#romulan bird of prey

[chernobog13]

LET'S BUILD A ROMULAN BIRD OF PREY!

[defconprime]

Ffffshew

[ship-o-rama]

Romulan Bird of Prey

Profile: mainstay of the Romulan Navy, stealth over speed.

Pictured: A Romulan Bird of Prey intercepts a starfleet shuttlecraft that crossed the Neutral Zone in 2259

Appeared in Star Trek Ongoing Vol 2. "Vulcan's Vengeance" IDW Comics

[urban-disco-bones]

Star Trek Micro Machines and Eaglemoss 🚀

[thisshrimpisfryingrice]

How to enter the neutral zone without entering the neutral zone.

[alphamecha-mkii]

Romulan Bird of Prey Cutaway by Matthew Paul Cushman

[grayrazor]

It suddenly struck me that the reason the Romulan symbol is a bird of prey is because they’re space Romans, and that’s their Aquila.

How did I never see it before?

[nerds-yearbook]

The December 15, 1966 episode of Star Trek introduced the alien race the Romulans and their bird-of-prey ships. It was also the last appearance of Janice Rand in the television series. The character wouldn't appear again until the motion picture. ("Balance of Terror", Star Trek TOS, TV, Event)

[lithiumseven]

Literally the most difficult part of being a Trekkie is trying to remember which one is the Warbird and which one is the Bird of Prey

[chernobog13]

CGI-version of the original Romulan Bird of Prey in the remastered Star Trek: The Original Series episode Balance of Terror.

Other than re-used footage in second season episode The Deadly Years, the Bird of Prey model was never seen in the series again. Instead, when the Romulans re-appeared in the third season episode The Enterprise Incident, they were using Klingon D-7 cruisers outfitted with cloaking devices.

Spock's line in that episode stating that intelligence reports indicated Romulans had acquired Klingon ships suggested an alliance. however brief, between The Klingon and Romulan Empires. This explained why later on in the Star Trek films Klingon ships were all equipped with cloaking devices.

This alliance might never have come to be if it were not for the fact that the original Bird of Prey model was destroyed by its creator.

Producer Robert Justman loved the work of prop builder Wah Chang. Chang had designed and or built several props for the show, including the communicators, the Salt Vampire, and the Tribbles.

There was just one teeny weeny little problem, though: Chang was not a member of the prop makers' union, nor was he eligible to join. Star Trek, as a studio production, was obligated to only use items designed and built by union members.

However, Justman considered Chang's work superior to that of studio prop makers. He conceived of a scheme to have Chang design and build the Romulan ship, but the studio would be invoiced for a pre-existing item, not something built specifically for the production. That would allow them to bypass the union requirement.

Chang built the 2 1/2 foot-wide, internally lit model out of vacuum-formed plastic, plaster, and metal in approximately two weeks. It was delivered to TOS production studio and filmed for the Balance of Terror episode. Because he was non-union, Chang would not get a credit for building the model.

Eventually the prop makers' union found out that Chang had built the model and filed a grievance. After much wrangling between the two sides, the union agreed to drop the grievance as long as Chang was not paid for his work. The studio agreed and Chang received the model back instead of the money he was owed.

Understandably angry, Chang smashed the model with sledgehammer when he returned home. Chang apparently confirmed this in 1982 during a radio interview.

When The Deadly Years was filmed stock footage of the Bird of Prey was used because there was no one to rebuild the prop (Star Trek's budget kept getting slashed each year). By the time The Enterprise Incident was being prepped the producers decided to forego the limited stock footage they had, and instead made use of the Klingon D-7, the model of which was still in the warehouse.

And thus, the brief Klingon-Romulan Alliance was born.

[defconprime]

[trekkie-polls]

For bonus points tell us if it would be scary or exciting to have run of the whole ship alone. Where would you explore first?

[saydams]

i do love the warbird. amazing design. but i admit i have a soft spot for the bird of prey from tos, with it's wonderful bird markings on the underside. (i was watching the deadly years last night and i was so happy to see again the feather patterns on the romulan ship, i had forgotten how great they are)

relatedly: have you seen this potential (rejected) warbird design?

Romulan Warbird for sure one of the top ten classic things to decloak off the starboard bow.

[icantspellthings]

Sulu and Chekov in TOS piloting a whole ass starship with just unlabelled buttons and no steering mechanism is already batshit crazy and wildly impressive, but honestly, I feel like from TNG onwards changing the control panels to touchscreens probably makes flying the starship shittier and even more insane.

At least with buttons, there's tactile feedback from it. You know you're pushing the button because you feel it, and you can rely on muscle memory because the buttons are always at the same place. Meanwhile, a touch screen is literally just a flat slick surface, imagine trying to fucking fly away out of a fight and oops your finger slipped and you've accidentally fired your phasers. Oh no, my palms are all sweaty under a high-pressure battle with hostile enemies, and now my touchscreen is freaking out because there's liquid on it, oh shit my sweat just imputed flight pattern alpha-elpsilon-gamma 24 and we're gonna crash straight into a romulan bird of prey. Oh fuck star fleet just updated my software and the buttons are now a different size and all rearranged I literally can't fly this shit anymore.

The stupid little touch screen next to the captains chair is even worse! Oh no I leaned on the armrest a little, and now we're on red alert, and I've jettisoned the pod.

[quasi-normalcy]

I think one of the big differences between Star Trek and Star Wars is that (intentional) silliness is baked into the canon on Star Trek in a way that it's really not on Star Wars.

Like, there are moments of levity in Star Wars (and things that aren't supposed to be funny but are), but it's written as a counterpoint to the big sweeping epic saga going on in the foreground. Like, behold Luke Skywalker, off on his Hero's Journey against the forces of evil! Also featuring a gay robot with anxiety and his peddle-bin pal. If the took the silliness out of Star Wars, it might not be as good, but it would still be legible as a series.

On Star Trek, on the other hand, there *is* no big, sweeping epic that's supposed to absorb your attention, and so the "serious" bits have no pride of place over the "silly" ones. Episodes where the Enterprise has to play a tense game of cat and mouse with a Romulan bird-of-prey or where Jim needs to let the love of his life die to save the future stand co-equal with episodes where the Enterprise is overrun with purring balls of fluff or where the crew needs to short-circuit a conman's sexbots by staging absurdist plays for them. And if you took the silliness out of Star Trek then it wouldn't be Star Trek anymore; you can't have utopianism where everyone is dour and serious all of the time.

[alphamecha-mkii]

Romulans Against a Cube by Mallacore