Hello all, Ric here covering a more recent addition to the Star Trek canon once more,
a new type of starship added from the expanded content of Star Trek Online into the prime
timeline, the Gagarin Class battlecruiser.
The Gagarin class has a bit of an interesting design lineage behind it in universe in the
games that perhaps could be retroactively applied to its origin in the prime timeline.
In real life, the ship was designed by Hector Ortiz with the 3D model created by Donny Versiga
as a recreation and 25th century version of the Shepard class for the Star Trek Online
game.
In season two of Star Trek Picard, several designs from the video game were translated
over to the show in an effort to add diversity to the fleet and the USS Gagarin and USS Christopher
were the first two ships of this class added alongside vessels of the Ross, Sutherland
and Reliant designs.
Honestly it's a move that makes sense, they are already Trek vessels, beta canon or not,
have a lot of design heritage to them and pave the way for the look of later Starfleet
ships with an identifiable style.
It’s amazing it was not done earlier, instead of reusing discovery-era ships- but more on
that later before I go off on a tangent.
In universe, we do not have an exact origin for the class, beyond the statements that
it was inspired by the Shepard class, but there is a far more in depth origin already
established for the class we can look at.
The following lore is taken from Star Trek Online as an origin for the class in universe,
but would make for an accurate origin in the prime timeline too if the series wanted to
fold that into canon too, by bringing back its introduction by about 15 years to be in
line with the show’s timeline.
Additionally, such a story could be used to justify a discrepancy in Star Trek that was
created in Picard series 1, more on that later.
Starfleet Maintenance and Ship Yard 39 in the Tellar Sector was a facility orbiting
the star TL-9139.
This shipyard was one of the largest producers of starfleet vessels in 2259 where it was
responsible for the new construction of numerous ships of that era and large scale maintenance
of such craft.
This included the likes of the Magee, Cardenas, Engle, Hoover and Nimitz.
These are the designs witnessed in Star Trek discovery that for the most part were not
the hero ships that made up the bulk of the forces of during the Klingon War.
After the war had come to a close, the shipyard was working on over 100 frames for new ships
when disaster struck.
Some unexpected activity resulted in the star belching out Baryonic Radiation across the
system over 0.5 lightyears.
There was no loss of life, fortunately, with ample time to evacuate, but the shipyards
were effectively irradiated and all the projects were abandoned.
With the proximity to deep Federation space and the irradiated nature of the system, looters
and salvagers were not an issue.
Additionally, the evacuation led to the radical overhaul of ship design as the older Eaves/Beyer
drive configurations, present on ships of this era were also abandoned and Starfleet
took the opportunity to focus on the newer Archer-Cochrane drives that had seen development
since their initial introduction.
Basically, this was used to explain why the very square shaped nacelles that were the
preference of Discovery era ships and scale of the vessels stopped appearing in future
designs.
After 150 years, the baryonic radiation had declined to tolerable levels, and salvage
could finally be conducted safely.
Starfleet was in dire need of ships and diverted resources to Yard 39 to extract these hulks,
all in various stages of completion and covering a wide array of early to mid 23rd century
designs.
Many of these ships only really needed completing before they were functional again, which led
to the reappearance of these old vessels amid Starfleet’s armada once more.
In the canon of the game, this was in the wake of the Iconian War of 2410, but the shows
could easily adapt this to ships needed for the Romulan Evacuation, or the post Utopia
Panitia attack.
In fact this would be ideal to explain away the presence of things like discovery-era
models seen in Star Trek Picard as reused assets.
Not defending it, just saying there is a retroactive “out” here if they wanted it, once more
supplied by beta-canon content.
Anyway… While some ships were easily completable,
others required much more work to finish, being little more than established space frames
with a bit of hull plating and no internal systems.
For these vessels, a makeover was given, leading to several designs that were literally built
on the bones of their older ships, but overhauled with 24th century technology.
One such vessel to come out of this process was the Gagarin Class, built atop the foundations
of the Shepard class.
This task was overseen by the Advanced Ship Design Bureau and the overhauls of the older
frame managed at the San Fransisco Fleet Yards, and later other facilities.
The Gagarin class had one unique feature however, one born from its design flaws inherited from
the Shepard class.
It was a hungry vessel, with most of its systems demanding high energy requirements.The Gagarin’s
unique eps grid, its power flow, led to spikes and fall-offs but these were eventually tied
in so that it could utilise this temperamental system to its advantage to bolster other systems
where needed.
This means it generally had a surplus of power that could be readily diverted to experimental
slots, allowing for an array of unique tech to be placed into it.
The first of its class was the USS Gagarin NCC-97930 and it’s not known when the vessel
was launched, but it was active in 2401 alongside the USS Christopher NCC-97936, suggesting
at least 6 vessel of this class by that year, either out there or in development.
The Gagarin class is 492 metres long, although most of that is from its nacelles and a width
of 258 metres, while it covered a conservative 11 decks, giving it a very narrow profile.
Its crew numbers 550 and its warp speed maintains a cruising velocity of 9.9 and its highest
factor is beyond this, although not defined on screen.
In the games it is equipped with a Quantum Slipstream drive too, which allows it to max
out at speeds equivalent to the old warp scale of warp 36.
It’s not clear what factor of the TNG scale this compares to.
It’s warp core was another form the Yoyodyne line, the 47A Matter/Antimatter Reaction Core
Chamber.
It had 12 Phaser arrays, likely of the mark twelve line, and two heavy phase cannons,
akin to those found on the Defiant class, while also housing two smaller phaser cannons
and four torpedo launchers.
As this loadout suggests, the Gagarin class was developed with combat in mind, sharing
many design traits with the Defiant class, despite its much grander scale and differing
look.
It had a wide array of forwards facing weaponry akin to the defiant and shared the narrow
profile, reducing its target area substantially.
This makes its role in the fleet quite clear, at the time of its launch, we have the contemporary
dedicated science ships like the Sagan, the Sovereign is a common sight for all round
missions, and the Odyssey is entering service as the new jack-of-all/master-of-all trades.
So this, alongside the Inquiry class, is a fast and powerful ship, built for defensive
duties.
I like to think of it as a more powerful version of an Akira class, undertaking patrol missions
and entering territory where piracy was a threat and so on.
I look forward to seeing this featured more in the canon of Star Trek and as one of the
newer favourites from the game, I could not have been happier to see it appear.
Well, one other ship exceeded that happiness for me, but that’s only to be expected from
an Enterprise.
Thanks for watching my breakdown of the Star Trek Gagarin class battlecruiser, as a note
after writing scripts on this, I went and watched a Spacedock video on the subject and
it seems they concur with the idea that simply sliding the Yard 39 story into the 2380 or
90s would address a lot of the Trek design style of the 25th century in Picard.
So..
do that CBS, it fits.
Thanks again for watching and I’ll see you later for another trek lore video.
I’ve been Ric, and goodbye!