Class Variants

The following are just a brief glimpse of some of the DS9 'kitbash variants' we know of so far, some of which are 'supposedly' canon. From time to time we get to see a new class, quite often these are 'class variations' which are nothing more than a kitbash of other established classes - perhaps due to the creators and designers getting lazy. But more often than not budget restrictions are the cause of this. When a script requires a new class of vessel the budget is sometimes unable to cater for the building and development of such models, for they can invariably run to tens of thousands of dollars. A good example of this was in the TNG episode 'Cause and Effect', whereby a TOS era vessel of the Soyuz Class made an appearance through a temporal rift. A new design was a hoped to be created, but lacking the time and budget to build and design the model, amendments and alterations were made to the existing Miranda Class model (The Reliant from ST II -alterations made by Rick Sternbach and Mike Okuda). In recent years though Star Trek has gone CGI, using the latest computer technology to render the special effects. But these kitbashes here hail back to good old days of plastic and glue...

A kitbash is the process whereby the ship components from one class are reconfigured to make a slightly differently looking ship. Possibly the most famous, and most understated occurrence of this was the Nebula Class which was a reoriented version of a Galaxy Class model kit. I think this is a reasonably fair conversion though, as this was the style and technology of the era, so contemporary starships are going to have a similar design appearance, just like the Refit Constitution, Miranda and Constellation all share a common appearance and style of hull components. This is further explained by the examples of the ships outlined on this page. I suppose, if you really wanted to explain it away you could say that Starfleet kitbashes its own first prototypes in any design to produce slightly different variations for alternative fleet applications.

The theory behind these ships is that during the Dominion war Starfleet needed as many ships as they could get. When losses increased the need became urgent, so utilizing whatever ships parts they could get their hands on, Starfleet constructed whatever space-worthy, warp capable, phaser firing vessels they could - cannibalising existing spaceframes and merging them with other salvaged components. This goes for the one-off 'war kitbashes'. It is this category I see the Yeager and Elkins-type starships. The others could well belong to an actual class...

I am lucky to be able to reveal photos of the actual studio models for these kitbashes. They have been kindly provided with the blessings of an individual connected with the production of DS9, who wishes to remain anonymous... Due credit though goes to Mark Delgado of the Wolf 359 research team who worked to unearth them...

Some of these models will appear to be a little rough around the edges, kit-'bashes' being an ironic and honest term to use here, as most were created with considerable 'battle-damage'. But remember they were in many cases only backdrop fillers, and were never intended to be shown in any great detail.

The oddities on this page are considered canon, appearing on DS9 and were featured in the DS9 Technical Manual. The classes, specifications and names of some of these ships remain unknown.

Model Photo	Model Photo	Screencap

Side View	Top View	One of my screencaps. See more Here

It doesn't take a trained 'Trek' eye to see that this vessel strongly resembles an Excelsior Class kitbash, although for the saucer module it looks like they kitbashed a model Boeing 747!, but it's probable it is the aft section of an Excelsior kit. This ship appeared in the DS9 episode 'A Time To Stand'. But this model is not actually labelled 'USS Centaur', the name of ship is quite obscure and barely discernable...

After some discussion with my colleagues at Flare, it's been suggested that it's an in-joke, and is named, perhaps after a production designer on the show... It looks a little like USS Surkats, but it's still a mystery. But in this instance I will refer to it as the USS Centaur, as that was the name it had in the show, and this was the model they used.

But if anyone can successfully decipher and confirm the actual lettering, please contact me....

It is unknown whether the Centaur is a one-off Starfleet kitbash, constructed from various scrap components or whether it is an actual member of its own class. Some in fact have suggested this could well be the Chimera Class, or Renaissance Class. There are several candidates. But there is a problem.

To any eye of starship expertise it becomes obviously apparent what other starship components were used in this model's construction. Although the saucer is clearly from an adapted Excelsior kit, the torpedo pod beneath the saucer and the nacelle pylons are from a first batch Miranda kit. So this is the dilemma, because the two are from separately scaled kits. Using the correctly scaled Excelsior saucer the Centaur would come in at around 350+ meters. Using a properly scaled Miranda kit for the pylons and pod, it would only be around 225 meters. So, this is the problem. We could say that the pylons and pod components only resemble a Miranda roll bar in shape, and are in fact much larger, or that the Excelsior saucer is a smaller variant of similar shape. It cannot be both; it cannot be a ship constructed with both Excelsior and Miranda components. The two are just not compatible scale-wise when we look at the Centaur. So what's going on?

The Miranda roll bar is clearly discernable on the Centaur, greeblies and all, so in this respect it is very difficult to admit that this might be an individual class. Disregarding the Miranda parts for a moment and concentrating only on its obvious Excelsior connection, it becomes much more plausible as a class - the Galaxy shares it's saucer design with other classes, such as the Nebula, and the Constitution shares it's with the Miranda, Soyuz etc. So this could perhaps be an Apollo Class or Renaissance Class, classes possibly hailing from Excelsior design lineage. But the Miranda problem will not go away. It cannot be a Starfleet war kitbash using parts from both classes of ship. It has to be 350 - 400M long, because the Excelsior saucer, and it features and windows seem correct in structure and scale, and can't be ignored.

I am forced to conclude that the Miranda roll bar resemblance is a coincidence, simply because they cannot be scaled alongside the Excelsior components inherent in this design. We have to for now ignore the modelling inconsistencies and say that the Centaur pylons are of similar shape to the Miranda roll bar, but are in fact custom made pylons for this ship.

This quick comparison shot shows the Centaur alongside an Excelsior saucer. Generally all seems to be in proportion - there is no great difference which would suggest that the 'small Centaur' theory is correct. The saucer windows on the Centaur are an added feature, but don't particularly tell us anything useful about the scale. The bridge domes are about the same size also. Furthermore, the shuttlebay protruding from the very front of the bridge module mirrors the scale of the very similar shaped shuttlebay on the Excelsior's tail. So in summary, the Centaur, by my calculations, comes in at around 380M.

Apollo Class is one possibility. But in my eyes, and many others, the Apollo is an Ambassador variant, and maybe a Frigate. I reserve the Apollo classification for something else.

The Renaissance Class is the second candidate. The Centaur registry of NCC-42043 is certainly in the right area for known ships of this class, such as the Maryland NCC-45109 and Hornet NCC-45231, and the ASDB designation of the Renaissance being a Light Cruiser, or maybe pushing it to a Medium Cruiser, also fits.

Chimera Class might be another possibility. Although the registry of the Centaur is lower than the only known Chimera, there's nothing to say this can't work, because we don't know how old the Chimera is for sure. I have the Chimera down as a Scout, and that also fits the profile of the Centaur. It's not huge, there's no secondary hull, no great indication that the crew count, families and all, would be high. Also the large array of hull greeblies and details may suggest it is well endowed with sensors. So a Scouting vessel would be a persuasive title for the Centaur.

Outsiders might include: Zodiac Class (possibly a newer starship class, similar age to the Nebula Class), Mediterranean (as a Surveyor, or sometimes called a Freighter this doesn't fit so well, such a ship wouldn't be able to take on Jem'Hadar bugs as it did in 'A Time To Stand').

And finally Merced Class might work. We know little of this classification, and again the registry of the Centaur is in the right area.

Or it could be something entirely new and unknown. But in conclusion, I have to reject the idea of this being a one-off Starfleet kitbash. Another very good reason for this is the Centaur registry number - NCC 42043. This indicates it is an older ship, somewhere around 40 years old at the time of the Dominion war. So it cannot really be a kitbash, built specially for the war. If Starfleet were going to build such a kitbashed ship using Excelsior parts, this new ship, one would have thought, would get a new registry number....

Model Photo	Model Photo	Screencap

Side View	Top View	One of my screencaps. See more Here

This strange Excelsior kitbash appeared in the DS9 episode 'A Time To Stand'. One immediately noticeable oddity is the nacelles, and the fact they've been turned 90 degrees. The Curry is also nicknamed the 'Shelley', (Mary Shelley), due to the obvious 'Frankenstein' connection.

I'm convinced that there is more than one Curry-type ship in the fleet flyby, the other being far off in the distance, and I've seen some good screenshot analyses which suggest it is a second Curry. So that would make this ship an actual Class, not a one-off ship.

The main oddity to notice here is the bizarre name of the ship. It's not labelled 'Curry' or 'Shelly' or anything else we might expect, but the name here is 'Raging Queen'. It was later discovered that this was yet another in-joke being named after a ship from A Saturday Night Live sketch with John Belushi. Would Starfleet really name a ship 'Raging Queen'?! Well it isn't really worth debating is it, the name never appeared on screen. It may well be the model was later relabelled as a joke, but I'm not ready to accept the name 'Raging Queen' into my fleet list just yet...

There has to be a good reason why Starfleet bothered to reorient the Excelsior configuration and construct this type of ship. I believe, and I've said it before, that configuration in many cases determines its designation and fleet application. I theorise that the 'Curry Class' of starship is a Through-Deck Cruiser. A rare, and seldom used starship as it is mainly geared towards a frontline war campaign. The upper portion of the secondary hull is possibility hollow, being a huge, multi-tiered Fighter Bay, housing multiple squadrons. The large number of Peregrine Fighters used in the Dominion war effort suggests that they emanated from some type of Carrier - they are not long range craft - and would have been transported by a much larger mothership. A more modern starship class, Akira Class, is also speculated to be a Carrier/Through Deck Cruiser - meaning a portion of the hull is an open bay, from the front all the way to the back. So could Starfleet have pulled some old Currys out of mothballs and put them on the frontline to deploy squadrons of Fighters???


Updated 3D kitbash	More of this bash Here

Hastily constructed 3D model -- built after ripping up my Excelsior and Miranda meshes.

This vessel has been seen on many occasions in DS9, quite often orbiting the station in the background.

Model Photo 1	Model Photo 2	Model Photo 3	Model Photo 4

Oblique	Oblique	Side view	Top View

I'm not alone in thinking that this design is quite preposterous, it isn't simply a bad kitbash, it appears as if a variety of ships of different sizes and from different eras suddenly exploded, and the various parts thereof somehow coalesced into one utterly hideous mockery of a ship. This ship is real though, and has been in certain episodes of DS9. The production team saw fit to model this beast with parts of a tiny Maquis raider, and an Intrepid Class saucer, and peculiar nacelles that seem just too small and weak to successfully propel a ship of this size. It also would suggest by the name that the Sabre Class USS Yeager seen in Star Trek VIII must have been destroyed during that Borg encounter. Anyway, nil points for resourcefulness boys....

This is a kitbash. It has to be. You can clearly see a conventional Intrepid, but with something entirely unconventional, almost alien sitting beneath the saucer. It's one type of ship fused onto another. The question is what, and why??

I call both the Yeager and Elkins 'Intrepid Class'. They are Intrepid Class ships, variants thereof, like the multiple (and in some ways quite different) Nebula variants, but those are all still called Nebula Class.

Perhaps the Yeager and Elkins were only one-off ships, experimental Cruisers, kind of proto-Intrepids that were rushed into service during the Dominion war campaign. They obviously have their own special area of expertise in the fleet, I have no idea what, but there are elements with both of these ships that are unorthodox and atypical of regular starships. Ignoring the actual 'kit components' combined for the models, the actual Starfleet ships must have a purpose behind how and why they exist...

Going by the registry number of the Yeager, being NCC-65674 it implies that it is older than the Voyager and indeed, the class prototype, USS Intrepid. This could have interesting ramifications. Being chiefly an Intrepid Class ship, the Yeager was most likely around some time before the USS Intrepid, perhaps by a 7 or 8 years, for instance. There are two possibilities why, as I see it:

1. The Yeager is a pre-Intrepid prototype study-model starship, built only once as one possible direction for the Planform SV-65 Intrepid Program to take. It failed, for whatever reason, and its evolution moved along a different path - and maybe that's where the Elkins would come in, which might have carried the provisional registry number of NX-74121, (later NCC 74121).

2. The Yeager is older starship class from the 2350's. Let's call it 'XYZ Class'. During the Dominion war Starfleet investigated what older starships they could recommission to help with the war effort. Starship production was split 50/50- on both new ships currently under construction, and the refurbishing, and weapons upgrades of already existing ships. A good number were tried and trusted starships, such as Miranda Class, that had existed in great numbers, but served today only as Training Vessels, or lay inert at starbases and surplus depots. These, and some other ships were recommissioned (some with their original names, which clashed with newer starships that had taken their names, such as the Excelsior and Nebula Class Lexingtons). With weapons upgraded as best as could be done, with the time and resources available, and skeleton crews installed, these recommissioned ships rushed to the frontline to replenish fleet numbers. (This is perhaps in the same vein as the Constellation Class Hathaway - decommissioned, inert, virtually obsolete, but still space-worthy, and with some effort and time could have been recommissioned, but it was peace time at this point in TNG, and there was no need -although they were beginning to prepare for possible Borg incursions).

So, XYZ Class, being an older class of ship, and damaged to a certain degree (but with Starfleet desperate to salvage any ship they could), was reconstituted with the spaceframe of an existing half-built Intrepid saucer, perhaps one of a discarded prototype saucer left over from the Intrepid program, but was still deemed useful and space-worthy. With no chance of being constructed as a fully operational Intrepid Class in itself, an operational, but jury-rigged secondary hull structure was installed, simply to get another warp-capable, phaser firing ship into service to take its place in the fleet. So the one-off USS Yeager and USS Elkins were born.

However implausible, how ever crazy and contrived, somehow it has to be explained...

Model Photo	Model Photo

Side View	Top View

It is only called Elkins here as that is what the name on the saucer appears to be. Some have suggested the name looks like 'Elnino', as in the weather phenomenon, but 'El Nino', in Spanish, is two words. If it is Elkins as is suspected, then it may well be named after Judy Elkins, a Visual Effects coordinator on the show.

The only thing I can say about this ship is 'nasty, nasty, nasty'. This is the true personification of a kitbash. It is certainly not a class, but a type - a one-off ship constructed using the salvaged parts of other ships. An Intrepid saucer mixed with Miranda nacelles, and the secondary hull resembles a Star Wars A-Wing...! or as some have suggested (and they're probably right) an F-14 Jet Fighter. The less said about this the better.... But one thing to take into account is the Miranda-style nacelles, next to the relative scale of the Intrepid saucer: they seem much too large. And it's not an easy task explaining why, so I shan't try.

Basically, the Elkins is a true 'war-bash', meaning during the desperate times of the Dominion war this ship was hastily thrown together with whatever bits and pieces they could find. Perhaps the Intrepid saucer was sitting in the yard as part of an unfinished Intrepid Class ship. Far from complete, a secondary hull was hastily assembled and simply bolted on to expedite 'a ship's completion', so it could be rushed into the battle action as soon as possible.

Model Photo	Model Photo

Side View	Top View

This ship's quite interesting actually. It's obviously an older starship type, whether it's a class in itself is not certain. Frustratingly no name or registry is apparent on the model. My guess is this is probably some sort of Scout ship from the late 23rd century. If the Constellation and Miranda can still be in service so many years later, then so can this.

Model Photo	Model Photo

Side View	Top View

Along with the Centaur I find this ship perhaps the most interesting out of these DS9 kitbashes. It is certainly crazy, some may even say ugly. But it is... interesting, and not altogether impossible. There was some initial speculation as to which way up this ship is meant to be - ie, how the ship is oriented. Is it two nacelles up, one down, or the other way around? I think I prefer it two up one down, but there's at least some doubt which remains, as the top view may well be of the underside, as no name or registry can be seen, meaning it's unseen on the other side - being the actual top of the saucer. Anyway, for now, I'm treating it as two up and one down.

I consider the name 'Medusa Class' as not entirely canon, but I assume it to be of an actual class. But lacking more information, I'm calling it Medusa Class for now, for the sake of argument. It could be seen as a post-Excelsior Class ship, perhaps a Destroyer of the late 23rd and early 24th centuries. It could well be the forerunner to the Niagara.