USS Yorktown (23rd century)

USS Yorktown (23rd century)
Owner:	United Federation of Planets
Operator:	Starfleet

The USS Yorktown was a Federation starship that was in service with Starfleet from the mid-to-late 23rd century.

History

In 2268, the Yorktown was scheduled to deliver vaccines bound for the colony on Theta VII after a rendezvous with the USS Enterprise. (TOS: "Obsession")

In 2286, the Yorktown was under the command of Captain Joel Randolph. While deployed near the Sol system, the Yorktown was one of the many vessels disabled by the Whale Probe near Earth.

In Randolph's distress call to Starfleet Command, he noted that the ship had lost all power and that all non-essential crew were given hiber-sedatives to slow down consumption of life support reserves. Meanwhile, the chief engineer attempted to deploy a makeshift solar sail so as to focus and absorb radiation from a nearby sun they were orbiting, with the hopes of generating power to keep the crew alive. (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)

In 2293, Tuvok's father was a Starfleet officer serving aboard the Yorktown. (VOY: "Flashback")

Yorktown personnel

• USS Yorktown personnel

Appendices

Background information

A registry number for Yorktown, NCC-1717, is derived from Gregory Jein's influential "The Case of Jonathan Doe Starship" article, published in the April 1973 issue 27 of the T-Negative fanzine, where he assigned the number NCC-1717 to the name Yorktown. [1] Michael Okuda took his cue from Jein's article and further propagated the registry in his reference work writings, most notably the Star Trek Encyclopedia, where the Yorktown is also referenced as a Constitution-class heavy cruiser. Class and number have been adopted by more recent reference works, such as the GE Fabbri publications. But unlike many of Jein's other conjectural Constitution-class registry numbers, the 2006 remastered version of the series, on which Okuda served as visual effects producer, afforded no opportunity to retcon conjecture to canon.

The USS Yorktown was the name of the central starship in Gene Roddenberry's first Star Trek proposal to NBC in 1964. The ship was named after the USS Yorktown (CV-5), a World War II American aircraft carrier, which in turn was named after the last major battle of the American Revolution, won in 1781 by a combined Franco-American army commanded by Gen. George Washington. (Star Trek Encyclopedia 2nd ed., p. 572) Coincidentally, the Yorktown was a class sister of the historical USS Enterprise (CV-6), after which Roddenberry ultimately named his starship. (The Making of Star Trek, p. 164)

Due to the fact that the Yorktown had been the original name proposition, the producers of Star Trek: The Original Series had the name included on their final fourteen ship list at the start of its second season, belonging to the Constitution-class, then still referred to as "Starship-class" by them. The name had been a consideration from the start and was never in doubt. (The Making of Star Trek, pp. 164-165) However, as the ship was given no opportunity to make an on-screen appearance, its configuration was never canonically established.

Gene Roddenberry, in a nod to his original name choice from 1964, suggested that the Yorktown was renamed USS Enterprise-A at the end of Star Trek IV, explaining why the latter ship seemed to be launched so quickly at the end of the movie. (Star Trek Encyclopedia, 3rd edition. p. 572) The season four internal studio document, Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual (2nd edition, p. 6), co-written by Okuda, emphatically stated this to be the case, reaffirmed in the later officially endorsed Star Trek Fact Files and the 2010 reference book USS Enterprise Owners' Workshop Manual. This was further validated when, in the later Encyclopedia, Mike Okuda described the Yorktown in 2293 as the second ship to bear this name. The Starfleet practice of renaming a vessel for a very deserving other vessel was later canonically established in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, when the USS Sao Paulo was rechristened USS Defiant when the original latter was destroyed in the Dominion War. (DS9: "The Changing Face of Evil", "The Dogs of War")

The Yorktown was listed as a Constitution-class starship, with the registry NCC-1704, in Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual.

Apocrypha

The comic book series Star Trek: Romulans - Schism featured the Constitution-class Yorktown, endowed with Jein's registry number NCC-1717.

The FASA sourcebook Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer's Manual listed a USS Yorktown (NCC-2033) of this era which belonged to the Excelsior-class.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Crossover, the Yorktown was revealed to have become a museum exhibit on a starbase, but its bridge has been replaced with the original bridge of the first Enterprise. In the story in question, Captain Montgomery Scott stole the Yorktown to rescue Spock, recently captured by the Romulans, and fitted it with an ancient Romulan cloaking device (the one acquired in "The Enterprise Incident"). The mission proved successful, but aid was still required from the USS Enterprise-D for Spock, Scotty and the Unification movement to escape.

External link

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