See The Enterprise-E Return To Star Trek For The First Time Since 2002
The Enterprise-E returned on an episode of Star Trek: Prodigy as part of a vast armada tasked with stopping the USS Protostar.
The Enterprise-E, serial number NCC-1701-E, is the starship the Next Generation crew flew through four of their big screen adventures. It was last seen in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis where it took quite a beating at the hands of Shinzon. Now, for the first time in a long time, the Enterprise-E is back.
The Enterprise-E returned on the second to last episode of Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 as part of a vast armada tasked with stopping the USS Protostar. Here it is in action from afar…
Here’s a zoomed-in look at that serial number…
The Enterprise is never mentioned by name in the episode and it really blends in, since there are numerous other Sovereign-class starships on the scene. Check out the full armada in this overhead shot…
Oddly enough, the only ship not captured in that full overhead shot of the fleet is the Enterprise. Its location in the fleet would put it slightly outside the shot, right in the middle bottom.
We never see any clear identifiers to prove it is indeed the Enterprise, outside of one other shot of the serial number on a nacelle. Here that is…
It’s tough to see, but if you look closely you can make out her iconic serial number again. There are some other shots of the ship though, as it goes toe to toe with an entire fleet of starships. Take a look…
And here’s Starfleet’s flagship in dire straights, on the verge of being blown to smithereens…
And for comparison, here’s what the Enterprise-E looked like the last time we saw her, way back in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis…
Because our glimpse of the Enterprise in Star Trek: Prodigy‘s big mess of a space battle is so fleeting, there’s some speculation that it might not actually be intentional. There are numerous Sovereign-class ships in the shot and they’re likely all taken from the same CGI model, a CGI model which was likely based on the Enterprise-E. It’s possible that someone over on the Star Trek animation team just forgot to replace the NCC-1701-E on the nacelle with the serial number of some other ship.
See the boys over at Trekyards making that argument…
We’ve reached out to the team over at Star Trek: Prodigy to ask for some clarification on whether the Enterprise-E’s appearance is intentional…
We’re still waiting for a response, but we’ll update this space should we get one.
If this really is the Enterprise-E on purpose, then there’s still one episode of Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 before it’s over. Plenty of time to give us some more Enterprise-E action or, if we are extremely unlikely, to actually destroy the Enterprise-E as a way of explaining why it has never shown up in Star Trek: Picard, and indeed, has now been replaced by the Enterprise-F on that show.
The Enterprise-E isn’t the only iconic Starfleet ship to show up in this Star Trek episode. The USS Defiant was there too, and we got a much better look at her. See close-ups of the Defiant back in action for the first time since the 90s in our full breakdown here.
