Friday's Child Klingon scout ship

I was looking at the 22nd century Bird of Prey variant from the Enterprise episodes "Affliction" and "Divergence" and thought it's better fit for the animated flying flat Iron in the original version than the D7 used in the remastered version
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wik...ships?file=Klingon_warship,_Fridays_Child.jpg
As a rule I'm not one to be terribly enthusiastic about using one of the modern shows to interpret elements of the original, but where we have gaps in the record and a logical solution arises, that's cool
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Laneth's_starship?file=Laneths_bird-of-prey,_forward.jpg
Opinons?

 

The Klingon ship was a Klingon warship according to Chekov and not a small scout-ship as Kras had told Kirk! But it's design was clearly not a D-7 and was more oddly shaped. I've always thought that the Klingons developed their better known designed vessels sometime before the events of Elaan of Troyius!
JB

 

Klingon ship designs are such a mess. The iconic Klingon bird of prey was meant to be Romulan until a script re-write of Star Trek III, hence the name, wing pattern and cloak. Fanon said it was a Romulan design which they traded to the Klingons in exchange for cloaking devices which made sense until the prequel series Enterprise. Even Star Trek Nemesis' Romulan warbirds were inspired by the STIII Bird of Prey according to the designer.

But ENT retconned Bird of Prey ships into the past of the Klingons. Disco retconned cloaking devices into the past of the Klingons. Next Gen chose to make Romulan ships green just like the Klingon ships had been post-TMP. So we just have these mortal enemies that all fly very similar ships just because.

 

This is why only the original series counts.

 

I think any military vessel with military weapons is technically a warship. The Klingon military scout ship is just a small warship. It's like calling Corvette, Frigate, and Destroyer warships. In today's navies, there is no such vessel called a "scout". The closest thing we have are submarines, which are still warships.

 

That's why retcons and prequels never work well.

 

IMO, "bird of prey" is not necessarily Romulan-specific, but a more general term like "man o'war" was in the age of sail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-of-war

 

I never count on ENT anyway! It's adventures are set in an alternate reality!
JB

 

Nope.

 

And of course, the navies of yore that had scouts used cruisers for that role - so the Klingons doing the same would have history on their side!

It's too bad that TOS-R would reduce the diversity of spaceships by eliminating the odd panhandle design from the Klingon arsenal, when ENT did such a good job in expanding Klingon diversity (and tying together many disparate Klingon designs from the earlier/"later" Treks, such as the cheapo shuttlepod from "Gambit" that now relates to Klaag's little shuttle from "Broken Bow" and its big brother from "Bounty").

ENT also does well in explaining the bird thing: it's the Vulcans naming these ships for us ignorant Earthlings, defining enemy vessels as Warbirds or Raptors or the like before any human gets a shot at naming them. And if Vulcans have a bird fetish, then it's pretty natural that Romulans would have one, too - especially considering their choice of totem animal, dating back to the days of Surak as we now hear.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Has to be! Caused by the temporal cold war! If ENT is before TOS then the technology took a nose dive...
JB

 

You're confusing production values with continuity.

 

Well yes I know that, but how do you explain it in story? Plus I can't say I really liked the show that much either!
JB

 

It's just surface gloss, not a story point. Doesn't need to be explained. Don't get distracted by the shiny objects: pay attention to the stories and characters.

 

Actually, if you choose, you can absolutely have Enterprise exist in an alternate timeline, at least from "Regeneration" on. The events of First Contact, the debris from the Borg sphere, and the Borg on Archer's ship, etc. The fact that Riker and Geordi were on The Phoenix instead of the two people who were originally there, that Lily was on the Enterprise instead of being with Chochrane... all of that stuff could have changed a lot of things. It's all BS, but the door is open if you want it to be.

 

Well the stories were not that good were they! Plus I never accepted an alien like Phlox on the Enterprise a hundred years before McCoy!!! The TOS ship was mainly crewed by humans until the later shows so why would they have been on the ship two centuries earlier from a race and planet that we've never heard of before? The only thing I did like about ENT was the Borg episode and the two part Klingon augment virus which was a very clever way to explain the differences in the Klingon physiognomy!
JB

 

If we're talking about stories, then to be honest you can't beat the original series!
JB

 

Sure you can. Acquire the master negatives; procure a baseball bat; and strike repeatedly.

 

Unless it's all a predestination paradox, which is the intended interpretation.

 

Except that doesn't explain why the Klingons also decided to have the bird motif for their ships independently from the Romulans, especially since birds have seemingly nothing to do with their culture.

How are you concluding that the Vulcans have a bird fetish? And what's this about Surak?