I think you're approaching it the *wrong way* entirely. Starfleet is the exception, **not** the rule. So many different ship classes all over the place. Some barely field tested. Making new classes just for the sake of making a new class (even though an existing class could do the job). It's a wonder Starfleet was able to supply parts to the many different starship types for so long. It is a huge logistical, and resource draining nightmare. Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians kept things simple. 2 to 3 ship types MAX. Nothing new introduced unless it was VERY thoroughly tested. Everything streamlined. Keep the same hull, but updated the internals as needed. This saved money, and resources for each empire. Very smart, and efficient.
Especially as you could do amazing things with a good Refit look at any Naval ships today or through out history pre and post large refit and although the hull at be largely the same the combat capabilities are vastly different
Starfleet kinda reminds me of the battleship buildups around WWI, where nations were constantly churning out new battleships, every hull a new design, no duplication.. it was horribly expensive and produced poorly vetted ships with all sorts of design problems that they never got a chance to iron out. Today we have discovered that a single well designed hull can be updated with all sorts of new equipment. You don't need a fancy new layout to put in new weapons and sensors. I always took this churn as a sign that the federation was way too obsessed with new shiney things and not about things that got the job done, which really shows in how outclassed they tended to be by other major nations.
@@neeneko There is the fact that all Federation designs were mass produced contrary to the WW1 battleships. Also the Federation tended to outclass the other Alpha quadrant powers *without even having a proper warship design.* The other powers simply couldn't compete with the huge nerds that the Federetion is made of. But this was until they encountered the Borg and the Dominion, both of which were also huge nerds, and while not on their level they had much more resources and a tech advantage.
Totally agree with this. Furthermore there are two important elements completely overlooked here. 1: In another video Lore Reloaded narrator says that Qo'nos is in a location that is short of materials to advance its R&D, were as the Federation and its expansive grip has access to numerous sources of materials. This would mean that designing new ships would be slower, but when done, they were meaning full. 2: After the destruction of Praxis, the Klingon government found itself almost bankrupt due to focusing resources on fixing Qo'nos. It stands to the fact that their priority was not on R&D of new ships but to have dedicated multipurpose ships to reduce cost. To prove this point, the Klingon involvement in the Alpha Quadrant during the many wars as seen in DS9, the main force was that of Vor'cha and BoP ships. Why would you need 3 or 4 other ship designs if they do the job. In another episode of DS9 that again proves why the method of having fewer ship designs was a good thing, in the episode (S7, Ep6) Treachery, Faith and the Great River, there is a need for a spare part for the Defiant, but as the part is hard to come by because (well its the only ship of its class, and would require a part from an escort ship) Nog does a little trading to get the part. Although the episode is quiet humorous especially when he takes Martok's Bloodwine, it highlights the problem that Starfleet could face when making so few ships of many classes.
Someone earlier suggested the Bird-of-Prey being like the T-55 of the Klingons. This is somewhat true if we follow through that thought: The design is sturdy, sound, and fulfills all the necessary requirements of its role. They're dirty and noisy but they keep running. Even larger follow-on designs (T-62, T-64, T-72) share the same outward appearance with differences mainly being internal. Bigger gun, better engine, better armor, an autoloader, etc. The Bird of Prey is the same: the external design and layout is sound, so they keep reusing it for future designs and just scale the ship to match new and more advanced internals. This goes double for the fact that T-55s and the younger siblings can and are regularly updated with better fire control, engines, reactive armor, and the like, to keep them useful and competitive, even up to modern standards in some cases. Who is to say that the Birds of Prey aren't superbly successful in the same way? Who is to say that between a T-72 and a T-80 that the Duras sisters wouldn't pick the older of the two, even though the gas-turbine engine is inherently better for mobility?
Klingons are partially based on the Soviets or so I heard, so the adage of "why fix what isn't broken" fits. For example in the semi-canon STO the Klingons have updated models of both the BoP and raptor, but every design overall bears an easily identifiable overall general shape.
Really love the Starship Lore. The way you delivered it is much better than 'Trek Shipyards' they tend to go off topic and gets unnecessarily drawn out. I hope there will be an episode on the Nova Class Starship like the USS Equinox and USS Roede Island.
One thing to remember, after Praxis blew up the Klingons had to concentrate on just surviving. Starship design probably took a back seat to environmental repair
Taking away from the real-world reason of re-using models, I thought it wasn't unreasonable to think the Klingons would just have made different sized birds-of-prey. Like pick-up trucks: same basic design but different sizes and features. Both the small, basic , bare-bones model and the over-sized, fully-loaded model are both pick-up trucks.
If any of the games are to go by like the armada games there are multiple sizes and honestly I know the shows and movies play with perspective a lot but it does look like at least that there are different sizes. That being said the defiant changes size constantly if you just go by the visuals.
Yeah I know they aren't that's why I'm saying that the visuals for the actual shows would also allow for this to be the case as they do play with scaling quite a bit.
The visuals don't bear this out (though thats because its what it looks like on screen). Additionally, cruisers would have different needs, jobs, and methods..using the same hull design might not be wise if you need a cruiser not to be a scout..then maybe itwouldn't..
🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely well done and very well informatively explained and executed in every detail and way shape and form possibly provided indeed, And the Klingon Bird of Prey has always been one of my favorite ship designs along with various other Klingon vessels as well👌.
I love the idea that a warrior race wouldn't just honor the warriors but also the ones who make sure the warriors can keep fighting. You can't defeat your enemies in glorious combat if you can't get to them.
In universe economics explanation. When praxis exploded and hurt the Klingon economy, perhaps it made sense to standardize around one hull type that could be mass produced easily? For the stability of their society, they just didn’t have the budget to play around with many new ship designs but they still needed a big fleet. This was their answer to keep warriors “employed” and their society reasonably stable.
-Actually the Enterprise only took one shot with out shields in TUC -The Bird of Prey is a great design no matter what century it's used in. -I personally believe the K'Vort cruiser was supposed to not look like a bird of prey but they didn't have the budget to make a new klingon ship yet. Personally I think Star Fleet changes designs to often. Ships are just like Computer cases. The case is not important but the processor, mother board and cards are important. I approve of the klingons knowing a proficient design when they see it and sticking to it. They've built new ships where necessary only.
saquist The thing with Starfleet is that they are always pushing the boundaries with new tech. Old space frames may not be able to handle them along with the support systems needed to run them if they become standard which might help to explain some of the reasoning for Staflrfleet's plethora of ship designs. The Empire didn't innovate as much and that's reflective in their ship variety and advancements.
Not to mention the K'Vort was only in Yesterday's Enterprise and we never saw a "prime universe" K'vort. Frankly if you just ignore the K'vort, it solves a lot the size/roles problems when it comes to Birds of Prey class ships. (Except fitting two humpback whales in her of course)
The klingons have a different motivation that Star Fleet. They have to fund WAR not exploration. Imagine how much the Klingon Defense Budget is. That money could be used for tried and true space frames. The Federation worries about speed. The klingons don't. That's where different hulls make a difference.
Big difference between nailing the secondary hull where they keep the anti-matter as opposed to a broom closet on the primary hull where they keep the lemon pledge.
A great example of the Paramount's corporate greed can be found by looking at two Star Trek films: Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Star Trek: Generations (1994). Despite their primary settings being around 80 years apart, both films had a Klingon Bird of Prey present. In fact, in Generations, it was supposed to have been the same kind of model that would have been used by the Klingons decades earlier. Yes, it was a jab at the Duras family not being able to afford a more modern ship since losing the Klingon civil war. Furthermore, ships were said to have a faulty power design that could be exploited by an enemy, who could trigger their cloaking device, which would disable their shields and leave them vulnerable to attack. This gave the pretense for why both ships were destroyed while cloaked. However, if you watch the clip of each Bird of Prey's destruction, you may realize, it was the SAME CLIP! Rather than being provided a sufficient budget to design, construct and destroy a new model, Paramount executives (who had green lit all other practical model effects in Generations) came back and said, "We've got a clip for that already. We was in a movie from 3 years ago. Use that!"
I think this is one of these areas where the dictates of budget in a television show did significant harm 2 the naval architecture of a culture. The Klingon Empire is one of the most fleshed-out cultures in Star Trek. It is in my mind Criminal that the Klingons do not have the same corner copia of ship designs that you see in the Federation in the official Canon. In my personal headcanon I have to include the ships from games like Starfleet command and Star Trek Armada and Armada 2 simply because they make the Klingon Fleet work so much more realistically then the handful of ship designs that we see on screen and the TV shows.
To be fair, if I was a Klingon starship designer and saw Starfleet sending Oberths at me, I would conclude there would be no point in making new warship designs when my enemies are basically announcing they're tired of living
>video designed to analyze a single fictional ship design >Represents one of the best analyses of why the Klingon narrative in the Star Trek kind of fizzled out. Yeah you did pretty good.
Yeah, calling out the Klingons as stagnating because of this while Excelsior-class ships are flying around all over TNG would be a serious double standard.
Well, at least the Excelsior model always represented the same ship class. With the BoP they used the same model for represent multiple classes, chiefly so that it wouldn’t be completely dwarfed by the Enterprise D model.
Isue with Enterprise-D is that Riker turned her away from the attacker, allowing the sisters to get easy shots into her engineering section and cause the core containment to fail. Had they not turned away, Enterprise would have destroyed the bird of prey easily.
the thing is they had no idea that the bird of prey could fire through the Enterprise shields as if they weren't even there because they had modified Geordies visor so they knew exactly what the shield frequency was
I gotta agree with the RLM review that the correct response was not trying to technobabble out of it but just "FIRE EVERYTHING." They'd been fine. Multiple people should have been court-marshaled for that battle. It's the real life equivalent of a 'Nam era patrol boat taking out a modern aircraft carrier.
Yes shows how Riker is a bad captain in this scenario, see episode The Wounded for correct response to fighting inferior enemy vessel by Captain Benjamin Maxwell whose own ship the Phoniex had its shields disabled was able to respond by maneuvering and destroying the shielded Cardassian warship, but back to Generations of course in reality they just wanted to increase the merchandising by introducing a new Enterprise in the future movies
I could never understand why they didn't use Torpedo's to flush out cloaked ships. a few well positions high yield Torpedo's would have probably caused a cloaked ship a serious headache, at the very least it would disrupt their cloak, as they would be unshielded. 😑 You could easily imagine Torpedo's being developed specially for this in a real arms race......
What are the chances any ship just happens to be carrying equipment for cataloging gaseous anomalies again? In fact it was the Excelsior which had the equipment. I guess Enterprise just happened to be on the same mission.
In all fairness, we see a number of Federation ship classes that were in service for at least as long. (though largely for the same real world cost saving reasons.) There's also a fairly solid in universe explanation for any stagnation given that the Klingons had to reduce their military budget due to the events of Star Trek VI.
Ah, thank you so much for the laughs! I almost get the impression you may have a few reservations about Star Trek reusing the same models over and over. Great video!
I think of the Bird of Prey as a small, highly maneuverable weapons platform. If the weapons and systems are being upgraded, it's basically the best bang for your buck. Why invest heavily in bulkier ships with a lower punch to cost ratio? I think it was a brilliant design and it makes sense that it would last late into the 24th century. I *do* think it's silly that one was able to take out a Galaxy Class starship, but it's rightly considered a formidable warship.
The Bird of Prey was the very first Star Trek ship I saw as a kid being introduced to the series, even before any of the Enterprise's, so it will always hold a special place in my heart.
I do find the stagnation idea very interesting. Though I'm sure that's not what they were thinking when they kept on reusing the Bird of Prey model, but that's what Death of the Author is for. As for the corruption thing I'm pretty sure that started in the empire before the Bird of Prey was introduced. I haven't seen Enterprise so I don't know if there are Birds of Prey in that.
Charles Champ yeah, it always gets weird when shows do a prequel, the bird of prey as encountered by Archer’s enterprise. According to memory alpha it first happened during “The Expanse”. Interestingly though, the show does go into, like in it video, when the Empire started to change. When the class/cast system started to change, other professions were pushed out of the way, out of power and the warrior class took over and were seen as the epitome of honor. This was explained by a Klingon “lawyer” assigned to defend Archer.
The BoP (specifically the B'rel class) can cloak, is highly maneuverable, perfect for hit & run attacks, cheap and lethal. Consider this, during the Cold War, the Soviets had a Quantity over Quality mentality hence the Soviet Navy build large numbers of small and cheap Osa I, Osa II, Komar class, Turya class and Shershen class missile boats and torpedo boats were cheap, lethal and built in large quantities. That said, it makes sense for the Klingons to build Bird of Prey's in large numbers and just keep building them well into the 24th century as their large numbers, ease of construction, cheap cost and effectiveness (especially in packs) allows the Klingon Empire to remain a strong and dominant military power.
Although I love the Bird of Prey as a ship - seriously, it's a beautiful ship, and I really want to see the old style birds of prey turn up in the new series and films (although I can't imagine it will) - it's by no means a great design as a warship. If it's ever fired backwards on any show, I can't remember it, and in space, only having front-firing weaponry seems a massive flaw. You can make all the arguments you like about warriors facing their foes front on, or the manoeuvrability of the ship, but even one rear firing torpedo would have made a huge difference. It shows too much reliance on strike and fade tactics (probably using the cloak).
Of no particular consequence to the Trek crowd, the USS Richmond K. Turner (CG-20), a Leahy-class guided missile cruiser of the United States Navy that was displayed in the first minute of your video was one of my ship's sister ships ( I served aboard the USS Leahy CG-16). It was in its day a very serious threat that was instrumental in Russia ultimately showing their belly.
Great video! My thought on the Enterprise-D destruction by the Duras sisters was that it was essentially a very lucky shot (one that’s emblematic of that Galaxy classes wider problems) It’s only after the Bird of Prey is destroyed that the issues with the warp core start to happen.
Actually, I would argue the Bird-of-Prey was the absolute best design of all the Empire's ships. It is small and so is easy to mass-produce. It packs an insane amount of firepower for a ship of its size, and it has a small crew and so the loss of even a number of these ships would NOT be a significant setback for the Empire. If you have a really good basic design, you don't get rid of it. Sure change its various systems as advances come about, but overall the ship was amazing.
Simple answer: TNG was too lazy to make new klingon-designs. So they used the stuff from the movies (a tradition very often seen in Star trek history, every movie made new props for the series). But the canon answer is just that the bird of prey is existing in different sizes. The klingons used the frame and made it just smaller (B`Rel-scout) or bigger (K`Vort-battlecruiser) or medium-sized.
Hey Lore Reloaded! I just recently found your channel, and I really enjoy your content. Many channels just list off a list of specs, and call it a day, but I enjoy your extra bits of history and breaking of the 4th wall here and there. But, I do agree that in the later years of the Klingon Empire they seemed to get stale after a while. But, then again a lot of this I think stems from the budget of the series. I am trying to keep with solutions to in-universe reasons, but it is hard as other races evolved, and changed their designs with time. Then again, maybe we are all wrong, and the Klingons are right in that their designs are timeless. Don't fix what's not broken, right?
The Klingons may have suffered from stagnation. But nearly as much as the Federation did. I would argue that Klingon ship design followed the rule of "If its not broken, don't fix it". I like that they kept simple, easily modified and refit designs, continually upgrading them, adding new designs when necessary. It was very efficient and practical. Bear in mind that the Klingons had to make peace with the Federation because their economy was collapsing under the weight of their military budget. They had to roll back spending and innovation in order to revitalize the empire, hence the stagnation.
The older bird of prey you flash a couple times at the start is ROMULAN, not Klingon. The 2 sides share the class designation for their scouts during the original series but they are not explicitly related, though there could have been some undiscussed tech sharing during the romulan-klingon alliance.
In the original script for Erath of Khan the movie that introduced the BOP it was meant to be a stolen Romulan ship hense the bird wing motif and it having wings in the first place as it was meant to be a replacement for the Warbird from TOS but that has since been retconned to shared research in the same way the Romulans got there hands on D7 hulls in TOS
The villains of ST3 were originally supposed to be Romulans, but they got changed to more dramatic Klingons early on. The ship concept had already designed, but they figured that maybe Kruge was so badass that he stole the ship from the Romulans. However, there was never dialogue to indicate that and Sulu calls it the "Klingon Bird of Prey" so that settles that. FASA's Star Trek RPG back in the 80s gave the nice explanation that it's a result of co-operation between Klingons and Romulans, and Romulans have their own version of the ship. Not canon, but I tend to like FASAs worldbuilding more than canon.
I do love that even if they had the budget, not changing the design of the bird of prey would be a good idea. This is because when we look at the counter part, the federation, we see a mess of too many ships. Imagine being in charge of repairs at a dock. After a battle you see dozens of ships 7 different classes, all needing different repairs. In contrast a Klingon bird of prey will only have one schematic with minor modifications depending on the layout.
To appease anyone would be dishonorable. Klingons don't sugar coat it. In fact I would say sometimes they're a little to dramatic in the story telling. lol. More blood wine and war stories. I swear the Klingons are just space Vikings.
Maybe it's just a case of "same hull, new tech"? Place modern systems in a familiar arrangement and you arguably have a pocket cruiser like the defiant..
Can’t wait for the next one. I hope you include how they use the same shots of a Bird of prey exploding and multiple movies... that was a little annoying
I would put the stagnation of the Klingon Empire in the 24th century down to a combination of two main factors. *1* - The warrior class rising to power and taking control of government (as lamented by Kolos in ENT) which started a longer-term decline as soldiering was emphasized and promoted to a ridiculous degree, to the detriment of the essential STEM fields for a prosperous high-technology galactic power. As younger generations growing up on warrior propaganda aspired to be warriors in greater numbers, the numbers of technologists, engineers, shipwrights etc. declined. That is real bad for a major starfaring power that wants to keep up with the others. *2* - The Praxis disaster. This would have been an Extinction Level Event for Qo'nos if not for the radical mitigation measures, as it was it almost crippled the empire, and took a long time to recover from. Add these two together and you've got the KE's stagnation problem in a nutshell, IMHO.
The Bird of Prey is the B52 of the Klingons. Updated and improved so many times it's still flying. It looks the same from the outside but internally it may as well be a completely different ship.
The Bird of Prey is the Sherman tank of Star Trek. It was easy to build and maintain, cheap and effective in larger numbers and a very straightforward design, which are very important features for a ship to be operated by people with substantially less technical skill than most other races. Then it was kept in service far too long with too little in terms of upgrades to actually keep it competitive in combat, but it was still somewhat serviceable, but only if you play to its strengths. Its not incapable in the 24th century, but its definitely a ship you have to be careful and considerate with about what it can and cant do. But these are Klingons we are talking about...
It always seemed to me that klingons use so many old ships in the 24th cause "Quantity>Quality" and cause of the Praxis!? incident, that klingon moon in STVI, they were not able to achieve/produce new ships for DECADES
Correct, the Treaty of Algeron saw the federation agreed not to persue cloaking tech and the Romulans agreed to a ban on their high yield plasma torpedoes (which the federation considered a much greater threat).
I don't think they ever actually implied that the ship kept the same dimensions for every different role the design was used for. If anything it looks like they had smaller, original sized BoPs and much larger ships that shared the same basic shape but scaled up significantly, not that it wasn't a fairly flimsy excuse for the real reason, which was obviously that they didn't have the budget to make new ship models as often as they would have preferred to on these shows, but still.
Does it bother anyone else that one of these ships with a crew of 12 is supposed to be able to hang with a Star fleet ship with a crew in the hundreds?
Kind of apples and oranges. The one man sub would only do so because it's undetected while the Bird of Prey has to decloak, and in most examples the Star Ship is able to raise shields and arm weapons.
id say that its a testament to its design that it was usable for such a long time. the bird of prey was designed as a hit and run vessel. from its cloaking device to its small maneuverable design, its clear the ship is meant to act similarly to a ww2 style naval destroyer. a smaller, low profile ship with the capability of dishing out a lot of firepower in a short period of time. like you said the weapons can be upgraded over the years to make it capable of damaging newer vessels, and really, what more does it need. if its being piloted in the way its design intends its capable of picking its fights on its own terms, and seriously damaging a vessel before its able to fight back. combine that with its ability to fly in atmospheric conditions meaning it can support troops on the ground and attack planetary targets quickly and efficiantly, i feel that theres a good reason this ship was used for so long. sure on one on one a ship like this would have had a hard time fighting something like a galaxy, but in numbers they were deadly. we see two bird of preys nearly destroy a vor'cha cruiser in tng.
New technology developments did stagnate but not for nostalgic reasons. As you said, becoming a warrior was considered being more honorable as time went on through TNG, DS9, and Voyager, we see a little of this in Enterprise too. We saw fewer and fewer innovators as serving the Empire as a soldier was more favorable. I wonder if this was because of something that Gowron enacted politically, was it religious through that Kahless clone, or something else...that would make an interesting discussion. And then you've got the Klingons relying on the Federation for resources after the Praxis moon incident, maybe they approached R&D with more caution after this fact.
I somewhat wonder if the 'peace' of TNG did it somewhat to. That it made the klingons think they weren't being warriors with nothing to fight and so they became warriors and tried to start conflict to keep it going? I don't know..
Lore Reloaded Krogans from Mass Effect were said to be the same with a very similar wording dislodged by one of the characters from ME3. And given the results; we saw a major civil war, they pulverized a weakened Cardassian Union, re-ignited conflict with the Federation, and the Dominion War...then the Federation again in STO. Could also argue using real world examples that war pushes new technological development, so the only way for the Klingons to ramp up R&D is during times of conflict.
The Bird of Prey was designed that way because even if it was used as cargo ship, or garbage scow, it would still look cool! Klingon's have a design over function philosophy. It's why the Bird of Prey has a bird of prey painted on the hull and why their knives are overly complicated in design and they do like opera. I think the reasons that the BoP doesn't work as well as it should, and why the Klingons keep it in service past it's due date is simply because a big part of their culture is image and they're at heart classicalists. Good vid!
It's hard to create a cruiser from a scout, but you can create a scout from a cruiser. (See German WW2 Destroyers like the Z-52 for a scout type ship up-gunned to a mini cruiser, and the British Leander-class ships, Cruisers that doubled very well as scouts)
It makes sense that the BoP was never fully replaced, the class was highly successful and upgradable, and a major threat in battle, which made replacing it somewhat illogical. It happens in the real world all the time, high initial success makes a design serve too long, and eventually be outdated
Yes they did go stagnant for a time but the BoP was such a good ship it still was a tough ship to beat. Then add to that the bravery of Klingons and you had a real fight on your hands. I love what Kirk said in the 4th movie when Bones was complaining about it being a rust bucket. He had a healthy respect for what it could do. Saying how much the BoP had cost the Federation. Loved the vid Lore and cant wait for the second part its going to be good one.
TNG era was the best IMO, Romulans, Klingons and Federation the power struggle between them was intense and pretty much equal. Now the Federation is the be all and end all of the Alpha quadrant.
The biggest issue I have is that the Klingons are using it. In TOS the 'bird of prey' was a Romulan ship "Balance of Power". The trade treaty between the Romulans and Klingons may explain the use of ships, but in Star Trek lure it was the Romulans using Klingon ships "Enterpise Incident ". The waters get s muddy from here, the D7 had a power source similar to an antimatter reactor. Later we find Romulans at using an artificial quantum singularity as a power source. Is this technology Romulans is not share with the Klingons?
I think I would have made a quick mention of the earlier Klingon / Romulean standardization of starships. Apparently the Romulrans brought little or nothing recognizable to the table,
I get the feeling that the bird of prey was the Klingon Zergling. Cheap, fast, and easy to build. The smallest would be crewed by a dozen warriors, so you could field 80 for the same number of trained staff as a galaxy class ship. There's a story that the Russian Mig fighter jets were designed to be repaired on the tarmac by a 16 year old with hand tools. I imagine there's some parallel design philosophy in the Klingon empire.
24th century Klingons _were_ pretty ridiculous, and while I never _necessarily_ thought of recycling the Bird of Prey as emblematic or symptomatic of their decline, it does make sense.
Star Trek IV is the reason I, as an 8 year old kid at the time, originally fell in love with the Klingon Bird of Prey! I actually preferred Kirk, Spock and the boys flying around in it more so than in the Enterprise. Damn that was such a great movie (minus the hippy save the whales nonsense).
I remember during the dominion war the Klingon bird of prey held the line while the federation and romulans were modifying their ships from the breen energy weapon.
A question for us true nerds. The episode "Friday's Child" a Klingon agent on Capella states a "small scout ship" is in orbit - bird of prey? Enterprise didn't see it until it was at the end of sensor range. Conclusion, Klingon commander sees Enterprise drop out of warp, he raises cloak and creeps off, either dropping the cloak too early by accident, or to switch power to sensors to eyeball the Enterprise. If so, this suggests Klingons had cloaking technology long before "Search for Spock" possibly even as long ago as "Discovery". I mean obviously the writers didn't think "let's leave it open that Klingon ships can cloak, in fifty years we might want to add that in a story" but it does fit in my view. Any thoughts?
In ENT in Klingon arc (4th Season), they already talked about how Empire stopped finding Scholars, Doctors, Scientists, and people who expanded Klingon Culture as Honorable and/or important. Only old Klingons remembered those times.
Lore Reloaded Well it happened. Perhaps there were 2 waves. 22nd century off goes doctors and scientist. And later off goes people who serve in military in non warrior capacity. Sorry. Never replied from mobile
Another reason the Klingons may have stagnated is because of the explosion and destruction of Praxis. It was indicated that without Praxis at the current military levels that the Klingon empire operated at that it could not survive more than fifty years. Under such economic strain it would not be surprising if even older ships would not continually be recycled, retrofitted, and rebuild. Shipyards would have most likely tried to get away with building as similar hulls as possible to minimize the need to retool. I suspect that economics, both real world and within the lore, could be the reason the ship hull was used so often. It's not so much don't fix it if it's not broken and more this is what we can afford.
I love the BOP design. I think you’re right that it stuck around due to cheapness of the studio, but I think it’s reasonable to propose that into TNG and beyond, the chassis (which was very successful) but filled it with new technology. The K’Vort was just a scaled up version of that chassis.
I think you are trying to apply human ship categorization to Klingon ship design. A Bird of Prey is simply a warriors warship - commanded independently as a solo or small group raider. Many different Klingon class ships have been Birds of Prey - a designation of how it is utilized and commanded.
if it aint broke don't fix it, ok maybe fix the tailpipe. i never thought the Klingon empire ever really needed to improve on the bird of prey, it definitely earned its name.
0:56 I assume that was supposed to be sarcasm. Yeah you can easily modify it into a cruiser. All warships share the same basic design. Just different sizes and armaments. You make it sound they took a pre-existing scoutship and physically modified the ship into a cruiser. When they based the cruiser on a proven design, and just increased the size and armaments. chaq wej ghor 'oH ghewmey 'oH tI' (If it ain't broke don't fix it) You see stagnation I see practicality, and efficiency. The Klingons don't waste resources developing a hundred different designs. They use a few proven designs and just upgrade them as their tech improves.
it's one of my favorite. I like the compact but powerful design. it hits me as on par with a ww2 destroer, having different outfittings for different roles. I think the problems they had were in forgetting Klingon values and how this ship got deployed. I would have run patrols with three ships and raids with five. this way one could stay cloaked until needed or until the ship.had a valuable shot at an enemy vessel. this extends itself into my idea behind raiding. always an Intel ship cloaked with a vessel in reserve avoiding notice and getting into position for a devastating strike.
I think you're approaching it the *wrong way* entirely. Starfleet is the exception, **not** the rule. So many different ship classes all over the place. Some barely field tested. Making new classes just for the sake of making a new class (even though an existing class could do the job). It's a wonder Starfleet was able to supply parts to the many different starship types for so long. It is a huge logistical, and resource draining nightmare.
Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians kept things simple. 2 to 3 ship types MAX. Nothing new introduced unless it was VERY thoroughly tested. Everything streamlined. Keep the same hull, but updated the internals as needed. This saved money, and resources for each empire. Very smart, and efficient.
Especially as you could do amazing things with a good Refit look at any Naval ships today or through out history pre and post large refit and although the hull at be largely the same the combat capabilities are vastly different
TheBigExclusive There is the fact that Starflett only needs a few atoms to build anything they need thanks to replicators.
Starfleet kinda reminds me of the battleship buildups around WWI, where nations were constantly churning out new battleships, every hull a new design, no duplication.. it was horribly expensive and produced poorly vetted ships with all sorts of design problems that they never got a chance to iron out.
Today we have discovered that a single well designed hull can be updated with all sorts of new equipment. You don't need a fancy new layout to put in new weapons and sensors. I always took this churn as a sign that the federation was way too obsessed with new shiney things and not about things that got the job done, which really shows in how outclassed they tended to be by other major nations.
@@neeneko There is the fact that all Federation designs were mass produced contrary to the WW1 battleships.
Also the Federation tended to outclass the other Alpha quadrant powers *without even having a proper warship design.*
The other powers simply couldn't compete with the huge nerds that the Federetion is made of.
But this was until they encountered the Borg and the Dominion, both of which were also huge nerds, and while not on their level they had much more resources and a tech advantage.
Totally agree with this. Furthermore there are two important elements completely overlooked here. 1: In another video Lore Reloaded narrator says that Qo'nos is in a location that is short of materials to advance its R&D, were as the Federation and its expansive grip has access to numerous sources of materials. This would mean that designing new ships would be slower, but when done, they were meaning full. 2: After the destruction of Praxis, the Klingon government found itself almost bankrupt due to focusing resources on fixing Qo'nos. It stands to the fact that their priority was not on R&D of new ships but to have dedicated multipurpose ships to reduce cost. To prove this point, the Klingon involvement in the Alpha Quadrant during the many wars as seen in DS9, the main force was that of Vor'cha and BoP ships. Why would you need 3 or 4 other ship designs if they do the job.
In another episode of DS9 that again proves why the method of having fewer ship designs was a good thing, in the episode (S7, Ep6) Treachery, Faith and the Great River, there is a need for a spare part for the Defiant, but as the part is hard to come by because (well its the only ship of its class, and would require a part from an escort ship) Nog does a little trading to get the part. Although the episode is quiet humorous especially when he takes Martok's Bloodwine, it highlights the problem that Starfleet could face when making so few ships of many classes.
Someone earlier suggested the Bird-of-Prey being like the T-55 of the Klingons. This is somewhat true if we follow through that thought: The design is sturdy, sound, and fulfills all the necessary requirements of its role. They're dirty and noisy but they keep running. Even larger follow-on designs (T-62, T-64, T-72) share the same outward appearance with differences mainly being internal. Bigger gun, better engine, better armor, an autoloader, etc. The Bird of Prey is the same: the external design and layout is sound, so they keep reusing it for future designs and just scale the ship to match new and more advanced internals.
This goes double for the fact that T-55s and the younger siblings can and are regularly updated with better fire control, engines, reactive armor, and the like, to keep them useful and competitive, even up to modern standards in some cases. Who is to say that the Birds of Prey aren't superbly successful in the same way?
Who is to say that between a T-72 and a T-80 that the Duras sisters wouldn't pick the older of the two, even though the gas-turbine engine is inherently better for mobility?
that makes sense.
Klingons are partially based on the Soviets or so I heard, so the adage of "why fix what isn't broken" fits. For example in the semi-canon STO the Klingons have updated models of both the BoP and raptor, but every design overall bears an easily identifiable overall general shape.
Really love the Starship Lore.
The way you delivered it is much better than 'Trek Shipyards' they tend to go off topic and gets unnecessarily drawn out.
I hope there will be an episode on the Nova Class Starship like the USS Equinox and USS Roede Island.
One thing to remember, after Praxis blew up the Klingons had to concentrate on just surviving. Starship design probably took a back seat to environmental repair
i think your analysis of Klingon society to the point that honor became second in favor of the warrior class is right on the mark.
The Klingon bird of pray the rear engined air-cooled porsche of the empire.
indeed.
Love the comparison...as another car enthusias
I love the pot shots you take at the logic in shows, the corporate greed, and at times the idiocy of the fanboys while in there nerd rages.
I loved the K'Vort loved the bigger size and the way the wings were fixed up all the time
Taking away from the real-world reason of re-using models, I thought it wasn't unreasonable to think the Klingons would just have made different sized birds-of-prey.
Like pick-up trucks: same basic design but different sizes and features. Both the small, basic , bare-bones model and the over-sized, fully-loaded model are both pick-up trucks.
DegeneragentX
In the turn based strategy game Birth of the Federation, the models were of drastically different sizes.
If any of the games are to go by like the armada games there are multiple sizes and honestly I know the shows and movies play with perspective a lot but it does look like at least that there are different sizes. That being said the defiant changes size constantly if you just go by the visuals.
Don't forget: those games aren't Alpha Canon so they're not 'canon'.
Yeah I know they aren't that's why I'm saying that the visuals for the actual shows would also allow for this to be the case as they do play with scaling quite a bit.
The visuals don't bear this out (though thats because its what it looks like on screen). Additionally, cruisers would have different needs, jobs, and methods..using the same hull design might not be wise if you need a cruiser not to be a scout..then maybe itwouldn't..
never too early for potshots
🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely well done and very well informatively explained and executed in every detail and way shape and form possibly provided indeed, And the Klingon Bird of Prey has always been one of my favorite ship designs along with various other Klingon vessels as well👌.
I love the idea that a warrior race wouldn't just honor the warriors but also the ones who make sure the warriors can keep fighting. You can't defeat your enemies in glorious combat if you can't get to them.
In universe economics explanation. When praxis exploded and hurt the Klingon economy, perhaps it made sense to standardize around one hull type that could be mass produced easily? For the stability of their society, they just didn’t have the budget to play around with many new ship designs but they still needed a big fleet. This was their answer to keep warriors “employed” and their society reasonably stable.
-Actually the Enterprise only took one shot with out shields in TUC
-The Bird of Prey is a great design no matter what century it's used in.
-I personally believe the K'Vort cruiser was supposed to not look like a bird of prey but they didn't have the budget to make a new klingon ship yet.
Personally I think Star Fleet changes designs to often. Ships are just like Computer cases. The case is not important but the processor, mother board and cards are important. I approve of the klingons knowing a proficient design when they see it and sticking to it. They've built new ships where necessary only.
saquist
The thing with Starfleet is that they are always pushing the boundaries with new tech. Old space frames may not be able to handle them along with the support systems needed to run them if they become standard which might help to explain some of the reasoning for Staflrfleet's plethora of ship designs. The Empire didn't innovate as much and that's reflective in their ship variety and advancements.
Not to mention the K'Vort was only in Yesterday's Enterprise and we never saw a "prime universe" K'vort. Frankly if you just ignore the K'vort, it solves a lot the size/roles problems when it comes to Birds of Prey class ships. (Except fitting two humpback whales in her of course)
The klingons have a different motivation that Star Fleet. They have to fund WAR not exploration. Imagine how much the Klingon Defense Budget is. That money could be used for tried and true space frames. The Federation worries about speed. The klingons don't. That's where different hulls make a difference.
+saquist You'd think that R&D would be at least part of that military budget.
Kvorts were also in the Next Gen Episodes relating to the Klingon Civil War
Big difference between nailing the secondary hull where they keep the anti-matter as opposed to a broom closet on the primary hull where they keep the lemon pledge.
A great example of the Paramount's corporate greed can be found by looking at two Star Trek films: Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Star Trek: Generations (1994). Despite their primary settings being around 80 years apart, both films had a Klingon Bird of Prey present. In fact, in Generations, it was supposed to have been the same kind of model that would have been used by the Klingons decades earlier. Yes, it was a jab at the Duras family not being able to afford a more modern ship since losing the Klingon civil war. Furthermore, ships were said to have a faulty power design that could be exploited by an enemy, who could trigger their cloaking device, which would disable their shields and leave them vulnerable to attack.
This gave the pretense for why both ships were destroyed while cloaked. However, if you watch the clip of each Bird of Prey's destruction, you may realize, it was the SAME CLIP! Rather than being provided a sufficient budget to design, construct and destroy a new model, Paramount executives (who had green lit all other practical model effects in Generations) came back and said, "We've got a clip for that already. We was in a movie from 3 years ago. Use that!"
They used the destruction clip in that of ds9 to..
DarkLight523 9
DarkLight523
They used the same clip twice in best of both worlds too.
jdslyman
CBS/Paramount: multimillion companies that can't build new sets and rips mere dollars from youtubers
And Voyager reused plenty of minor Alpha quadrant species' ships, although they did modify them, and CG alter later.
I think this is one of these areas where the dictates of budget in a television show did significant harm 2 the naval architecture of a culture. The Klingon Empire is one of the most fleshed-out cultures in Star Trek. It is in my mind Criminal that the Klingons do not have the same corner copia of ship designs that you see in the Federation in the official Canon. In my personal headcanon I have to include the ships from games like Starfleet command and Star Trek Armada and Armada 2 simply because they make the Klingon Fleet work so much more realistically then the handful of ship designs that we see on screen and the TV shows.
Love your channel, been binge watching for the past week.
glad you enjoy
To be fair, if I was a Klingon starship designer and saw Starfleet sending Oberths at me, I would conclude there would be no point in making new warship designs when my enemies are basically announcing they're tired of living
>video designed to analyze a single fictional ship design
>Represents one of the best analyses of why the Klingon narrative in the Star Trek kind of fizzled out.
Yeah you did pretty good.
It's the Ford Mustang of Star Trek. They look super cool and powerful, but they're freaking everywhere you look!
Sort of like how they kept reusing the Excelsior model over and over again.
Indeed!
yup the AK-47 of star trek.
Like everything in life, it comes down to money.
Yeah, calling out the Klingons as stagnating because of this while Excelsior-class ships are flying around all over TNG would be a serious double standard.
Well, at least the Excelsior model always represented the same ship class. With the BoP they used the same model for represent multiple classes, chiefly so that it wouldn’t be completely dwarfed by the Enterprise D model.
Isue with Enterprise-D is that Riker turned her away from the attacker, allowing the sisters to get easy shots into her engineering section and cause the core containment to fail. Had they not turned away, Enterprise would have destroyed the bird of prey easily.
the thing is they had no idea that the bird of prey could fire through the Enterprise shields as if they weren't even there because they had modified Geordies visor so they knew exactly what the shield frequency was
I gotta agree with the RLM review that the correct response was not trying to technobabble out of it but just "FIRE EVERYTHING." They'd been fine. Multiple people should have been court-marshaled for that battle. It's the real life equivalent of a 'Nam era patrol boat taking out a modern aircraft carrier.
Yes shows how Riker is a bad captain in this scenario, see episode The Wounded for correct response to fighting inferior enemy vessel by Captain Benjamin Maxwell whose own ship the Phoniex had its shields disabled was able to respond by maneuvering and destroying the shielded Cardassian warship, but back to Generations of course in reality they just wanted to increase the merchandising by introducing a new Enterprise in the future movies
Enterprise should have been able to destroy the Duras' sisters BoP with simple brute force. The weird thing is that they didn't even try.
I could never understand why they didn't use Torpedo's to flush out cloaked ships. a few well positions high yield Torpedo's would have probably caused a cloaked ship a serious headache, at the very least it would disrupt their cloak, as they would be unshielded. 😑
You could easily imagine Torpedo's being developed specially for this in a real arms race......
The Klingon Bird of Prey was simply the pinnacle of starship design. It's hard to improve on perfection.
what if you shot it in the tail pipe?
What are the chances any ship just happens to be carrying equipment for cataloging gaseous anomalies again? In fact it was the Excelsior which had the equipment. I guess Enterprise just happened to be on the same mission.
In all fairness, we see a number of Federation ship classes that were in service for at least as long. (though largely for the same real world cost saving reasons.) There's also a fairly solid in universe explanation for any stagnation given that the Klingons had to reduce their military budget due to the events of Star Trek VI.
The Bird of prey is the interstellar equivalent of a katana.
for all we know them first Torpedo's lead to the tng tachyon net.
Ah, thank you so much for the laughs! I almost get the impression you may have a few reservations about Star Trek reusing the same models over and over. Great video!
I think of the Bird of Prey as a small, highly maneuverable weapons platform. If the weapons and systems are being upgraded, it's basically the best bang for your buck. Why invest heavily in bulkier ships with a lower punch to cost ratio? I think it was a brilliant design and it makes sense that it would last late into the 24th century.
I *do* think it's silly that one was able to take out a Galaxy Class starship, but it's rightly considered a formidable warship.
The Bird of Prey was the very first Star Trek ship I saw as a kid being introduced to the series, even before any of the Enterprise's, so it will always hold a special place in my heart.
Great vid man. Loved / hated the bird of prey. Always wondered why they never updated the models for it.
I do find the stagnation idea very interesting. Though I'm sure that's not what they were thinking when they kept on reusing the Bird of Prey model, but that's what Death of the Author is for. As for the corruption thing I'm pretty sure that started in the empire before the Bird of Prey was introduced. I haven't seen Enterprise so I don't know if there are Birds of Prey in that.
Charles Champ yeah, it always gets weird when shows do a prequel, the bird of prey as encountered by Archer’s enterprise. According to memory alpha it first happened during “The Expanse”. Interestingly though, the show does go into, like in it video, when the Empire started to change. When the class/cast system started to change, other professions were pushed out of the way, out of power and the warrior class took over and were seen as the epitome of honor. This was explained by a Klingon “lawyer” assigned to defend Archer.
The BoP (specifically the B'rel class) can cloak, is highly maneuverable, perfect for hit & run attacks, cheap and lethal.
Consider this, during the Cold War, the Soviets had a Quantity over Quality mentality hence the Soviet Navy build large numbers of small and cheap Osa I, Osa II, Komar class, Turya class and Shershen class missile boats and torpedo boats were cheap, lethal and built in large quantities.
That said, it makes sense for the Klingons to build Bird of Prey's in large numbers and just keep building them well into the 24th century as their large numbers, ease of construction, cheap cost and effectiveness (especially in packs) allows the Klingon Empire to remain a strong and dominant military power.
Did someone get yesterdays leftover G'agh before recording this one?
shadowwolfie85 not sure what you are trying to say
G'aggh is best served live, and not as a leftover reheat !
The TV trope of "Villain Decay" applies to vessels as well as characters...
Bird of Prey is one of my favorite ships, if not my favorite ship, in Star Trek.
Although I love the Bird of Prey as a ship - seriously, it's a beautiful ship, and I really want to see the old style birds of prey turn up in the new series and films (although I can't imagine it will) - it's by no means a great design as a warship. If it's ever fired backwards on any show, I can't remember it, and in space, only having front-firing weaponry seems a massive flaw. You can make all the arguments you like about warriors facing their foes front on, or the manoeuvrability of the ship, but even one rear firing torpedo would have made a huge difference. It shows too much reliance on strike and fade tactics (probably using the cloak).
Excellent Video, Enjoyed 🖖
Great work as always!
It slices, it dices, it makes time traveling julianne fries!
Of no particular consequence to the Trek crowd, the USS Richmond K. Turner (CG-20), a Leahy-class guided missile cruiser of the United States Navy that was displayed in the first minute of your video was one of my ship's sister ships ( I served aboard the USS Leahy CG-16). It was in its day a very serious threat that was instrumental in Russia ultimately showing their belly.
Great video! My thought on the Enterprise-D destruction by the Duras sisters was that it was essentially a very lucky shot (one that’s emblematic of that Galaxy classes wider problems) It’s only after the Bird of Prey is destroyed that the issues with the warp core start to happen.
Actually, I would argue the Bird-of-Prey was the absolute best design of all the Empire's ships. It is small and so is easy to mass-produce. It packs an insane amount of firepower for a ship of its size, and it has a small crew and so the loss of even a number of these ships would NOT be a significant setback for the Empire.
If you have a really good basic design, you don't get rid of it. Sure change its various systems as advances come about, but overall the ship was amazing.
What a beautiful design.
Simple answer: TNG was too lazy to make new klingon-designs. So they used the stuff from the movies (a tradition very often seen in Star trek history, every movie made new props for the series). But the canon answer is just that the bird of prey is existing in different sizes. The klingons used the frame and made it just smaller (B`Rel-scout) or bigger (K`Vort-battlecruiser) or medium-sized.
indeed
Hey Lore Reloaded! I just recently found your channel, and I really enjoy your content. Many channels just list off a list of specs, and call it a day, but I enjoy your extra bits of history and breaking of the 4th wall here and there.
But, I do agree that in the later years of the Klingon Empire they seemed to get stale after a while. But, then again a lot of this I think stems from the budget of the series. I am trying to keep with solutions to in-universe reasons, but it is hard as other races evolved, and changed their designs with time.
Then again, maybe we are all wrong, and the Klingons are right in that their designs are timeless. Don't fix what's not broken, right?
glad you enjoyed.. I took inspiration from a lot of other channels and put my twist on it ;)
The Klingons may have suffered from stagnation. But nearly as much as the Federation did. I would argue that Klingon ship design followed the rule of "If its not broken, don't fix it". I like that they kept simple, easily modified and refit designs, continually upgrading them, adding new designs when necessary. It was very efficient and practical. Bear in mind that the Klingons had to make peace with the Federation because their economy was collapsing under the weight of their military budget. They had to roll back spending and innovation in order to revitalize the empire, hence the stagnation.
The older bird of prey you flash a couple times at the start is ROMULAN, not Klingon. The 2 sides share the class designation for their scouts during the original series but they are not explicitly related, though there could have been some undiscussed tech sharing during the romulan-klingon alliance.
cool
In the original script for Erath of Khan the movie that introduced the BOP it was meant to be a stolen Romulan ship hense the bird wing motif and it having wings in the first place as it was meant to be a replacement for the Warbird from TOS but that has since been retconned to shared research in the same way the Romulans got there hands on D7 hulls in TOS
The villains of ST3 were originally supposed to be Romulans, but they got changed to more dramatic Klingons early on. The ship concept had already designed, but they figured that maybe Kruge was so badass that he stole the ship from the Romulans. However, there was never dialogue to indicate that and Sulu calls it the "Klingon Bird of Prey" so that settles that. FASA's Star Trek RPG back in the 80s gave the nice explanation that it's a result of co-operation between Klingons and Romulans, and Romulans have their own version of the ship. Not canon, but I tend to like FASAs worldbuilding more than canon.
I do love that even if they had the budget, not changing the design of the bird of prey would be a good idea.
This is because when we look at the counter part, the federation, we see a mess of too many ships. Imagine being in charge of repairs at a dock.
After a battle you see dozens of ships 7 different classes, all needing different repairs.
In contrast a Klingon bird of prey will only have one schematic with minor modifications depending on the layout.
Lore reloaded is back YAY
guess whos back!
Klingon defense fleet does not sound right even if they are taking a defensive position I think they would find a more aggressive way of saying it.
Mc_Pyro They are defending their honor
Lol, that's what I always thought too. The Klingons don't have a word for defense. They call it reconquered homeland. 😈
A possible explanation is they called it that to appease the Federation pacifists.
To appease anyone would be dishonorable. Klingons don't sugar coat it. In fact I would say sometimes they're a little to dramatic in the story telling. lol. More blood wine and war stories. I swear the Klingons are just space Vikings.
Donald Hudson Well, my mom pointed out that they May say “defense is the best form of offense”
Maybe it's just a case of "same hull, new tech"? Place modern systems in a familiar arrangement and you arguably have a pocket cruiser like the defiant..
Right... that's what I was trying to get out when I said the systems were updated
Have you done one on the drumhead?
Not yet
I wish I could like this video twice! Great insight about how the BoP reflected the cultural decline of the Empire.
glad you enjoyed it.
Can’t wait for the next one. I hope you include how they use the same shots of a Bird of prey exploding and multiple movies... that was a little annoying
Kept hearing weird noises in the background like *slurp* *gurgle* *kiss,kiss* and *humping noise* Man you must love the BoP!
I would put the stagnation of the Klingon Empire in the 24th century down to a combination of two main factors.
*1* - The warrior class rising to power and taking control of government (as lamented by Kolos in ENT) which started a longer-term decline as soldiering was emphasized and promoted to a ridiculous degree, to the detriment of the essential STEM fields for a prosperous high-technology galactic power. As younger generations growing up on warrior propaganda aspired to be warriors in greater numbers, the numbers of technologists, engineers, shipwrights etc. declined. That is real bad for a major starfaring power that wants to keep up with the others.
*2* - The Praxis disaster. This would have been an Extinction Level Event for Qo'nos if not for the radical mitigation measures, as it was it almost crippled the empire, and took a long time to recover from.
Add these two together and you've got the KE's stagnation problem in a nutshell, IMHO.
The Bird of Prey is the B52 of the Klingons. Updated and improved so many times it's still flying. It looks the same from the outside but internally it may as well be a completely different ship.
The Bird of Prey is the Sherman tank of Star Trek. It was easy to build and maintain, cheap and effective in larger numbers and a very straightforward design, which are very important features for a ship to be operated by people with substantially less technical skill than most other races.
Then it was kept in service far too long with too little in terms of upgrades to actually keep it competitive in combat, but it was still somewhat serviceable, but only if you play to its strengths. Its not incapable in the 24th century, but its definitely a ship you have to be careful and considerate with about what it can and cant do. But these are Klingons we are talking about...
Lore makes his videos with honor
00:48 klingon DEFENSE fleet? You crack me up.
I aim to please
The more I see your intro, the more I want to play ME1 again!
It always seemed to me that klingons use so many old ships in the 24th cause "Quantity>Quality" and cause of the Praxis!? incident, that klingon moon in STVI, they were not able to achieve/produce new ships for DECADES
that's not unreasonable.
6:11 IIRC there was a treaty between the romulans and the federation that prevented them from making or using cloaking devices
Correct, the Treaty of Algeron saw the federation agreed not to persue cloaking tech and the Romulans agreed to a ban on their high yield plasma torpedoes (which the federation considered a much greater threat).
I don't think they ever actually implied that the ship kept the same dimensions for every different role the design was used for. If anything it looks like they had smaller, original sized BoPs and much larger ships that shared the same basic shape but scaled up significantly, not that it wasn't a fairly flimsy excuse for the real reason, which was obviously that they didn't have the budget to make new ship models as often as they would have preferred to on these shows, but still.
The slight shifts of frame are my favorite part.
Biggest strength is how versatile it is. It can be either incredibly weak or surprisingly strong depending on what the script requires.
It was a tough old model but it still was a good ship. I liked it
Oh, you should do a video about the Negh'Var!
Does it bother anyone else that one of these ships with a crew of 12 is supposed to be able to hang with a Star fleet ship with a crew in the hundreds?
Kind of apples and oranges. The one man sub would only do so because it's undetected while the Bird of Prey has to decloak, and in most examples the Star Ship is able to raise shields and arm weapons.
Well done episode
indeed!
id say that its a testament to its design that it was usable for such a long time. the bird of prey was designed as a hit and run vessel. from its cloaking device to its small maneuverable design, its clear the ship is meant to act similarly to a ww2 style naval destroyer. a smaller, low profile ship with the capability of dishing out a lot of firepower in a short period of time. like you said the weapons can be upgraded over the years to make it capable of damaging newer vessels, and really, what more does it need. if its being piloted in the way its design intends its capable of picking its fights on its own terms, and seriously damaging a vessel before its able to fight back. combine that with its ability to fly in atmospheric conditions meaning it can support troops on the ground and attack planetary targets quickly and efficiantly, i feel that theres a good reason this ship was used for so long. sure on one on one a ship like this would have had a hard time fighting something like a galaxy, but in numbers they were deadly. we see two bird of preys nearly destroy a vor'cha cruiser in tng.
New technology developments did stagnate but not for nostalgic reasons. As you said, becoming a warrior was considered being more honorable as time went on through TNG, DS9, and Voyager, we see a little of this in Enterprise too. We saw fewer and fewer innovators as serving the Empire as a soldier was more favorable. I wonder if this was because of something that Gowron enacted politically, was it religious through that Kahless clone, or something else...that would make an interesting discussion. And then you've got the Klingons relying on the Federation for resources after the Praxis moon incident, maybe they approached R&D with more caution after this fact.
I somewhat wonder if the 'peace' of TNG did it somewhat to. That it made the klingons think they weren't being warriors with nothing to fight and so they became warriors and tried to start conflict to keep it going? I don't know..
Lore Reloaded
Krogans from Mass Effect were said to be the same with a very similar wording dislodged by one of the characters from ME3. And given the results; we saw a major civil war, they pulverized a weakened Cardassian Union, re-ignited conflict with the Federation, and the Dominion War...then the Federation again in STO. Could also argue using real world examples that war pushes new technological development, so the only way for the Klingons to ramp up R&D is during times of conflict.
Great use of the "accidental edit" button! Looking forward to the follow-up vid
Can't wait for next weeks video...
The Bird of Prey was designed that way because even if it was used as cargo ship, or garbage scow, it would still look cool! Klingon's have a design over function philosophy. It's why the Bird of Prey has a bird of prey painted on the hull and why their knives are overly complicated in design and they do like opera. I think the reasons that the BoP doesn't work as well as it should, and why the Klingons keep it in service past it's due date is simply because a big part of their culture is image and they're at heart classicalists. Good vid!
agreed! and me miss something *GASP* ne'er happens!
More like function over design, like the Soviets the Klingons don't care if it'd fugly as long as it works, you're thinking perhaps more the Romulans.
1-Constitution Class
2-Galaxy Class
3-Bird of Prey
4-Warbird
5-Borg Cube
6-K’Tinga
7-Excelsior Class
8-Negh’Var Class
9-Borg Sphere
10-Sovereign Class
It's hard to create a cruiser from a scout, but you can create a scout from a cruiser. (See German WW2 Destroyers like the Z-52 for a scout type ship up-gunned to a mini cruiser, and the British Leander-class ships, Cruisers that doubled very well as scouts)
K
I love these Metalocalypse-esque bleeps when you cuss.
It makes sense that the BoP was never fully replaced, the class was highly successful and upgradable, and a major threat in battle, which made replacing it somewhat illogical. It happens in the real world all the time, high initial success makes a design serve too long, and eventually be outdated
Yes they did go stagnant for a time but the BoP was such a good ship it still was a tough ship to beat. Then add to that the bravery of Klingons and you had a real fight on your hands. I love what Kirk said in the 4th movie when Bones was complaining about it being a rust bucket. He had a healthy respect for what it could do. Saying how much the BoP had cost the Federation. Loved the vid Lore and cant wait for the second part its going to be good one.
glad you enjoyed!
TNG era was the best IMO, Romulans, Klingons and Federation the power struggle between them was intense and pretty much equal. Now the Federation is the be all and end all of the Alpha quadrant.
The biggest issue I have is that the Klingons are using it. In TOS the 'bird of prey' was a Romulan ship "Balance of Power". The trade treaty between the Romulans and Klingons may explain the use of ships, but in Star Trek lure it was the Romulans using Klingon ships "Enterpise Incident ". The waters get s muddy from here, the D7 had a power source similar to an antimatter reactor. Later we find Romulans at using an artificial quantum singularity as a power source. Is this technology Romulans is not share with the Klingons?
I think I would have made a quick mention of the earlier Klingon / Romulean standardization of starships. Apparently the Romulrans brought little or nothing recognizable to the table,
You build a strong case, but damn these things are cool looking.
I get the feeling that the bird of prey was the Klingon Zergling. Cheap, fast, and easy to build. The smallest would be crewed by a dozen warriors, so you could field 80 for the same number of trained staff as a galaxy class ship. There's a story that the Russian Mig fighter jets were designed to be repaired on the tarmac by a 16 year old with hand tools. I imagine there's some parallel design philosophy in the Klingon empire.
24th century Klingons _were_ pretty ridiculous, and while I never _necessarily_ thought of recycling the Bird of Prey as emblematic or symptomatic of their decline, it does make sense.
hey lore reloaded could you do a breakdown of the SCIMITAR AND GALAXY DREADNOUGHT?
I intend to do them all, I have a poll every monday on my community tab where you choose the next to be looked at.
OKAY THANKS! NOW BATTLE SPEEED!!
Star Trek IV is the reason I, as an 8 year old kid at the time, originally fell in love with the Klingon Bird of Prey! I actually preferred Kirk, Spock and the boys flying around in it more so than in the Enterprise. Damn that was such a great movie (minus the hippy save the whales nonsense).
I remember during the dominion war the Klingon bird of prey held the line while the federation and romulans were modifying their ships from the breen energy weapon.
1:28 Except that in the Search for Spook all it took was one shot to disable a Constitution class without shields.
A question for us true nerds. The episode "Friday's Child" a Klingon agent on Capella states a "small scout ship" is in orbit - bird of prey? Enterprise didn't see it until it was at the end of sensor range. Conclusion, Klingon commander sees Enterprise drop out of warp, he raises cloak and creeps off, either dropping the cloak too early by accident, or to switch power to sensors to eyeball the Enterprise.
If so, this suggests Klingons had cloaking technology long before "Search for Spock" possibly even as long ago as "Discovery".
I mean obviously the writers didn't think "let's leave it open that Klingon ships can cloak, in fifty years we might want to add that in a story" but it does fit in my view.
Any thoughts?
In ENT in Klingon arc (4th Season), they already talked about how Empire stopped finding Scholars, Doctors, Scientists, and people who expanded Klingon Culture as Honorable and/or important. Only old Klingons remembered those times.
That would be inconsistent writing and a gaffe..
Lore Reloaded Well it happened. Perhaps there were 2 waves. 22nd century off goes doctors and scientist. And later off goes people who serve in military in non warrior capacity.
Sorry. Never replied from mobile
So if you are going to nitpick. The Vorcha was 2360's not 2370's. The tng ran 2364-2371 the Negh'Var was 2370s.
As it was seen in DS9
Episode this was stated in?
Another reason the Klingons may have stagnated is because of the explosion and destruction of Praxis. It was indicated that without Praxis at the current military levels that the Klingon empire operated at that it could not survive more than fifty years. Under such economic strain it would not be surprising if even older ships would not continually be recycled, retrofitted, and rebuild. Shipyards would have most likely tried to get away with building as similar hulls as possible to minimize the need to retool. I suspect that economics, both real world and within the lore, could be the reason the ship hull was used so often. It's not so much don't fix it if it's not broken and more this is what we can afford.
I love the BOP design. I think you’re right that it stuck around due to cheapness of the studio, but I think it’s reasonable to propose that into TNG and beyond, the chassis (which was very successful) but filled it with new technology. The K’Vort was just a scaled up version of that chassis.
The BoP is the personification of the saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it"
I think you are trying to apply human ship categorization to Klingon ship design. A Bird of Prey is simply a warriors warship - commanded independently as a solo or small group raider. Many different Klingon class ships have been Birds of Prey - a designation of how it is utilized and commanded.
if it aint broke don't fix it, ok maybe fix the tailpipe. i never thought the Klingon empire ever really needed to improve on the bird of prey, it definitely earned its name.
0:56 I assume that was supposed to be sarcasm. Yeah you can easily modify it into a cruiser. All warships share the same basic design. Just different sizes and armaments.
You make it sound they took a pre-existing scoutship and physically modified the ship into a cruiser. When they based the cruiser on a proven design, and just increased the size and armaments. chaq wej ghor 'oH ghewmey 'oH tI' (If it ain't broke don't fix it)
You see stagnation I see practicality, and efficiency. The Klingons don't waste resources developing a hundred different designs. They use a few proven designs and just upgrade them as their tech improves.
If you're referring to the Duras sister bird of prey it hit the Enterprise D WAY more than three times penetrating it's shields.
What would you say to doing a rundown on the Vor'Cha Class and the Negh'Var class ships?
it's one of my favorite. I like the compact but powerful design. it hits me as on par with a ww2 destroer, having different outfittings for different roles. I think the problems they had were in forgetting Klingon values and how this ship got deployed. I would have run patrols with three ships and raids with five. this way one could stay cloaked until needed or until the ship.had a valuable shot at an enemy vessel. this extends itself into my idea behind raiding. always an Intel ship cloaked with a vessel in reserve avoiding notice and getting into position for a devastating strike.