They don't say it out loud very much, but look on the ships themselves, and the letters "U.S.S." are part of the name of every Federation starship on "Star Trek." But it doesn't mean the same thing it does here in the 21st century.
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00:00They don't say it out loud very much, but look on the ships themselves.
00:04In the letters, USS are a part of the name of every Federation starship on Star Trek.
00:09But it doesn't mean the same thing it does here in the 21st century.
00:12With the exception of the NX-01 from Enterprise, which predates the United Federation of Planets,
00:17every other version of the Enterprise, the NCC-1701, and all the lettered versions, A
00:22through E, have a USS in their name.
00:25Same goes for Voyager, the Defiant, the Cerritos, and any other Federation ship.
00:29The inclusion of those three letters dates back to a centuries-old tradition of naming
00:32naval vessels.
00:34Sometime in the early 17th century, British ships were gathered together as the Royal
00:37Navy, and all the vessels under its purview were designated his or Her Majesty's ship.
00:42All the Navy's vessels were, hence, given the prefix HMS, as in the HMS Pinafore or
00:48the HMS Surprise.
00:50When the United States started building a Navy in 1797, USS, standing for United States
00:55Ship, was used in place of the HMS.
00:57In Star Trek, though the letters are the same, they mean something different, United
01:01Starship.
01:02Every country has its own similar ship abbreviations, of course, but Starfleet adopted the US nomenclature
01:16because, well, Star Trek is an American show created by an American man, Gene Roddenberry.
01:21Also, within Star Trek canon, Starfleet was founded in the United States, with Federation
01:26Headquarters and Starfleet Academy located in San Francisco.
01:30Had Star Trek been created in Canada, say, the ship might be called the HMCS Enterprise.
01:36The USS Enterprise of Star Trek was named after a naval ship of the same name, a Yorktown-class
01:41aircraft carrier that was commissioned in 1938 and fought extensively in the Pacific
01:46Theater of World War II.
01:47It was one of only three aircraft carriers to survive the theater, and was eventually
01:51decommissioned in 1947.
01:54When Roddenberry learned about the Enterprise, he was fascinated by its campaigns, and decided
01:58to use its name for his science fiction series.
02:00Originally, Roddenberry wanted to name his ship the USS Yorktown, but changed his mind.
02:05That's lucky, since Yorktown would have definitely tied his ship more directly to Earth.
02:09But Yorktown was eventually used for other ships and stations in Star Trek, including
02:13for the giant starbase seen in Star Trek Beyond.
02:17When Star Trek was originally in development, Roddenberry got some jingoistic pushback from
02:21studio executives over what USS should stand for.
02:25Some of the higher-ups at NBC assumed that the Enterprise was an American ship, and that
02:28the future was ruled by the United States.
02:30Star Trek, of course, takes place in a future in which the Earth's countries have united
02:34and joined a federation of allied planets.
02:37Stephen E. Whitfield's book The Making of Star Trek explains that NBC executives wanted
02:41the Enterprise to be described as a good, safe, patriotic United States spaceship.
02:45Roddenberry evidently personally fought against this, feeling that the future belonged to
02:49the entire planet Earth, not to the United States in particular.
02:53Whitfield's book states categorically that USS stands for United Starship, which is in
02:57keeping with the multiculturalism at the heart of the franchise.
03:00Of course, the history of what the abbreviation means when characters on the various series
03:04have said it aloud has varied a bit.
03:06In the original Star Trek pilot, The Cage, and in the episode Patterns of Force, among
03:10others, dialogue implied that USS stood for United Spaceship.
03:14Captain James Kirk of the United Spaceship Enterprise is my first officer, Mr. Spock.
03:19But this has been retconned, and in an official capacity, USS stands for United Starship.
03:24While we're at it, the NCC in All the Ships registry number stands for Naval Construction
03:29Contract.
03:30According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, original Star Trek art director Matt Jeffries based
03:34the abbreviation on the pre-1949 registration codes for American aircraft, where an N designated
03:40that it was an American plane, and a C referred to a civil aircraft.
03:44He added a second C because he thought it looked better.
03:46The registry numbers imply a vast behind-the-scenes bureaucracy at work, with unseen pencil pushers
03:52constantly working hard to keep a vast military fleet in order.
03:55An organization as large as Starfleet would realistically require millions of bureaucrats
04:00keeping it afloat, so the registry numbers give Star Trek a realistic tinge.