USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E)
What is USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E)?
History of USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E)
The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E) was a 24th century Federation Sovereign-class starship operated by Starfleet. This ship was the sixth Federation starship to bear the name Enterprise. On stardate 49027.5, the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E, seen as the pinnacle of Starfleet ship design, was launched from San Francisco Fleet Yards, with Captain Jean-Luc Picard in command once more. Much of the crew of the Enterprise-D had been reassigned there, including almost the entire senior staff. The sole exception was Lieutenant Commander Worf, who had already transferred to the space station After almost a year in space, the Enterprise was ordered to patrol the Romulan Neutral Zone during the second Borg incursion. Starfleet was officially concerned about possible Romulan military action since many of the available ships had been diverted to fight the Borg, but in reality, Starfleet was concerned about Picard's presence at the battle. However, shortly after the Federation fleet engaged the Borg cube, Picard disobeyed orders and returned to Earth to assist the fleet. Once there, Picard became aware of a battle-induced weakness in the Borg ship due to his residual link to the Collective and ordered all the ships in the fleet to concentrate their fire on that section of the ship. As a result, the Borg vessel was destroyed and the Battle of Sector 001 was a victory for Starfleet. Before the Borg cube was destroyed, it launched a second vessel towards Earth. This ship created a temporal vortex and traveled back to the year 2063 in order to stop Zefram Cochrane from launching his historic warp ship, the Phoenix. Their hope was to prevent first contact with the Vulcans and assimilate Earth before the Federation could be formed to resist them. The Enterprise, protected from the alterations in the timeline by a temporal wake within the vortex, chased the Borg into the past and destroyed their ship and sent an away team to help Cochrane repair the Phoenix. However, the ship's sensors and shields were damaged during the trip through the vortex and, unbeknownst to the crew, several Borg drones transported aboard the Enterprise before their ship exploded. They began to assimilate the ship, beginning with main engineering and sickbay on Deck 16 and converting the corridors into a Borg configuration, complete with regeneration alcoves and assimilation chambers. On Picard's order, Lieutenant Commander Data locked out the main computer with a fractal encryption code to prevent the Borg from fully seizing control of the Enterprise. The Borg established their collective in engineering and cut primary power to all other decks, cutting the Enterprise off from the away team still down on the surface. The Borg were able to swiftly overrun the defense checkpoints set up by the Starfleet crew on Decks 26 through 11, assimilating the crew as they progressed and seizing control of such sections as hydroponics, Stellar cartography, deflector control and the shuttlebays. They also attempted to build an interplexing beacon on the particle emitter of the deflector dish to contact the Borg Collective of that time period. A three-man team led by Captain Picard stopped the beacon from being completed by separating the dish from the ship by disengaging the magnetic locks and destroying it. The Borg changed tactics and continued to overrun the defense checkpoints, assimilating the ship up to Deck 5 with the intent to fully assimilate the vessel. The Borg's ability to adapt to the handheld weapons of the Enterprise crew made stopping them impossible and Picard realized that the fight was a lost cause. After great consideration, he reluctantly ordered the evacuation of the ship via the escape pods and activated the ship's auto-destruct sequence to prevent the Borg from interfering with the Phoenix flight. Picard eventually confronted the Borg Queen in main engineering, only to find, to his horror, that the Borg had apparently coerced Data into collaborating with them. He aborted the auto-destruct sequence and entered the encryption codes into the main computer, effectively giving the Borg Queen command of the Enterprise. On the Queen's instructions, Data fired three quantum torpedoes at the Phoenix, ostensibly intending to destroy it. However, the torpedoes narrowly missed their target and Data revealed that he had in fact simply been deceiving the Borg. He ruptured one of the plasma coolant tanks, flooding engineering with plasma coolant and liquefying the Borg Queen and all the drones in engineering. With the death of the Borg Queen, the remaining Borg onboard were disabled, which allowed Data and Picard to recapture the vessel. The Enterprise crew was successful in helping Cochrane make his flight and instigate First Contact with Vulcans. Using the gravitational field of Luna allowed the Enterprise to remain undetected by the Vulcan ship and the Enterprise was able to recreate the vortex used by the Borg to return to 2373 where the Borg components were removed, the ship repaired and subsequently returned to service. With the Federation Diplomatic Corps attempting to negotiate an end to the Dominion War, the Enterprise was relegated to a diplomatic role, much to the dissatisfaction of Captain Picard. In 2375, the Enterprise was conducting a diplomatic mission with the Evora, a new Federation protectorate species and was scheduled to resolve a territorial dispute in the Goren system when her crew became embroiled in a plot by the Son'a, assisted by Starfleet Admiral Dougherty, to forcibly remove the Ba'ku from their isolated homeworld in the Briar Patch. The Son'a turned out to be vengeful former Ba'ku who had been exiled from the planet after a failed coup a century prior. They planned to harvest metaphasic radiation from the planet's ring system and needed Starfleet's cooperation to carry out the plan. Captain Picard felt the relocation of the Ba'ku was a severe violation of the Prime Directive and resigned his commission, leading a team of Enterprise crewmembers to the Ba'ku planet to prevent their capture and removal. Commander William T. Riker was instructed to take the Enterprise and contact the Federation Council to alert them of Admiral Dougherty's treachery. However, the Enterprise was required to navigate an area of space known as the Briar Patch in order to contact Starfleet Command. This area disrupted communications as well as the ship's warp drive. Two Son'a battle cruisers were sent by Ahdar Ru'afo to intercept the Enterprise before she left the Briar Patch and severely damaged the ship in the process. The warp core was ejected in order to seal a dangerous tear in subspace created by the isolytic weaponry of the Son'a. Riker was able to outwit the Son'a by collecting metreon gas native to the Briar Patch then venting it behind the ship. When the Son'a used their weapons, the gas exploded, destroying one ship and severely damaging the other. Geordi La Forge half-jokingly commented that the tactic could become known as the Riker Maneuver. The Enterprise later returned to the Ba'ku planet to aid Captain Picard disarming the Son'a collector. They ran into Ru'afo's flagship on their way there and Commander Riker pretended to ram into the flagship but instead flew over it and used its phaser banks to fire at it. When the collector started to blow up, the Enterprise beamed up Picard and left Ru'afo to be destroyed in the collector while it blew up. The Enterprise later left the Briar Patch to leave for Earth. The Enterprise visited Earth for several days in 2376, around the time the Pathfinder Project made contact with the USS Voyager and conducted a mission about seven light years from Earth the following year. According to Deanna Troi, it was an important mission, but the objective was never discussed. Sometime between 2375 and 2379 the Enterprise underwent a major refit. Four additional aft-facing photon torpedo tubes were added, along with one more forward-facing tube: a twin launcher aft of the bridge, a single launcher above the aft hangar deck and a single launcher at the forward base of the bridge terracing. The bridge was refitted with handrails and the consoles were improved across the port and starboard walls with more detailed displays. Additionally, new nacelle pylons were fitted at that time, slightly longer, broader, and more sharply swept than the originals and fitted with four additional phaser arrays. In 2379, the Enterprise returned to Earth for the wedding of William T. Riker and Deanna Troi. She departed for Betazed, where another ceremony, a traditional Betazoid wedding, was scheduled. While en route, the ship detected unusual positronic signals from the Kolarin system, discovering another Soong-type android, the prototype B-4. Shortly following, the Enterprise was ordered to Romulus for a meeting with the new Praetor, Shinzon, who apparently wanted to initiate peace talks. Both the discovery of B-4 and the peace overtures turned out to be a ruse to capture Captain Picard and discover tactical positions of Starfleet vessels. Once it became clear Shinzon was going to use his starship, the Scimitar, to destroy all life on Earth and wage war on the Federation, the Enterprise was to join Star Fleet Battle Group Omega and make a stand against Shinzon. Shinzon caught up to the Enterprise in the Bassen Rift and, in the ensuing confrontation, the vessel was severely damaged, including a major hull breach on the bridge, destroying the viewscreen and controls and disabling the warp core. As a last resort, Picard ordered Counselor Deanna Troi to take control of the Enterprise and have it ram the Scimitar, resulting in the loss of much of the saucer section's forward area. The collision disabled the Scimitar, but Shinzon, driven by vengeance, activated his deadly thalaron weapon and trained it on the Enterprise. The weapon was overloaded, and the Scimitar was destroyed due to interference from Commander Data, who sacrificed himself to save the Enterprise, Picard and, indirectly, Earth. Following the Scimitar incident, the Enterprise returned to Earth where it underwent an extensive repair in one of the orbiting spacedocks. By 2381, Captain Picard was promoted to admiral and left the Enterprise to spearhead the construction and deployment of a massive transport fleet intended to aid the evacuation of the Romulus system before its sun went supernova in 2387. In 2384, the Enterprise was part of a Federation armada sent to intercept the USS Protostar, when it was intentionally attacked by the living construct released by Asencia. Later, after the Protostar was destroyed, the ship was seen wrecked, with numerous gashes in the hull and completely dark, but somewhat intact. In 2401, while taking the rebuilt Enterprise-D from the Fleet Museum, La Forge mentioned they "obviously" couldn't take the Enterprise-E, something that Worf said "was not [his] fault", alluding to an incident rendering the ship unusable, presumably either through destruction or some other means.
