Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Klingon Bird-of-Prey

A first for the franchise, ILM's finished studio model of the Klingon Bird-of-Prey featured mechanized components which allowed the ship to move into several different configurations.

Best seen in The Search for Spock, the Bird-of-Prey was able to achieve at least three distinct poses: Horizontal wings while the ship is in flight, downward swept wings during attack, and raised wings during landing.

While these different configurations would continue to be used in the subsequent TOS films, the actual motorized wings themselves rarely operated on camera after The Search for Spock and stopped working altogether for the ship's appearances in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Most future appearances of the ship favored the wings positioned horizontally or lowered in attack configuration as seen in TNG, DS9, Voyager, and recently, Lower Decks.