Starfleet ship design is an evolving affair with new innovations and developments being
tested on newer ships before being implemented on others. The varying technologies provided by all
the Federation’s member worlds are so numerous that not every vessel will feature every single
advancement, even those ships that serve as the pinnacle of a design era, such as the Excelsior or
Galaxy class only have a select few innovations that make for the balanced all rounder.
The intrepid class Starship was not designed with this approach in mind, but more to redefine the
method of exploration going forwards. While ships like the galaxy were made to undertake
long missions and be self sufficient for years, such ships were hardly feasible all the time.
For the most part in Starfleet’s history, this had been its approach to reaching those far away
and unexplored frontiers of its knowledge, but the Intrepid would try something else.
It was smart, observant and it was fast. In real life, the Intrepid design came about
in 1993 with the need for a hero ship for Star Trek Voyager. The brief was a new-generation
vessel that would be sleeker but smaller than the Enterprise D. A crew number was settled on,
around 200, which informed the scale of the ship. As time went on, the idea of a ship being stranded
away from Starfleet was always on the table, so Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda began planning
tech and designs that would allow for such a ship to persist, and the role for the intrepid class
began to form at the behest of the plot. A good reminder that lore is there to service designs,
not just to regulate concepts. Early designs of Voyager had it with the very identifiably fast and
streamlined shape, narrower and more pointed than contemporary vessels. There were several designs
with fins that almost gave the ship a shark-like silhouette and by the ending of the design stage,
recognisable features were identifiable such as the saucer and hull shape and deflector design.
The fins and more angular corners of the vessel were removed and smoothed out but several models
were constructed of various designs. The eventual studio model was made by Tony Meininger and
the intrepid class was finalised. This is pretty interesting to me,
as the concepts and ideas for the vessel were very much solidified before the designing began,
in much the same way as a ship would be constructed for real.
A requirement in the fleet is identified, then the technology for that is created
and then implemented into a design that’s refined. The tech at play within Voyager was
as much a concern as the look itself. In universe, I’m going to attempt to
refrain from studying Voyager too much in this video, as that ship was far from
a typical Intrepid class. Considering the number of modifications it had made to it
over the course of its journey which sounds like a video in its own right I should cover…
So, the intrepid was made to fulfil a need in Starfleet, a ship that could travel out to those
distant places and get back again without resorting to things like 5-year missions.
This led to a deep space explorer that would blitz across known space at breakneck speeds
without slowing down for months if needed so it could then begin exploring and mapping its
destination and reporting back to starfleet. For this reason, its focus was scientific survey and
prolonged fast warp travel. However, encountering the unknown is Starfleet’s job so other areas,
although not the focus, were not neglected, such as ambassadorial suites and recreational
facilities, although these were noticeably more compact than vessels like the Galaxy or later
Sovereign. So the intrepid was basically a leaner vessel than others of its era
and a rather major shift in Starfleet design philosophy, heralding many designs to come.
Its length was 344 metres, height was 64 metres and 132 wide and it had a mass of 700,000
tons spread over 15 decks. Its crew complement varied depending on the ship but it could
comfortably house up to 200 people. It had a single shuttle bay at the rear which housed 4
standard shuttlecraft and two workerbees, although it featured several offside hangars to store small
craft. It also had a craft called the Aeroshuttle which was specifically designed for this class of
ship and docked in the underside of the saucer section. This small vessel was basically to
operate as a scout and planetary survey ship, capable of atmospheric flight but was never
seen in use. A reason for this is speculated that risking its loss was too great to Voyager,
considering they could not just get a replacement made at a spacedock, so they relied more
on shuttles and the eventual Delta Flyer. Additionally, the Intrepid class was capable
of flight in atmosphere and planetary landings. The warp assembly is where the vessel shined, from
the core to the nacelles. The warp core itself was one of the most advanced produced in the
2370s and when it was launched, the intrepid was the undisputed fastest vessel in the Federation.
It was a Class 9 Tricyclic core rated to last for 3 years before major overhaul.
The nacelles themselves had a unique feature of Variable Warp Geometry, or hinges built
into the pylons that could allow for manipulation of the warp field for faster and longer flight at
high warp factors, making micro adjustments to optimise its flight and reduced subspace drag.
To give a comparison, the Defiant and Galaxy classes operated with a class 7 drive.
This allowed the Intrepid a final velocity of warp 9.6 over a prolonged time frame and
it theoretically could travel at warp 6.2 until it was out of fuel easily while hitting a maximum
of 9.975 which it could hold for 12 hours, far eclipsing every other ship of the fleet.
The intrepid also had some of the most advanced sensor systems included, which were visible from
the exposed arrays around the saucer section which could observe up to 300 million separate stars at
once and had exemplary range and clarity. Many of these advanced features were made
possible by the rapid computational speed of its computer core, which not only utilised standard
isolinear technology but also a new approach and arguably the bigger experimental tech on board,
its Bioneural circuitry. This circuitry was organic and suspended in a conductive
gel allowing for malleable processing and quicker response time than previous technology.
In terms of armaments, the Intrepid was pretty average for a Starfleet vessel,
considering combat was not its focus. However, with its rapid computational speeds,
it could effectively compile data and adapt its phaser and shielding at a rapid pace,
granting great on-the-fly adaptability. It had 14 type X phaser arrays and 4
torpedo launchers and an armoury of photon torpedoes and several Tricobalt torpedoes,
a very powerful and limited armament that was restricted by the Khitomer Accords.
Its deflector shielding came with a variety of specific scientific applications,
such as multiphasic shields for warding off hazardous phenomena spread over its 14 emitters.
The prototype for the class was the USS Intrepid NCC-74600 and the class was named for the prior
intrepid class of the 22nd century and work on it began in 2360. Construction took some
time and the first major obstacle in its design was the discovery of subspace damage caused by
Warp drive in 2370 when the Intrepid class was almost complete. The Intrepid had already been
undergoing test flights in 2369 with great results in manoeuvrability and speed at warp and impulse
so this limiting warp factor was a major issue. Apocrypha cites this as the reason for the
Variable Warp Geometry, that rather than redesign the class which was already on the cusp of
entering production, Starfleet engineers of Utopia Planitia merely adapted the design to compensate.
Future ships would overcome this with less harmful designs leading to the
lower profile vessels of the 2370s onwards. With these issues overcome, production on
new intrepid class vessels was given the go ahead with several more commissioned in 2371,
including the USS Voyager. These ships were constructed primarily at Utopia Planitia,
but flown to other docks in system for launch such as McKinley station. It looks like the Dominion
War lowered the rate of intrepid production as exploration unfortunately had to take a back seat.
Those that were present became ideal diplomatic ships, couriers and scouts as their fast speed
allowed them to outpace most dangers and their observational skills were among the highest in the
fleet. For this reason we see Intrepid class ships acting as host to meetings and carrying around
the admiralty, VIPs and the like, while evading direct combat. Additionally, they were carrying
lots of advanced tech, so Starfleet probably wanted to keep these away from the Dominion,
in case they were captured and reverse engineered, at least until these innovative designs were
implemented on more than just one class of ship. So the Intrepid class was hailed as the most
advanced ship produced in 2370 and while that title may have been stolen by the Sovereign
soon after, the intrepid remained able to sustain higher velocity warp for longer and was still the
premier vessel for deep space exploration when a specific destination was in mind,
while the Sovereign or Luna was better suited to cruise around an unknown location for a time,
gathering data. It’s one of my favourite ships and one of the first to address the Starfleet
design ethos going forwards with more streamlined designs with less neck and an overall narrower
profile. It also had better space utilisation striking a good balance between being compact
but still comfortable, sitting between the Defiant and Galaxy class in those extremes.
It’s also one of the only ships in Starfleet that can catch a cold.
Thanks for watching this breakdown of the Intrepid class, I’ve been Ric and I’ll
see you next time for another lore video so until then, thanks again and goodbye!