Star Trek: 10 Secrets About The Klingon Bird-of-Prey You Need To Know 

The fact you uploaded this just a few minutes after my son asked me what my fav. non federation trek space ship is and me nerding out on the bop.... I just can't 🤣

The D-12 is considered a sub-class of the B'rel. The Haynes manual to the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, while non-canon, describes the differences in BoP interiors is that while the exterior shape remains relatively the same, the interior is up to the leader of that house when they put in the orders to the shipyards. That's why some bridges have the periscope (Klaa & Duras), why Chang's ship had that wheel, why Kang's was vast and why Dukat's BoP bridge had the aft consoles so close together.

On the rare occasion that a Trek-related video teaches me something about Star Trek I didn't already know, I call that a winner video--and this video actually taught me one fact that I did not already know (well done). All these years, I actually did not realize that the Star Trek III Bird-of-Prey bridge was a reuse from a previous (but unknown?) TV series. So, to discover which series that might be would seem to require the searching of classic sci-fi series for a match (assuming it was from a series that was actually released). I will say that it is somewhat reminiscent of the bridge of the Cetacean, the submarine from the late 70s sci-fi series, "Man from Atlantis." Not an exact match, but the layout is striking similar. And that, my friends, is a...Cetacean observation.

to me, a "bird of prey" is a somewhat catch-all term for a whole class of ships... something like a destroyer, or even a frigate in naval terms, the forms can differ greatly... plus, I tend to believe its more of a federation way of classification than a Klingon one. I do like Lorerunner's theory, that each house had its own shipyard, or at least there own design philosophy for smaller ships, only the very largest ships being imperially standardized.

My head canon is that the bird of prey actually had a main and auxiliary bridge/control center, similar to many Federation ships.

It's probably considered Beta canon, but Kruge's 'dog' is called a Warrigul.

I also like how in Star Trek V the wingtip disruptor cannons articulate, not something seen in Star Trek very often (yes the ship phasers of 1701 and Reliant were able to fire in arcs, but it seemed to be an unseen internal mechanism.) Other than the Phase Cannons on NX-01 I can’t think of another shown on screen.

It's odd to think back and remember there were times the Romulans and Klingons got along, especially when they are essentially blood enemies by TNG.

TOS D7 battle cruiser remains my favorite. The only reason the Romulans had it in "The Enterprise Incident" was because they didn't have the model of the Romulan Bird of Prey anymore and they spent all TOS season three model budget on Matt Jeffrey's D7 model

Regarding the Hallmark tree ornaments, that's nothing -- the USS Voyager actually *became* a Hallmark ornament in the episode "Death Wish" when they were (may be direct quote or slightly paraphrased) "tethered to a large plant".

Another to explain a way out of it is, because both the Romulans and the Klingons wanted to be the dominate race, they would have both seen the Federation as a threat because Starfleet was uniting all the other alien species together around them. So maybe the alliance between the Romulans and the Klingons actually happened before the "Balance of Terror" episode and didn't actually get exposed until "The Enterprise Incident" episode. In fact that might have also been part of Kirk's mission to not only steal a cloaking device but expose the Romulan and the Klingon alliance. Then when the Klingon moon Praxis exploded the Romulans tried to persuade the Federation to attack the Klingons, but instead the Federation decided to form an alliance with them. An alliance that both the Romulans and the Klingons thought the Federation wasn't serious about. Certain of this the Romulans attack the Klingon outpost at Narendra III thinking the Federation won't do anything about it, but to both the Romulans and the Klingons surprise the Federation did respond by sending their ships in to evacuate the Klingons and fight off the Romulans, the battle where the Enterprise C was lost, the battle where the Romulans and Federation where "ok we are definitely not friends" and a battle where Klingons saw the Federation as honourable for keeping their word. My point is that the Klingons did design the first Bird Of Prey and the Romulan Bird Of Prey is Klingon technology implemented into it, considering that the Romulans already had their base designs for it, seen from the ENT episode "Minefield"

Fun Real World Fact: In the 90s McDonnell Douglas and Boeing developed a stealth aircraft demonstrator called the Boeing Bird of Prey. It was named after the Klingon Bird of Prey because its design was so evocative of the Star Trek Design.

So that's why there are birds of prey in both empires. I had put it down to lack of imagination... Really great video Seán! I'd never noticed the steering wheel in the background! Won't be able to miss it now lol!

That is so cool they used hallmark ornaments as actual filming models! I actually unpacked my 2ft tabletop Christmas tree to hang up all of my trek ornaments this morning. I keep the little tree as it is pre-wired with incandescent lightbulbs which work properly in all the Trek ornaments (Corridor Red Alert lights, phasers/disrupters firing and warp nacelles for example) as everything else we have is LED now. Looks so cool though! I have that exact Klingon Bird of Prey as well as a Romulan Warbird, USS Voyager and Captains Picard and Kirk hung up now!

Interesting fact about the K’vort class, a few years ago Michael Okuda tweeted out a picture of a kitbash model based on the K’tinga model kit, which used flashlights for nacelles and a toy jukebox for the bulb at the front. Apparently, he’d made this to be the K’vort class cruiser in Yesterday’s Enterprise, but because it wouldn’t work for the shots they needed, they reused the Bird of Prey and that’s one of the reasons why there are multiple classes of Bird of Prey that are all different sizes.

I love this! I have a lot of the Starship ornaments, including the bird of prey 🤩

Did anyone else get a flashback to the "Helm to 108" scene from Fifth Element when the steering wheel was pointed out?

the The Klingon Bird-of-Prey is my favorite Klingon ships, i even made one in Lego when i was young.

Leonard Nimoy walks in, makes a couple weird motions and noises and then several movies are made on the spot. I do like though, that the FASA ship battle game featured several versions of the Bird of Prey for both Klingon and Romulans. Didn't make it more confusing.

I still have my Micromachines BOP standing on my table to this day. The wingtip cannons are permanently bent now and some of the paint is faded, but it's still mostly fine. Also, love the EC Henry shoutout.

Great energy in your video, I look forward to seeing more of your work. great job!

There was a dialogue in The Voyage Home before leaving Vulcan. Sulu stated that the new upgrades allow it to fire while cloaked.

Sean, If I remember correctly, the episode from STE which featured a klingon vessel disabled and floating (orbiting?) within the atmosphere of a gas giant featured (at least) 2 of the klingon pets/fresh meat sources which had been prevented from succumbing to the nerve toxin (by virtue of being locked in the galleys larder...). I think that they were produced via practical effects vs. any CGI manipulation...

I always thought of Kruge's pet as a proto-Targ, and once Targs were introduced in canon (TNG; Where No One Has Gone Before,) Kruge's pet was simply retconned as another breed of Targ.

I walked out of the theater after seeing ST3 heartbroken at the death of the Enterprise, but also conflicted about whether I loved the Excelsior or BoP more (Yes, I'm old enough now to want to spend a weekend on Genesis planet for a quick rejuvenation). I leaned toward BoP, because I at least knew a dozen people so we could totally crew one of those should I ever be gifted one for my birthday. All these years later, and regardless of it being outclassed by basically everything in the TNG timeline, it is still a great looking design. According to FASA (probably noted in several comments already), yes, the design is Romulan but traded with the Klingons, who were so taken with it they did their own larger cruiser and frigate versions, something the Romulans were less than enthused about when relations went sour. Great vid, love the footage choices.

One mystery that goes unasked, is what was done with the HMS Bounty? Sure it sank, but retrieving it would be easy peasy by our standards, let alone Starfleet. You literally have a fully intact, albeit waterlogged Klingon warship with lots of secret tech just plop into the drink within mere miles from Starfleet HQ, do you think they'd give that a pass?

More of these ship vids please Sean, enjoyed this one. Bird of prey is such an iconically cool ship, one of the best in Trek. I know it divides opinions but for some reason I just love the Cardassian Galor cruiser, looks like it’s made to glide through space. That and it was the ship of one of the best love to hate him characters, gul Dukat.

I started to watch this episode with low expectations, but became so impressed with the research! Thanks for sharing this with us.

The bridge as seen in a Matter of Honor was also used as the secret base from the Adrian Paul War of the Worlds series. (The one where they blew up the previous base, and killed off one of the two most popular characters, because the main characters would not have a permanent base of operations). FASA's Klingon Ship Recognition Manual notes the K-22 Bird of Prey Class V Scout (what is now call the B'Rel) was 88m - aka the ship from ST3 and 4. The D-32 Stronger Bird Class VII Cruiser was 110m. (I usually consider this a Frigate) And the L-42 Great Bird Class IX-X Frigate (about the same displacement as a D-7M k't'inga or Constitution, and I call it a Destroyer) was 164m. The K'vort is generally considered to be about Class XII (about half an Excelsior), a Battlecruiser, and 260ish meters long. Though these are all fan estimates. I call it a D-52 FWIW

Appreciate that on Doctor Who Day (23 November), Seán Ferrick, Paul Sutherlin & Kris Thompson would hit another Trek Lore "Dolphin" Banger out of the park...Well done all.

What i know is after Kirk and crew used the exhaust pipe to track it in cloak they forgot to tell anyone else to basically handle all cloaked ships using that type of cloaking . In nemesis the romulan cloaking was used well having pieces showing through

I actually have that Bird of Prey ornament! Had it since I was a kid, along with my Romulan Warbird and my Captain Picard TNG ornament.

Thanks for the video much appreciated, have to admit Klingon Bird of Prey is my second favourite non Federation ship(1st Romulan Warbird ). Haynes Manual although not cannon does try to deal with the three variations as best as possible.

I just got this ship on a star trek game I'm hooked on. Its so powerful and I'm still just a noob lol, major boost. I thought this video was just algorithm showing me facts about my new favorite ship, but you just posted this. Righteous lol

Thanks for the cool info. Cheers.

Fun fact the device bones used to scan kechovs brain in voyage home was the top center piece of the Klingon bird of prey model kit

Great video.

GOD I love everything about Klingons! Do more Klingon lists!

Bird of Prey, love it, great video. 👽👽👽

Excellent Excellent video

When I first saw the Vor'cha I was like... what... I have to remember it's almost 30 years old now. Still looks new and impressive to me. I feel 11 each time I see one on screen.

An idea I've had after too much STO, is that Birds of Prey are used commonly by Klingon house fleets. Combat, transport, whatever, they're a common vessel in the Empire, and built by numerous house shipyards and workshops. All based on a common design plan, but having different sizes and interior configurations based on the needs of the builders. Which explains the sizes discrepancies and interior appearances. As for the Enterprise era BoPs, my head cannon. Klingons had them during Ent time, but were obsolete by ToS. But, during the K-R tech exchange, Romulans got ahold of a few to study, and built their own, newer version (specifically designed to use the cloak). Klingons got ahold of it, and it became the Klingon version.

Very cool episode 👍🏽🖖🏼

The special features interview where Leonard tells about his impression is hysterical!!! Lol

With the Bird of Prey, the size differences kind of seem to be something that has an easy explanation due to the various Klingon houses. A lot of the houses have their own fleets and shipyards, so having a starting point of a design that each house then modifies seems to be a way to keep the design in evolution with each house making modifications, ones that do well get stolen and copied by the other houses while still trying to outdo each other, so size and other things vary heavily but it becomes, essentially, a ship of theseus design program where none of it might be from the original, but it's still a Bird of Prey. I still love the Kor class Bird of Prey from STO, just recently upgraded it on my KDF to the fleet version...fun raider and a great thing in the KDF Elite Starter, only issues is that it, like anything else with a cloak, is a pain to fly against the Vadwaur due to the cloak seeking tricobalt weapons they have.

I saw an eppy with this and that’s what got me into Star Trek

Fact 3 reminds me of the similar fact from Return of the Jedi. ILM used the small Die Cast ship to fill in some background TIE fighters in the Battle of Endor.

I love the design, it is so burned into Klingon perception of us Fans, simply unforgettable.

The "early" BoPs from Enterprise bugged me. I always like the Klingon/Romulan technology exchange canon. Especially because it was initially done as an exposition dump by Spock in "Enterprise Incident" primarily because the original model from Balance of Terror wasn't available. Having it come full circle with the first Klingon cloaked ship being from that exchange was a nice touch. Dammit Enterprise...

Great video, honorable ship!

And I thought I overthought stuff 😎 Fun episode!

The bird of prey has been on my Christmas tree since it was first released

There is a meme on the web that the Bird of Prey was based on a Canada Goose. I created a backstory in my head where a Klingon mission on a Federation colony goes askew and the story of this mighty bird inspires a Klingon engineer years later.

We love you Paul Sutherland! And the whole team! Thank you!

🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely well done and executed and very informatively explained in every detail way shape and form provided on this format and subject matter on the Klingon Bird of Prey and it has truly been one of my favorite ship designs of the Startrek universe indeed; And it was Nimoy and the production staff that changed it from Romulan to Klingon because they believed that the Klingons would be a more formidable aggressive foe than the Romulans!, Any ways a job very greatly well done indeed Sir!👌. And p.s. I myself own various different sized model kits and the FASA & Micro Machines & Hallmark ones and all of very the different Eaglemoss models of this fabulous ship!😉.

The size thing always drove me crazy. I get that they were just trying to save money by re-using the same model over and over and over, but I remember seeing this thing in front of the Enterprise D and thinking, wtf?

I always thought "Bird of Prey" was a colloquial term (as opposed to a ship design or class name) for any Klingon (and sometimes Romulan) ship that looked like a.... bird of pray as found on earth (hawk, etc). Later the term "Warbird" was used for Romulan ships in a similiar way. Also, wasn't that monster dog thing supposed to be a t'harg?

"Qatlh" is a Klingon adjective. It means "be difficult (v)". "qatlh" with a small "q" is a question word - "Why?" (ques) The noun "legacy (n)" is "'ISyar." I run The Daily Klingon blog on tumblr. Nice try though.

Kruge's "dog" has an amazing resemblance to Alf.

Because clearly Hallmark has pleased Kahless with their code of honor. I always liked the gunnery periscope and wanted that used more often. It created the sense that the ship captain himself was taking responsibility and central role in combat.

RE: #4. Back in the 80's the company that produced the Star Trek RPG, FASA, published a supplement to it's "Starship Tactical Combat Simulator" game called the "Klingon Ship Recognition Manual" which included many new playable Klingon ships. In it, they actually had three separate versions of the Bird of Prey that were all different sizes (a Scout, a Cruiser, and a Frigate). I always wished this had been incorporated into canon (along with a lot of other lore from the game).

8:00 amazing special effects 👏 😆

That set was from Battlestar Galactica, cylons viewer room

Thanks.

Known as the Bortas, B,rel, Pagh, K,vort class cruisers. Armaments torpedoes & cloaking device fascinating.

Bird of prey was my favourite spaceship from the Star Trek universe. I don’t speak Klingon but I appreciate the effort of inventing the language…still, the bird of prey…fired my imagination. Now, let’s see, with leading edge slots on the “wings” and a pressurized flow of high speed air over the top of these wings…the Coanda Effect, ya know…one might make a working model that would fly in air…wouldn’t that be an entrance at a comicon? Or even the Experimental Aircraft show at Oshkosh? Or stepping down a bit, a model airplane that ordinary folks could buy and fly around the park? The airflow out of an electric leaf blower is about 100 mph, small aperture but it might work on a model aircraft…(he mumbles to himself as he heads to the non-existent workshop)

This was a gooder!

The BoP bridge in ST3 was really odd cos it was a complete change of style from what we saw of the klingon bridge in TMP, but then they went back to that aesthetic for ST4. Maybe makes sense if the BoP and its bridge were going to be Romulan? Dunno.

It will always be a Romulan bird of prey to me! It even fires a plasma torpedo in ST:III

Okay, I'm just glad I'm not the only one who is enough of a dork to sing "Mmm-BoP!" every time one of these things appears on screen.

I have not put up a holiday tree in quite a few years. But when I did, it was almost all Star Trek and yes, the Bird of Prey was hung on the tree.

I was always under the understanding that because Klingon houses built their own birds of prey there was a huge difference in sizes and the classes was more of a lay out/ outside style thing.

It is a shame we never got to see the Klingon Romulan alliance on screen.

When integrating the Bird of Prey design into the my guy's fleet list. I had to go with 4 different variants, each a different size. To go with their intended uses in the fleet.

Regarding the varying sizes of Birds of Prey (discounting the discrepancies within Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - that's just... uh... a mistake, so let's just use the larger size they use as the 'actual' size due to it being necessary for the plot), I like to imagine that Klingon shipwrights aren't big on standardisation or even make ships to order based on whatever House is commissioning it. Depending on the ego of the prospective captain or the funds of his or her (usually his, let's be honest - Klingons are pretty misogynistic as a society and it takes an exceptional warrior woman to get into any position of power) House's material wealth the size of the ship would vary immensely. But Klingons being Klingons they don't see a need to differentiate 'ship classes' to the same degree as the Federation or Romulans and will just call a ship whatever best fits its intended role - so a smaller Bird of Prey might generally just be referred to as a B'rel and a larger one as a K'vort as examples to denote it as a raider or a light cruiser. I also suspect components are often completely different ship to ship, with only the cloaking devices, disruptors and torpedoes being more standardised.

We needed this. The KBoP is a fantastic design. I think a little over-used, but good enough that if you're going to overuse something, let it be this. Personally, I'm surprised that no one's latched onto the Temporal Cold War as a catch-all to explain the continuity errors away. Why not? It's there. It should work. And, well, not everything matters.

Funny few trek ships resemmble animals or every day items. Voyager a squid, Defiant a alchol 5th bottle.or garden spade, Ferangi a horse shoe crab,klingon Battle Cruiser sort of like a cockrail fruit squeezer

I'm sure the article in the description is a great read. Sadly, due to the websites "internal server error," you can only read the first page.

Cool.

If you haven’t already, you need to do an ‘exploration’ video on the I.K.S. K’t’inga class battlecruiser!

I never saw the BOP as a Romulan design because it doesn't look all that Romulan to me. The elongated neck and head with the photon torpedo launcher for a mouth and the main disruptors located at the lateral extremities is classic Klingon design and was present on the D7 and K'Tinga-class battlecruisers. The BOP looks far more Klingon than Romulan to me. I'm glad that they didn't ultimately make it a Romulan ship becasue the D'Deridex is so damn awesome!

Oh hey! My family had that hallmark Christmas ornament growing up! Unfortunately the gun turrets at the wingtips snapped off after 15 good years of service.

The HMS Bounty has one of those age old never answered Star Trek questions right up there with "Why does God need a Starship?" in "Why does a Starship need a emergency hatch on the bridge?"

I had a Klingon Bird of Prey once... but I FORGOT where I parked it 😭

The Bird of Prey is the one ship I would want.

Although the Defiant is my all time favorite Star Trek ship, the Bird of Prey/Warbird is a very close second.

Qapla! (headbutts wall, falls unconscious)

It’s also worth noting that DS9 often has birds of prey in fixed wing because they were using kit bashing to make enough models.

Nimoy in Spock ears shouting into a director's microphone made me laugh.

I kind of had wished that perhaps in Picard, that Captain Picard actually DID "appropriate" the Klingon BOP from Commodore LaForge's shipyard. It was, is, and always will be the "Millennium Falcon" of the Star Trek franchise. The fact the BOP was probably more like a gunboat or a PT Boat of WW2. Fast, well armed, having a cloaking device, and in the hands of a pilot like Ensign Nog, a formidable and highly maneuverable "war canoe". Considering it only has one warp nacelle, and (speculation) is probably powered by a variant of the S-2 Graf Unit which is the Klingon warp system for dilithium conversion. And it also had quite powerful impulse engines that could push it to .15c. And a contested top speed of warp 8.5 to warp 9.

Fun fact: The fisherman on the ”norwegian” whaling ship was speaking finnish 😂

I'm disappointed that there wasn't a talking point named "General Chang's chicken".....because it's a bird.

You forgot the bird of prey in the Kelvin timeline. I like that one better than the Discovery version.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.🖖

"One of those monster dogs!" Did you.... did you forget the word "targ?" Also, for decades I've always heard the opposite for the Romulan/Klingon BoP relationship. The Romulans adopted the design from the Klingons while the Klingons got loaner cloaking devices to study in return. So no need for a retcon because of whatever Enterprise screwed up this time.

5:22 i agree in star trek 3 the bridge of the bird of prey looks to clean to be klingon

I would never have guessed it was originally meant to be a Romulan ship design, since it layout is similar to the TOS Klingon ships with their long necks, but that does explain the name. I know there's been plenty of continuity issues in old Trek but at least they made some effort to fix continuity issues when they arose, even if they didn't always do it well.

I always thought Kruge's targ looked like it was slathered in BBQ or General Tso's sauce

I have the Klingon Bird of prey but I want the K-Tinga battle cruiser ship.

Wings down looks silly, wings straight looks good and wings up looks really really cool.