USS Arcturus (NCC-1807)

Design History
The Tikopai-class was first authorized by the Federation council in 2268. Based upon the successful design of the Constitution-class exploration cruiser, construction of the class was delayed until testing and approval of the new linear warp drive could be completed. With the acceptance of the new warp engine design after the refit of the testbed vessel, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), the Tikopai-class was redesigned to incorporate the improvements of the uprated Constitution design. The keel of USS Tikopai (NCC-1800) was laid during a ceremony at Ishikawajima Harima Industries shipyard orbiting Earth in 2273 and the starship was launched 11 October 2274.

Service summary
The original starship USS Arcturus was built at the Starfleet Division, Kuha Keihasalm Shipyard, Sosma Docks in orbit of the planet Arcturus III and launched in the year 2275. Following space trials and commissioning, the Arcturus participated in two standard five-year missions of exploration in the Beta Quadrant, including a mission in conjunction with USS Darion (NCC-1810) and USS Vena (NCC-1817) investigating Klingon activities while operating under the guise of various scientific expeditions between 2282 and 2285. Following the end of the second five-year mission, the Arcturus was assigned to the command of Captain Eric W. Johnson in 2286. Several months later, Arcturus entered drydock at the Starfleet Yards annex in synchronous orbit high over Long Island on Earth for refit and upgrades. Some of these modifications included the removal of the secondary shuttlebay on deck six of the primary saucer hull and replacement of the bridge module and deck two superstructure, including the docking ports on the port and starboard side of deck two, as well as the addition of rear-facing torpedo tubes on the weapons module on deck fourteen.

The Arcturus departed drydock in mid-2287, still under the command of now-Commodore Eric Johnson, and resumed its mission of exploration in the Alpha Quadrant.

Special Mission
In late 2288, Arcturus was assigned a new mission. Like the USS Enterprise twenty years earlier, Arcturus was to use the slingshot time warp method to travel back in time, specifically to Earth year 1968, on a mission of historical research. The primary goal of the assignment was to locate and investigate the being known as Gary Seven, whom the Enterprise crew had previously encountered, and try and learn about the alien beings that had trained the special agent to guide Earth toward a more peaceful future. However, something went wrong during the time warp and rather than moving backward in time, the Arcturus warped forward almost eighty years, emerging in normal space in 2367, only a few months after Starfleet’s tragic losses during the Battle of Wolf 359. [It would be five more years before the cause of Arcturus’ time warp forward would be discovered, when the crew of the USS Dauntless (NCC-74658) determined the presence of the Arcturus at the Khitomer Conference in 2293 would eventually lead to all-out war between the Federation and Klingon Empire and deliberately caused the slingshot maneuver to malfunction and send the 23rd century starship forward in time rather than back.] Shortly after the starship’s return to Earth, Starfleet Command and the Office of Temporal Investigations determined the crew of Arcturus should not be returned to their own proper time. While the crew of the Arcturus was admitted back into Starfleet Academy for updated retraining, the starship itself entered San Francisco Yards for upgrades to certain key systems, though a full uprating to 24th century standards was considered prohibitively expensive.

Once the Arcturus crew had completed their six months of refresher training at the Academy, they were reassigned back aboard the Arcturus (NCC-1807) for a one year training cruise, familiarizing themselves with 24th century Starfleet procedures as they explored several sectors of the Alpha Quadrant. By early 2369, the Arcturus was recalled to Earth, where in a ceremony inside Spacedock, the Arcturus-1807 was decommissioned and the crew was officially reassigned to the newly launched USS Arcturus (NCC-1807-A). Following the decommissioning ceremony, the original Arcturus, placed under the temporary command of Chief of Operations Lt Commander Kalin Kale and a small skeleton crew, was escorted by the new starship Arcturus back to the Sosma Docks at the shipyard where she had first been built, in orbit of Arcturus III, where she is now on public display as a museum ship as part of the Starfleet Museum Annex.