I'm not convinced that the design is a reaction to the Borg. The Galaxy class was a ship of a peaceful era - a flying city, designed to bring along all the comforts of home. When Starfleet started designing ships to fight Borg, they trimmed down their ships and cut away the frills. The Defiant, in particular, was a small ship that could punch way above its weight and could be easily mass-produced and crewed (I'm still disappointed that we never saw Defiants operating in wolf packs). The D'Deridex makes sense as a ship designed to oppose Starfleet's fancy new Galaxy-class flagship, not so much for killing cubes.
Yes! Big big ships are just opportunities for the Borg to take a big part of your power out _in one move._ They use tractor beams, focus fire, hack the systems and/or beam over Drones to assimilate the ship. You fight the Borg best using the Attack ship swarm concept, so your firepower is diversified and can't be as readily adapted to. A whole bunch of ships all changing weapons frequencies are harder to adjust to, the Borg have to do that for each ship - assuming a competent opponent who knows Borg abilities. OT/ With *First Contact* and the Defiant. While a fan service with it being a hero ship (and the cheers in the cinema when it first appeared - I saw it with a non Trekie who went "so that's a important ship I assume?") First Contact really should have shown a bunch of Defiant class ships all fighting as the concept intended versus the Cube. Even including the attack pattens with their complimentary ships as Starfleet does a ballet of death. But then how do the Borg even get that far against Defiants swarming it doing strafing runs while Akira's bombard it at range with torpedoes and Sabers phaser it at range as well? The producers really cut back on the original battle sequence with multiple Cubes, due to budget considerations, however. With a Borg armada being cut down by Starfleet being able to blow away Cubes and the time travel being a hail mary to eliminate a actual threat to the Borg. But a good budget compromise that didn't break the lore regarding relative power between the factions is they could have shown a running battle versus two Cubes, with Starfleet able to destroy one just by pounding away before they got to Earth, but that's when the battle gets desperate as they're running out of time with the remaining Cube nearing it's goal. And the Enterprise-E comes in to stop that Cube as its getting close enough to Earth to risk being able to beam Drones to the surface. It would also hint at the the strategy of the Borg,.. if one Cube fails, send two. Then extrapolate from there. Next time Starfleet is looking at four Cubes....
Makes sense. If you see an "Enemy" doing something that COULD be evil, you tend to assume that's what it is. At least if your government is paranoid. There were major issues with the US Space Shuttle program. The Air Force was originally supposed to help develop it to use with spy sats. Then, pretty much backed out when they realized rockets were better. The Soviet Union on the other hand freaked out. I can't remember where or when it was, but there was a Soviet diplomat publicly denouncing the US "Space bomber". IIRC, that's also around the time the Soviets mounted cannons on one of their space stations. I can see the Romulans taking a similar route. "It COULD be a super battleship designed specifically to destroy us... So it MUST be and we have to outdo the dastardly Federation and their Galaxy class, and their 'Root beer'"
@@casbot71 I always wondered why the Borg time travel sphere didn't just beam down, or just land, on the Earth. If they landed near a population center, there would have been little resistance and the Borg would have had 1,000's to millions of new drones in a matter of days. Unless Picard decided to planet bomb the Earth with Quantum Torpedoes, there really was nothing that he or the Big E could do to stop them. They didn't need the technology of the Enterprise E, they could create their own out of the ruins of Earth's third world war. Nor would they have needed to stop first contact - they could have let it happen and stolen the Vulcan's ship by the time it landed, and assimilated them and once done with Earth, move on to Vulcan.
They did eventually show something like that in Voyager's "A Message in a Bottle" with two Defiant-class starships as escorts in in a squadron lead by an Akira-class starship that were tasked with retaking the USS Prometheus from the Romulans.
@@slewone4905 high copper content......... like say a vulcan? you dont say! rommies are just distant vulcans who may have rejected suraks way of dealing with there violent nature
Don't understand why some people need to explain everything by trying desperate to involve the Borg, it's just as pointless as saying "it must be the Romulans"!
@@bigfootwalker5399 A large part of that has to do with the narrative of the TNG era *heavily* relying on the Borg. Most of the events that shape the era in it's later part revolve around the Borg and the 'setup' for that happening comes early in the era too, so it's a constant theme throughout, even during the Dominion war. From an out-of-universe in real life perspective the Borg basically got slapped into any discrepancy they'd fit into pretty frequently
I remember how totally bowled over by this ship I felt on first seeing 'The Neutral Zone'. It made a huge impact at a very important time for the show. At that point things still felt touch-and-go as to whether the series would even continue. The D'Deridex seemed to say 'There is so much more coming if you will allow us to present it to you.' Thankfully they did!
The problem for the concept might have emerged by the change in present stealth tactics, from disguising as some harmless creature or thing to the demand of being recognized as nonexistent : |
I guess we tend to forget that the Romulans and Klingons have a "backyard facing the woods", because the Federation is so hedged in from every direction except "Out of the Galaxy". That is unless or until Star Trek releases a fully Canon and official star map.
They did about 15 years ago. I don't know what happened to it, but I used to have an official "star atlas" of the Alpha and Beta quadrants. The Federation was depicted as covering nearly 45% of inhabited Alpha quadrant space, although their weakness was that Federation territory was "scattered" compared to the other major powers, with narrow bottlenecks of space leading to larger sectors and such. In terms of sheer size and population, the atlas depicted the 24th century Klingon Empire as comparable, although their total territory was nearly equally distributed between the Alpha and Beta quadrants. In contrast, Klingon space was not as "scattered" as the Federation was, but their government was never as well unified. The Romulan Star Empire was shown as directly bordering the Klingon Empire, but apparently they didn't share a border with the Federation until the TOS era was over. Compared to the other two, their territory and population were smaller, but they also had many more older and highly developed systems under their control. By their introductory description in the atlas, it was suggested that the reason the Klingons had not successfully invaded the Romulan Empire was because their defenses were just too sophisticated. And the reason the Romulans couldn't defeat the Klingons outright was because they were simply too greatly outnumbered. Interesting stalemate conditions. Please pardon my extensive reply. That's just what I remember from the atlas, and I thought it would be interesting to share.
@@GlidingZephyr I am aware of numerous Star Trek Star maps, but an official Canon one still eludes me. I'll renew my efforts to find it, if it indeed exists.
There is a Star Trek Star Charts book by Geoffrey Mandel from 2002, though it may be out of print. There's a stellar cartography book by Larry Nemecek, but even used copies (per amazon) are expensive. I'm glad I bought the Star Charts book when I did.
The Chodak theory is that there is a big and nasty ancient empire on the opposite border of Romulan space that the Romulans have been dealing with while things were quiet with the Federation.
There's long been speculation that, much like the Imperial-class Star Destroyer, its meaht to frighten and intimidate enemies with its sheer perceived size, mass, and power.
@@vic5015 That's rather obvious. However, I've always believed it's design would allow smaller warships to be carried in the large internal space between the "wings"...
@charlestaylor253 maybe, but the Romulabs *love* deception and subterfuge. Is it *that* had to imsgine that the D'deridex might be a bit less than meets the eye?
From what I’ve heard, it has the gap in the centre to maintain line-of-sight with each other. In the early days of Star Trek it was a rule of starship design, as the in-universe explanation was that they had to interact with each other to form the warp field.
I like how it basically looks like two Birds of Prey stuck together bottom-to-bottom. Always been such a memorable design that challenges the notion that to seem aggressive spaceships need to look aerodynamic light fighter jets.
That was done by Picard in one of the books once. I can't remember which one but they hid the Enterprise D inside the gap of a cloaked Romulan ship whose captain was wanting to defect or something. Picard then rammed the other D'Deridex that arrived to prevent the Romulan captain from defecting. I can't remember how it went, but it was an interesting scene.
That’s not exactly true. The Romulan ship was just slightly larger than the Enterprise. Only the saucer section could fit inside and that would take some precise maneuvers at that. I built almost all the models back than. I thought about it than and tried it with same scale models. Non canon means they don’t know what they’re talking about because they only know bits and pieces. They also don’t know the difference between an isolinear rod and a self sealing stem bolt
@@charleskroman5006that _DS9_ reference had me grinning! Not canon, But _TNG_ novel "The Romulan Prize" by Michael Jan Friedman DID have a prototype warbird larger than the D'Deridex. The _Syrinx_ dwarfed _Enterprise-D_ . Its singularity propulsion powered the cloaking grid. And had surface area, volume and mass comparable to a Starfleet dock. *SPOILER:* it took the combined effort of a Galaxy and Constitution class ( _U.S.S. Independence_ ) to square up to the vessel.
@@ai6894 I’m only into canon Star Trek but I know most novels are not. The 3rd installment of the Invasion Series tells of the Defiant going to warp from the station to the wormhole. Far from canon but still a good novel. But as for the Enterprise hiding in the Warbird, I never read that novel but that does make sense now. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
There is the idea out there that a few of the old vertical version was infact built as another class of warship. I would think of it as planed to be an Inturnal Empire threat, to hide even from the Main Romulan Fleet, in order to prevent any of them from going Rogue. Perhaps they were destroyed in the Dominion war.
Something like that would likely be given to the Tal Shiar. In that case, they could have been part of the fleet that attacked the Founders. But, I'd argue it's more likely they kept them in hiding and planned to keep them there even if it cost the empire.
I thought it was Tasha Yar leaking information (voluntary or not)from the future about the Galaxy class to the past Romulans who built the D'derdex to counter it
0:48 the vertical look of the concept warbirds reminds me of the ‘Warp Ring’ design that the Vulcans used in Star Trek: Enterprise. I like the concept since it provides a connection between the Vulcans’ and the Romulans’ ship designs.
I've heard they wanted a verical ship because it would look more unique then all the other horizontal ships in trek, But someone made the decision to make it horizontal to make it fit better on screen. And I think the horizontal version fits better into the theme of romulan ships looking like birds
Imagine if you will, you're commanding your little Steamrunner or Cheyenne, dutifully patrolling the neutral zone, when without prior warning on sensors this predatory looking Behemoth, a km long and nearly ¾ of a km high decloaks less than a km off your bow. You double check your tactical assessment and learn that these things are so heavily shielded, they can tank 3 galaxy classes or 2 Jem Hadar battle cruisers and have a 50/50 shot off warping home afterwards. Then, 2 more decloak behind you. This is the point of the D'Deridex in my mind. It's a psychological game of fear and intimidation. And it did it oh so well.
It would've made for an interesting tactic in the Dominion war, if a galaxy without the saucer could fit in the void of the D'Deridex. Imagine the Dominion's surprise with that decloaking behind your vanguard.
@@LARGO125 The Dominion was doing fine against the Federation and Klingon empires. The same Klingons that the Romulans could not invade. Also there is no point in trying to intimidate the Jem'Hadar. The Romulans joined in by were countered by the Breen. It's not like the Romulans were ever overwhelming.
A wonderful breakdown of a great design. A genuinely iconic class that communicates the design language of the Romulans beautifully. It couldn’t be anything but Romulan could it? It’s basically perfect.
0:47 - the concept design was later used in a Romulan ship featured in the Lower Decks episode "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee". According to Brad Winters, it was intended to be larger than a shuttle but much smaller than a warbird.
I always have thought that it was built due to the fact that the Romulans were faced by TWO powers, and they just started building the ships bigger in order to make the other two back down.
More likely THREE - remember in first contact in TNG one of Romulans said that 'urgent matters' occupied their attention. Federation didn't know entire galaxy. Probably, empire was embroiled either in serious rebelion or maybe even WAR.
I very much appreciate your videos. This one particularly. I know you use a lot of beauty shots via STO, but unlike some channels you also put a lot of effort into the subject matter, rather than just low effort STO beauty shots, with little additional substance. But you always do a great job of presenting both lore and apocrypha in a way that really fleshes out the subject and is complimented by your particular take on things. And you also do a great job being even handed with the bits you like and the bits you don't, in a way that allows the viewer to make up their own mind. I know it can be a bit hard finding interesting subjects considering all the lore and lore channels out there. But you seem to be able to maintain a high quality with all your vids. Nice one Rick.
I love the fan theory that the Romulans know the singularity field is not the most efficient choice but it has two major advantages: 1) No dilithium, means no stopping to refuel or obvious economic weakpoints in dilithium mine worlds. 2) If the vessel is compromised, it implodes rending all components down to their molecules and making salvaging crew/components/data absolutely impossible as the only thing left is plasma and scattered molecules.
Tbh I think it's origin was because of the galaxy class but not for the reason you may think, Tasha tar after being captured by the romulans did likly spill the beans about the galaxy class from the alternate future and how it was in the alt universe a warship
The Romulans tried to make Borg-killers and created giant ships. Starfleet tried to make Borg-killers and created tiny ships. Really shows the difference in thought processes.
A lot of high volume fire power make a lot of sense in fighting the borg. The small crews mean you can have more ships. Remember that Riker was offered the command of a squadron of cruisers as a roving anti-borg force. The Defiants allows such a strategy in volume. The main problem with the Battle of the Wolf is that the Federation just came at the Borg piecemeal and took the time firing. That's plain stupid. It's shown that a simple photon torpedo will do major damage to a Borg Cube. The same cube will repair that damage in a minute if you sit around doing nothing. Now take those 40 Federation ships and split them into 6 groups (a cube has six sides). Just have those groups do a "rolling thunder" attack where one from each group fires their torpedoes, then the next, then the next while the first ones reload. While they are doing this the groups surround the cube with one for each face. Dead cube. A squad of Defiants with a game plan can do the same.
Thank you for doing these breaks downs!! They are informative and have answered questions I have had about Star Trek Starships. Thank you! Would you be able to do a break down of the Nerada and the Scimitar?
I always loved the theme TNG used with these. It added to the menace of the Warbird exponentially. Go back and just watch Neutral Zone Encounter and tell me the music didn't hype you up for the Arrival of the Warbird
Loved how they were destroyed by the Ent-D in the TOS Federation novel. The Ent-D actually fit inside it and hiding inside its cloaking field and then went out to ram another Romulan Warbird. The Maneuver called it ramming speed. Also loved the other instance in the ShatnerVerse The Return novel in which a renamed Defiant class Enterprise also hid inside the Warbird and then started gutting it from the inside by rolling all over to destroy its structural supports between the top&bottom hulls.
My favorite ship design--not just in Trek, but in anything with spaceships! I absolutely adore the D'deridex, to me it is the template for how to make a ship look cool.
I rememberrwhen I first saw the D'Deridex class in the TNG episode, "The Neutral Zone". It was like looking at a nightmare come to life in its design, certainly ominous. Notwithstanding the bird of prey inspiration, I always felt that the bow looked almost like a Xenomorph head (from the Alien franchise), which is what gave it a terrifying look. Unlike the Klingons, which were still using K'Tinga cruisers and Birds-of-Prey well into the 24th century, which just seemed like they lost their wow factor, the D'Deridex definitely entered the scene with a bang, so to speak, and it made the return of the Romulans something worth remembering. What was done with the class during the events of DS9, specifically the attack on the Founders' homeworld, I think it completely downplayed what this class was truly capable of, essentially relegating this monster to just another starship class that had so much promise only for it to have little in the way of teeth.
My head cannon (and likely a lot of peoples I suspect) is the Romulans were probably dealing with the Borg for a long time before Starfleet ever met them in 2265. It would explain at least to a large extent their withdrawal from the "galactic west" part of the milky way that includes the alpha quadrant. We don't really know how deep into the Beta Quadrant Romulan territory stretches but it is easy to surmise that the Borg were likely making incursions deep into the Beta quadrant for some time and probably butted up against the edges of Romulan space at some point in the early to mid-24th century.
If any ship of the time would have been capable of having even a small chance of standing up to the Borg it would have likely been the D'deridex in strike groups. Though they would still be incredibly outgunned by a cube and would definitely take heavy losses.
Such an awesome ship!! The D'Deridex Warbird is my most favorite of the Alien ships in the whole ST franchise! Just such an amazing ship design! Great video! Thanks for this!!
A ship this big even at the height of the empire must have been a substantial investment in resources and manpower. Losing even one of them must have stung.
The Borg and the Romulan Supernova. The resurgence of the Romulan empire, and the D’Deridex class were likely developed before the Borg threat was fully realized. However it was unlikely that Romulan scientists could miss that their own star was becoming increasingly unstable. I think that the RSE suppressed knowledge of the deterioration of their star and tried numerous tactics to mitigate the disaster ahead of time. But being hemmed in by the Klingons and the federation, they could only try underhanded moves like trying to undermine the Klingons or Invade Vulcan. They knew that they could not win a direct conflict and they knew a prolonged confrontation would only make it harder for them to manage the situation. Thats why the Romulans signed a non aggression pact with the Founders. They hoped to eventually join forces with the Dominion to carve out a piece of federation territory. But Sisko and Garak’s little performance forced their hands and pushed them into an alliance with the federation. The desire to intimidate the federation ultimately failed when they quickly realized that a war with the federation was unlikely to be won. The original plan for the D’Deridex failed.
The Tal Shiar didn't want to join up with the Dominion, they joined up with Tain to try and take them down. In my head cannon, they had an idea that Garak's memory stick was a fake but went along because the Dominion was an even bigger than they thought - and Garak was also counting on it.
I remember encountering this ship in Star Trek Bridge Commander. It was pretty weak in that game, you could take it out in one go by just focusing the bridge, which it has to show you when it attacked. It's an interesting design tho.
The first time I saw this thing I was absolutely in love with it. One of the most iconic ships after the Enterprise D herself. It's a shame the cinematography of the episode she made her debut on was a little scuffed. You can see in storyboard shots the introduction was supposed to be from an over the shoulder view of the Enterprise, with the looming hulk of the D'Deridex still outclassing her in size. Because of the perspective they chose in an effort to show off the details of the Warbird more, her intimidating size was never properly illustrated.
Could a smaller ship trying to avoid getting shot hide inside the cutaway for the D'deridex? I think it'd be a funny way to try and get out of a tense situation, as I'm willing to get all the guns aim outwards, not to the middle of their own ship
I think this overlooks the obvious events from the mid-2340s where the Romulans assault at least two Klingon worlds and that there is for whatever reason a significant amount of hostilities between the two. They were probably designed to combat whatever Klingon heavy combatants were around at that time, maybe the even the Vor'cha depending on when both it and the warbird entered service. I think it makes more sense as a statement to the aggressive Klingon Empire to watch itself and stay on their side of the fence.
The empty space actually does make sense. The warp bubble goes around the ENTIRE ship, but not inside of that hollow. Its not a null, it's not "empty". You can transport anything in there, including gaggled small craft like landing craft, prefab and flat pack stations and surface instillations, etc. This is a ship for an EMPIRE that is not ashamed of what it is, unlike the interstellar gang fight that is the Klingons or the Federation which is embarrassed by it's hegemony. 22 transporters supports this- the D'Deridex put the "D" in d-day for the Romulan Empire in it's prime.
I always wished they'd kept those black sashes/belts from the Romulans' first (mid-)24th century appearance. They looked so much better than those weird moulded-rubber things with textured nubs. Sure, the replacement had their raptor emblem... but they could've just made that into a buckle or brooch with the black sash. Though I'm saying that after about a decade seeing the HD scans, maybe the black fabric didn't look like much of anything on videotape. I certainly don't remember noticing there being a change, on my SD DVDs, the same way as I have on the HD version.
It did actually have more than 2 torpedo launchers and the disrupters where also class 21 cannons however im uncertain of the class of disrupter beams it had but it was indeed a lot more powerful than in the specs presented here it had in its disrupters alone a total output of 65,000 TeraWatts and the torpedo tubes where of an S2 design holding a total torpedo storage of 800 torpedo's of both photon and graviton torpedo's. Aside from that though you vid is bang on the money, i caught a few of your vids now all pretty high quality.
I'd love to see the mogai class with a war bird style duel wing arrangement just with less space between the upper and lower wings with a secondary neck attaching to the head/command section, I think it would look really good. The nacelles would have to be played around with, the version on the upgraded valdore from STO would be a great fit.
My headcanon is that the D’Deridex project was started after the aggressive uh debriefing of the Ent-C survivors who claimed a much larger battleship Ent-D was being fielded in the near future. With one blonde officer in a different uniform being pointed out as actually having served on her.
My favorite ship. The true power house of the Alpha Quadrant! If used properly 1v1 The Galaxy would only have enough time to realize it's destruction in the Talons of the War Bird!
I always loved the look of the D'Deridex but in the show it's often difficult to really get a sense of the scale (one of the hazards of setting all establishing shots in the black void of space, I suppose). Most shots I recall seeing of it had it facing a Galaxy-class, basically nose-to-nose, but filmed at an angle so that it was hard to compare sizes. It usually looked either the same size or even slightly smaller than the Galaxy (and when it did appear bigger, my brain usually just went "Oh, but because of the angle and lack of establishing background elements, it looking bigger is probably just an optical illusion or a scaling error in post").
The D'Deridex was designed to be and in a couple cases shown to be 1,341 meters in length. In the Prime Timeline, the Federation wouldn't have a comparably sized mainline capital starship until the 2080s with the 1,100 meter Odyssey-class, which included the Enterprise-F among its number.
Love the Borg connections. Over the years, maybe influenced by STO, *insert assimilated Romulus here,* but I've often noticed, aside from the colour scheme of the TNG era Roms, some "similarities," maybe in-universe influences, real world happy accidents?
By far my favorite ship design of star trek. One of the reasons why when I played Star Trek Online, I was happy for the Romulan inclusion. Still shame they weren't their own faction. Makes me want to boot up the game again.
One other thing. For a show that prided itself on scientific accuracy, TNG could not have got singularities more wrong. No, they aren't going to cause the ship to implode if they escape their housing, they'd fire straight through the ship like the super-dense, ultra-massive object they are.
A thought that i have about the singularity drive is that it may in fact be an international security measure. The romulans being paranoid and ambitious, the idea of sending captains and crews out in such powerful ships must also come with the fear of one or more such ships being turned against those in power, so if micro singularities work like our hypothetical micro singularities they are less reactors and more super efficient batteries. Batteries that would require specialized facilities to replace or recharge. If they were conventionally powered, a rogue captain could resupply anywhere in the galaxy, by harvesting stealing or being given antimatter to continue the fight. But if they rely entirely on facilities well within romulan space and securely under the thumb of those in power, a rogue ship or fleet might only have months of reserves, or even if they have years of power available, they are still risking eventually running dry if the coup doesn't succeed soon enough.
Having less, but more powerful armaments supports the Borg theory. The Borg usually came with a single, powerful cube, so you had one target you needed to punch trough
My headcanon is that the D'Deridex is not actually intended to face the Federation at all, or the Borg. They were as in the dark as the Federation when their colonies started being destroyed, and that was when we and Starfleet first saw the ship, so it's fairly clear it wasn't designed to face the Borg at all. Consider also that the Romulan Star Empire has been in a state of peacetime towards the Federation for upwards of 60 years, and it's been more than 200 years since the Federation and Romulans last went to war. The Romulans are paranoid and militaristic, but they clearly understand that the Federation respects their borders and has a "don't start none, won't get none" policy. They might put up a belligerent front, but they're not at war with the Federation and not seriously expecting to be so any time soon. You don't build kilometer-plus long battleships for no practical reason. I think the Star Empire has a broad body of client/conquered worlds on the other side of its territory that it has to police, and lacks the industrial might and manpower to operate a large and diverse fleet. So hence the invisible fleet of dreadnoughts. Some upstart world on their back doorstep starts getting ideas like "These tithes are too much" or "We should be allowed to develop colonies in nearby star systems" and gets those ideas firmly slapped down by a kilometer-long battleship materialising out of nowhere and wrecking whatever resistance they can put up. It doesn't matter too much if the Star Empire only has a couple hundred of them to police their entire empire, as long as at least one of them is near enough to put the fear of Rome into the lesser races. The D'Deridex is twice the size of most ships of its size, and it's physically as large a volume as it can possibly be inside its warp-bubble. It's blatantly designed to intimidate, not as a practical warship. With that in mind, look at the ships built after the D'Deridex. Every design we see after that is smaller, more compact and much much more aggressive. The only other Romulan ship of that size we see is the Scimitar, a prototype dreadnought/carrier. The D'Deridex is a bloated behemoth intended to intimidate the Empire's conquered client-races and perform Gunboat Diplomacy, not as a serious warship intended to fight peer enemies. It is however all that the Empire has to work with when the Dominion War comes around. It's likely they committed most of their fleet during the war too, meaning that post-war they simply lacked the fleet-assets to react to the Hobus Supernova.
The deflector on the front which was incorrectly displayed as a weapons port should be illuminated like a green federation deflector dish. Thats its purpose and it should resemble that. Instead its completely opaque matching the hull. Which makes NO sense for weapons OR deflector. So... that was always a dropped ball that's STILL not corrected.
The Borg causing the development of the D'deridex does make sense. As Commander Tabok told Captain Picard, the Star Empire was distracted by other affairs and the warbird was the result...
The Romulan Singularity drive is simply put, a Kugelblitz, an artificial black hole. It would be considered radically advanced, being at the BLEEDING EDGE of current Romulan science and engineering, but also points to them having a wildly more developed and advanced space infrastructure to produce the kugelblitzes. They would use Hawking Radiation, emitted by the Kugelblitz to power their ship.
This to me.. is the BEST looking ship in all of star trek.
2nd best. Kilingon Bird of Prey is number one. IMHO. But I hear you!
2nd best for me. Good old Constitution, nothing beats that.
The Pontiac Firebird of Starships❤
You have great taste
@FuzzyBunnyofInle lmao your not far off with that. I can easily see it with those "feathers" and those that love it are fanatical lol
I'm not convinced that the design is a reaction to the Borg.
The Galaxy class was a ship of a peaceful era - a flying city, designed to bring along all the comforts of home. When Starfleet started designing ships to fight Borg, they trimmed down their ships and cut away the frills. The Defiant, in particular, was a small ship that could punch way above its weight and could be easily mass-produced and crewed (I'm still disappointed that we never saw Defiants operating in wolf packs).
The D'Deridex makes sense as a ship designed to oppose Starfleet's fancy new Galaxy-class flagship, not so much for killing cubes.
Yes!
Big big ships are just opportunities for the Borg to take a big part of your power out _in one move._
They use tractor beams, focus fire, hack the systems and/or beam over Drones to assimilate the ship.
You fight the Borg best using the Attack ship swarm concept, so your firepower is diversified and can't be as readily adapted to.
A whole bunch of ships all changing weapons frequencies are harder to adjust to, the Borg have to do that for each ship - assuming a competent opponent who knows Borg abilities.
OT/ With *First Contact* and the Defiant.
While a fan service with it being a hero ship (and the cheers in the cinema when it first appeared - I saw it with a non Trekie who went "so that's a important ship I assume?")
First Contact really should have shown a bunch of Defiant class ships all fighting as the concept intended versus the Cube.
Even including the attack pattens with their complimentary ships as Starfleet does a ballet of death.
But then how do the Borg even get that far against Defiants swarming it doing strafing runs while Akira's bombard it at range with torpedoes and Sabers phaser it at range as well?
The producers really cut back on the original battle sequence with multiple Cubes, due to budget considerations, however. With a Borg armada being cut down by Starfleet being able to blow away Cubes and the time travel being a hail mary to eliminate a actual threat to the Borg.
But a good budget compromise that didn't break the lore regarding relative power between the factions is they could have shown a running battle versus two Cubes, with Starfleet able to destroy one just by pounding away before they got to Earth, but that's when the battle gets desperate as they're running out of time with the remaining Cube nearing it's goal.
And the Enterprise-E comes in to stop that Cube as its getting close enough to Earth to risk being able to beam Drones to the surface.
It would also hint at the the strategy of the Borg,.. if one Cube fails, send two.
Then extrapolate from there.
Next time Starfleet is looking at four Cubes....
Makes sense. If you see an "Enemy" doing something that COULD be evil, you tend to assume that's what it is. At least if your government is paranoid.
There were major issues with the US Space Shuttle program. The Air Force was originally supposed to help develop it to use with spy sats. Then, pretty much backed out when they realized rockets were better. The Soviet Union on the other hand freaked out. I can't remember where or when it was, but there was a Soviet diplomat publicly denouncing the US "Space bomber".
IIRC, that's also around the time the Soviets mounted cannons on one of their space stations.
I can see the Romulans taking a similar route. "It COULD be a super battleship designed specifically to destroy us... So it MUST be and we have to outdo the dastardly Federation and their Galaxy class, and their 'Root beer'"
@@casbot71 I always wondered why the Borg time travel sphere didn't just beam down, or just land, on the Earth. If they landed near a population center, there would have been little resistance and the Borg would have had 1,000's to millions of new drones in a matter of days. Unless Picard decided to planet bomb the Earth with Quantum Torpedoes, there really was nothing that he or the Big E could do to stop them. They didn't need the technology of the Enterprise E, they could create their own out of the ruins of Earth's third world war. Nor would they have needed to stop first contact - they could have let it happen and stolen the Vulcan's ship by the time it landed, and assimilated them and once done with Earth, move on to Vulcan.
The Defiant wasn't meant to take down Borg ships directly, it was a support ship, and the ships it would support were quite large.
They did eventually show something like that in Voyager's "A Message in a Bottle" with two Defiant-class starships as escorts in in a squadron lead by an Akira-class starship that were tasked with retaking the USS Prometheus from the Romulans.
If the D'deridex is meant to be painted green by the Romulans, then that means they painted it the color of blood. That's a discomforting thought.
I never thought of that
My theory is their homeplanet had a high copper content, and so their alloys would have some copper as well. But yours sounds better.
@@slewone4905 high copper content......... like say a vulcan? you dont say! rommies are just distant vulcans who may have rejected suraks way of dealing with there violent nature
@@YoLo-bb2vc no he didnt say that, he was talking about their homeworld, which isnt vulcan.
@@theendoftheline but that doesnt deny the fact they were once vulcans they have changed slightly since then but there base is undeniably vulcan.
Dderidex: "can we make it through the borgs plot armour?"
Borg cube: No
Voyager: "the Borg cubes have plot armour?"
'Plot armor is irrelevant. We are Borg.' 😉
Don't understand why some people need to explain everything by trying desperate to involve the Borg, it's just as pointless as saying "it must be the Romulans"!
@@bigfootwalker5399 A large part of that has to do with the narrative of the TNG era *heavily* relying on the Borg. Most of the events that shape the era in it's later part revolve around the Borg and the 'setup' for that happening comes early in the era too, so it's a constant theme throughout, even during the Dominion war. From an out-of-universe in real life perspective the Borg basically got slapped into any discrepancy they'd fit into pretty frequently
@@Deltarious 🤔
@@Deltarious The Borgieman. ;-)
I remember how totally bowled over by this ship I felt on first seeing 'The Neutral Zone'. It made a huge impact at a very important time for the show. At that point things still felt touch-and-go as to whether the series would even continue. The D'Deridex seemed to say 'There is so much more coming if you will allow us to present it to you.' Thankfully they did!
The comparison with those boots is really apt and does a good job of defining the Star Empire as a whole
Yeah, the Romulans seemed to REALLY adopt the, "speak softly, but carry a big stick" mindset. ESPECIALLY with the D'Deridex.
The problem for the concept might have emerged by the change in present stealth tactics, from disguising as some harmless creature or thing to the demand of being recognized as nonexistent : |
I guess we tend to forget that the Romulans and Klingons have a "backyard facing the woods", because the Federation is so hedged in from every direction except "Out of the Galaxy". That is unless or until Star Trek releases a fully Canon and official star map.
They did about 15 years ago. I don't know what happened to it, but I used to have an official "star atlas" of the Alpha and Beta quadrants. The Federation was depicted as covering nearly 45% of inhabited Alpha quadrant space, although their weakness was that Federation territory was "scattered" compared to the other major powers, with narrow bottlenecks of space leading to larger sectors and such.
In terms of sheer size and population, the atlas depicted the 24th century Klingon Empire as comparable, although their total territory was nearly equally distributed between the Alpha and Beta quadrants. In contrast, Klingon space was not as "scattered" as the Federation was, but their government was never as well unified.
The Romulan Star Empire was shown as directly bordering the Klingon Empire, but apparently they didn't share a border with the Federation until the TOS era was over. Compared to the other two, their territory and population were smaller, but they also had many more older and highly developed systems under their control. By their introductory description in the atlas, it was suggested that the reason the Klingons had not successfully invaded the Romulan Empire was because their defenses were just too sophisticated. And the reason the Romulans couldn't defeat the Klingons outright was because they were simply too greatly outnumbered. Interesting stalemate conditions.
Please pardon my extensive reply. That's just what I remember from the atlas, and I thought it would be interesting to share.
@@GlidingZephyr very classic Master of Orion style!
@@GlidingZephyr
I am aware of numerous Star Trek Star maps, but an official Canon one still eludes me. I'll renew my efforts to find it, if it indeed exists.
There is a Star Trek Star Charts book by Geoffrey Mandel from 2002, though it may be out of print. There's a stellar cartography book by Larry Nemecek, but even used copies (per amazon) are expensive. I'm glad I bought the Star Charts book when I did.
The Chodak theory is that there is a big and nasty ancient empire on the opposite border of Romulan space that the Romulans have been dealing with while things were quiet with the Federation.
This War bord is one of the most beautiful designs of next gen era
My favourite ship design in all of Trek!
I wish they had been able to properly convey the size of the D'Deridex. You could literally fit a Galaxy class in that empty space.
The D'Deridex is a masterpiece of aesthetic design. It's as beautiful as it is deadly, like my last girlfriend.
why was your last girlfriend deadly what did she do???
@@pillepolle3122 I'm guessing she killed the relationship or killed his dreams.
@@williamstewart2372
or worse.....his dog....
I always thought the "Gap" in the middle looked odd. But still an Iconic design.
There's long been speculation that, much like the Imperial-class Star Destroyer, its meaht to frighten and intimidate enemies with its sheer perceived size, mass, and power.
@@vic5015
That's rather obvious. However, I've always believed it's design would allow smaller warships to be carried in the large internal space between the "wings"...
@charlestaylor253 maybe, but the Romulabs *love* deception and subterfuge. Is it *that* had to imsgine that the D'deridex might be a bit less than meets the eye?
From what I’ve heard, it has the gap in the centre to maintain line-of-sight with each other. In the early days of Star Trek it was a rule of starship design, as the in-universe explanation was that they had to interact with each other to form the warp field.
@@charlestaylor253or, possibly, an entire colony set-up.
I like how it basically looks like two Birds of Prey stuck together bottom-to-bottom. Always been such a memorable design that challenges the notion that to seem aggressive spaceships need to look aerodynamic light fighter jets.
Seems like an obvious invitation to a Prometheus style multi vector war ship...maybe that's why they were after it??
I love that design. For some reason I find the light patterns both beautiful amd fascinating.
I once heard that a galaxy class star ship can fit in that gap. It's still a magnificent ship.
That was done by Picard in one of the books once. I can't remember which one but they hid the Enterprise D inside the gap of a cloaked Romulan ship whose captain was wanting to defect or something. Picard then rammed the other D'Deridex that arrived to prevent the Romulan captain from defecting. I can't remember how it went, but it was an interesting scene.
@@darthhauler9947 so in theory that's true. True thanks for the information.
That’s not exactly true. The Romulan ship was just slightly larger than the Enterprise. Only the saucer section could fit inside and that would take some precise maneuvers at that. I built almost all the models back than. I thought about it than and tried it with same scale models.
Non canon means they don’t know what they’re talking about because they only know bits and pieces. They also don’t know the difference between an isolinear rod and a self sealing stem bolt
@@charleskroman5006that _DS9_ reference had me grinning! Not canon, But _TNG_ novel "The Romulan Prize" by Michael Jan Friedman DID have a prototype warbird larger than the D'Deridex. The _Syrinx_ dwarfed _Enterprise-D_ . Its singularity propulsion powered the cloaking grid.
And had surface area, volume and mass comparable to a Starfleet dock.
*SPOILER:* it took the combined effort of a Galaxy and Constitution class ( _U.S.S. Independence_ ) to square up to the vessel.
@@ai6894 I’m only into canon Star Trek but I know most novels are not. The 3rd installment of the Invasion Series tells of the Defiant going to warp from the station to the wormhole. Far from canon but still a good novel. But as for the Enterprise hiding in the Warbird, I never read that novel but that does make sense now. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
My absolute favorite ship, probably in all sci fi to be honest.
Same here.
There is the idea out there that a few of the old vertical version was infact built as another class of warship. I would think of it as planed to be an Inturnal Empire threat, to hide even from the Main Romulan Fleet, in order to prevent any of them from going Rogue. Perhaps they were destroyed in the Dominion war.
Something like that would likely be given to the Tal Shiar. In that case, they could have been part of the fleet that attacked the Founders.
But, I'd argue it's more likely they kept them in hiding and planned to keep them there even if it cost the empire.
I thought it was Tasha Yar leaking information (voluntary or not)from the future about the Galaxy class to the past Romulans who built the D'derdex to counter it
0:48 the vertical look of the concept warbirds reminds me of the ‘Warp Ring’ design that the Vulcans used in Star Trek: Enterprise. I like the concept since it provides a connection between the Vulcans’ and the Romulans’ ship designs.
I've heard they wanted a verical ship because it would look more unique then all the other horizontal ships in trek, But someone made the decision to make it horizontal to make it fit better on screen.
And I think the horizontal version fits better into the theme of romulan ships looking like birds
Also turns out warp rings are also the likely best configuration of warp drive irl based on the math updates to the Alcubierre drive.
Imagine if you will, you're commanding your little Steamrunner or Cheyenne, dutifully patrolling the neutral zone, when without prior warning on sensors this predatory looking Behemoth, a km long and nearly ¾ of a km high decloaks less than a km off your bow. You double check your tactical assessment and learn that these things are so heavily shielded, they can tank 3 galaxy classes or 2 Jem Hadar battle cruisers and have a 50/50 shot off warping home afterwards. Then, 2 more decloak behind you. This is the point of the D'Deridex in my mind. It's a psychological game of fear and intimidation. And it did it oh so well.
It would've made for an interesting tactic in the Dominion war, if a galaxy without the saucer could fit in the void of the D'Deridex. Imagine the Dominion's surprise with that decloaking behind your vanguard.
@@LARGO125 The Dominion didn't seem to have much of an issue fighting the D'Deridex.
@@LARGO125 The Dominion was doing fine against the Federation and Klingon empires. The same Klingons that the Romulans could not invade. Also there is no point in trying to intimidate the Jem'Hadar.
The Romulans joined in by were countered by the Breen. It's not like the Romulans were ever overwhelming.
A wonderful breakdown of a great design. A genuinely iconic class that communicates the design language of the Romulans beautifully. It couldn’t be anything but Romulan could it? It’s basically perfect.
0:47 - the concept design was later used in a Romulan ship featured in the Lower Decks episode "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee". According to Brad Winters, it was intended to be larger than a shuttle but much smaller than a warbird.
Sounds like the description of the runabout concept, like Starfleet's Danube class. I think there is a ship in STO that would fit the bill...
Wasn’t there one in the season 4 finale as a part of nova fleet
@@Iron_10 it's actually the same one.
I always have thought that it was built due to the fact that the Romulans were faced by TWO powers, and they just started building the ships bigger in order to make the other two back down.
More likely THREE - remember in first contact in TNG one of Romulans said that 'urgent matters' occupied their attention. Federation didn't know entire galaxy. Probably, empire was embroiled either in serious rebelion or maybe even WAR.
I very much appreciate your videos. This one particularly.
I know you use a lot of beauty shots via STO, but unlike some channels you also put a lot of effort into the subject matter, rather than just low effort STO beauty shots, with little additional substance.
But you always do a great job of presenting both lore and apocrypha in a way that really fleshes out the subject and is complimented by your particular take on things.
And you also do a great job being even handed with the bits you like and the bits you don't, in a way that allows the viewer to make up their own mind.
I know it can be a bit hard finding interesting subjects considering all the lore and lore channels out there.
But you seem to be able to maintain a high quality with all your vids.
Nice one Rick.
I love the implosion effects of the Romulan in STO!
I love the fan theory that the Romulans know the singularity field is not the most efficient choice but it has two major advantages: 1) No dilithium, means no stopping to refuel or obvious economic weakpoints in dilithium mine worlds. 2) If the vessel is compromised, it implodes rending all components down to their molecules and making salvaging crew/components/data absolutely impossible as the only thing left is plasma and scattered molecules.
@@littlekong7685 Oh my! I love your thinking, it's totally Romulan!
I love the Warbird Classes.
JARLAXLE! This is awesome, since I've been LOVING where Jarlaxle and all the surrounding characters of the Companions of the Hall have been going.
I always found the D'Deridex a beautifully-designed ship. Intimidating, graceful, and massive.
Like my ex-girlfriend...🖖
Tbh I think it's origin was because of the galaxy class but not for the reason you may think, Tasha tar after being captured by the romulans did likly spill the beans about the galaxy class from the alternate future and how it was in the alt universe a warship
And what an impression it was. I was still a kid when TNG introduced us to the DD Warbird. Such an awesome ship.
This is hand down one of my favorite ships in star trek.
The Romulans tried to make Borg-killers and created giant ships. Starfleet tried to make Borg-killers and created tiny ships. Really shows the difference in thought processes.
Except there is zero proof that the romulans created giant ships to fight the borg while smaller federation ships for tat purpose are canonical.
A lot of high volume fire power make a lot of sense in fighting the borg. The small crews mean you can have more ships. Remember that Riker was offered the command of a squadron of cruisers as a roving anti-borg force. The Defiants allows such a strategy in volume.
The main problem with the Battle of the Wolf is that the Federation just came at the Borg piecemeal and took the time firing. That's plain stupid. It's shown that a simple photon torpedo will do major damage to a Borg Cube. The same cube will repair that damage in a minute if you sit around doing nothing.
Now take those 40 Federation ships and split them into 6 groups (a cube has six sides). Just have those groups do a "rolling thunder" attack where one from each group fires their torpedoes, then the next, then the next while the first ones reload. While they are doing this the groups surround the cube with one for each face.
Dead cube.
A squad of Defiants with a game plan can do the same.
One of the coolest looking ships in all of Star Trek and severely underutilized.
When this ship arrived I instantly knew they were romulans. It screamed Roman Empire. One of my favourite designs
Right off the bat, two stars, a planetoid and the star of the show.
Thank you for doing these breaks downs!! They are informative and have answered questions I have had about Star Trek Starships. Thank you! Would you be able to do a break down of the Nerada and the Scimitar?
Thumbs up for added Forgotten Realms lore and for adding the correct context pictures of Jarlaxle.
I always loved the theme TNG used with these. It added to the menace of the Warbird exponentially. Go back and just watch Neutral Zone Encounter and tell me the music didn't hype you up for the Arrival of the Warbird
I've always loved how this ship looked.
Loved how they were destroyed by the Ent-D in the TOS Federation novel. The Ent-D actually fit inside it and hiding inside its cloaking field and then went out to ram another Romulan Warbird. The Maneuver called it ramming speed. Also loved the other instance in the ShatnerVerse The Return novel in which a renamed Defiant class Enterprise also hid inside the Warbird and then started gutting it from the inside by rolling all over to destroy its structural supports between the top&bottom hulls.
I love that, in addition to looking like the TOS Birds of Prey, it kinda looks like the ENT era Vulcan ships if you squint
Didn't know you were a Forgotten Realms fan! Jarlaxle was an awesome character!
My favorite ship design--not just in Trek, but in anything with spaceships! I absolutely adore the D'deridex, to me it is the template for how to make a ship look cool.
I've always liked how the forward section looks like a skeletal face. Even moreso when the porthole lights are lit.
you forgot to mention that it was the color of blood. kinda says something bout the mentality of the military behind it.
I rememberrwhen I first saw the D'Deridex class in the TNG episode, "The Neutral Zone". It was like looking at a nightmare come to life in its design, certainly ominous. Notwithstanding the bird of prey inspiration, I always felt that the bow looked almost like a Xenomorph head (from the Alien franchise), which is what gave it a terrifying look. Unlike the Klingons, which were still using K'Tinga cruisers and Birds-of-Prey well into the 24th century, which just seemed like they lost their wow factor, the D'Deridex definitely entered the scene with a bang, so to speak, and it made the return of the Romulans something worth remembering. What was done with the class during the events of DS9, specifically the attack on the Founders' homeworld, I think it completely downplayed what this class was truly capable of, essentially relegating this monster to just another starship class that had so much promise only for it to have little in the way of teeth.
I actually remember reading somewhere that the BORG threat drove the design of this ship.
My head cannon (and likely a lot of peoples I suspect) is the Romulans were probably dealing with the Borg for a long time before Starfleet ever met them in 2265. It would explain at least to a large extent their withdrawal from the "galactic west" part of the milky way that includes the alpha quadrant. We don't really know how deep into the Beta Quadrant Romulan territory stretches but it is easy to surmise that the Borg were likely making incursions deep into the Beta quadrant for some time and probably butted up against the edges of Romulan space at some point in the early to mid-24th century.
I love the looks of the Romulan ships, especially this one!
I absolutely love the D'deridex class. She's just gorgeous. Drexler outdid himself on that one. But then, par for the course.
This one will always be one of my favorites!
I love the fact that the Romulans implemented two factor authentication before IRL tech companies did.
This and the Ferengi D'Kora are my favorite designs... D'Kora next
I made my Online nom de plume partly based on the Warbird. Favorite sci-fi warship of them all, really.
I remember as a kid I didn't like star trek, but I got a Dederidex model from Macdonald's or something like that and loved the design.
If any ship of the time would have been capable of having even a small chance of standing up to the Borg it would have likely been the D'deridex in strike groups.
Though they would still be incredibly outgunned by a cube and would definitely take heavy losses.
Liked not just for the great talk about a great ship, but also for Jarlaxle!
Such an awesome ship!! The D'Deridex Warbird is my most favorite of the Alien ships in the whole ST franchise!
Just such an amazing ship design! Great video! Thanks for this!!
I always loved the Double Ds from the moment i first saw them 😅
Hah, I love their modern version of "false doors" for the controls
oh, I can vaguely remember the two different models. I now know why one was so much less saturated
I wish I had the model I built as a kid. I still do have the playmates one. I used my paint pen and put lights on it to give it scale. 🖖
Definitely one of my favourite ships in any universe.
A ship this big even at the height of the empire must have been a substantial investment in resources and manpower. Losing even one of them must have stung.
The Borg and the Romulan Supernova. The resurgence of the Romulan empire, and the D’Deridex class were likely developed before the Borg threat was fully realized. However it was unlikely that Romulan scientists could miss that their own star was becoming increasingly unstable.
I think that the RSE suppressed knowledge of the deterioration of their star and tried numerous tactics to mitigate the disaster ahead of time. But being hemmed in by the Klingons and the federation, they could only try underhanded moves like trying to undermine the Klingons or Invade Vulcan. They knew that they could not win a direct conflict and they knew a prolonged confrontation would only make it harder for them to manage the situation. Thats why the Romulans signed a non aggression pact with the Founders. They hoped to eventually join forces with the Dominion to carve out a piece of federation territory. But Sisko and Garak’s little performance forced their hands and pushed them into an alliance with the federation.
The desire to intimidate the federation ultimately failed when they quickly realized that a war with the federation was unlikely to be won. The original plan for the D’Deridex failed.
Solid points.
The Tal Shiar didn't want to join up with the Dominion, they joined up with Tain to try and take them down.
In my head cannon, they had an idea that Garak's memory stick was a fake but went along because the Dominion was an even bigger than they thought - and Garak was also counting on it.
love the dnd description at the end I can see how you'd make a great dungeon master
My absolute favorite ship of Star Trek. I played sto just to be able to use this ship.
I remember encountering this ship in Star Trek Bridge Commander.
It was pretty weak in that game, you could take it out in one go by just focusing the bridge, which it has to show you when it attacked.
It's an interesting design tho.
I love the Jarlaxle reference
The first time I saw this thing I was absolutely in love with it. One of the most iconic ships after the Enterprise D herself. It's a shame the cinematography of the episode she made her debut on was a little scuffed. You can see in storyboard shots the introduction was supposed to be from an over the shoulder view of the Enterprise, with the looming hulk of the D'Deridex still outclassing her in size. Because of the perspective they chose in an effort to show off the details of the Warbird more, her intimidating size was never properly illustrated.
MAybe my single most favorite ship design in all of Sci-Fi.
Could a smaller ship trying to avoid getting shot hide inside the cutaway for the D'deridex? I think it'd be a funny way to try and get out of a tense situation, as I'm willing to get all the guns aim outwards, not to the middle of their own ship
Beautiful ships, probably my favorite Trek vessel in honesty.
I think this overlooks the obvious events from the mid-2340s where the Romulans assault at least two Klingon worlds and that there is for whatever reason a significant amount of hostilities between the two. They were probably designed to combat whatever Klingon heavy combatants were around at that time, maybe the even the Vor'cha depending on when both it and the warbird entered service. I think it makes more sense as a statement to the aggressive Klingon Empire to watch itself and stay on their side of the fence.
I wish they used the vertical configuration
You, sir, get a thumbs up for a great video, and two more for the Jarlaxle Baenre reference. 👍👍
A well placed RA Salvatore reference 😊
'Was it for Starfleet or the Borg?'
My radical dialectic synthesis take is it was both. And probably the Klingon Vor'cha as well.
Quiet until they decide to make a point, then quite loud... yep, this ship represents the Romulans quite well.
The empty space actually does make sense. The warp bubble goes around the ENTIRE ship, but not inside of that hollow. Its not a null, it's not "empty". You can transport anything in there, including gaggled small craft like landing craft, prefab and flat pack stations and surface instillations, etc. This is a ship for an EMPIRE that is not ashamed of what it is, unlike the interstellar gang fight that is the Klingons or the Federation which is embarrassed by it's hegemony. 22 transporters supports this- the D'Deridex put the "D" in d-day for the Romulan Empire in it's prime.
I always wished they'd kept those black sashes/belts from the Romulans' first (mid-)24th century appearance. They looked so much better than those weird moulded-rubber things with textured nubs. Sure, the replacement had their raptor emblem... but they could've just made that into a buckle or brooch with the black sash.
Though I'm saying that after about a decade seeing the HD scans, maybe the black fabric didn't look like much of anything on videotape. I certainly don't remember noticing there being a change, on my SD DVDs, the same way as I have on the HD version.
It did actually have more than 2 torpedo launchers and the disrupters where also class 21 cannons however im uncertain of the class of disrupter beams it had but it was indeed a lot more powerful than in the specs presented here it had in its disrupters alone a total output of 65,000 TeraWatts and the torpedo tubes where of an S2 design holding a total torpedo storage of 800 torpedo's of both photon and graviton torpedo's. Aside from that though you vid is bang on the money, i caught a few of your vids now all pretty high quality.
I'd love to see the mogai class with a war bird style duel wing arrangement just with less space between the upper and lower wings with a secondary neck attaching to the head/command section, I think it would look really good. The nacelles would have to be played around with, the version on the upgraded valdore from STO would be a great fit.
The "head" of the ship has a certain RDM BSG Cylon vibe...even though it was years before the series saw light.
My headcanon is that the D’Deridex project was started after the aggressive uh debriefing of the Ent-C survivors who claimed a much larger battleship Ent-D was being fielded in the near future. With one blonde officer in a different uniform being pointed out as actually having served on her.
My favorite ship. The true power house of the Alpha Quadrant! If used properly 1v1 The Galaxy would only have enough time to realize it's destruction in the Talons of the War Bird!
The ship design, intelligence focus, and utter rejection of the Vulcans are my favorite things about the Romulans
I always loved the look of the D'Deridex but in the show it's often difficult to really get a sense of the scale (one of the hazards of setting all establishing shots in the black void of space, I suppose). Most shots I recall seeing of it had it facing a Galaxy-class, basically nose-to-nose, but filmed at an angle so that it was hard to compare sizes. It usually looked either the same size or even slightly smaller than the Galaxy (and when it did appear bigger, my brain usually just went "Oh, but because of the angle and lack of establishing background elements, it looking bigger is probably just an optical illusion or a scaling error in post").
I somehow imagined the singularly 'core' to be invisibly hovering in the space between the upper and lower wings. :)
The D'Deridex was designed to be and in a couple cases shown to be 1,341 meters in length. In the Prime Timeline, the Federation wouldn't have a comparably sized mainline capital starship until the 2080s with the 1,100 meter Odyssey-class, which included the Enterprise-F among its number.
Love the Borg connections. Over the years, maybe influenced by STO, *insert assimilated Romulus here,* but I've often noticed, aside from the colour scheme of the TNG era Roms, some "similarities," maybe in-universe influences, real world happy accidents?
By far my favorite ship design of star trek. One of the reasons why when I played Star Trek Online, I was happy for the Romulan inclusion. Still shame they weren't their own faction. Makes me want to boot up the game again.
One other thing. For a show that prided itself on scientific accuracy, TNG could not have got singularities more wrong. No, they aren't going to cause the ship to implode if they escape their housing, they'd fire straight through the ship like the super-dense, ultra-massive object they are.
A thought that i have about the singularity drive is that it may in fact be an international security measure. The romulans being paranoid and ambitious, the idea of sending captains and crews out in such powerful ships must also come with the fear of one or more such ships being turned against those in power, so if micro singularities work like our hypothetical micro singularities they are less reactors and more super efficient batteries. Batteries that would require specialized facilities to replace or recharge. If they were conventionally powered, a rogue captain could resupply anywhere in the galaxy, by harvesting stealing or being given antimatter to continue the fight. But if they rely entirely on facilities well within romulan space and securely under the thumb of those in power, a rogue ship or fleet might only have months of reserves, or even if they have years of power available, they are still risking eventually running dry if the coup doesn't succeed soon enough.
Having less, but more powerful armaments supports the Borg theory. The Borg usually came with a single, powerful cube, so you had one target you needed to punch trough
The D'deridex warbird is the Romulan version of "Speak softly, and carry a big stick."
My headcanon is that the D'Deridex is not actually intended to face the Federation at all, or the Borg.
They were as in the dark as the Federation when their colonies started being destroyed, and that was when we and Starfleet first saw the ship, so it's fairly clear it wasn't designed to face the Borg at all.
Consider also that the Romulan Star Empire has been in a state of peacetime towards the Federation for upwards of 60 years, and it's been more than 200 years since the Federation and Romulans last went to war.
The Romulans are paranoid and militaristic, but they clearly understand that the Federation respects their borders and has a "don't start none, won't get none" policy. They might put up a belligerent front, but they're not at war with the Federation and not seriously expecting to be so any time soon.
You don't build kilometer-plus long battleships for no practical reason.
I think the Star Empire has a broad body of client/conquered worlds on the other side of its territory that it has to police, and lacks the industrial might and manpower to operate a large and diverse fleet. So hence the invisible fleet of dreadnoughts.
Some upstart world on their back doorstep starts getting ideas like "These tithes are too much" or "We should be allowed to develop colonies in nearby star systems" and gets those ideas firmly slapped down by a kilometer-long battleship materialising out of nowhere and wrecking whatever resistance they can put up. It doesn't matter too much if the Star Empire only has a couple hundred of them to police their entire empire, as long as at least one of them is near enough to put the fear of Rome into the lesser races.
The D'Deridex is twice the size of most ships of its size, and it's physically as large a volume as it can possibly be inside its warp-bubble. It's blatantly designed to intimidate, not as a practical warship.
With that in mind, look at the ships built after the D'Deridex. Every design we see after that is smaller, more compact and much much more aggressive. The only other Romulan ship of that size we see is the Scimitar, a prototype dreadnought/carrier.
The D'Deridex is a bloated behemoth intended to intimidate the Empire's conquered client-races and perform Gunboat Diplomacy, not as a serious warship intended to fight peer enemies. It is however all that the Empire has to work with when the Dominion War comes around. It's likely they committed most of their fleet during the war too, meaning that post-war they simply lacked the fleet-assets to react to the Hobus Supernova.
The deflector on the front which was incorrectly displayed as a weapons port should be illuminated like a green federation deflector dish. Thats its purpose and it should resemble that. Instead its completely opaque matching the hull. Which makes NO sense for weapons OR deflector. So... that was always a dropped ball that's STILL not corrected.
The Borg causing the development of the D'deridex does make sense. As Commander Tabok told Captain Picard, the Star Empire was distracted by other affairs and the warbird was the result...
The Romulan Singularity drive is simply put, a Kugelblitz, an artificial black hole. It would be considered radically advanced, being at the BLEEDING EDGE of current Romulan science and engineering, but also points to them having a wildly more developed and advanced space infrastructure to produce the kugelblitzes. They would use Hawking Radiation, emitted by the Kugelblitz to power their ship.