#Klingon Battle Cruiser

[oldschoolfrp]

Star Trek scenes by Denis Loubet from The Space Gamer 42, Star Trek Special Issue, August 1981, featuring articles on Star Fleet Battles and the Star Fleet Battle Manual (previously, and)

[nocternalrandomness]

Klingon Battle Cruisers over Q'onoS

[chernobog13]

K't'inga-class battle cruiser ready to fire!

[alphamecha-mkii]

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Klingon Vor'Cha Class Concept Art by Rick Sternbach

[discoonthegrass]

The Trouble with Tribbles: To protect a space station with a vital grain shipment, Kirk and the crew must deal with Federation bureaucrats, a Klingon battle cruiser and a peddler who sells furry, purring, voracious little creatures as pets.

The Empath: Trapped in an alien laboratory, Kirk, Spock and McCoy meet an empath and are involved in a series of experiments.

Remember, the FINAL POLL will launch on Friday. Will top-seeded City on the Edge of Forever prevail, or will Tumblr darling Amok Time have something to say about it?

[leesargent]

Li'l Star Trek The Motion Picture

I actually really love TMP, even before the Director's Cut, but more so after that excellent edition. I like the aesthetics and the sense of wonder and size it invokes.

A lot of the visual effects stand up today - that opening sequence with the Klingon battle cruisers is so beautifully shot! And the Enterprise is a joy to behold.

[raisinchallah]

u kno kinda funny to me how many people are so obsessed with star trek ship design when tbh all of them like across the board kinda suck and are boring star trek ship design peaked at the klingon battle cruiser in the motion picture its been downhill since then deep space nine which is clearly not a ship and is a space station being beautiful and sexy is an exception and not counted

[deadheaddaisy]

What’re your most rewatched ENT episodes? What about your most rewatched Stargate episodes? (And do you think those have anything in common, like similar plotlines or similar themes?)

Oooh, now that's something I hadn't ever considered. Let me see.

By now you should know that I don't do anything by half measures. So I managed to cull my list down from over 200 to 79 of my most-replayed episodes (and this does not mean they are the highest-rated or best, just what I rewatch regularly, sometimes for certain scenes only, sometimes because they're good in the background). I went for both SG-1 and Atlantis as they both overlap with Enterprise in air-dates (The Storm overlaps with Babel One and Unending in timing, for one, and now I feel really ancient since SGA is 20 years old and the others are way older).

Green shows my go-to, will always rewatch these when I need something on. The other colours don't really matter for the purposes of this ask.

Most of these are quite action- or humour-heavy. Hathor and Bound are very much "the guys get brainwashed by pheromones" though I find the women of the SGC far more capable than Enterprise's in taking back their base (knocking out several men to do so, partly out of frustration and partly to stop being attacked themselves). There's also the issue of consent and what happened to Daniel, though that's kind of sidelined. 

Friendship and found family are big, big drawcards, and there are several excellent episodes across all three series that highlight this, which is what I love most of all in my shows. Fighting back against a takeover makes an appearance across all three, too, which makes Foothold, Prometheus, the Storm arc, and Midway so enticing in Stargate; and Shockwave, The Catwalk, and Chosen Realm (okay, the second half, as the first half makes my blood boil) in Enterprise. 

On the whole, I'd say most of these episodes either show the crew/team/individuals kicking ass and taking names, or facing natural disasters (especially Inferno), alien threats, or war time. I also love individuals showing their true natures and growth (hence both versions of Proving Ground, Death Knell - Samantha Carter is an absolute badass in this one - Sleeping Dogs, the Romulan/Andorian arc, Malcolm's Section 31 arc, Rodney's sister episodes (David Hewlett and his sister bring their true sibling dynamics to both).

And then humour, of course. John Billingsley is a hoot in The Other Guys and Bound (and I love Phlox in all the Enterprise episodes, natch), and then Rodney's performance in Duet and Harmony makes my day. And Window of Opportunity, Wormhole X-Treme and 200 are among the very best of SG-1's line-up. 

I am a big fan of (space)ships, hence my love of episodes introducing these (aside from the NX-01 and NX-02, naturally). Thor's Chariot introduces us to the sexy beast that is a Biliskner-class Asgard warship, with Earth's Prometheus making two appearances; in Enterprise's Proving Ground we see the Kumari Andorian warship (and then again in Babel One, getting the living hell blown out of it, sadly); and in SGA, an Aurora-class battle cruiser in Inferno (not to mention the Daedelus showing up in The Siege). 

I love Marauders because it shows Malcolm in his element, being an actual tactician and playing with his big guns; while Hoshi shows how all that training he gave her made her a crack shot; even if the whole Klingon storyline doesn't do much for me.

Vox Sola introduces my rarepair and I dig it for Hoshi and T'Pol's interactions (also in Sleeping Dogs, plus Hoshi insisting on using all the torpedoes). For me that's very much a Death Knell and Upgrade kind of situation - and Foothold, go Sam yet again! - for SG-1. And then Elizabeth and John facing off in The Long Goodbye - the diplomat against the military leader? Yes, please. Plus, the kiss! 

I have Exile in there even though I hate the stupid nightgown-wearing what the hell because it's such a Hoshi-Malcolm-centric episode, right down to Tarquin using an avatar that looks very much like Malcolm - short, dark-haired, light-eyed. I imagine Hoshi feels safe around Malcolm so Tarquin uses that look as part of his stratagem to trick her into feeling at ease. And also because Hoshi shows just how tough she actually is when her people are threatened.

This is already way too long an answer, or I'd go through every episode, but as you can see, several of them cross over in themes, across all three series, and it depends on what I'm looking for at the time.

Thanks for the ask!

[glowing-disciple]

Everyone always talks about how Kirk screwed with the Kobayashi Maru test, but I don’t think y’all realize how much people screw with it on the regular.

Brief recap for the uninitiated: the Kobayashi Maru is a test designed to be unwinable. It’s supposed to gauge how well someone handles a no win situation. The premise of the exercise is simple: you are commanding a combat ready starship ferrying a large group of wounded civilians to a nearby colony where they can receive treatment. While in route, you receive a distress call from the Kobayashi Maru, a small starship that’s basically a space minivan. It’s been swept into the Klingon side of the neutral zone by an ion storm and is badly damaged. You can help them, but taking your ship into the neutral zone would constitute an act of war (if you’re caught).

The “fun” part is that the simulation is programmed to generate an infinite number of Klingon battle cruisers, so there’s no way for you to blast your way through, and the stricken ship is out of transporter range, so you can’t just magic your way out of this either.

People who have taken the test are also forbidden to discuss any of this with anyone who hasn’t taken it, so everyone goes into it blind.

But here’s the neat part: there is a novel where Kirk, Scotty, and Sulu talk about how they handled this test.

This is already a long post, so I’m just going to summarize how each of them tackled the problem…

Kirk: hacked the simulation so that the Klingons would recognize him as a famous hero and assist in the rescue.

Scotty: ended up surrounded by Klingon battle cruisers and decided to take a third option by using his engineering expertise to create an impossible situation. This crashed the simulation.

Sulu: said “not my problem” and completely ignored the Kobayashi Maru, to the shock and horror of his instructors and classmates.

I wonder what other things people have done during this test…

[staringdownabarrel]

I know the copy-paste fleet from PIC's Et in Arcadia Ego, Pt. II tends to get a lot of people riled up, but honestly, I feel like it makes a lot of sense from an in-universe perspective.

Like, one of the big issues Starfleet had in the TNG and DS9 eras was that basically any time a new threat rolled up at the border, their threat response was just whichever ships they could call up at short notice. This was one of the bigger reasons why the fleets in episodes like The Best of Both Worlds, Redemption, Pt. II, and the Descent two parter were a mish-mash of different classes: from Starfleet's perspective, it was quite literally just whoever they could drum up in the moment, not which ships were actually best for this job.

During the DS9 era, there was a shift from fleets being just whoever they could drum up to being actual formalised big fleets that consistently did maneuvers together. This is why it went from DS9 getting seven ships as reinforcements during the battle in The Way of the Warrior to there just being hundreds of ships that operated together a few seasons later. This is apparently a trend that continued after the Dominion War, too: in Nemesis, the fleet the Enterprise-E was supposed to link up with towards the end was referred to as Battle Group Omega.

I think having a couple hundred Inquiry-class ships operating as a single fleet would make sense in this context. A lot of the ships that were in service during the TNG/DS9 era would have been decommissioned or destroyed by this point, and Starfleet would have had to replace them with something. In seasons two and three of Picard, we've seen some of the other ships that have been introduced over the intervening decades; having a few rapid response units would also make sense.

This wouldn't necessarily square with Starfleet's exploratory and scientific missions, but I don't think it'd necessarily need to. Even in TNG, there were more military-focused officers like Captain Jellico and Admiral Nechayev who were very concerned with the Federation's security, and they didn't get in the way of the Enterprise-D's exploratory, scientific, or diplomatic missions.

The same would be true of the late 24th/early 25th century of PIC's first season: they could easily have both the heavily militaristic officers and the more pacifist officers working different missions for the most part. It's just that the part of the fleet we saw was the military part.

Plus, from a thematic point of view, this would tie into why Picard left Starfleet to begin with. In Remembrance, Picard straight up says he left because he felt that Starfleet wasn't Starfleet anymore. Having a noticeable chunk of the fleet set up to be the immediate military response to a new threat would make sense in that context. Picard's traditionally been the kind of guy who prefers peace and diplomacy (though he is a capable military guy when the chips are down), so Starfleet immediately being able, and potentially willing, to respond to everything with deadly force really would rub him the wrong way.

The other reason I don't mind there being a fleet of hundreds of Inquiry-class ships ready to go is because of the makeup of the Romulan, Klingon, and Cardassian fleets during DS9. While these powers did have some varieties in their fleets, for the most part they're just as guilty of flying copy-paste fleets as Riker was in Et in Arcadia Ego, Pt. II. While Starfleet was flying fleets with a large variety of ship classes, the Romulans were almost exclusively flying D'deridex-class warbirds, the Klingons mostly Vor'cha- and Negh'var-class battle cruisers with the occasional bird-of-prey and K'tinga-class, and the Cardassians exclusively Galor- and Keldon-class ships.

This doesn't necessarily mean that these are the only ships these powers had available, but they were very much the backbone of their battle fleets and were clearly considered to be the most capable of combat. Their other ships were probably made for much more specialised purposes.

This is probably a design philosophy Starfleet probably took as well. Instead of having most of their larger ships be jack-of-all-trade ships, they spent more time having specialised ships for specialised purposes. The end result of this is that they could have 200 Inquiry-class ships ready to go for this purpose rather than just have dozens of different classes that might not be the best for it, but would do in a pinch.

I feel like this is also something people would have warmed to a lot more over time, had the Picard writers not immediately try to back peddle in season two's opening episode, The Star Gazer. Had they just said, "Well, this is a new era, both of production and in-universe, and this is how Starfleet does battle fleets now," it might still be a contentious thing but people would eventually get used to it.

The other thing they probably should have done--and I still think they should do this at some point--is have a show set during this same period that focuses heavily on a five-year mission during this period. That'd allow room for an explanation that the copy-paste Inquiry fleets are mostly just for emergencies, and that other ship classes exist for different purposes. (I know eventually someone will say, "Yeah, but Lower Decks and Prodigy exist", but keep in mind they're set twenty-ish years prior to Picard.)

I think this would allow for starship classes to clearly be for much more set purposes rather than just be the jack-of-all-trade ships they've traditionally been. While there's been exceptions to this like the Oberth- and Nova-classes mostly being science vessels, the Defiant-class being a warship in all but name, and the Olympic-class being a medical ship, but these are mostly the exceptions.

Classes like the Constitution- and Excelsior-classes are nominally explorer classes, but have been shown to be used for military missions as well for example, and that tends to be the general rule for larger ships. For the most part, if they're a medium-to-large ship for the era, then they're used as a jack-of-all-trades ship rather than for a specialised purpose.

So really, the writers on Picard had the opportunity to really do something interesting with how starship classes get used and having a set canonical purpose for each new class, but then they chose to not do it because it didn't really gel with a lot of people. I feel like this is ultimately an unfortunate thing.

[tigerexe]

15! what is your favourite star trek starship?

tos enterprise is my special girl but shoutout to klingon battle cruisers! I love their weird shape. Especially in tmp i like the detail of the front being slightly charred from frequent torpedo fire

[stra-tek]

Episode six of Picard's third season is, without doubt, the most fanwanky thing the franchise has ever put out.

And that includes the novels.

We got:

Geordi, who now runs the Fleet Museum

Moriarty

Starship porn feat. OG Stargazer, Voyager from Voyager, the Bird of Prey from Star Trek IV, Doug Drexler's NX-01.5 refit (even though it never appeared in the actual Enterprise series), the old Klingon battle cruiser, the U.S.S. Enterprise-A and even a TOS-era Constitution-class ship (looking like TOS not SNW)

Data (again, again) and Lore

The cloaking device from Star Trek IV: The One With the Whales being stolen and used

A Data/Geordi reunion

Walking past a shitload of TOS and TNG episode references in the Daystrom Station vault

Walking past James T. Kirk's frozen remains (still with a heartbeat, according to some) which are part of something called Project Phoenix

Probably more stuff I've forgotten

[nocternalrandomness]

USS Enterprise-A escorting Kronos One to Earth

[chernobog13]

The IKS Amar about to fire a torpedo!

[thewomancallednova]

Klingons on the viewscreen: *boy band noises*

Sam: Wow this is such a bop

James: Actually, it's a K't'inga class battle cruiser.

(Thanks to @zetabrarian for the idea)

[discoonthegrass]

The Trouble with Tribbles: To protect a space station with a vital grain shipment, Kirk and the crew must deal with Federation bureaucrats, a Klingon battle cruiser and a peddler who sells furry, purring, voracious little creatures as pets.

The Naked Time: The crew is infected with a mysterious disease that removes people's emotional inhibitions to a dangerous degree.

Feel free to reblog in order to help this poll reach the most people! Remember to vote on the other polls in this round, listed here! Note: Next poll won't be posted until Monday!