Every "Star Trek" USS Enterprise, Ranked

Of the two Enterprises that fell between the ships of the original series crew and the ships of "The Next Generation" crew, one heroically sacrificed itself to stop a war (we'll get to it in a minute). Then there's the B, which makes a cameo appearance in Generations, a not-great movie, captained by Ferris Bueller's best friend. The Enterprise-B isn't even the definitive ship of its class. It's a clone of the Excelsior, last seen under the command of Captain Sulu in The Undiscovered Country.

The ship of "Star Trek: Enterprise." It's fine.

Bringing in elements from alternate timelines that exist solely within single episodes is a good way to fall down a rabbit hole. However: I reserve the right to talk about this ship and none of the others, because when tween me saw the Enterprise-D transformed into a three-nacelle cloaking-equipped war machine, a barely suppressed "hell yes" sprang from my heart.

I always thought the -A was a good-looking ship. It just doesn't have the track record to ascend any higher here. Following its introduction at the end of Star Trek IV, the ship spends Star Trek V the butt of running jokes about how the damn thing doesn't work yet. It's shot up and decommissioned by the conclusion of Star Trek VI. The Enterprise-A has to live down the list because it saved the galaxy only what, twice?

Enterprise-E stars in three movies, two of which aren't very good. That scene at the beginning of First Contact, though. Captain Picard defies orders and swoops in with his jagged new Sovereign-Class vessel to kick a little Borg ass and save the fleet. It tells you all you need to know about the swashbuckling version of Star Trek you're about to watch.

This ship is a one-shot hero. It appears only in "Yesterday's Enterprise," one of the best episodes of "The Next Generation" and most thoughtful uses of time travel in the series. Accidentally transported to Picard and Riker's era, the ship and her crew must choose to return to certain death in their rightful time, sacrificing themselves to protect a Klingon outpost and ignite the Klingon-Federation alliance that blooms a peace in the 24th century.

TNG will forever be my Trek show. I watched it live with my dad and rewatched the collection of episodes he recorded to VHS. I am a Picard man.

The ship, though. For all its neat features like the holodeck and the battle bridge, the Enterprise-D looks like a Mercury Sable station wagon on the outside and a mid-sized American city's convention center on the inside.

By the mid-2000s, the Ford Mustang had puttered through years of uninspiring 1980s and '90s design cues and needed a breath of fresh air. Then, in 2005, the fifth-generation Mustang roared onto the scene with a look that deliberately echoed the sexy 60s design, updated for the 21st century. The story is similar for the new NCC-1701 that debuted in 2009's Star Trek. Say what you want about the rebooted Trek movies of the 21st century, but J.J. Abrams succeeded in his mission to put the new crew in a hot-rodded version of the original Enterprise design. The computer blues on the bridge, the industrial feel of the engineering section—it works. 

"No bloody A, B, C, or D."