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

Previous entries in the Dolphin Series have mentioned this before, but it's always fun when officially licensed merchandise ends up on screen in the Star Trek Universe. We're talking about those times when AMT's model Enterprise-A ended up in Star Trek VI or Playmates' Borg cube showed up as definitely "not a toy" in Star Trek: Voyager.

Here's another one for that list: Hallmark's Klingon Bird-of-Prey appeared in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's season four Klingon extravaganza, "The Way of the Warrior".

While the producers initially commissioned illustrator John Eaves to create a batch of new Klingon starships for "The Way of the Warrior", the massive scale of the episode's centerpiece battle sequence meant the budget was tight and existing models would have to suffice. To fill out the Klingon fleet, Deep Space Nine's in-house VFX crew brought the old Bird-of-Prey, Vor'cha-class attack cruiser, and K'Tinga-class battlecruiser filming models out from storage and quickly recalled the "All Good Things..."' Negh'Var model from a touring exhibition.

Still, the sheer quantity of Klingon ships needed to execute the sequence drove the producers to seek out models from outside Paramount's stock, turning to off-the-shelf merchandise like Playmates' various toy ships and, yes, Hallmark ornaments. These models are barely discernible from their large scale counterparts, but many of the Birds-of-Prey in "The Way of the Warrior" are, in fact, Hallmark's Christmas 1994 Bird-of-Prey Magic Ornaments, complete with "flickering and glowing lights" that filled many of our 1990s holidays with Keepsake Magic.