10 Legendary Star Trek Kit-Bashes

The Centaur-class went from being a quick ship invented for necessity to becoming one of the most popular kitbash ships of them all. Adam Buckner designed the ship using existing Excelsior and Miranda-class pieces. However, why he designed the ship is one of the most unique stories on this list.

Buckner had been working under Gary Hutzell, who had encouraged him to use some of the downtime between seasons five and six of Deep Space Nine to build some models, ostensibly with a view to practicing motion control. During this time, Buckner was traveling and met a young boy named Guillermo while in Spain. After explaining his job, Buckner promised to build the boy a model.

Flash forward to A Time To Stand, and the script called for the USS Centaur. Buckner put together the ship using the Excelsior saucer, with the Reliant bridge module. The nacelles came from the Excelsior, while the Reliant's roll-bar served as the nacelle struts. The model was so small that they didn't bother installing any lighting, instead opting to attach UV strips to the nacelles. These were later digitally altered to appear blue.

The ship appeared briefly, moving quickly, as the team decided it would be designed as a 'deep intruder', which effectively meant it was designed for speed and recon, not battle. Once the episode wrapped, Buckner kept the filming model, but then built another one, so that he could keep his promise to Guillermo.

That could have been the end of the story, but the ship once again saw a return in both Star Trek: Prodigy and the video game Star Trek: Resurgence.