In the early days of Starfleet, before the United Federation of Planets,
Humans had very few starships to defend themselves and explore with.
While the NX-01 Enterprise would be the lead ship of the tiny fleet, Starfleet would make use of other smaller craft to defend Earth,
while Captain Archer and his crew were off finding the next best thing.
Introducing the Intrepid Type Light Cruiser! Seen in Star Trek: Enterprise defending Earth from enemy ships,
and probably exploring stuff too.
Welcome to Trek Central! I’m your host, Captain Jack, and let’s get into it!
Before we warp into this video, If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more,
then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central!
You can also follow us on social media for daily updates on the Star Trek Universe!
As always, please let us know your thoughts in the comment section below,
we want to know what ship to cover next, so get commenting with suggestions!
Okay, engage!
This light cruiser was in service in the early 22nd century,
before the NX class was launched. The ship comes in at a short, but reasonable 165 metres.
Comprised of 7 decks, lettered A to G and staffed with 46 crewmembers with a maximum warp speed of 3.5.
It is compact but agile, equipped with phase cannons and 2 torpedo launchers and the standard hull polarisation defence system.
Its primary mission was to act as part of the space defence fleet for Earth and its off-world colonies in the Sol System,
Alpha Centauri, Deneva, Terra Nova and Vega.
A forerunner to the NX class, and although less advanced, the primary hull features a half saucer,
but its overall shape and configuration were very similar to the design that Starfleet used for the NX, and starship descendants well into the 24th century.
A familiar feature and placement; is its navigational deflector, which is located in the “cutout” section on the leading edge of the saucer, along with the sensor pallets.
A symmetrical warp field governor which regulates the warp field is located atop the short engineering section,
midway between the nacelle support pylons, which positioned the nacelles themselves further forward, overlapping a significant portion of the primary hull.
They are much shorter than the later NX, and feature stabilising fins on the outer aft edge.
The impulse engines are located on the outer edge of the aft of the saucer.
In Beta Canon, after the Earth Romulan war, as part of the United Earth Space Probe Agency,
Chief of Staff Admiral Jonathan Archer and Alpha Centauri Chief of Staff Alexis Osman’s fleet modernization program
introduced a new wave of Intrepid that were put into production and the existing ships underwent refit.
New engine cores allowed them to reach a top speed of warp 5.6 for a limited time, with a cruising speed of warp 4,
, upgraded to carry deflector shields and equipped with a tractorbeam -
which they definitely DID NOT leave spacedock without… It was installed on a Tuesday.
The United Earth Government existed as early as the 2130s.
Its primary space defence and exploration organisation was led by the United Earth Space Probe Agency, the UESPA,
which had integrated itself with Starfleet Command as the leading United Earth space exploration service.
By the mid 22nd century Starfleet was operating several types of warp capable vessels, one of these was the Intrepid type ship,
others included the Warp Delta, which was an even older design.
If you want a closer look at some of these pre-federation starships, we recently did a video looking at just that, so take a look!
The Intrepid type, as part of the defence fleet, were also accompanied by the Warp Delta ships.
When Enterprise was ambushed by a Klingon Bird of Prey on her return to Earth, “Delta Wing”
including the UES Intrepid with a couple of Delta’s was able to cause enough damage to the Bird Of Prey forcing it to retreat.
The vessel type was intended to be a back-up in case the Warp 5 program went belly up and the NX-class components needed to be repurposed.
But after the success of Enterprise, much to the Vulcan’s negative smug-gittiness attitude,
Starfleet saw no reason to let their work go to waste.
So the Intrepid’s lead ship of the “class” the Intrepid was commissioned and launched in 2153, under the command of Captain Carlos Ramirez.
In an alternate future, the Intrepid was part of the very few surviving Earth ships of the Xindi-Earth war.
Along with Enterprise, she escorted a small convoy of the remaining 600 humans to a ramshackle colony on Ceti Alpha V.
The Intrepid and the remaining Starfleet ships were stationed in orbit, but would make routine patrols of the systems in order to detect any potential threats.
The colony came under attack from the Xindi. At first they were able to disable 2 enemy ships,
but more Xindi ships arrived and they didn’t stand a chance.
Already battered and bruised, the Intrepid lost her port nacelle during the fight, and was forced to retreat,
though the ship herself survived.
Newly promoted Captain Malcolm Reed, though still serving as armoury officer on Enterprise,
awaiting an appropriate time to handover, was intended to become the new CO of the Intrepid in this alternate timeline.
There is some conflicting information on whether or not the Intrepid preceded or succeeded the launch of Enterprise, given that the lead of the class was that of the same name.
However, it would stand to reason that the type of ship was in service before the launch,
but received significant upgrades following the data and technology collected by the NX-01 and the improved version was put into service as a “class” instead of “type”
with the first being named after the class itself, and where the idea for that stemmed from in universe.
Just speculation, given that the NX-01 wasn’t Enterprise-class as initially intended by designer Doug Drexler.
Now really that is all we know about this ship class in Alpha canon, but there are some Beta sources that we can use to flesh out this ship and its history and legacy.
In 2155 during the Earth-Romulan war, it was decided to halt production of the Intrepid and NX starships,
by Prime Minister Nathan Samuels, in favour of the Daedalus vessels,
as it was much more efficient to build Daedalus-class than either of the others.
It would be 3 Daedalus, to 2 Intrepid or to 1 NX.
And as said previously, the Intrepid class was upgraded as part of the fleet modernization program after the Earth-Romulan War.
One famous ship of the newly refitted Intrepid class was the USS Pioneer NCC-63, which was under the command of Captain Malcom Reed.
And even later under the command of Captain Caroline Paris, yes from that Paris family, who go all the way to Tom Paris of the USS Voyager in the 24th century.
This wouldn’t be the only legacy starfleet family serving on the intrepid, with the ships historian being Samuel Abraham Kirk,
father to Tiberius Kirk and Great Grandfather to the famous James Tiberius Kirk.
The USS Pioneer under the command of Captain Malcom Reed, whose first officer was Commander Travis Mayweather,
would go on numerous missions; working with Tobin Dax to improve warp engine efficiency while he was chief engineer of the ship,
helping get the Rigellians into the Federation and even dealing with the Ware, the name of the automated space docks seen in Enterprise, that worked off of living beings.
Creepy!
After this Ware threat was dealt with command of the intrepid was transferred to Caroline Paris, as Malcom Reed would be promoted to Adjutant to Admiral Archer.
Interestingly enough, this would not be the only Intrepid Class starship in Starfleet,
with the Intrepid Class being given to the name of the class which the USS Voyager belonged to.
Why this decision was made is unknown, but perhaps could be related to the Intrepid class having Variable geometry warp nacelles
and the original Intrepid Class being known for its advancements in Warp theory with Dr Tobin Dax. Just a theory but it does make some sense.
And that's a Star Trek theory!
The Intrepid-type originally came about from drawings done by John Eaves based on the NX-Class model,
and the model was essentially a kitbash when its CGI Model was created. It was built by Pierre Drolet and Rob Bonchune.
Some of the concepts John Eaves came up with would be very similar to what we got as the end result,
but some of the other Starfleet Vessels wouldn’t be seen, with saucer cutouts, and Akira style ship layouts.
As with most ships designs, several iterations are drawn up. Some of these concepts are on screen now, with the one on the left looking similar to the USS Franklin from Star Trek Beyond
and the saucer cutout is a feature unique to the Crossfield-class,
so someone had that one in mind at some point. Anyway, the whole point of Enterprise was that the NX-01
was Starfleet’s first true starship, therefore the art department simply never designed any other 22nd century vessels.
Whenever they have a Starfleet armada they want ships that look good in battle but that weren’t easily mistaken for Enterprise.
Meaning they’ve kind of got the same elements but when it comes to how the saucer looks and the composition of the nacelles and body they’ve all got a very distinct shape.
Even though they were background ships, they had to stand out.
A fun little way to tie everything up. Rob Bonchune, one of the hands who worked on the Intrepid,
also worked on the Voyager series, the ship itself being an Intrepid, which in turn was kitbashed into the Yaeger-class for DS9,
which he also worked on. In a way he had a hand in the various iterations of the Intrepid thus far.
And is technically the father of the design, cool right?
But what do you think of the Intrepid Class Light Cruiser, is there any specific ship you want us to cover? Let us know and it may appear in an upcoming video!
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central!
You can also follow us on social media, or join our Community Discord Server!
For now, I’ve been Captain Jack, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!