Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Romulan Warbird You Need To Know

Actually, we're not done with recurring themes in the world of Star Trek starships because we have to talk about scale. Again.

When he was designing the Romulan warbird for Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season finale, Andrew Probert drew numerous diagrams of the ship set against the Enterprise-D, showing that the Romulans' new ship was over twice the size of a Galaxy-class starship. However, when the episode made it to air, Probert was disappointed to see the finished VFX shots left the size of the warbird unclear:

I love even numbers, so the warbird is 4,440 feet long. The thing is, I provided this image to the producers purposely to suggest that the scene be filmed with the Enterprise in front, obviously closer to us, yet the warbird is still larger. Unfortunately the visual effects people reversed the shot and you really had no idea how much larger the Romulan ship was.

Subsequent episodes of The Next Generation would provide no definitive scale for the Romulan warbird other than indicating that the ship was larger than the Enterprise-D, which was approximately 2,100 feet long and 639 feet tall (42 decks). However, for its appearance in Deep Space Nine's "The Die is Cast", a deck plan graphic was created for the Romulan warbird's bridge, showing the ship with a mere 26 decks, making it far less than twice the size of the Galaxy-class.

So what's the true scale of the Romulan warbird? According to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual by Herman Zimmerman, Doug Drexler and Rick Sternbach, the D'deridex-class is 3,415 feet long, which just makes things even more confusing.

Basically, it's as big as the producers wanted it to be, okay?