10 Worst Ever Starships In Star Trek

The Freedom-class ship, originally designed to float through space as part of the ruined Wolf 359 fleet, was another example of kitbashing. It borrowed elements from the Ambassador and Galaxy-class ships, resulting in a flying saucer with a single nacelle to power it all. 

As a broken, battered ship in a graveyard, the Freedom-class earns every point for effectiveness. As an operational starship, it's harder to make that claim. While Lower Decks used the design to great comedic effect, that only served to highlight its weak design.

Had the Freedom-class remained a ghost ship, derelict and destroyed, then it would be a fun curio. However, it was also an evolution of the earlier Saladin-class, which also served as the inspiration for the future (past) Archer-class as well. It was an example of a joke that went on too long while reminding us all that the weaker the ship's design, the more likely its quick and painful death would be.

Imagine, if you will, that an Excelsior-class vessel 'span out' while exiting the mycelial plane, only to hit an 'undetectable Hawking radiation wall.' That same phenomenon inverted the insides of the USS Glenn's crew - so we have to wonder if something similar occurred in the design of the USS Curry.

One of the limping Frankenstein fleet of A Time To Stand's opening scene, the Curry resembled a mash-up of Excelsior and Miranda-class ships, with a drive section jutting out before the primary hull. It was burning in space as well, adding a fizzing despair to the gloom.

The design is a mess, offering far too many weak points for the enemy to target. Cannibalising existing designs may work in some circumstances but this one reminds the audience of that transporter scene from The Motion Picture.

To paraphrase a shell-shocked Starfleet transporter chief, we can only hope that this doesn't live long.

Kitbashing is a tried and tested method of creating new ships quickly when one is against the clock for a visual asset. Let this be clear, there isn't a thing wrong with kitbashing as a method - it is simply the mashing together of existing model parts and designs to give us something new - that's fine!

In the case of the Mazarite ships from Enterprise's first season episode Fallen Hero, the audience gets two for the price of one. This was an early example of digital kitbashing, which is exactly what it sounds like: adding together digital elements to create a new ship. It was also one of the earliest re-uses of a design in Enterprise.

This re-use focused on Andrew Probert's D'Deridex Romulan warbird from The Next Generation. The dorsal section of those beasts was lifted off, given a brown paint job, and launched out into the unknown to serve the Mazarites. They were instantly recognisable, highlighting their birth, rather than hiding it.

They were effectively flying wings and looked about as mean. They were thrifty, but that's about it. 

The Springfield-class USS Checkov finds itself on this list for, in all honesty, purely aesthetic reasons. Of all of the ships created for the graveyard scene in The Best Of Both Worlds, Part 2, it is by far the ugliest. That saucer section, sitting beneath those highlighter pens, above a deflector dish that screams of an afterthought is just a bizarre choice.

To be fair, it was never meant to be looked at with any real scrutiny. It was among many that were popped into the background of a scene to suggest a greater battle had taken place, so one can't hold too much against it. 

It was almost named on-screen before the writers worried that evoking such a popular character's name in that setting would be too disturbing for audiences. 

The Springfield-class may have done exactly what it set out to do, but in all fairness, we wouldn't be shocked to find the Borg had targeted this one first, just to put it out of their misery. 

The positives of the USS Vengeance, while few, do highlight how strong this warship is. It's armed to the teeth, has weapons pods that can detach from the main hull to provide extra cover, and is faster than the average Federation vessel.

There ends most of the good stuff.

This ship is overstacked to the extreme, thus making it a bit of a mess. The actual design of the ship is clearly meant to evoke memories of the Constitution-class, though that does it no favours. Sure, it can punch its way out of most situations - but it also leaves itself open to some pretty dumb manoeuvres as well. 

To be fair - Khan did lower its shields to beam the torpedoes aboard, but really, shouldn't that ship have been able to overpower the Enterprise with ease? With a genocidal madman at the helm, the Vengeance should never have been in any real danger. Instead, it - along with its oddly carved-out hull - ends up colliding with half of San Francisco. 

For such a giant piece of muscle, it doesn't really last that long.

The USS Discovery-A, being so similar to its predecessor, may seem like an odd entry here. After all, the original Discovery - inspired by Ralph McQuarrie's sketches for Star Trek: Planet Of The Titans - is extremely close in design. Why, then, single out this iteration of the Discovery?

The ship suffers from additional cut-out sections, floating nacelles, and a general lack of distinction. 

Where the original Discovery primarily left the cut-outs on its saucer section only, the Discovery-A design elects to take chunks out of the drive section as well. This is especially egregious when one considers the TARDIS-like size of the turbolift system - just where on earth does any of that go?

The floating nacelles utilise programmable matter to connect them with the rest of the ship, though this is shown to have its own set of weaknesses, one exploited during the Emerald Chain takeover. The Discovery-A may best be described as a toy with added pieces stuck to it (and chopped out) because they look cool, rather than serving any real purpose. 

It all seems a bit academic after that coda in Life, Itself, though...

The Klingon Bird-of-Prey that appears in Star Trek Into Darkness started life at a disadvantage. It was the successor to one of the most enduring, popular designs of ships from the entire franchise. Following the Bird-of-Prey introduced in The Search For Spock was never going to be an easy feat.

Its size was the first black mark against it. These ships are clearly small fighters, closer in scale to a Maquis raider or Peregrine-class fighter. The most recognisable elements - the swept-out wings, rising to facilitate landing - looked crooked, almost held together with hope, rather than steel.

The frenetic nature of its introduction did it no favours, nor did the scenes that followed. Without any further scenes giving the audience a better appreciation for the design, it was left to commercially available models to get a good look at it. 

It's by no means awful - it's simply there.

Star Trek (09) reinvigorated the franchise after a couple of years of listlessness. The end of Enterprise had brought a dark period in Trek's history. It seemed like Starfleet would never fly again. 

Thankfully, J.J. Abrams saw to it that it did - before almost immediately kicking seven levels of hell out of the poor USS Kelvin. As it moved closer to investigate, the Kelvin unfortunately encountered one of the most bizarre ships in Star Trek's many years.

The Romulan mining vessel Narada just doesn't make any sort of sense. While the inside is an absolute death trap of floating platforms and slippery surfaces, the exterior is hardly any better. The ship's massive drill serves a vaguely realistic purpose - it drills. Fairly straightforward.

But - why does it have more tendrils than a Portuguese Man-O-War Jellyfish? Why is it armed to the teeth? Why does it look more like a Sea Urchin than a space-worthy vessel? 

If its sole reason to exist was to look intimidating, it achieves that with flying colours. If it was ever planned as an actual vessel to do a job - it raises way, way more questions than it answers. 

Full disclosure: the Enterprise-D is usually at the top of our lists of favourite ships, a fact only compounded by its emotional return in Võx, so one might wonder why a variant of the said ship is sitting here on this list.

Yes, it goes warp 13 and is armed to the teeth but my friends, look at the f**king state of it. The ship seems designed just so that its arrival would pack an extra punch, slicing through those Klingon ships the way that it does. In that respect, it was a triumph. Aesthetically, however - choices were made.

The phaser canon on the underside of the saucer section looks more at home in the Terran Universe - and yes, we are fully aware that it does indeed fly there - than it does in the Prime. That thing is designed to punch up and cut up its foes, which is more than a little at odds with The Next Generation.

A Dreadnaught of science it may be, but one of the best, she surely ain't. Speaking of ugly... 

If you've followed this channel for a while, you knew this ship was coming. Oh my, what were they thinking when they slapped together two ships with all of the intrepid inspiration of a demented Viktor Frankenstein?

It is, simply put, one ugly creation. The saucer section of an Intrepid-class ship is perched atop a Maquis raider, with Intrepid nacelles glued to the small wings of the little fighter.

Little is the operative word as the audience was already familiar with the design. These were small ships, barely bigger than a Danube-class Runabout, cannibalised into a warship of inconceivable proportions. 

Now, listen, we've all had those nights where we partied a little harder than expected and our thoughts wandered farther than we dreamed possible. But in the immortal words of the wise Dr Ian Malcolm:

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.