Cool Starship / Live-Action TV

Cool Starships in live-action TV.

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• Andromeda Ascendant from Andromeda.
  • Andromeda actually has two, one of each kind: The Andromeda Ascendant◊ as the hot technomiracle, and the Eureka Maru◊ as the "rusty bucket of bolts".
  • How about the Siege Perilous-class Deep Stand-off Attack Ship II? It has 180 missile tubes, 24 35-megawatt PDL turrets, 4 anti-proton cannons. Built to destroy entire fleets. Out of 4 built, 3 were shown on-screen (Wrath of Achilles, Balance of Judgement, and Resolution of Hector), and they look amazing◊.
  • There's also the Bellerophon◊, Earth's first starship launched in the 22nd century (before humanity's First Contact with the Systems Commonwealth) which lacks a slipstream drive but has a giant fusion engine used to accelerate to relativistic speeds. Thousands of years later, it's still exploring the galaxy with the original crew thanks to Time Dilation. Oh, and since the ship is unarmed, the crew will happily use their fusion engine to incinerate enemy ships, although they might need to refuel at the nearest gas giant after that.
  • What about the Pax Magellanic which was a sister-ship to Andromeda, but was instead gold from stem to stern?
• Andor: Luthen's Fondor Haulcraft looks like a very clean but unremarkable little ship at first, and is then revealed to be heavily modified with a built in droid to help come up with transponder codes to hide their identity on the fly and aim disguised turret guns, way more power and speed than such a craft is expected to have and anti-tractor beam measures. The ship is an example of what a very well funded and maintained starship meant for illegal activities can be in the Star Wars universe in contrast to the many that are manned by people with a limited budget.
• Babylon 5:
  • The White Star. Although JMS wasn't entirely happy with the design, saying that from certain angles it looked like a plucked chicken. He even had a character say so in a later episode.
  • The Babylon 4 station had engines and was even bigger. It served as the base of operations for a war 1000 years before it was friggin built.
  • The Omega-class destroyer line. So ugly they're beautiful, and while they may have no gravity control or certain other features that come standard with starships (especially in the Babylon 5 universe), they can still take on much more advanced civilization's warships on nearly equal terms. The Advanced Omegas especially get a Shout-Out, because they were built with reverse-engineered Shadow technology.
    • Omegas weren't built yet in time for the Earth-Minbari War. It's possible they would have allowed humans to hold off the Minbari onslaught a little longer (although not by much). Supplementary material claims that several prototypes (called Nova-X) were involved in the first battle of the war, as they happened to be undergoing testing in the Vega system where the Minbari attacked, one of them managing to ram a Minbari Sharlin-class war cruiser.
  • The Excalibur from Crusade.
  • The Shadow's giant starfield colored spider monster warships. Very effective at evoking the utter hopelessness of fighting them.
  • The Sharlin-class War Cruiser from the Minbari Federation. It's a giant blue angel fish...and that doesn't sound particularly cool, until you see it...
  • The Vorlon ships. All of them. The dreadnoughts are imposing enough and can One-Hit Kill almost any ship. Their fighters (mostly drones) can swarm-kill a Shadow Battlecrab, even if they're vulnerable to Starfury weapons. Then there's the Vorlon Planetkiller, which is a 27-kilometer behemoth that can do exactly what its name suggests. Even the transport used by Kosh looks amazing, especially since it's semi-alive.
  • The new EarthForce Warlock-class destroyers. They don't have the spinning sections, as they're the first EarthForce ships to use Artificial Gravity. This means they're faster and more maneuverable. Plus, they feature advanced weapons and defenses. They're supposed to be a one-to-one match to the Minbari Sharlin, even though there are only 50 of them in the fleet.
  • Even the little Starfury fighter class deserves a knock. Its key element is its six degrees of freedom. It is designed to move and turn through the three dimensions with ease, so few can match its sheer maneuverability. It was such a uniquely useful design that it's drawn Real Life attention for a future spacecraft design.
  • The Earth Alliance's Explorer-class ships. These are the ships that are the vanguard of Earth's influence, and while they might not be very pretty, they're huge, they're often the first Earth ships to enter new star systems (the Cortez was even stated to have been on a five year mission), and they can build jumpgates!
  • Even the anonymous ships seen in exterior shots of B5 tend to be pretty.
• Subversion: the new Battlestar Galactica, BS-75, survived the Cylon attack to become the focus of its series because it was old, obsolete, and less cool than the rest of the fleet, without being actually junky. (Though by virtue of achievement Galactica is still really, really cool.)
  • The Battlestar Pegasus is a straight up example. Likewise the Mk VII Vipers.
  • To quote the commander of Pegasus, "Galactica's not a Relic, it's a Classic." And this "bucket"'s main defense are not crazy shiny looking shields but saturating the surrounding area of space with an absurd amount of explosions.
  • Hell, the Cylon basestars count. There's a ship that looks both truly unique and badass. They also look like Split-Level Aggravation◊.
• Let's show some respect to the original Battlestar Galactica as well. The Galactica herself was an iconic intergalactic aircraft carrier with an impressive design that finely balances sheer awesome mass and grace, surpassed only by the Vipers she carried. And the Cylon Raiders managed to make a simple ovular design look intimidating and agile.

• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: The Earth Defense Directorate starfighters, the Draconian Hatchet fighters, the Belly Bombers used in Return of the Fighting 69th, Ardala's ship, and the Searcher from Season 2 as well as Hawk's Talon fighter. With real talons.
• Cosmos
  • The original Ship of the Imagination piloted by Carl Sagan is capable of taking him — and the viewer — absolutely anywhere in time and space, to view the universe on the macro or micro level. The inside is a comfortable-looking 80's minimalist cockpit, the outside is a luminous dandelion puff. There's also an optional viewscreen in the floor where Sagan can demonstrate scientific ideas.
  • Neil deGrasse Tyson's Ship of the Imagination is a Shiny-Looking Spaceship with a sleek design and sometimes acts as a mirror to whatever splendors are around it. Like Sagan's, it can go anywhere and anywhen. The big circular viewscreen in the floor is omnipresent, but it always shows the past — the viewscreen in the ceiling, potential futures.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor's TARDIS. Even though it barely works and constantly shakes and smokes, it is still the most powerful ship in the universe, capable of towing the Earth through intergalactic space. And it looks like a Police Box. And have we mentioned that it's Bigger on the Inside?
  • "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances": Jack has two Chula warships. The one he has for his personal use is very cool-looking, but is blown up at the end. The other is a battlefield ambulance that he was planning to sell as a con job. It is filled with enough nanogenes to "rebuild a species".
  • Aside from the TARDIS, the new series features the Daleks' badass flying saucers◊.
  • Starship UK from "The Beast Below", which not only features skyscrapers mounted on a shiny metal platform, but is powered by the last Star Whale.
  • There's also the beautiful Byzantium◊ from "The Time of Angels" (pre-crash, of course). It has cyborg trees on board to generate oxygen! Freaking cool!
  • "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls" has the Mondasian colony ship encountered by the Doctor, a cylinder 400 miles long and 100 miles in diameter, with over 1500 city-sized decks, which range from actual cities to beautiful farm landscapes.
• John Crichton's Farscape One from Farscape. Few ships can safely fly through a wormhole; Farscape One makes it look easy.
  • Speaking of Farscape... Talyn. Moya was like a good Team Mom, but Talyn was like that dangerous but cool kid everyone knew about but never really knew growing up.
    • To expand on that: Moya was an unarmed, but huge, empathetic, Living Ship, part of a species of such ships called "Leviathans." She carried no weapons, but cared for her crew, and could use her "Starburst" ability, a unique type of Faster-Than-Light drive, to escape the Hetch-drive powered conventional ships of the Peacekeepers. Talyn, her altered son, was the first Leviathan "gunship," combining Moya's biomechanoid tech with Peacekeeper weapons systems for maximum coolness.
  • Lo'La. Period.
    • Until we see her more-modern cousins. Luxan fighters work commando-style: sneak in, hit hard, then vanish again. With a little tactical data, Jothee's ship briefly crippled the Scarran Dreadnought with a few well-placed shots.
  • You can't leave out the Peacekeeper Command Carrier, warships so large and heavily armed that they're thought to be unbeatable.
  • Or the Scarran Dreadnaught, which is even larger.
  • Or possibly the coolest of Cool Starships that never actually got to be seen: A single Nebari host vessel took down the legendary Command Carrier Zelbenion. In fact not just took her down, but outright curb-stomped her. Let's be clear on this: This wasn't even a Nebari warship.
    • To be clear, Nebari don't even have "warships". When you conquer people through the use of your awesome Psychic Powers, your ships may be little more than troop transports.
    • It's pretty much stated that the Nebari are a Higher-Tech Species, compared to even the heavy-hitters like the Peacekeeprs and the Scarrans. When John offers his wormhole knowledge for sale, the three bidding powers include the Nebari as well.
• Firefly and Serenity:
  • Serenity. She's a clapped-out, rusty cargo transport, but she still gets you where you want to go. And homey.
  • The über awesome city ships that the Alliance have, a collection of skyscrapers floating through space, just because you can. They were designed to be a sort of counterpoint to Star Wars Star Destroyers, tall as opposed to long, and made to resemble office buildings to reflect the bureaucratic nature of the Alliance. ^note And because space is a virtual vacuum and you don't need to streamline ships in space.
• The Lexx, a massive spacecraft that resembles a dragonfly. Its only weapon is a Wave-Motion Gun that smashes the planets into bite-size chunks.
• The USS Orville from the eponymous series. While hardly unique (there are 3000 ships in the Union fleet, after all), her crew is responsible for a number of feats that belie her size and firepower, using excellent maneuvering and clever tactics to defeat ships several times the size. In addition, the Orville has a sleek jellyfish-like appearance. She's even better in Season 2 after she Took a Level in Badass, with stronger Deflector Shields that help her class-up from Fragile Speedster to a borderline Lightning Bruiser.
• The Astro Megaship from Power Rangers in Space and Lost Galaxy. All the functionality of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Enterprise, plus it turns into a giant robot! It's got Linkara's seal of approval! As does Master Vile's skull spaceship. Serpentera also technically counts.
• The Orion from Raumpatrouille. She may not look like much (a standard flying saucer shape), but she launches from an underwater base and is equipped with the Overkill, which can blow up planets spectacularly.
• The Jupiter Mining Corporation ship Red Dwarf from the BBC's sci-fi comedy of the same name: ten kilometers of engineering that's survived three million years and the demise of humanity. A possible subversion of the trope, since it was specifically designed to be utilitarian, but it still counts as the "hero ship" of the series, or possibly an "antihero ship" to extend the metaphor.
  • Then you've got Starbug, a transport ship used for ferrying people from the surface of planets to the Mining ship and exploration of planets. Has no FTL travel yet somehow managed to track the massive mining ship (although it did take a few centuries) and somehow managed to increase the amount of space within it. Oh and then after the main crew is killed by their future selves the ship somehow changes shape again to allow more extra room.
• The Vulture from Salvage 1. Built in a 1979 scrap yard from parts including a gasoline truck, a cement mixer and some old tires, the Millennium Falcon ain't got nothing on this baby when it comes to being a miraculously functional "piece of junk." It took its crew of a junkman, a former astronaut, and a propulsion expert all the way to the Moon and back to salvage NASA's collectibles.
• The Blackjack from Slingers is the only known ship that can "sling" itself through space (within the fiction, anyway).
• The Eagles from Space: 1999 also fit, being the best thing about the series apart from Martin Landau. Pretty much all of the spaceship designs (by Brian Johnson and his team, who'd also worked on 2001) count. And the show did have a cool Season 1 theme tune by Barry Gray.
• Space: Above and Beyond had several:
  • The SA-43 Endo/Exo-Atmospheric Attack Jet (known as the Hammerhead) that the Wildcards flew into battle.
  • The Marines and other Earth military forces also made use of spacegoing armored transports (ISSAPC and various other designations depending on their equipment and functional role). These large shuttle-like vhicles were somewhat like the Eagles of Space: 1999, but more militarized. They could carry troops and equipment on long-range missions, primarily inside a solar system, though it was unclear if or how they achieved faster-than-light travel in some episodes. They were modular and could be modified and refitted for different types of missions, and their troop module could also serve as a temporary habitat and base for troops deployed in hostile environments. They carried decent sensors and defensive weaponry also, but they were not front-line combat craft like the Hammerheads.
  • The USS Saratoga which acted as The Battlestar of the series.
  • The Chig fighters, which felt reminiscent of the TIE Defenders in their design.
  • Chiggy von Richthofen's Ace Custom is a highly-advanced Chig fighter that is completley invisible on sensors (although its presence in the vicinity creates "ripples" on the screen) and armored against the Hammerheads' main turrets. One Hammerhead pilot attempted to ram Chiggy and only got his fighter destroyed with nary a scratch on the ace. As a final "fuck you", the Chigs have painted "Abandon All Hope" in English on its nose cone. It only succumbed to Conservation of Ninjutsu. Chiggy could destroy entires squadrons of fighters, but when faced with a single human (well, In Vitro) ace in a standard Hammerhead, couldn't outmaneuver him and caught a missile up its tailpipe.
  • The Chig Bomber, a longer-range, "heavy fighter"/gunboat type of combat craft, with a several crewmembers piloting it using an organic Unusual User Interface. It was (possibly) partially alive, and carried heavier weapons than a fighter, but was more maneuverable and able to do more damage, especially when captured by the Marine Corps and sent on a mission behind enemy lines. The "bomber" also came with escape pods. It was first seen as part of a small squadron of such ships that was capable of harassing larger vessels like the Saratoga. A similar vessel appeared later, used as a VIP transport by the Chig Ambassador in the finale.
• Space Academy had the Seeker, a more cigar-shaped version of the space shuttle that looked like it had an old cathode ray tube TV screen for an engine.
• The Stargate-verse has a fair number of these:

• Anything Ancient.
• The Lost City of Atlantis! Yes, it is a flying city, one capable of near-instant travel between galaxies, and going toe to toe with the below-mentioned Super-Hive.
• Stargate Universe takes place entirely on an Ancient Cool Ship, the Destiny. This is one of those ships that despite being old and run-down it almost makes it even cooler.
  • The Destiny is doubly-cool, just from how it refuels: by flying though stars!
• The Ori battleships, despite being shaped like a toilet seat, their main weapon can one-shot most ships in the known universe and have brutally powerful shields. If you see one heading for you, get the fuck out of there or you're DEAD if it gets into weapons range.
• The Goa'uld Ha'tak-class motherships: They are flying pyramids that land on mountains. The Lucian Alliance later upgrades them to be a match for a fully tricked-out Daedalus-class battlecruiser. Earth humans aren't the only ones who can make things better. Yes, they can even resist the Ori mothership-killing plasma beams.
• The Replicator ships, which are, basically, giant Replicators.
• Asgard ships. They cross intergalactic distances in days. The O'Neill and the Daniel Jackson were particularly cool, being pretty much the Asgard equivalent of a Super Star Destroyer.
• Anything built by the Wraith can classify as either creepy or cool, depending on your outlook. When you hear the whine of a Dart, you'd better run. The Super-Hive in the Grand Finale is a ginormous organic ship with an uber-thick hull that can withstand anything and overpowered cannons that can cripple Daedalus-class ships. And that was before it finished growing.
• Puddle jumpers. They might not be as impressive, but they can be invisible and they're shaped to fly straight through a Stargate at high speed. If I were one of the many random Marines and scientists on Atlantis, I'd freakin' want to visit planets in a nice, safe puddle jumper rather than walking straight into an ambush.

• "The Starship Enterprise◊" of Star Trek, in its various incarnations, is likely the archetypal Cool Ship for television. But a franchise this wide has room for plenty more:

  • Described as the "quintessential gemstone" or the "holy grail" of Sci-Fi, Shatner himself said Matt Jeffries concept was a "very imaginative design". Even with its Zeerusty charm, she still holds up today.

  • The Enterprise-D◊ of Star Trek: The Next Generation positively made every other Star Trek ship that came before it look a sedan compared to a Porsche.
  • Then came the Enterprise-E◊ in Star Trek: First Contact. She's the crowning achievement of an R&D group called the Advanced Starship Design Bureau, designed not only to perform the traditional role of long-range exploration cruiser (read: hero ship that can do any job), but also to fight and defeat the Borg. Talk about high standards.
  • And from the same film, the fan-favorite background ship, the Akira-class, with its split-hull catarmaran design and massive weapons payload. They saw a lot of action in the Dominion War, too.
  • Voyager, a sleek, high-tech ship◊ designed to go where the bigger ships can't, and accomplishes this goal a little too well. Word of God says that the folding pylons make the warp drive less damaging to local space.
  • Also, the Delta Flyer, designed by Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres specifically to be a Cool Starship. (Too bad Tuvok vetoed those retro fins Tom wanted.)
  • And the Dauntless◊, even though it turns out to be a Trojan Horse, it's still pretty cool.
  • The Equinox◊ is basically Voyager in Cute Bruiser form.
  • The Defiant, a cramped, blocky, compact ship designed to break stuff. It's what you'd get if you took a Galaxy-class starship, stripped off everything not necessary for killing, and then stuffed it all in an armored box and added even more guns for good measure. It's Sisko's own design, when the loss of his wife at Wolf 359 had put him in the best frame of mind to design warships: furious. As a result, it is designed explicitly to kill Borg, a task that coincidentally makes it good at killing many other things, most of them several times its size. Starfleet officially describes it as an "escort vessel", one can only assume while doing air quotes specifically to stress that this is a bald-faced lie. Described in the DVD commentary as "on a five-year mission to kick ass."
  • The Prometheus, an experimental starship seen a couple of times in Voyager. Not only is it a sleek high-tech ship designed to go where bigger ships can't, it can also split into three parts in order to break stuff.
  • The Enterprise-C◊, commanded by Captain Rachel Garrett and Lt. Castillo. It was so badass, its crew decided to fight a battle they were destined to lose simply because it would lead to peace between the Federation and the Klingons. Now you know you're a cool ship when you get blown up and the Klingons are impressed.
  • Even before it was known that going back would fix history, many of the crew wanted to go back to fight the hopeless battle, because the Enterprise-C finishes what she starts.
  • Even better, the entire class the Enterprise-C is, the Ambassador-class only made 3 other appearances on screen (and one of those was as rubble). Originally, the Ambassador-class was planned as a regular guest starship, but budget constraints early on prevented a model from being built. When they did Yesterday's Enterprise they significantly altered the design to be more simplistic and be built in a rush. To this day, the Ambassador-class line of Starships is still one of the most popular designs in the Trek Fandom, so much so that it being the last Enterprise released in game in Star Trek Online was met with a lot of hostility. This from a ship, that was denied many appearances because of budget, was less known to the average viewer, and was shelved because it looked too much like the Galaxy-Class Enterprise-D. And the Ambassador-Class is STILL famous.
    • The original concept design◊ for the Ambassador is even better-looking◊.
  • Enterprise NX-01◊, humanity's first Warp 5 ship. Not as pretty or badass as later versions, but it did get the job done. And got it done well.
  • The entire Constitution-class heavy cruiser line (of which the NCC-1701 Enterprise is a member). They were fast, reliable, powerful, and tough.
  • Remember the USS Constellation? Blasted into near-scrap by the Doomsday Machine, antimatter exhausted and warp drive a 'pile of scrap', yet it could still fly and fight clumsily once Scotty got his hands on it. Both the television series and the TOS films repeatedly demonstrated that the Constitution-class simply could not be killed. Even if something managed to kill every member of its crew, the ships themselves would almost always survive — probably intact enough to be brought back into fighting form within hours. Enterprise and Defiant both demonstrated that losing their deflector shields was, at most, a moderate inconvenience for a Constitution; as hostile forces could pound away at their unshielded hulls for entire minutes at a time without damaging them enough to really take them out of a fight. Those ships were arguably the best the Federation ever built.
  • In the two-part ST:Enterprise episode that took place in the Mirror Universe, another Consitution class starship, the U.S.S. Defiant, gets sent into the Mirror Universe a century back in time. When the Terran Empire gets hold of it, they use it to utterly annihilate every enemy vessel in their path and single-handedly stage a coup against the entire Imperial government.
  • The refit was even better, as emphasized by the original Enterprise. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, that ship got blasted to hell on the Reliant's initial approach, with its main power systems scrapped and weapon and shield systems seriously drained; as Spock said, "they (being Khan and his followers) knew exactly where to hit us"^note thanks to Khan previously going over the Constitution-class specs during his time on the "Big E" (which Kirk had provided him to "acquaint him" with the 23rd century). Did that stop the Enterprise? Hell no! After Kirk just managed to throw Khan off with an Indy Ploy, the crew are able to get the Enterprise fixed up in under three hours, from which she dives right back into the fight with the Reliant and (after Spock points out Khan's strategies revolve around 2-D Space) trashes her. Oh yeah, and if that wasn't badass enough Word of God claims the additional damage the Enterprise held in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock came from engaging Klingon incursion forces around Genesis in the time between the second movie and the third. In other words, as damaged as the Enterprise was before, she still managed to hold her own against the Klingons and (apparently) come out on top. Really, with all of those accomplishments, one wonders why Starfleet chose to retire the class, even when they kept the Miranda and Excelsior classes around.
    • Debris in the starship graveyard in Best of Both Worlds strongly suggests that at least one Constitution-class ship was in service long enough to fight at the Battle of Wolf 359.
    • The Excelsior class also had a very long shelf life, with some of those ships seeing action as late as the Dominion War. Though that may have been a case of Break Out the Museum Piece (the Federation sorely lacking for ships at the time), it's still a testament to the ingenuity of Federation engineers (who are essentially memetic badasses in-universe, even to the Dominion), that they could recommission 80-year-old starships and regularly send them into the fray.
  • And now we have the "new" Constitution-class from the rebooted Star Trek (2009), which despite being over a hundred years "obsolete", still managed to damage the Narada (which was also augmented by reverse engineered Borg technology) to a considerable extent though it was being sucked into a black hole at the time. Apparently the permanently altered timeline made the class even better.
  • And that's just the main Human ships. Most of the supporting cast of races got cool ships, but the Klingon◊ and Romulan ships◊ were especially badass.
    • The D'deridex-class Romulan Warbird is around twice the size of a Galaxy-class starship, has fire superiority over same, and to top it off, manages to be extremely stealthy when it needs to be. These ships seem to be designed to showcase the strength and power of the Romulan Empire, and to tell all potential enemies of the Empire, "You can start something, but we'll be the ones to finish it."
  • Especially since, if you go by the IKS Rotarran, (Martok's ship) Dominion War-Era Birds of Prey are pretty much comparable to the USS Defiant.
  • The Ferengi Marauder of all things, even Picard considered it a "very impressive design" — good thing they're more interested in commerce than warfare.
  • The Ferengi D'Kora-class was specifically stated to match the Enterprise-D in terms of tactical effectiveness.
    • Ferengi were no slouches when it came to technology (it was their trading nature that got their hands on them), plus they had a practical desire to keep what they acquired. Bottom line, Ferengi know how to build a ship capable of defending itself. Rule of Acquisition #125: You can't make a deal if you're dead.
  • Let's add the Akira-class (functionally Star Trek's version of The Battlestar), Nebula◊-class (Compact version of the Galaxy-class yet just as powerful, and with the weapon's pod even moreso), the Galaxy◊-class itself (especially the War Refit versions), the Constitution◊-class (AKA, the ORIGINAL Enterprise, and especially the refit and movie versions◊), and many more...
  • Also, the various Borg ships, especially the very large and very dangerous Cubes◊.
  • The Breen Warship definitely deserves a mention due to its unique and menacing asymmetrical design. It's also swift, well-armed and packing a Power Nullifier that can render other ships completely helpless.
  • While only occurring in one episode, the Voth City Ship◊ is definitely deserving of a mention. It's huge. It's fast. It beamed the entire motherflipping starship Voyager into a cargo hold! More impressive because the Voth are genetically related to humans, being descended from Earth dinosaurs, who managed to escape the extinction in primitive ships and made it all the way to the Delta Quadrant where they dominate all the species in their area of influence. They could probably give the Borg a run for their money.
  • The Vulcan High Command ringships from Star Trek: Enterprise; particularly the ''D'Kyr''-class Combat Cruiser◊, but also the Surak-class ships and the larger Suurok-class vessels like Sh'raan.
  • Also from Enterprise the stylish and badass Andorian starship Kumari◊. Being captained by an Ensemble Dark Horse like Shran certainly doesn't hurt.
  • The Excelsior class. Introduced in the movies as the bigger, cooler Enterprise-like ship, we see them all the time in the TNG-era — and that's impressive itself. If eighty years later they're still one of the most prominent types of ship, whoever designed it really did something right. Turns out that they can be upgraded to go up against anything more modern designs throw at them, one even holding its own against the Defiant (long story about why they were fighting) for a little while.
    • That ship, the Lakota, was fitted with those powerful Borg and Dominion-killing quantum torpedos that Enterprise-E and the Defiant carry. Dialogue makes it clear that if Lakota used them — at least toward the end of the battle — Defiant probably would have lost.
    • The Enterprise-B, seen in Star Trek Generations, was an Excelsior-class ship as well.
  • The Negh'var. Sadly we don't see too much of it. Most Klingon ships are the TOS ones upgraded to look more not-made-in-the-60s. Then we meet the flashship, an armed-to-the-teeth behemoth. In the Mirror Universe, it's basically considered a superweapon. And, like the Excelsior-class, its staying power proves that they really had a winner here. One of a kind in the present, but the future-set sequences of both the TNG and Voyager Grand Finale episodes had it as what all Klingon ships look like.
  • Speaking of staying power, the Bird of Prey is also a TOS movie introduction that sticks around well into Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They may look the same, but what's under the hood makes them capable of standing in the ring against the Enterprise-D and its Klingon equivalent, the Vor'cha class (if not being enough to win a one-on-one fight.)
  • And for completeness sake, the Vor'cha class. Like the Negh'var, it's sadly underused in favor of the old Birds of Prey, but it was designed with the fact that Klingons and the Federation are allies these days in mind, with as many glowing red strips as TNG-era Federation ships have glowing blue strips. While reminding you of the TOS battle cruiser, it's that much shinier and downright sweet to look at.
  • As a prequel, Star Trek: Enterprise had to make the predecessors of the TOS ships and yet not be as zeerust as their in-universe successors. Though Executive Meddling (the new model didn't have enough windows for the higher-ups' taste so they were forced to use an existing one) meant the first Klingon ship we see is infamously the old battle cruiser as seen in the TOS movies (and once or twice in DS9) we eventually see the predecessor of the battle cruiser and the bird of prey. Both are to die for. (Or, to enemies of the Klingons, to die from!) Add to it the ever-improving special effects; rotating turrets and such can be seen in action. Most notably, there's a three-parter where Khan-brand Super Soldiers hijack a Bird of Prey and go on a rampage.
  • The Species 8472 bioships◊. Each one is piloted by a single being but has enough firepower to wipe out an entire squadron of Borg cubes before they can even finish their "You will be assimilated" speech. Immune to assimilation. A group of them can merge their beams to blow up a planet.
  • From the Original Series, the Romulan Bird of Prey◊. How cool it is? Well, being fusion-powered she has less power for weapons, shields and warp speed than a similar-sized Federation ship, and is smaller than the Big E, and yet not only her only weapon, the so-called plasma torpedo (actually an energy weapon) is a Wave-Motion Gun (the Earth Outposts the BOP was attacking were buried deep in a metallic asteroid and fully shielded, and the Federation would have needed a small fleet to destroy one. The BOP would take them down with two shots: the first would drop the shields and wreck the outpost, and the second would disintegrate asteroid and outpost), but cloaking a starship was deemed impossible until she did just that. Plus there's the nice thing Kirk had an Oh, Crap! moment when the ship was identified as Romulan...
  • The USS Discovery◊ from the eponymous series. A research ship specially designed around the experimental spore drive, which can teleport it great distances (the Discovery's sister ship used to routinely make 90-light-year jumps in about a second). Because spinning is spectacular, before it makes a jump, the saucer section's outer ring spins clockwise, then the inner ring begins to spin counterclockwise, then the whole thing flips while reality bends to snap it light-years away in an instant. With the Federation-Klingon War going on, the Discovery is the most important ship in the fleet, even beating out the Enterprise, which is still on its original five-year mission under Pike. Being able to make instantaneous jumps with pinpoint accuracy can help turn the tide of war, such as when the Discovery performs a Gunship Rescue of a key mining colony or initiates a Teleport Spam in order to harass the Klingon flagship and get a 3D image of it while cloaked.
  • For that matter, the Ship of the Dead (AKA the Sarcophagus), a unique Klingon ship with its hull lined with coffins of fallen warriors and the first ever Klingon cloaking device. It belongs to a rogue Klingon house, before being appropriated by General Kol as his flagship and then destroyed by the Discovery.
  • The ISS Charon, Emperor Philippa Georgiou's flagship. A cool-looking palace with a giant ring in the middle, with an artificial sun at the center (actually a spore reactor). She also has plenty of firepower, given the can of whoopass she opens on a planet with a rebel base.
  • Season 2 has Chancellor L'Rell introduce the iconic D7 battlecruiser◊ to the Klingon Houses. It's the first Klingon warship in the series not to be associated with a particular House and only bear the crest of the Empire, hence the less ornate design.
  • We also see a Section 31 stealth ship◊ with variable nacelle configuration. It may not have a cloaking device, but it's stealthy enough to avoid detection and allow operatives to get close to Qo'noS.
  • From the premiere, the USS Shenzhou◊ was an instant Ensemble Dark Horse, with a nifty Reliant-style design and unusual underslung bridge.
  • Season 2 prominently features a beautifully reimagined USS Enterprise.

• This was subverted in That '70s Show. The camera moves underneath a chassis to display it as a huge behemoth flying in space, only to reveal that it's a Vista Cruiser with Eric and Donna sitting in it. Incidentally, it could be considered a Cool Car.
• Needless to say for a Gerry Anderson show, UFO (1970) abounds with these. SST's, tilt-fan aircraft decades before the Osprey crashed, jet-powered seaplanes, submarine-launched jet fighters, Lunar Modules piggyback-launched from VTOL carrier aircraft, bug-like Moon Mobiles that travel with an eerie wooo sound,^note Any time you hear an eerie sound in a Gerry Anderson series, it's produced by composer Barry Gray on his 'Ondes Martenot' synthesizer Interceptors with a Big Fucking Nuke in the nose. What more could a teenage fanboy ask for?

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