I like to think that Klingons are proud of their ships, and their honorable history; a starship must be lost in battle, not placed in a museum. So unlike the Federation, they don't replace the ship but instead they continuously upgrade them, while keeping the hull. So a bit of a Ship of Theseus situation where the ship might be 120 years old, but her internal components have all been replaced and upgraded. Also the perfect excuse for the showrunners to use the exact same model, over and over and over and over again.
That was the Katinga class the successor to the d7 that served over 100 years into the dominion war not a variant of the d7 same general frame but all new guts & other improvements but that actually supports the comparison to excelsior which was the replacement of constitution using the now standard starfleet ship frame layout but bigger and better internal upgrades. Constitution was d7s rival excelsior was katingas
Not the Excelsior, sure it saw longer use then the Connie, but it's still not equivalant in capabilities. It's just that the Connie was aging, the refit kept it up to par with the K'tinga if maybe superior, but the Connies just weren't as numerous as the K'tinga, rather lucky the Federation and Klingons never went to war around TOS or the movies. The Klingons simply kept this ship in service and maybe producing more as they weren't exactly as inovative as Starfleet, Science and Engineering not exactly being common carreer paths or interests for a warrior culture, plus the storied history of the class kept it as more of novelty as newer classes like the Vor'cha were filling in roles for heavier combat.
That's more because the Klingons just needed every ship they lay their hands on, since the Empire had been in a state of serious stagnation and decay for the last 100 years before the Dominion War and indeed, long before even that with the Federation having been pulling further and further ahead of the Klingons in technology and industrial capability for decades before Praxis. The K'tinga/D-7 of the Dominion War, was the equivalent of throwing a WW2 T-37 onto a modern battlefield, just to make up the numbers and soak up some fire for you limited number of more modern units.
@@weldonwin who knows, maybe the K'tinga did have some major upgrades by the present, but yes at the very least the Klingons were getting outmatched by the Dominion due to the nature of the Jem'hadar, both were warriors willing to die in battle, but the Jem'hadar were bred from birth to be expendable soldiers, a common tactic being for smaller ships to kamikaze into other ships, no matter how stong another ship was or how many attack ships it could shoot down, crashing a single Jem'hadar Fighter into a ship will always do serious damage, so mor numerous and replacable then the Klingons, more willing to charge in an die, trained from birth to be perfect soldiers, generally more powerful or capable ships anyway. Even if the K'tinga was on par on technology level with modern Federation ships it's smaller size was a disadvantage vs the more numerous likely capable Dominion ships. This is likely the reason the Negh'var was inroduced, to give the Klingons a bigger ship to match the larger Dominion ships.
Even in the movies it's definitely animated in a way that makes it look like that. But thinking logically about it, it's way too big to be a torpedo tube. It's the size of like 5 decks.
I had this ship as a toy. LOVED IT. I also had a Enterprise refit and a large Enterprise D, that had sound effects. I always wanted this one to be larger too.
One of the facts that you left out was that there were TWO D7 models commissioned by AMT as part of their licensing agreement with Desilu/Gulfstream/Paramount to produce the kit; one was taken for use by the studio for filming and the other was used as the master tooling model for the kit. The master tooling model was pantographed to make the kit at half-scale to the master, and each of the two main models were slightly different in details, leading to discrepancies between the model kit and studio model. Both were finished and painted by Howard Anderson Studios in the same two-tone livery with Jefferies designing and applying the markings. The two models after Star Trek was cancelled had two very different journeys: the model used for filming was taken by D.C. Fontana to the Smithsonian, along with other Star Trek artifacts, while the other went home with Roddenberry for a time, and then given to Stephan Poe. The filming model was loaned back to Paramount around 1977 for use as a reference, but was apparently damaged in the process of taking molds to create new models for the series. It was sent back in less-than-ideal condition. This was also about the same time that the 3 foot model Roddenberry had loaned back to the studio was "lost", and would not turn up again until last year. The master tooling model was kept by Poe until the late 1990s when it was sold at auction and then several times through the early 2000s until billionaire Paul Allen obtained it and it now resides at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, WA. I was very fortunate to see the model, not only in-person, but without any display case or anything else in the way because Rick Cigel brought the model with him to San Diego Comic Con in 2001 as part of the promotion of his disastrous Unobtainium Ltd. model company. I got very close up to it, snapped photos of the model in great detail, and took notes on the two-tone paint scheme and the markings. What you see online just does not do it justice. The craftsmanship is incredible, a real testimony to the work of Jefferies, Gene Winfield and AMT's Custom Speed Shop, and Howard Anderson Studios!
Not any more so that the neck and pylons on the Connie. The tapering conical shape of the D7 neck should be far sturdier than the federation weak points.
My personal feeling on this is that the defense of these ships is their shields. When you shoot at these ships, you aren't shooting at the "necks", you are shooting at the shields. Once the shields go down, the entire ship becomes vulnerable, not just the neck. Wrath of Khan is no help here, as it shows the de-shielded Enterprise successfully resisting phaser fire without that much damage; perhaps if Khan's crew had better experience, they could have punched through the Enterprise hull anywhere they chose. Cutting the neck would be bad, but so would slicing the saucer in half or turning the engineering section into rapidly expanding gas...
@@davidfinch7407 Khan aimed to disable the Enterprise, not destroy it; he wanted information. The Enterprise-D destroyed the unshielded Lantree with a single torpedo.
@@davidfinch7407 Khan wasn't trying to destroy the Enterprise, only disable. At least at first. And Spock did say "They knew exactly where to hit us.."
This is my all-time favorite ship. The Pod in the front of the ship was for officers, while the enlisted bunked in the aft section. In the blueprints I have, the aft section also housed cryo freezers used to freeze marines and spec-ops units.
@@Quenstar weren't those massive number of phasers something that Starfleet battles latched onto and decided were a version of point defense (lower powered phasers) and then postulated an enemy that used done and missile tactics . then said. well the Kzinti aren't very defined on screen and we've got the rights to used them through some totally bizarre legal reason. and so Kzinti got drone/fighter craft and were the enemies of the kligons. iirc
@@twitchew They were originally published (in SFB) as offensive/defensive phasers (phaser-II), but were larger than the point defense phasers (phaser-III). Later it was said that in the "early years" (later than the Romulan war, but not as recent as "Star Trek") everyone had phaser-IIs,; which are the same weapon as the offensive phaser (phaser-1), with less effective fire control.
As an American I also pronounce it the British way mainly because I can never say aluminum the American way due to my speech impediment. I love the British way
Aluminium is also the standardized nomenclature for chemists. To quote professor Poliakoff: "if you are a serious chemist, you should use aluminium in your publications, cause otherwise people won't find your publications because they WILL be using aluminium as a searchterm"
Liked their reuse in TOS as Romulan ships. With the fanon reason being a military exchange between the Romulans and Klingons. Romulans were yesterday’s existential threat and thus were old news in the TOS era. The spent a century stewing on their defeat coming up with 2 wonder weapons that were basically neutralized in their first encounter with Starfleet. Which is rightly how it should go if the Federation is intended to be aspirational and a model society for TV audiences. And so now on their own, a century later, the Romulans are just a minor border threat to a single ship, not a peer power to the Federation as a whole. Just as the Klingons should have been relegated to a lower league in the TNG era for the same reason. This is one of my gripes with TNG, where the writers rushes to their security blanket to bring back the Klingons and Romulans as peer nations without explanation when TOS accidentally showed how much help the Romulans (and even that eras Klingons) needed to keep up with the ever advancing Federation. Undermined the entire point of Trek especially when TNG and the following shows revealed how corrupt and backwards both empires were with a militaristic feudal monarchy for the Klingons and a slave holding police state for the Romulans. Doubly bad, since it also overshadowed the work done to make the Ferengi and Cardassians the new big bads. One thing I’d like if we ever get a TNG rework would be resetting of the era with this progress in mind (which also makes Q's admonishment for thinking too much of surpassing the Romulans and Klingons as any kind of major feat much more telling). Though if what happened by the time of TNG was that the TOS antagonists: the Klingons, Romulans, Tholians, Gorn, Orions all joined up in a Confederation as a response to the existential threat the Federation posed to all of them I’d accept the state of the galaxy in TNG. Ironic in that this fear is exactly what drove the formation of the Federation to begin with.
One I'd love to see get more information on is a ship from the Star Trek book Rules Of Engagement. It's supposedly the first Klingon ship able to fire weapons while cloaked. It comprises of a K'Tinga class ship that is fully unmanned, but remotely controlled from a B'Rel Bird of Prey. Both ships travel docked together, with the Bird of Prey effectively sitting on the back of the K'Tinga while in transit. They separate for combat, and the K'Tinga can fire while cloaked because uses no power output for life support, inertial dampers, etc. It's a great book that I highly recommend. I don't know if it's classed as 'canon' but it's based between ST The Motion Picture, and ST2 The Wrath of Khan, when Kirk was still an Admiral, but onboard Enterprise.
Honestly the idea of settling on a handful of basic hulls that could be mass produced with variants for specific roles makes a lot of sense. It certainly might explain that despite the extreme losses they suffered in the dominion war they were still able to maintain their forces
I feel like Aluminium and Aluminum refer to exactly the same thing and therefore we should say it whichever way we like with no apology. :) Also apparently a transparent compound of aluminium exists.
🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely greatly well done and very well informatively explained and executed in every detail way shape and format provided on the Klingon D'7 Battle Cruisers and it has always been one of my very favorite designs of Startrek vessel's, A job very nicely fabulously well done indeed Sir!👌.
Well the original D7 model is in the smithsonian museum. However when filming started for The motion picture Paramount asked for both the enterprise and D7 filming models to be loaned. The Smithsonian only lent out the D7 since the enterprise was under restoration for display. (insert refit joke here). However by the time Paramount returned the model it was altered to such a degree that it was irreversible. Due to this alteration the museum will not let the original enterprise filming model leave.
I kinda wish you would make an episode on EC Henry's interpretation of the first Klingon ship shown in TOS. I know it's 100% a fan ship but the design is just so cool!
This was really cool to watch, I hadn't appreciated how many design concepts were shared between this and the constitution. Hope you do more non-Starfleet ships in the future!
TOS deflectors we’re not dishes, but separate smaller units, usually arrayed around the big dish. The constitution class has at least three deflectors arrayed around its dish, both the original and refit.
What I love about the D7 is the fact that's it's so very, very Klingon. The entire design appears to be an attempt to answer the question "So what would strike fear into the hearts of our enemies? Okay, let's do that. NO, why would we care if it's a sound design decision or not?! IT'LL SCARE THEM! That's all that matters." Bridge and computer located at the end of a long, skinny, vulnerable neck? Check. Ship dependent on excessive cooling vents so it doesn't cook itself alive? Check. Primary armaments (disruptor cannons) mounted to warp nacelles to ensure enemies trying to disable either hit both? Check. Entire design as ballsy as possible? You bet your favorite pet Targ it is!
Fun fact, it was first referred to by Sir Davy as alumium back around 1810ish. He then changed his word and picked aluminum. Because, rhyming scheme or some such, then switched it again to aluminium. All happened over the course of several years, and as there were no interwebs, well, the second one came across the pound, found itself into the dictionaries, etc... years go by and then the third shows up, but like no internet, no e-books or wikipedia and if you need 3 times to name your metal and we use printing presses, we're staying with what you sent the first time. So you might as well have fun with the good Sir's inability to settle on the exact combination of i-u-m and n for his metal, and use a different one every time.
Main Deflector.... Also, Main Torpedo Bay. Have fun! It's worth noting that the amount of cooling vents doesn't _just_ help the engines, but remember Klingons value war. I imagine those disruptors get pretty hot from continual firing.
Even though Jeffries designed these just a few years apart, it seems to me like the original Constitution fits its own era of science fiction, while the Klingon Cruiser anticipates the next one.
It's a beautiful design, it looks fast, i think the nacelles being under the main superstructure makes it look like a predator, an enemy ready to pounce..
If you ever feel bad about aluminum vs. aluminium, just remember that the guy who originally isolated it wanted to call it alumium (al-LOO-mee-um), and I think we can all agree that that's an objectively worse name than either aluminum or aluminium, so both sides made a better, if differing, choice.
Even painted in Romulan Light-grey, it's a 'War-Bird' that is as Elegant as it is Lethal! The narrow boom was a Lifeboat for the Command Crew, should the Slaves Revolt, or Battle Damage be too much for the ship's aft section/warp/weapons to deal with. I think the 'Hammer upon a Sling' weapon styling was also inline with Klingon ideals. This ship puts it's Heavy Weapons, the Disruptors, at the fore of the Warp Engines, and Phasers are along the upper Dorsal areas aside the big Impulse Engines, under the very Pointed Front of the wing-arches, and also Under the node of the the Bridge cupola section. This provides few weak areas around the 'globe' of the ship's shields that the Phasers can't help protect, while the Main Disruptors wreak havoc upon their Foes up-front. It's a good design that steps deeply into the Klingon mindset, and yet, has few weaknesses for others to exploit. I've played SFB for decades, and I know, in Stephen's World, these are Ships you RESPECT, and hope are Not Your FOE today!
Klingon ships seem to have experienced retcons: In TOS they don't appear to have photon torpedoes but instead fire some sort of underpowered missiles. The wing nacelles are engines for the D7 however in SNW they also revealed they mount weapons. The Klingon bird of prey has its drive system based in the center of the hull and the wings Mount weapons. The explanation being that the Klingons obtained a unique drive system from Invaders that they defeated. However the D7 should have had access to the same drive technology.
Hey mate, no worries about saying "Aluminium" as opposed to "Aluminum". Both are valid pronunciations. Heck, from what I remember the inventor initially called it "Alumium" but changed it later.
Regardless of what anyone may think. The Klingon D7 Battle Cruiser was always my favorite with the only Klingon design to come close was the Bird of Prey.
Rick, wasn't the torpedo launcher located where the main deflector dish is? I think of the launcher like that of the old german fighters that had a cannon running thru the nose
6:02 - It’s also possible that all of those cooling vents could have been to vent excess heat of incoming weapons fire 🤔 that excess heat would have to go somewhere and given the combat driven culture of the Klingons, it makes sense that they’d need a way to vent that heat during a battle where they’re taking heavy fire from an enemy 😕😅
Thank you, i know it's a Sunday. Thank you for the upload before the footie . Please can you do Nell the ship from battle beyond the stars and the liberator amd scorpio oh and the eagle from S1999 . When you have a space to do any or all of them please Thank you and be well. Kind Regards David Every day is poppy day
1 photon torpedo is not fully correct! D7s were known to enter the battle area at high speed, pass the opposite ship, and use their rear-mounted weapons to hit the unshielded back sides of said ships. Even La'an Noonien-Singh stated that one had to be cautious of the rear-mounted torpedo of the D7. So it is not only in FASA. ;)
As silly as it sounds, i always thought as a kid, the _D-7_ cruiser body shape was based on a Klingon homeworld dragonfly or hunting bird. The empire emblem, especially during the animated series, resembled a three point court jester's hat 🃏. Fun Fact: the green, 23rd century Bird of Prey _B'Rel_ (later 24th _K'vort_ refit) class was originally a design from the Romulan Star Empire. The Klingon High Council stole and reverse engineered it for mass production. This was in retaliation for the Romulan Senate trading malfunctioning cloak tech for warp drive.
A good retcon they could have used is that after the end of the War, the Klingon Empire was taken over by those affected by the Augment virus. It would have explained why TOS Klingons looked different, the Augment virus Klingons weren't shunned but ended up at the top of the heap after seizing power. It could even be explained that they had a different psychology to "free range" Klingons and thats why the Empire in TOS was more communist style than Noble Houses Machiavellian that is normally how Klingons rule themselves. They had a touch of both Human organisational collective nature and especially the Augment power obsession added to and overriding the basic honour obsessed Warrior mix. And somehow ended up with the functional communism of the TOS Klingon Empire (and Star Fleet Battles). The Neo-Kligons were able to make communism work better than Humans had! [Admittedly, being closer to post-scarcity technology probably helps]. Then later on genetic surgery allowed all those affected by the virus to change into regular Klingons, and the Empire metamorphosised into a hybrid of both systems. Still having the great Houses which is a part of basic Klingon psychology, but with the after-effects of their time as a single toleration government, making them unified with a standardised economy and power centralised under the Chancellor. It would fit in with the then established lore and given more depth to Klingon society and history. They underwent two great revolutions in society during the 23rd century, caused by a human genetic virus infecting and changing a significant portion of their population. And then the affected finally being turned back. That would have a profound impact on Klingon attitudes to Humanity and by extension the Federation. There may even be some Klingons who reminisce about the time when the Empire was more unified and less chaotic, under their Neo-Kligon [ahem, Soviet] dominance. Older Klingons who used to be Neo-Kligons, until they had genetic surgery to change them into "Real" Klingons, may quietly miss the old days. And of course the cure involved genetic resequencing via transporters, which became available post TOS (before the TMP era). [Which can be a bit of a portent to _that_ series, which some believe should be set as an alternate timeline/reality, at least it's 3rd season.] And it gives the opportunity to have some dramatic periods in previously monotonous Klingon history explored, say in Strange New Worlds as background information. But by TNG the older Klingons might ironically be the most favourable towards a Klingon/Federation alliance, as they think that further Human influences might enable the Empire to recapture its old unity of society. But they don't mention that in public.
I like Klingon ships, but I can't stop seeing them as birds wearing hats.
😂
"How did a bird get in here?"
Ship puts on a hat
"*gasp* A Klingon D7!?!?!"
Well the Klingon D7 was inspired by the most evil bird..... The Canadian Goose.
hense the term "Bird of prey" Duh :p
Why would you do that to me?
More of the Klingon Excelsior than anything else, variants still in use until the end of the Dominion war, 120 years.
I like to think that Klingons are proud of their ships, and their honorable history; a starship must be lost in battle, not placed in a museum. So unlike the Federation, they don't replace the ship but instead they continuously upgrade them, while keeping the hull. So a bit of a Ship of Theseus situation where the ship might be 120 years old, but her internal components have all been replaced and upgraded.
Also the perfect excuse for the showrunners to use the exact same model, over and over and over and over again.
That was the Katinga class the successor to the d7 that served over 100 years into the dominion war not a variant of the d7 same general frame but all new guts & other improvements but that actually supports the comparison to excelsior which was the replacement of constitution using the now standard starfleet ship frame layout but bigger and better internal upgrades. Constitution was d7s rival excelsior was katingas
Not the Excelsior, sure it saw longer use then the Connie, but it's still not equivalant in capabilities. It's just that the Connie was aging, the refit kept it up to par with the K'tinga if maybe superior, but the Connies just weren't as numerous as the K'tinga, rather lucky the Federation and Klingons never went to war around TOS or the movies. The Klingons simply kept this ship in service and maybe producing more as they weren't exactly as inovative as Starfleet, Science and Engineering not exactly being common carreer paths or interests for a warrior culture, plus the storied history of the class kept it as more of novelty as newer classes like the Vor'cha were filling in roles for heavier combat.
That's more because the Klingons just needed every ship they lay their hands on, since the Empire had been in a state of serious stagnation and decay for the last 100 years before the Dominion War and indeed, long before even that with the Federation having been pulling further and further ahead of the Klingons in technology and industrial capability for decades before Praxis. The K'tinga/D-7 of the Dominion War, was the equivalent of throwing a WW2 T-37 onto a modern battlefield, just to make up the numbers and soak up some fire for you limited number of more modern units.
@@weldonwin who knows, maybe the K'tinga did have some major upgrades by the present, but yes at the very least the Klingons were getting outmatched by the Dominion due to the nature of the Jem'hadar, both were warriors willing to die in battle, but the Jem'hadar were bred from birth to be expendable soldiers, a common tactic being for smaller ships to kamikaze into other ships, no matter how stong another ship was or how many attack ships it could shoot down, crashing a single Jem'hadar Fighter into a ship will always do serious damage, so mor numerous and replacable then the Klingons, more willing to charge in an die, trained from birth to be perfect soldiers, generally more powerful or capable ships anyway. Even if the K'tinga was on par on technology level with modern Federation ships it's smaller size was a disadvantage vs the more numerous likely capable Dominion ships. This is likely the reason the Negh'var was inroduced, to give the Klingons a bigger ship to match the larger Dominion ships.
Not to mention it had great theme music to accompany it's reveals.
Du-dii, du-dii, du-diii!
@@347Jimmy*Brass Section accompument*
If the High Council had listened to me, we would have had D7s at Axanar and we would have broken the back of the Federation!
The Star Trek show we should’ve been given instead of Discovery.
@OP Yeah, but not being a native Klingon speaker defo hurt ur credibility 🤷 😅
@@brabhamfreaman166: Which Klingon dialect? (According to Mark Okrand, there are 26 - 29 different dialects to choose from.)
I always saw (in TOS original unaltered episodes) the “deflector” was the main forward torpedo tube.
I was under that impression as well.
Same here
Even in the movies it's definitely animated in a way that makes it look like that.
But thinking logically about it, it's way too big to be a torpedo tube. It's the size of like 5 decks.
It certainly is in The Motion Picture.
Edit: I have the movie open right now. It’s absolutely the torpedo launcher. No ifs, ands, or buts.
@@Artentus well, I wouldn't say quite 5 decks, maybe 2 or 3... but yeah, maybe it just shoots out a torpedo the size of a double decker bus!? 🤣
I had this ship as a toy. LOVED IT. I also had a Enterprise refit and a large Enterprise D, that had sound effects. I always wanted this one to be larger too.
One of the facts that you left out was that there were TWO D7 models commissioned by AMT as part of their licensing agreement with Desilu/Gulfstream/Paramount to produce the kit; one was taken for use by the studio for filming and the other was used as the master tooling model for the kit. The master tooling model was pantographed to make the kit at half-scale to the master, and each of the two main models were slightly different in details, leading to discrepancies between the model kit and studio model. Both were finished and painted by Howard Anderson Studios in the same two-tone livery with Jefferies designing and applying the markings.
The two models after Star Trek was cancelled had two very different journeys: the model used for filming was taken by D.C. Fontana to the Smithsonian, along with other Star Trek artifacts, while the other went home with Roddenberry for a time, and then given to Stephan Poe. The filming model was loaned back to Paramount around 1977 for use as a reference, but was apparently damaged in the process of taking molds to create new models for the series. It was sent back in less-than-ideal condition. This was also about the same time that the 3 foot model Roddenberry had loaned back to the studio was "lost", and would not turn up again until last year.
The master tooling model was kept by Poe until the late 1990s when it was sold at auction and then several times through the early 2000s until billionaire Paul Allen obtained it and it now resides at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, WA.
I was very fortunate to see the model, not only in-person, but without any display case or anything else in the way because Rick Cigel brought the model with him to San Diego Comic Con in 2001 as part of the promotion of his disastrous Unobtainium Ltd. model company. I got very close up to it, snapped photos of the model in great detail, and took notes on the two-tone paint scheme and the markings. What you see online just does not do it justice. The craftsmanship is incredible, a real testimony to the work of Jefferies, Gene Winfield and AMT's Custom Speed Shop, and Howard Anderson Studios!
The D7/D7-A
absolutely love these ships.
The D7 is such a great ship, both in universe and as a sci-fi Starship.
The D7 is my favorite Klingon ship
Star Trek the Motion Picture showed Klingon D7’s firing torpedos from the rear…giving them 2 torpedo launchers.
Those were katinga class the successor of the d7 I think. Katingas were just upgraded new builds of the d7 like constitution and nx refits
@@Twitchguy Beat me to it.
A good upgrade. Don't want anyone thinking they can safely sneak up behind you.
Love the D7/KTinga design, but that neck is such a weakness
Not any more so that the neck and pylons on the Connie. The tapering conical shape of the D7 neck should be far sturdier than the federation weak points.
My personal feeling on this is that the defense of these ships is their shields. When you shoot at these ships, you aren't shooting at the "necks", you are shooting at the shields. Once the shields go down, the entire ship becomes vulnerable, not just the neck. Wrath of Khan is no help here, as it shows the de-shielded Enterprise successfully resisting phaser fire without that much damage; perhaps if Khan's crew had better experience, they could have punched through the Enterprise hull anywhere they chose. Cutting the neck would be bad, but so would slicing the saucer in half or turning the engineering section into rapidly expanding gas...
You could say the same about the pylons that are standard in Starfleet ship design. As shown in Star Trek Beyond.
@@davidfinch7407 Khan aimed to disable the Enterprise, not destroy it; he wanted information. The Enterprise-D destroyed the unshielded Lantree with a single torpedo.
@@davidfinch7407 Khan wasn't trying to destroy the Enterprise, only disable. At least at first. And Spock did say "They knew exactly where to hit us.."
This is my all-time favorite ship. The Pod in the front of the ship was for officers, while the enlisted bunked in the aft section. In the blueprints I have, the aft section also housed cryo freezers used to freeze marines and spec-ops units.
I love this design almost as much as the Constitution. Those TOS ships were fantastic, and they got even better on the big screen.
Thanks for going back to the FASA ship construction manual :)
Much rather have FASA lore than Discovery 'canon'.
The 9 "disruptors" were originally phasers in the Franz Joseph Designs blueprints. There were disruptors on the front of the nacelles.
@@Quenstar weren't those massive number of phasers something that Starfleet battles latched onto and decided were a version of point defense (lower powered phasers) and then postulated an enemy that used done and missile tactics . then said. well the Kzinti aren't very defined on screen and we've got the rights to used them through some totally bizarre legal reason. and so Kzinti got drone/fighter craft and were the enemies of the kligons. iirc
@@twitchew They were originally published (in SFB) as offensive/defensive phasers (phaser-II), but were larger than the point defense phasers (phaser-III). Later it was said that in the "early years" (later than the Romulan war, but not as recent as "Star Trek") everyone had phaser-IIs,; which are the same weapon as the offensive phaser (phaser-1), with less effective fire control.
As an American I also pronounce it the British way mainly because I can never say aluminum the American way due to my speech impediment. I love the British way
Aluminium is also the standardized nomenclature for chemists. To quote professor Poliakoff: "if you are a serious chemist, you should use aluminium in your publications, cause otherwise people won't find your publications because they WILL be using aluminium as a searchterm"
I’m an American who grew up reading Asterix and Tintin as a kid. That messed with my spelling for a long time.
Or to annoy the Poindexters call it Easybendium.😝
Liked their reuse in TOS as Romulan ships. With the fanon reason being a military exchange between the Romulans and Klingons. Romulans were yesterday’s existential threat and thus were old news in the TOS era. The spent a century stewing on their defeat coming up with 2 wonder weapons that were basically neutralized in their first encounter with Starfleet. Which is rightly how it should go if the Federation is intended to be aspirational and a model society for TV audiences. And so now on their own, a century later, the Romulans are just a minor border threat to a single ship, not a peer power to the Federation as a whole. Just as the Klingons should have been relegated to a lower league in the TNG era for the same reason. This is one of my gripes with TNG, where the writers rushes to their security blanket to bring back the Klingons and Romulans as peer nations without explanation when TOS accidentally showed how much help the Romulans (and even that eras Klingons) needed to keep up with the ever advancing Federation. Undermined the entire point of Trek especially when TNG and the following shows revealed how corrupt and backwards both empires were with a militaristic feudal monarchy for the Klingons and a slave holding police state for the Romulans. Doubly bad, since it also overshadowed the work done to make the Ferengi and Cardassians the new big bads. One thing I’d like if we ever get a TNG rework would be resetting of the era with this progress in mind (which also makes Q's admonishment for thinking too much of surpassing the Romulans and Klingons as any kind of major feat much more telling). Though if what happened by the time of TNG was that the TOS antagonists: the Klingons, Romulans, Tholians, Gorn, Orions all joined up in a Confederation as a response to the existential threat the Federation posed to all of them I’d accept the state of the galaxy in TNG. Ironic in that this fear is exactly what drove the formation of the Federation to begin with.
The D7 is a CLASSIC and the best Klingon ship of the line.
Fun Fact: The T'Liss class Bird of Prey of the Romulans lasted from the 21st-24th century in activity.
That's just what the Tal Shiar wants us to think!
One I'd love to see get more information on is a ship from the Star Trek book Rules Of Engagement. It's supposedly the first Klingon ship able to fire weapons while cloaked. It comprises of a K'Tinga class ship that is fully unmanned, but remotely controlled from a B'Rel Bird of Prey. Both ships travel docked together, with the Bird of Prey effectively sitting on the back of the K'Tinga while in transit. They separate for combat, and the K'Tinga can fire while cloaked because uses no power output for life support, inertial dampers, etc. It's a great book that I highly recommend. I don't know if it's classed as 'canon' but it's based between ST The Motion Picture, and ST2 The Wrath of Khan, when Kirk was still an Admiral, but onboard Enterprise.
Honestly the idea of settling on a handful of basic hulls that could be mass produced with variants for specific roles makes a lot of sense. It certainly might explain that despite the extreme losses they suffered in the dominion war they were still able to maintain their forces
So that's how D7's cloak
Transparent Aluminum.
Transparent Aluminum is a real thing now. They created it a couple years ago.
I feel like Aluminium and Aluminum refer to exactly the same thing and therefore we should say it whichever way we like with no apology. :)
Also apparently a transparent compound of aluminium exists.
🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely greatly well done and very well informatively explained and executed in every detail way shape and format provided on the Klingon D'7 Battle Cruisers and it has always been one of my very favorite designs of Startrek vessel's, A job very nicely fabulously well done indeed Sir!👌.
Well the original D7 model is in the smithsonian museum. However when filming started for The motion picture Paramount asked for both the enterprise and D7 filming models to be loaned. The Smithsonian only lent out the D7 since the enterprise was under restoration for display. (insert refit joke here). However by the time Paramount returned the model it was altered to such a degree that it was irreversible. Due to this alteration the museum will not let the original enterprise filming model leave.
I kinda wish you would make an episode on EC Henry's interpretation of the first Klingon ship shown in TOS. I know it's 100% a fan ship but the design is just so cool!
This was really cool to watch, I hadn't appreciated how many design concepts were shared between this and the constitution. Hope you do more non-Starfleet ships in the future!
My favorite ship in any sci-fi.
TOS deflectors we’re not dishes, but separate smaller units, usually arrayed around the big dish. The constitution class has at least three deflectors arrayed around its dish, both the original and refit.
I love seeing D7 models (digital or otherwise) done in the original smooth surface style. People always want to turn it into a K'tinga.
One of my all time fav ships great video 😊
This has been my favorite trek ship since i saw it in first run.
One of my favorite ship designs in Star Trek and maybe Sci Fi in general (tied with the Luchrehulk)
What I love about the D7 is the fact that's it's so very, very Klingon. The entire design appears to be an attempt to answer the question "So what would strike fear into the hearts of our enemies? Okay, let's do that. NO, why would we care if it's a sound design decision or not?! IT'LL SCARE THEM! That's all that matters."
Bridge and computer located at the end of a long, skinny, vulnerable neck? Check. Ship dependent on excessive cooling vents so it doesn't cook itself alive? Check. Primary armaments (disruptor cannons) mounted to warp nacelles to ensure enemies trying to disable either hit both? Check. Entire design as ballsy as possible? You bet your favorite pet Targ it is!
Well done for showing the vessels, you could have had a blank scren and said they were cloaked 😂
Fun fact, it was first referred to by Sir Davy as alumium back around 1810ish. He then changed his word and picked aluminum. Because, rhyming scheme or some such, then switched it again to aluminium. All happened over the course of several years, and as there were no interwebs, well, the second one came across the pound, found itself into the dictionaries, etc... years go by and then the third shows up, but like no internet, no e-books or wikipedia and if you need 3 times to name your metal and we use printing presses, we're staying with what you sent the first time. So you might as well have fun with the good Sir's inability to settle on the exact combination of i-u-m and n for his metal, and use a different one every time.
Main Deflector.... Also, Main Torpedo Bay.
Have fun!
It's worth noting that the amount of cooling vents doesn't _just_ help the engines, but remember Klingons value war.
I imagine those disruptors get pretty hot from continual firing.
I really love the Klingon D7 Battlecruiser .
I've always liked the klingon designs, especially the bird of prey.
Give this man a show on CBS and let him write the next Star Trek series!
This needs to happen. Kudos
Awesome retrospektive, great video!! Thanxalot 🖖😎
Thank you for another great video!
I love the D7 and K'tinga.
My all time favorite SciFi ship!
Right off the bat, WORDS.
What a beauty of a ship.
These ships have nice sombreros
Please keep doing these non federation ship videos, bird of prey, vorcha, galore, D'deridex, promelian battle cruiser, d'kora marauder.
always will be my fav
I honestly think the Klingon ships are simply over engined that’s why the extra coolant vents . Much like the defiant class in DS9
Even though Jeffries designed these just a few years apart, it seems to me like the original Constitution fits its own era of science fiction, while the Klingon Cruiser anticipates the next one.
It's a beautiful design, it looks fast, i think the nacelles being under the main superstructure makes it look like a predator, an enemy ready to pounce..
D7 is my most favorite scifi ship design.
Great video, thank you!
If you ever feel bad about aluminum vs. aluminium, just remember that the guy who originally isolated it wanted to call it alumium (al-LOO-mee-um), and I think we can all agree that that's an objectively worse name than either aluminum or aluminium, so both sides made a better, if differing, choice.
Even painted in Romulan Light-grey, it's a 'War-Bird' that is as Elegant as it is Lethal! The narrow boom was a Lifeboat for the Command Crew, should the Slaves Revolt, or Battle Damage be too much for the ship's aft section/warp/weapons to deal with. I think the 'Hammer upon a Sling' weapon styling was also inline with Klingon ideals. This ship puts it's Heavy Weapons, the Disruptors, at the fore of the Warp Engines, and Phasers are along the upper Dorsal areas aside the big Impulse Engines, under the very Pointed Front of the wing-arches, and also Under the node of the the Bridge cupola section. This provides few weak areas around the 'globe' of the ship's shields that the Phasers can't help protect, while the Main Disruptors wreak havoc upon their Foes up-front. It's a good design that steps deeply into the Klingon mindset, and yet, has few weaknesses for others to exploit. I've played SFB for decades, and I know, in Stephen's World, these are Ships you RESPECT, and hope are Not Your FOE today!
The ultimate expression in Klingon warfare
Klingon ships seem to have experienced retcons:
In TOS they don't appear to have photon torpedoes but instead fire some sort of underpowered missiles. The wing nacelles are engines for the D7 however in SNW they also revealed they mount weapons.
The Klingon bird of prey has its drive system based in the center of the hull and the wings Mount weapons. The explanation being that the Klingons obtained a unique drive system from Invaders that they defeated. However the D7 should have had access to the same drive technology.
Slightly alternate title: Starfleet's nightmare: The D7 Battle Cruiser.
Good video, this is my favorite Star Trek ship, second only to it's modified cousin, the K'Tinga. But I wish you hadn't used the Discovery Klingons.
Hey mate, no worries about saying "Aluminium" as opposed to "Aluminum". Both are valid pronunciations.
Heck, from what I remember the inventor initially called it "Alumium" but changed it later.
Regardless of what anyone may think.
The Klingon D7 Battle Cruiser was always my favorite with the only Klingon design to come close was the Bird of Prey.
Uh, your “main deflector” is where the photon torpedoes are fired out of at the beginning of The Motion Picture. It’s kind of hard to miss.
Those are the K'Tinga class, a modified version of the D7.
the photon torpedo tube is not visible in the diagram, Shouldn't it be where you marked the deflector, unless it goes through it?
In Voyage home, Scottish says "I've converted it into something a little less primitive"
I love the D7. 🖖🙂
The fellow who named aluminum was British (Cornish, to be precise).
It was continental scientists who insisted on changing it to aluminium.
Rick, wasn't the torpedo launcher located where the main deflector dish is? I think of the launcher like that of the old german fighters that had a cannon running thru the nose
6:02 - It’s also possible that all of those cooling vents could have been to vent excess heat of incoming weapons fire 🤔 that excess heat would have to go somewhere and given the combat driven culture of the Klingons, it makes sense that they’d need a way to vent that heat during a battle where they’re taking heavy fire from an enemy 😕😅
Please for the the love of Khales do the rest of the fleet as well
I remember in Birth Of The Federation the other Klingon ships you could realistically handle then these beasts turned up and wreck you
6:25 So, apparently Klingons use human rules for navigation lights.
I think a large part of the internals was food storage. Klingons prefer live food and non-replicated drinks.
Thank you, i know it's a Sunday. Thank you for the upload before the footie .
Please can you do Nell the ship from battle beyond the stars and the liberator amd scorpio oh and the eagle from S1999 .
When you have a space to do any or all of them please
Thank you and be well.
Kind Regards
David
Every day is poppy day
1 photon torpedo is not fully correct!
D7s were known to enter the battle area at high speed, pass the opposite ship, and use their rear-mounted weapons to hit the unshielded back sides of said ships.
Even La'an Noonien-Singh stated that one had to be cautious of the rear-mounted torpedo of the D7.
So it is not only in FASA. ;)
As silly as it sounds, i always thought as a kid, the _D-7_ cruiser body shape was based on a Klingon homeworld dragonfly or hunting bird. The empire emblem, especially during the animated series, resembled a three point court jester's hat 🃏.
Fun Fact: the green, 23rd century Bird of Prey _B'Rel_ (later 24th _K'vort_ refit) class was originally a design from the Romulan Star Empire. The Klingon High Council stole and reverse engineered it for mass production. This was in retaliation for the Romulan Senate trading malfunctioning cloak tech for warp drive.
This one always looks like a weapon, a giant would use
I think the “main deflector” is shown as a large torpedo tube in the Motion Picture?
Which version had the rear firing torpedo tube as seen in Star Trek TMP 🤔
So these ships shot out their main deflector every time they fire torpedoes? 😹
I mean... that's a bold tactic.
A good retcon they could have used is that after the end of the War, the Klingon Empire was taken over by those affected by the Augment virus.
It would have explained why TOS Klingons looked different, the Augment virus Klingons weren't shunned but ended up at the top of the heap after seizing power.
It could even be explained that they had a different psychology to "free range" Klingons and thats why the Empire in TOS was more communist style than Noble Houses Machiavellian that is normally how Klingons rule themselves.
They had a touch of both Human organisational collective nature and especially the Augment power obsession added to and overriding the basic honour obsessed Warrior mix. And somehow ended up with the functional communism of the TOS Klingon Empire (and Star Fleet Battles).
The Neo-Kligons were able to make communism work better than Humans had! [Admittedly, being closer to post-scarcity technology probably helps].
Then later on genetic surgery allowed all those affected by the virus to change into regular Klingons, and the Empire metamorphosised into a hybrid of both systems.
Still having the great Houses which is a part of basic Klingon psychology, but with the after-effects of their time as a single toleration government, making them unified with a standardised economy and power centralised under the Chancellor.
It would fit in with the then established lore and given more depth to Klingon society and history.
They underwent two great revolutions in society during the 23rd century, caused by a human genetic virus infecting and changing a significant portion of their population.
And then the affected finally being turned back.
That would have a profound impact on Klingon attitudes to Humanity and by extension the Federation.
There may even be some Klingons who reminisce about the time when the Empire was more unified and less chaotic, under their Neo-Kligon [ahem, Soviet] dominance.
Older Klingons who used to be Neo-Kligons, until they had genetic surgery to change them into "Real" Klingons, may quietly miss the old days.
And of course the cure involved genetic resequencing via transporters, which became available post TOS (before the TMP era).
[Which can be a bit of a portent to _that_ series, which some believe should be set as an alternate timeline/reality, at least it's 3rd season.]
And it gives the opportunity to have some dramatic periods in previously monotonous Klingon history explored, say in Strange New Worlds as background information.
But by TNG the older Klingons might ironically be the most favourable towards a Klingon/Federation alliance, as they think that further Human influences might enable the Empire to recapture its old unity of society.
But they don't mention that in public.
I'm genuinely touched when people say "aluminum" like that
Maybe there's hope for world peace after all 🙏
Any thoughts on what Vorok's battlecruiser in ENT 1x05 really was? Was ist a D7 or some predecessor?
Interesting
And remember, all captains of D7 cruisers loved to have some Tribbles as pets.
Ok, maybe I’m not telling the truth. 😂😂😂
You’re British, you pronounced aluminium the correct way. #BeProud
So was the d7 in enterprise actually a d5?
Also the hole at the front a main deflector? Surely that's the torpedo launcher.
At first, I thought this ship was an early cruiser design of the UFP.
Ah the Klingon ship that looks like a supposed emoji wearing a sombrero. 😮
How come we saw a large photo torpedo come out of were the main deflector is shown on the picture
That long neck, not sure about that. To me it always seemed like a primary target.
is kinda weird there are no impulse engines at the head, since that would be necessary for it to turn
0:33 "alum-in-umm... Ouch, my britishness."
I'll make sure to spell it "colour" a few times, just for you.
Didn’t they sell the design to the Romulans?
Was a bigger fan of this over the Constitution and also the D'deridex over the Galaxy.
Klingon science labs, where they beat the secrets out of the universe.
Shout out to my fellow SFB D7C Captains, let's prep a Scatter Pack and go Klingon Hook a Fed CA :)
Aluminium or aluminum?
Aluminiuminium
Klingon... DEFENSE... forces?!?
PetaQ! Klingons do not DEFEND!!! Klingons ATTACK!!!
🖖
Sorry but how is aluminium a "genuine flub" when that is the correct way to pronounce it?