Summary
- The wide variety of ships in Star Trek Universe, not all Federation, cater to different purposes and opinions on strength.
- Iconic starships like USS Enterprise, Chang's Bird-of-Prey, and USS Excelsior have significant impacts on storylines and character arcs.
- Ships like USS Titan-A, The Jellyfish, USS Vengeance, and Borg Cube showcase diverse designs, technological advancements, and narrative importance.
The technology of Star Trek is one of the ways the franchise continues to fascinate and impress fans while reaching out to new ones. Other than the drama between the characters, the big, powerful, glowing starships are a major draw for the shows, movies, and video games.
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There are such a wide variety of ships that exist in the Star Trek universe, designed and built for just as many different reasons, and it's a matter of opinion as to which is the strongest. Not all of them are Federation ships, but developed by new life in new civilizations.
7 USS Enterprise NCC-1701
The Original Federation Flagship
- First Appearance: Star Trek: The Original Series, S1E1, "The Man Trap."
The flagship of the Federation in the 21st century, the Enterprise is the ship featured in The Original Series, with Captain Kirk taking the helm after Robert April and Christopher Pike. Considering how quickly ships seem to come and go in the modern era, the Enterprise lasted several years and was destroyed over the Genesis planet just before it was due to be decommissioned.
This was hardly the end of the Enterprise, since it was rebuilt as NC-1701-A by the end of the movie, and there's also a whole class of Enterprise ships with a similar design. The ship appeared again in Star Trek 2009, and similar to movie tradition, it seems to get blown up in every movie no matter how many they build.
6 Chang's Bird-of-Prey
The Prototype That Could Fire When Cloaked
- First Appearance: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, 1991.
This experimental model only appeared once and wasn't in operation for very long before the Enterprise blew it out of the sky with a little help from the Excelsior. The ship was used as part of a plot to kill the Klingon Chancellor, derail the peace talks between the estranged Empire and the Federation, and frame Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew for the crimes.
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Even though it was destroyed in short order with a simple DIY heat-seeing missile, its impact on the dynamic between Klingons and the Federation as a ship that could fire when cloaked can't be understated. The only vulnerability a Bird of Prey had previously was that it had to de-cloak to fire, but luckily the advantage didn't last very long, and neither did the Klingon empire.
5 USS Excelsior
Captain Sulu Always Knew She Had Potential
- First Appearance: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, 1984
The first appearance of the Excelsior in the third Star Trek movie was less than flattering. It tried to pursue the Enterprise as it stole out of Spacedock to embark on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock but stalled out after Scotti sabotaged a few key parts.
It returned in Star Trek VI, this time with Hikari Sulu confidently at the helm. It was featured in the introduction as strong enough to withstand the shockwave emanating from the destruction of the Klingon mining planet, Praxis. Sulu and the Excelsior appeared a few times to lend aid to the Enterprise in the form of both intelligence gathering and fighting prowess, which successfully thwarted the plot to stop the peace conference.
4 USS Titan-A
Captain Riker Finally Takes Command
- First Appearance: Star Trek: Picard, S3E1, "The Next Generation."
There are a few ships in the Star Trek franchise with the name "Titan" but this is the one that was featured in Star Trek: Picard and is one of the most modern, high-tech, and powerful. The name is a reference to the Titan rockets from Earth's history that also formed the inspiration for Zerhpham Cochrane's first warp-drive craft, The Pheonix.
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In the show Picard, the Titan has William Riker at the helm, who finally takes a command assignment at the end of s. This was after years of vacillating between staying on the Enterprise as the first officer or taking responsibility for his own ship, but it seemed like he was waiting for a powerful ship worthy of his galactic fame.
3 The Jellyfish
Designed And Built By The Vulcan Science Academy
- First Appearance: Star Trek, 2009
The Jellyfish is a unique ship intended to be piloted by a single person and has one sole purpose, which is partly why it only appears in one movie. According to the regular Star Trek timeline, the ship is officially listed as missing, but in the Kelvin timeline, it has been destroyed along with the deadly weapon it was carrying. The Red Matter was intended as part of modern mining operations, but its destructive power was enough to destroy whole planets.
It was Spock from the original timeline who brought the ship into the Kelvin universe in the hopes of putting a stop to the Romulan terrorist Nero. It was the younger version of him born in the alternate timeline that piloted the ship successfully to defeat Nero and destroy his mining ship, which was also from the future and just as powerful.
2 USS Vengeance
An Aggressive Design For Another Timeline
- First Appearance: Star Trek: Into Darkness, 2013
"I thought we were explorers," a disgruntled Scotti says to Kirk before turning in his resignation in the second Star Trek movie to take place on the Kelvin timeline. Scotti wanted to work on ships outfitted for boldly going where no one had gone before, to seek out new life and new civilizations, but not to blow them up.
The USS Vengeance is a Federation ship built off the books by Section 31, lined with a myriad of deadly weapons and the ability to fire at other ships while at warp speed. Its captain was Admiral Alexander Marcus, a paranoid and authoritarian fanatic with all kinds of good intentions, who was perfect for the helm of such a deadly ship.
1 Borg Cube
The Most Powerful Ship In The Universe
- First Appearance: Star Trek: The Next Generation, S2E16, "Q Who?"
The Borg were the next big villains after the Federation made friends with the Klingons and reigned in the Romulans, and there were whispers of their malevolent presence before they actually showed up. This was an enemy from humanity's worst nightmares, in which people were reduced to a life more like insects than humans, and forced to endure painful computerized implants and a total loss of their individuality on a galactic level.
None of the Borg ships had names, as that's the nature of their culture, and were simply referred to by their shape. It wasn't until Captain Janeway succeeded in retrieving and rehabilitating a human being from Borg captivity and sabotaging their portal network that humans even had a chance against the marauding cubes.
- Created by
- Gene Roddenberry
- First Film
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- Latest Film
- Star Trek Beyond
- First TV Show
- Star Trek: The Original Series
- Creation Year
- 1966