Star Trek: 10 Top Secret Artefacts At Daystrom Station

2. M-5 Computer

Daystrom Station Star Trek Picard Kirk B-4
CBS Media Ventures / Paramount Pictures

Not to be confused with a motorway traffic control system, the M-5 computer was set to take the fleet by storm over 100 years before Starfleet came up with the crazy idea of networking their ships.

Being made by the station's namesake, the M-5 might not have been a sentient computer looking to take over the galaxy or enslave a planet but it did make some unique choices.

As part of a war game simulation, the M-5 was given full control of the USS Enterprise but decided that its sister ships were excellent target practice with live weaponry. Its errors meant that starships would remain under biological control forever more with only Discovery's Zora seeming to prove the exception.

Created by the station's namesake, Richard Daystrom, the M-5 left a wake of destruction during its testing. Two Constitution Class starships were disabled; the USS Lexington NCC-1709 and the USS Excalibur NCC-1664, with the loss of the latter's entire crew, while the USS Hood NCC-1703 and USS Potemkin NCC-1657 are lucky to escape.

Since the M-5 was built using Daystrom's own memory engrams it makes perfect sense for a "part" of him to be retained on the station with the irony now being that it's housed just a few alcoves away from the very man who talked it into defeat: James T Kirk.

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A Star Trek fan from birth, I love to dive into every aspect of the franchise in front and behind the screen. There's something here that's kept me interested for the best part of four decades! Now I'm getting back into writing and using Star Trek as my first line of literary attack. If I'm not here on WhatCulture then you're more than welcome to come and take a look at my blog, Some Kind of Star Trek at http://SKoST.co.uk or maybe follow me on Twitter as @TheWarpCore. Sometimes I force myself not to talk about Star Trek.