So it just occurred to me that during the TNG production era there is a shift in ship nomenclature:
- TNG: The Enterprise
- DS9: The Defiant/Yukon/Danube/etc.
- VOY:
TheVoyager - (ENT): “Ennurprais” is all that’s left.
Seems towards the later shows they stopped referring to the ship as a, well, ship and just addressed it as a character? Why?
Yeah…‘the Voyager’ sounds awkward to me in a way that ‘the Enterprise’ doesn’t. You also hear this in the real life Voyager probes.
With many other ships, both real and fictional, the same phenomenon is noticeable - if the ship name sounds awkward with a ‘the’ in front, it will usually not be part of the name.