USS Pegasus
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference
| USS Pegasus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Class: | Oberth-class |
| Registry: | NCC-53847 |
| Affiliation: | Federation/Starfleet |
| Status: | Lost (2358) |
- For the TNG episode of the same name, see "The Pegasus"
The USS Pegasus (NCC-53847) was an Oberth-class Federation starship in operation during the 24th century. A prototype vessel, the Pegasus served as a testbed vehicle for various technologies, many of which would later be implemented on the Galaxy-class.
In 2358, the Pegasus was commanded by Captain Erik Pressman, and included Ensign William T. Riker, on his first assignment out of the Academy. In that year, the Pegasus was assigned to conduct a test of an interphase cloaking device, in direct violation of the Treaty of Algeron. During the test, an explosion occurred in Main Engineering, resulting in heavy casualties. Several members of the crew, including the first officer and chief engineer, mutinied in an attempt to shut down the illegal test. Pressman, Riker, and seven other crewmembers fled the ship in an escape pod. Not long after departing, they witnessed a large explosion in space. No wreckage was found, and the vessel was believed to have been destroyed by a warp core breach. In fact, the Pegasus was not destroyed but rather drifted in cloaked form until it re-materialized inside asteroid gamma 601 in the Devolin system.
The survivors stated that the accident in engineering had been responsible for the destruction of the Pegasus, and made no mention of the cloak. The Judge Advocate General's inquiry into the incident concluded that the surviving officers had not been entirely truthful in their recounting of the events, and suggested a further investigation. The follow-up investigation never took place, and the inquiry report was quietly buried by Starfleet Intelligence.
In 2370, the Romulan warbird IRW Terix discovered a piece of wreckage from the Pegasus in the Devolin system. Pressman, now an admiral, dispatched the USS Enterprise-D to recover the vessel first, aiming to reach the cloaking device before the Romulans discovered the Federation's duplicity. The Enterprise entered the asteroid and found the ship, which was half-buried in solid rock. The illegal events that happened aboard were made public, and Pressman, among others, were court-martialed. (TNG: "The Pegasus")
[edit] Pegasus personnel
| Oberth-class starships |
|---|
| USS Biko • USS Copernicus • USS Grissom • USS Oberth • USS Pegasus • SS Tsiolkovsky • SS Vico • USS Yosemite • Unnamed |
[edit] Background
The Pegasus was named after the winged horse of Greek mythology.
It appears that the original intentions of the production staff, while designing the Pegasus, was that it was going to be a vessel possessing four nacelles. Evidence of this can be seen in a scene featuring the Pegasus's engineering room, which suggests that ship may have been intended to be a Cheyenne-class, Constellation-class, or some other unseen type of four-nacelle starship.
The Star Fleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph featured a listing of an earlier vessel, the Hermes-class Pegasus with the registry NCC-612 (it was of the Monoceros-subclass). The ship was a MK-VIIA scout authorized for appropriation on stardate 3669. While this manual was once considered canon by the producers, it is now mostly apocryphal, save for a few canonically-mentioned bits.
