After 53 years of isolation behind the neutral zone, the Romulans would return with a class of ship that could rival the Galaxy Class of starfleet in terms of power,
size and most notably presence.
The D’Deridex class Romulan Warbird was a mainstay of the Romulan Star Empire,
remaining in service for a long time, and demonstrating that the Romulan’s were one of the big galactic powers of the 24th century.
They were used not only by the main navy of the Romulan Star Empire, but its secret police force with the Tal Shiar
But what made this ship such a powerhouse for the romulan empire?
Did it actually use Dilithium to power its warp drives? We’ll talk about this and more in our breakdown of one of it not thee most terrifying ships of the Romulan Star Empire, The D’Deridex (Dee-Derri-Dex) Class Warbird!
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Welcome Lords, Ladies and Sovereigns, to Trek Central! I’m your host, Captain Jack, and let’s get into it!
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In the late 2260s the Romulan Star Empire used Klingon-designed D7 battle cruisers.
They acquired a handful of these ships, and their designs when the two powers formed an alliance against the Federation,
but they didn’t take long to incorporate the Klingon advance technology into their own vessels, including the Warbird!
You can actually see how the D7 would develop into the D’Deridex design, with the upper wing, nacelles and bridge section bearing some resemblance to the D7.
The Imperial Romulan Warbird, is formally known as a D’deridex-class or B-type warbird,
a heavy cruiser and the largest and most powerful mainstay of the Romulan military and the backbone of the fleet operating in the second half of the 24th century.
Towering at least 45 decks and running a colossal 1,353 metres long for our rebellion friends, or 4438.9 feet to the Imperials,
that is twice the length of Starfleets Galaxy Class Starship. And it could accommodate 1,500 plus officers, crew and troops.
Like most Romulan vessels it shares a birdlike appearance with a cowled head and nacelles on either end of the outstretched wings.
Unlike other ships of the fleet, the upper and lower hull is separated by open space, this is also in-keeping with the “line-of-sight” rule for the nacelles to generate a warp field.
The command area, like any other, is located at the front of a massive “head” section, which carries the Romulan crest, consisting of a stylized bird of prey clutching two planets, the twin homeworlds of Romulus and Remus, one in each claw.
Quite a nippy top speed of warp 9.6, though it could not maintain for long periods as well as the Starfleet counterparts without causing irreparable damage to the ship.
However it can maintain a respectable cruising speed of warp 9.
Being one the of the more cleverer factions of the Trek-verse, Romulans opted not to use matter/antimatter powered engines, instead going their own way by utilising a quantum singularity for their power source.
Though the way energy was generated was different than the antimatter-matter reactors of other factions, both systems would have an input of matter streams and an output of superheated plasma to various systems.
The quantum singularity was in essence a miniature blackhole, which was merely a few millimetres across, but produced enough power to warp space.
Quantum singularities have the potential to distort space-time, causing time to behave strangely, making it run backwards, different speeds, send someone through time, you know, your everyday Quantum-type stuff.
The singularity would be fed deuterium which would then be compressed by the quantum singularity into a dense stream of energy.
This would be focused through dilithium chambers in order to regulate this energy output into the warp nacelles or power systems of the ship.
Romulan ships therefore would use Dilithium in their ships, which is why the planet of Remus had massive Dilithium mines to provide this energy-regulating substance to the imperial navy.
Once the singularity had been created, there was no shutting it down without causing an implosion powerful enough to destroy the entire ship.
In an emergency the singularity could be ejected, either by automation or manually. The ship would then be reliant on twin impulse engines for sub-light travel.
The core itself is housed in a containment chamber off main engineering.
Display screens and readouts mounted on a column in the centre of the room allow for the engineers to keep an eye on its status.
Also fitted with a powerful tractor beam, allowing it to lock-on to and immobilise enemy vessels.
The main emitter is located on the underside of the “neck” section, forward of the ship's cargo bays.
Their installed transporters systems operate on a similar subspace frequency to Starfleet.
What the ship lacked in top speed, it made up for in Fire Power!
Boastingly armed with 6 ship-mounted disruptor cannons and two photon torpedo launchers, making it more heavily armed than a Galaxy-class or a Klingon Bird of Prey.
The disruptors are located in the head section, near the navigational deflector and on the spars that connect the front and back of the ship.
A cloaking device gives the warbird an added advantage of rendering it invisible to enemy ships’ sensors.
Using the cloak, whilst made for stealthiness, it does have some minor drawbacks. Shields can’t be up whilst under cloak, leaving it vulnerable to attack if detected.
No firing weapons of any kind, nor running at high-warp, making it only completely effective at speeds below warp 6.
Enemy ships’ sensors were able to detect the Warbirds under certain circumstances, such as if the ship went to warp while in a radiation field, or a nullifier core became misaligned
which could cause the warp engines to create magnetic disturbances whenever in motion, therefore the engineering personnel had to closely monitor all electromagnetic emissions to ensure nothing gave them away.
This would also mean that the ship could not use communications to contact other vessel, as the communications signal would give them away.
They have been using cloaking devices since the 22nd century, but needed constant upgrades to counter improvements to sensors, homing torpedoes, ionic pulses, or by a sweep or net of tachyons.
Cloaking technology was also an arms race between the cloak and the detection systems.
A shuttle bay is located at the aft, between the impulse engines. It is sizable enough to accommodate ships equivalent to a Danube-class (Dan-uub) Runabout. The Romulans had a couple of different smaller craft which presumably the D’Deridex could accommodate.
There was the Romulan Scout Ship, which was a smaller more squashed version of the D’Deridex design which could accommodate only 1 to 2 crew members.
Starfleet intelligence had designated this to be a Talon-Class shuttle, though whether this was accurate is unknown.
Another shuttle which emerged later in the 24th century, the Theta Class shuttle, which still shared the same Romulan Ship designs present in the D’deridex,
though was much more akin to a D’Deridex version of a Runabout shuttle.
This shuttle was heavily armed for a shuttle, equipped with a cloaking device and was roughly the size of a runabout.
The crew quarters, located on C deck are sparsely furnished with simple chairs and tables, with bunks incorporated into the walls.
In 2364, when they made a resurgence after a 53 year absence following the fallout of the Tomed (toe-med) Incident in 2311,
a staged terrorist attack when the Ivarix-class warbird Tomed collided with a Federation base at high-warp, causing their quantum singularity confinement to fail, destroying 13 outposts.
The Klingons sided with the Federation against the Romulans, leading to the Treaty of Algeron (Al-Ger-ron), forcing them to stand down from interstellar affairs, effectively removing them as a galactic power.
Really what that achieved was giving them breathing room to develop their D’deridex warbirds.
Gul Dukat- I mean totally and legitimately full Green-blooded Romulan Tebok, drops in on the Enterprise-D, making it well known that they have returned and they have the muscle to stand up to the Federation flagship.
Though technically this 53 year lack of contact between the Romulans and the Federation was not really true.
In 2344 the Battle of Narendra (Nar-end-dra) III happened, where 4 Romulan warbirds would destroy the Klingon Colony on the planet.
The USS Enterprise C would answer the Klingons distress call, but would be destroyed by the Romulans.
The Enterprise C being destroyed by the Romulans was not a bad thing, as this showed the Klingons that Humans and the Federation had honour.
its lasting Legacy led to a new era of peace between the Federation and Klingon Empire.
However, the battle initially caused a temporal rift to form, sending the C into the future, thus appearing to the Klingons that they’d dishonourably retreated,
so instead kicked off a tiring 2 decade long war. But that is a whole other story.
The D’Deridex Class warbird would be active during many encounters between the Federation and the Romulan Star Empire in the late 24th century.
By the time of the Dominion War, the D’Deridex was the primary starship employed by the Romulans against the Dominion.
The first use of Romulan ships against the Dominion was in fact before the war, and was a group of Tal Shiar controlled D’Deridex starships.
The Tal Shiar had made an alliance with another secret police group, not not section 31, but the Obsidian Order.
These two fleets of secret police ships would try and destroy the founders homeworld, the leaders of the Dominion.
This plan would fail, as the leader of the Tal Shiar fleet, Colonel Lovok, was replaced with a Changeling imposter.
This meant the Dominion knew all about the plan, and would ambush these two fleets, hoping to wipe out both the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar before they would start their war in the Alpha Quadrant.
Though at first the Romulan Star Empire had no interest in joining the conflict, even having a pact of non-aggression with the Dominion,
they would go on to fight side-by-side with the Federation-Klingon alliance in various engagements towards the end, including The Second Battle of Chin’toka as well as several engagements following their welcomed sight into the conflict.
They were also part of the battlegroup headed for the war ending assault on Cardassia.
Though it bares pointing out that the reason why the Romulans would side with the Federation-Klingon Alliance was due to the assassination of a Romulan Senator called Vreenak (Vree-Nack),
who they believed was assassinated by the Dominion for finding plans of a Dominion invasion of Romulus, when in fact this was fake, and he was assassinated by Elim Garak, working for interests the Federation. As Vreenak would say:
Notable commanders of these giant flying ships of bad-assery were:
Commander Tebok, mentioned earlier, confidently staring down Captain Picard and his flagship.
Colonel Lovok, and Enabran (En-ab-ran) Tain, commanders of the Flagship Warbird,
operating as part of the Tal Shiar/Obsidian Orde
Commander Tomalak, violated the Neutral Zone to rescue a friendly crash-landed scout ship from Galorndon Core, discovered by the Enterprise-D. They stayed in orbit until the rescue was complete.
Finally the one, the only Sela!
After stepping out of the shadows, because the corner was really dark and she couldn’t help herself, we were all eager to know where her story would lead… and we still are.
She had been involved with the Duras sisters Lursa and B’Etor During the Klingon civil war.
A tachyon net at the edge of the Romulan-Klingon border revealed her ship and quickly ended the war.
The D’Deridex Class would seemingly be replaced near the latter part of the 24th century for the Valdore Class of starships, though presumably there would be D’Deridex’s still in employ in other parts of the Romulan Star Empire.
We would see a D’Deridex class starship in 2384, protecting the Romulans Borders from incursion by other powers, even the Federation who would be currently assisting them with the relocation effort.
After the Coup by Shinzon of Remus in 2379, the Romulan Star Empire would find itself changed immensely.
The Romulan System Star would start showing unnaturally signs of going Supernova in the near future, and not being able to move many of its ships from its borders or patrolling duties due to their deep seated cultural paranoia,
, would have to rely on the United Federation of Planets to assist in the relocation of many populations and planets that would be affected by the Supernova.
Unfortunately this plan would be thwarted, and though many people would be relocated, it would not be enough.
As part of a plot by a secret cabal within the Tal Shiar known as The Zhat Vash, The Federation would suffer an attack by Rogue Synthetics on their main shipyards of Utopia Planitia.
The Romulan Star Empire would perish in ashes in the oncoming supernova, but like a phoenix rising from said ashes, the Romulan Free States would appear.
These free states would still occupy a large amount of territory the Romulan Star Empire had, and would go on to replace their D’Deridex and Valdore-Type starships with newer models.
The Tal Shiar would also survive this change in governments, and use a lot of these new ship types.
From the imposing Dhailkhina (Dial-key-na) Command warbirds, usually seen at the head of fleets and armed for orbital bombardments with its Blaster Bays, to the Dia Vectu-Class (Dee-ah Vec-too) Bomber Warbirds which were effective at in atmosphere bombing runs on planets, to their improved shuttles with the Snakeheads,
Warp capable scout ships that could not only use cloaking devices to cloak itself, but to project false images as well. It was heavily armed and made a powerful interceptor for a single manned craft.
Due to the fracturing of the Romulan Star Empire and the rising of warlords in that area of space,
there were reports of warlords with old Romulan ships, from Kar Kantar in the Qiris sector with antique bird of preys to Xenius (Zen-ee-us), a wannabe praetor who had a D’Deridex warbird and tried to retake the planet of Jenjor VI.
Whether we might see other Romulan Warlords with Decommissioned D’Deridex starships in a possible Star Trek: legacy… we shall have to wait a see!
Okay, so, where did this famous Romulan design even come from?
Andrew Probert had the pleasure of designing this one. Originally the original 1987 concept for the warbird he wanted everything aft of the “head” section to be vertical, so it was taller than it was wide, instead of the horizontal result that they went with.
When working on the ship Probert realized that their rules hadn’t stipulated that the ship should be wider than taller and have the warp engines above and below the void between.
Though that design would be rejected in favour of what we know, 20 years after that concept, it was fully realized for the Ships of the Line calendar.
There were also some concepts for the D’Deridex to not have the under wing section of the ship,
something which would later be adapted into some Romulan Ship Designs for Star Trek Online.
In order to make the Romulan ship more menacing, the D’deridex in its “vertical” configuration dwarfed the pint-sized Enterprise-D,
and by extension the C too, however the design was a little too radical for the producers, though they liked a lot of what they saw, it was reworked to have relatively similar proportions.
He had certain rules for starship design that he had discussed with Gene Roddenberry, one of which was the warp engines to be operated in pairs and to see one another.
Though it was never formally established on the show, and would be broken in the future.
One of the ideas was for the engines to be arranged in a ring, much like an idea Matt Jefferies had for the original Enterprise, no bloody A, B, C, D, E, F, G or J!
According to the Star Trek: Star Charts and Stellar Cartography: Star Trek Reference Library, there was a star system in the Beta Quadrant named D’deridex, which could’ve been the origin for the ships’ name.
A master systems display-like cross section of Lovok’s ship, created by Doug Drexler, only depicted approximately 26 decks.
Though we could say by later episodes of The Next Generation and even by the time of Star Trek: Nemesis.
or just they made some changes.
Hidden features that never made it to screen included the V shaped part at the front of the nose was intended to be the navigational deflector,
an essential element of any faster-than-light ship that sweeps the path in front of it.
The indentations on the bottom of the ring were twin cargo bays.
The “hump” on top was main engineering. The scales running down the back were escape pods and the notch between the impulse engines was the shuttle bay.
The warbird was canonically named “B-Type” in Next Gen episode The Defector, and although in “Tin Man” referred to as D’daridex,
the spelling changed to D’deridex after the episode aired and the spelling was only recently solidified in canon in the Star Trek: Prodigy episode “Crossroads”.
From its initial appearance, it went on to be one of the most used ship designs in Trek, making a total number of 37 appearances from 17 in The Next Generation,
10 in Deep Space Nine, 3 in Voyager, one each in Enterprise and Picard, 3 in Lower Decks and twice in Prodigy.
The latest, chronologically at least, that we’ve seens of the Romulan was in Picard season 1, with the exception of Elnor in season 2 *cough* (Who may have died on the Excelsior in Season 3) *Cough*
They are still a power in the galaxy, so there’s no reason why they shouldn’t reappear in the highly anticipated, but yet to be announced: Star Trek Legacy.
Nothing would give us more pleasure than to see the Enterprise-G kick the treacherous Tal Shiar ass of General Oh,
whose actual name is Nedar, and hopefully give us an updated visual of the legendary D’deridex-class Warbird!
What are your thoughts on how we could see it again? Let us know your theories, we’d love to hear them.
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For now, I’ve been Captain Jack, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!