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00:00Hello, hello, and welcome back to this latest video of
00:03We are going to be going through one of the most famous ships in all of Star Trek history now in a
00:10moment. Before we do that, please don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. We are so close to
00:15250,000 subscribers. You are amazing and awesome, and we massively, massively appreciate your
00:22support. Thank you so much, everyone. Remember as well to give the original article that this
00:27video was based on a read. It was written by the astounding Paul Sutherland, who I fully believe
00:34will be running Utopia Planitia shipyards given half a chance. Now, as you've probably guessed
00:39from the thumbnail, we're going to be going through the Klingon Bird of Prey, which is probably the most
00:44famous alien ship of them all. This ship is almost as recognizable as the Klingons themselves, famously
00:51beginning life as a Romulan vessel before being retconned to being part of the Empire. This has
00:57gone through several different iterations and sizes. We will be going through the Birel, Kvort, and D-12
01:03class ships as well. Grab yourself a gallon or two of blood wine, and let's get to it.
01:10Hey, I love you. I love you.
01:12Welcome to 10 secrets of the Klingon Bird of Prey. Number 10, Romulan retcon. Now, as I just noted,
01:22the Klingon Bird of Prey was originally intended to be a motion picture era style redesign of the
01:28classic Romulan Bird of Prey from the original series. Initial drafts of the ship would refer to
01:34the ship as Romulan, and that's where the Bird of Prey title came from. However, as the scripting
01:40process went on, the Romulans were swapped out for Klingons, and their proprietary Bird of Prey
01:46was swapped out to be a stolen one. Ultimately, in the version of the script that was filmed and
01:51released, the Bird of Prey was simply a Klingon Bird of Prey with no reference to the Romulan
01:57connection whatsoever. There was, however, an in-universe explanation. According to writer-producer
02:02Harv Bennett, I didn't change their ship because I remembered a piece of trivia that stated there
02:06was a mutual assistance military pact between the Klingons and the Romulans for an exchange
02:11of military equipment. Bennett's explanation would remain as part of Fanon for decades,
02:17and like the Romulan use of Klingon battlecruisers in the original series, it was simply a way of
02:23explaining it away. That is, until Star Trek Enterprise came along and showed the Klingons
02:28using 22nd century variations of the Bird of Prey, thus completely retconning that in-universe
02:35explanation. It was nice while it lasted, though. Number nine, wonderful muscles. While you can
02:41easily trace the configuration and inspiration for the Klingon Bird of Prey back to the original
02:47series episode Balance of Terror, the filmmakers didn't rely solely on Hua Chang's original
02:52design. In a somewhat novel move for Star Trek films at the time, the art department itself
02:58was bypassed and Leonard Nimoy handed off design of the Klingon Bird of Prey to ILM which was doing
03:05the effects for the film. During early discussions with Nimoy, ILM's Nilo Rodas, David Carson and Bill
03:11George were inspired by the director's imitation of a predatory bird arms outstretched like wings.
03:18Nimoy's guidance also included the directive that the ship should possess an elongated neck,
03:23again a characteristic of an attacking bird and one that would be incorporated in Klingon starship
03:28designs for decades to come. Further exploring various concepts for this ship, Nilo Rodas drew
03:34a vague impression of a muscled man and then based the Bird of Prey as this man flexing his muscles in
03:41a downward position. Model maker Bill George then designed the ship around that with the railed vents
03:48above the wings as the shoulders of this muscle man and the wings down an attack position like the
03:53arms being outstretched. There was even red piping added around the head of the Bird of Prey to simulate
03:59the chin guard on a football player's helmet. As instantly iconic as the ship would become,
04:06it started life with Leonard Nimoy pretending to be a bird and modelling it on a football player.
04:12Number 8 Honourable Movement
04:15A first for the franchise, the Bird of Prey model featured mechanised wings that could be lowered
04:21and raised as per command. There were three different configurations displayed in the search
04:26for Spock. Horizontal for flight configuration, down for attack configuration and then raised for
04:33landing configuration. Now while all three were on show in the search for Spock, they would be used
04:39again over the course of the TOS movies but they would become less and less frequent going into next
04:44generation and beyond. This is because the physical model itself began to break down and the mechanised
04:51components stopped working which is why for the most part you see birds of prey in the next generation
04:58permanently in a horizontal flight position. This would eventually change with the move to CGI in
05:05Deep Space Nine. Number 7 Down Periscope. Continuing on with the franchise's long-running effort to save money,
05:12the Klingon bridge from Star Trek 3 The Search for Spock was actually a reuse of a set from another
05:18series, the name of which has unfortunately been lost to time. Now it incorporated various elements
05:24that have been left over from the motion picture and the Wrath of Khan and such futuristic elements as
05:29plastic sandwich boxes. I'm actually serious. But the main feature of Krooge's Bird of Prey is the
05:37monsterous looking dog that was sitting beside the captain's chair for the majority of the film. This
05:43was a practical model that was operated by Ken Ralston who was the ILM VFX supervisor who hid under the
05:50floor and moved it with his arms. Bizarrely the set was totally redesigned for Star Trek 4 The Voyage
05:56Home when the very same ship, now dubbed the HMS Bounty, was used by the renegade crew of the USS Enterprise
06:02for their titular voyage home. More than the design used in Star Trek 3, this version from Star Trek 4
06:08would effectively set the template for all Klingon ships to follow. Newcomer Mike Okuda also contributed
06:15to that design. In Star Trek 5 The Final Frontier, the set was more or less the same although they added
06:21a periscope that could be lowered over the gunner's chair. Number 6 Kalos take the wheel. Now as stated,
06:29the bridge for Captain Klaa's Bird of Prey in Star Trek 5 The Final Frontier was a new build,
06:35although based on the build from Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home. It would be used almost wholesale again
06:41in Star Trek 6 The Undiscovered Country. It was given a bit of a different colour scheme to represent
06:47General Chang's Bird of Prey. Remaining largely unchanged, the green lighting scale depicted the
06:53ship while at battle stations. There was a console added behind the General's chair and there was something
06:58else that was a first for this ship as well. A steering wheel. Described by director Nicholas Meyer
07:04as an enormous thing that was impossible to move, the Bird of Prey's steering wheel is barely visible
07:09in the finished film, but an unnamed Klingon officer can be seen operating the antiquated technology
07:14in the background of a couple of shots during the movie's climax. Sadly, while many aspects of
07:19both Klaas and Chang's Bird of Prey bridge were incorporated into future versions of the Klingon
07:24Bird of Prey as well, this steering wheel was gifted to Meyer when production wrapped on Star Trek 6
07:31and it has since long ago disappeared. Number 5. Everybody remember where we parked.
07:38Because of its relative small size, we'll get to it, the Klingon Bird of Prey turns up in various
07:43different locations in Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home, including landing in Golden Gate Park,
07:48hovering and intimidating a Norwegian whaling ship, and of course crashing into San Francisco Bay.
07:56To achieve this last shot, a version of the Bird of Prey was built and crashed into a water tank
08:01combined with footage of a miniature Golden Gate Bridge. However, the final section of the film
08:08required Kirk and crew to escape the sinking Bird of Prey into the bay, which required a full-scale
08:15section of the ship to be built. Obviously unable to actually film the scene in open ocean,
08:20the filmmakers instead constructed the Bird of Prey's nose section in Paramount Studio's disused water tank
08:26at the time being used as a parking lot. As Mike Okuda described the location, this parking lot at
08:31Paramount Pictures was known as B-Tank, with short walls on two sides, raised beams on the other two,
08:36and the blue sky backing behind, it could be flooded to simulate an open ocean. One of the
08:40very rare times that a full-scale section was built for Star Trek and it was parked in Paramount
08:47Pictures parking lot. Appropriate. Number four, size matters. Long before fans were left scratching
08:54their heads about the TARDIS-like interior of the Discovery A, people have been wondering what in the
09:00name of Grethor is up with the various sizes of Klingon Birds of Prey. There's been many in-depth
09:05articles and YouTuber EC Henry has actually done a fantastic video breaking down just how exactly
09:11two humpback whales could fit inside a Klingon Bird of Prey. The Bird of Prey seems to fluctuate between
09:1750 and 150 meters long in the voyage home itself and then in several episodes of Star Trek The Next
09:24Generation, for example Reunion and The Defector, it could be up to 350 meters long. To clear this whole
09:32mess up, the writers of TNG and Deep Space Nine have referred to two types of Bird of Prey, the Burel
09:37and Kvort classes, and Star Trek Generations introduced the retired D12-type Bird of Prey,
09:42which also retroactively appeared in DS9's past prologue. What's the difference between these three
09:48styles? Well, the episodes and movies themselves, along with Michael and Denise Okuda's Star Trek
09:53Encyclopedia, don't really help matters. Initially telling us that the Burel is the larger of the three
09:58variants then saying it's the Kvort, Rick Sternbach's Star Trek Deep Space Nine technical manual muddies the
10:05waters even more by suggesting there's a 685 meter long jumbo bird of prey that's roughly the same
10:12size as a galaxy-class starship. But sure, no, go on and tell me how Discovery is the one that ruined
10:19continuity. Number three, Klingon Keepsakes. As we've previously mentioned in this dolphin series,
10:25it's always loads of fun when Star Trek merch turns up on screen. Now, for example, there's the AMT
10:31model kit of the Enterprise that turned up on screen in Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country,
10:36and then there's Playmates Borg Cube, which turned up as definitely not a toy in the episode Dark
10:42Frontier of Star Trek Voyager. Now we've got one more for you, Hallmark's Klingon Bird of Prey turned up
10:49in this DS9 season 4 Klingon extravaganza, The Way of the Warrior. While the producers initially
10:55commissioned illustrator John Eves to create a batch of new Klingon starships for The Way of the Warrior,
11:00the massive scale of the episode's centerpiece battle sequence meant the budget was tight and
11:04existing models would have to suffice. To fill out the Klingon fleet, Deep Space Nine's in-house VFX
11:09crew brought the old Bird of Prey, Vortcha-class attack cruiser, and Katinga-class battle cruiser
11:14filmy models out from storage and quickly recalled the All Good Things Nagvar model from a touring
11:21exhibition. Still, the sheer quantity of ships that were on show meant they had to reach out to other
11:27ways of getting them on screen, including model kits and, yes, Hallmark ornaments. In fact, quite a few
11:35of the Birds of Prey that are shown on screen in The Way of the Warrior are those exact same Christmas
11:41ornaments that could be hanging from your Christmas tree this Christmas. Number two.
11:49Paul, some of these titles work lovely on the page, but then you don't have to say them. After the
11:55destruction of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek III The Search for Spock, the Bird of Prey became the
12:00main starship setting of Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. To quote producer Harv Bennett, they had a lot
12:05of fun designing that one and I think the colour selection, a kind of serpentine kind of green, went on
12:11to help us. Not only there, but later we utilised it in Star Trek IV because it's so dramatic a look.
12:17Now, the drama of the ship must have been contagious because it went on to appear in Star
12:21Trek V as Captain Klaa's ship, Star Trek VI as General Chang's ship, and Star Trek Generations
12:27as the Juros Sisters, RIP, ship as well. Despite these major motion picture appearances and the
12:33aforementioned Star to the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Short Trex, Lower Decks,
12:38and Star Trek Prodigy, the ship was actually slated for more appearances than even that. The scripts for
12:43the TNG episodes Aequiel and The Chase and the DS9 episodes Dramatis Personae and Crossover all
12:50indicated the use of the Bird of Prey, though the ship was ultimately replaced with the Vortja-class
12:55attack cruiser itself created for TNG to replace the Bird of Prey, but only moderately successful.
13:00And to note, while General Chang's Bird of Prey was able to fire while cloaked in Star Trek VI The Undiscovered
13:06Country, there was an additional prologue planned that would have seen the HMS Bounty being
13:11deconstructed and studied by Captain Montgomery Scott. Number one, Qwalth, now roughly translated,
13:19Legacy. The legacy of the Klingon Bird of Prey extends well past the movies, the episodes,
13:24the toys, the Hallmark ornaments, and goes into Star Trek design language to this day. Now while Star
13:30Trek's producers commissioned Rick Sternbach to create a new Vortja-class attack cruiser to replace
13:36the Klingon Bird of Prey, the popularity of the ship ensured that it would continue to make
13:42appearances. In fact, it's one of Star Trek's longest lived ships. It was so popular, in fact,
13:47with executive producer Rick Berman that he would often encourage illustrators and designers to use
13:53elements of the Bird of Prey when he felt other designs weren't working, including in the film's Star
13:59Trek Nemesis. Both the Valdor-type Warbird and the Reman Scimitar incorporate elements of the Bird of
14:04Prey, despite them having Romulan as opposed to Klingon design. A seeming anachronism, Star Trek
14:11Enterprise featured a new spin on the Klingon Bird of Prey, designed by John Eves after several other
14:1522nd century Klingon vessels were created for the show but failed to meet the producer's approval.
14:21Even Star Trek Discovery featured a Bird of Prey in its Klingon-centric first season, a ship that was
14:26heavily influenced by Gothic architecture and H.R. Giger's biomechanical style, but still clearly
14:31bearing all the hallmarks of that very first Bird of Prey. It has since appeared in Star Trek Prodigy,
14:37and of course in Star Trek Lower Decks, most notably in the episode Way Dush, where a lot of the
14:44interior are recreated so faithfully, the only thing we're still waiting to see in live action again
14:50is another one of those dogs. Give us one of those monster dogs you patawks! Thank you so much for
14:56watching this video, thank you so much Paul Sullivan for putting together an amazing article again,
15:00please don't forget to go and check that out. Everyone remember you can catch us over on Twitter
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15:22we are so proud of you. Everyone, live long and prosper, we'll see you soon.