessel into the temporal vortex it had created to travel through time. The Enterprise's crew briefly glimpse the result of the creation of this alternate history while following the vessel back through time; the attack is successful and Earth is wholly assimilated by the Borg.
Once the Enterprise arrives over Earth shortly after the Borg vessel, the vessel quickly targets a particular spot on Earth and attacks, but the Enterprise manages to destroy it before it does any serious damage. After the attack, the Enterprise crew determine that they have arrived in the year 2063, the year humanity made first contact with the Vulcans, and they also determine that the Borg vessel's target was Bozeman, Montana, the launch site of Cochrane's first faster-than-light flight. This leads to the crew now realizing that the Borg's reason for time-travelling was to stop the first contact event and they decide to covertly assist Cochrane in his preparations in a bid to ensure the flight happens as intended and history remains intact.
However, the crew are unaware that some of the Borg had teleported to the Enterprise before their vessel was destroyed. The Borg proceed to hijack and almost assimilate the entire ship until Captain Picard and Commander Data reclaim it and rescue the crew. After that, the crew witness Cochrane's flight and humanity's successful first contact, then Commander Geordi La Forge, the ship's Chief Engineer, informs Picard that he has found a way to replicate the Borg's temporal vortex and return to their own time in the 24th century, which he successfully accomplishes and the film ends as the Enterprise travels into the vortex back to the future.
In Star Trek: Insurrection, the crew stops a Son'a attempt to forcibly relocate the Ba'ku people from their homeworld. In Star Trek: Nemesis, the Enterprise is heavily damaged while stopping Shinzon from using a weapon of mass destruction to destroy all life on Earth. The ship returns to spacedock to undergo extensive repairs. In the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Picard, "Võx", the Enterprise is briefly mentioned as having been later commanded by Worf, but is unusable and out-of service for nebulous reasons. By this point, the Enterprise-E has been replaced by the Enterprise-F which falls under Borg control.
The Enterprise-E appears in the Star Trek: Prodigy season 1 two-part finale "Supernova" as one of the ships that intercepts the USS Protostar and falls victim to the Vau N'Akat living construct weapon.
In the Star Trek: Lower Decks series finale "The New Next Generation," Starfleet Command sends the Enterprise-E to stop a interdimensional rift that's threatening to destroy the prime universe, but it won't arrive in time so the USS Cerritos is dispatched to deal with it in the meantime. After the rift is stabilized, the Enterprise is one of the ships that tows Starbase 80 to the rift's location.
In the novels published by Pocket Books after Nemesis, the Enterprise-E remains under the command of Picard as of 2385 in the 2013 novel miniseries Star Trek: The Fall. Data was resurrected in the novels similarly to the comic miniseries Countdown, but he decided not to re-enter Starfleet.
A designer's blueprints show that the Enterprise has new phaser banks and torpedo launchers in Star Trek: Nemesis that were not present in Star Trek: Insurrection. It also shows the warp nacelles have been moved upwards and forward slightly. Star Trek: Ships of the Line, written by Star Trek's technical consultant Michael Okuda, states that the Enterprise can travel at up to warp 9.995. However, this conflicts with other sources which may or may not be considered canon, in universe. Those sources published in between the time of Star Trek: First Contact and/or Star Trek: Insurrection, state a maximum warp speed of 9.95 or 5000 times the speed of light (as narrated in character by Commander William T. Riker, First Officer). An officially licensed supporting source, that had Star Trek's Michael Okuda as a technical consultant to the authors, states the Enterprise-E had "a cruising speed of warp 8 and she could comfortably reach warp 9.95".

## Reception

In 2018, Io9/Gizmodo ranked the fictional spacecraft design shown in the films First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis, the Enterprise-E, as the third best version of starship Enterprise of the Star Trek franchise.
In 2019, SyFy ranked the fictional starship design, the NCC-1701-E Enterprise, as the third best version of the starship in the Star Trek science fiction universe.

## Cultural impact

In 2014, a building in China was designed to resemble the ship.