Star Trek fans rejoiced at the return of the well-executed episodic format in the recent success of the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and they continue to anticipate the reunion of the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast in the final season of Star Trek: Picard in 2023.
Over the years, diehards have hotly debated the merits of all the spaceships rendered through the franchise canon, from the original Enterprise NCC-1701 to Klingon birds of prey. While every series has showcased new adversaries for Starfleet vessels to contend with, some few of the technological space-faring wonders have been far more dangerous and deadly than others.
The Xindi Weapon (Star Trek: Enterprise)
In Star Trek: Enterprise's first season episode, 'The Expanse,' a Xindi probe weapon initiates a first salvo against the peoples of Earth. Though it self-destructs after firing one shot, that discharge tears a swath across the planet from Florida to Venezuela, killing seven million people, including Commander Trip Tucker's younger sister. It's not often in the annals of Star Trek fans see such a high body count save for Borg-invaded worlds as seen in The Next Generation.
Most of Enterprise's main story arc in its debut focuses on dealing with the Xindi and the Sphere Builder's imminent threat to Earth, and in an alternate timeline, as witnessed by Captain Archer, the genocidal Xindi probes successfully destroy Earth and most of humanity along with it.
The Scimitar (Star Trek: Nemesis)
The Scimitar is of the few bright spots in what's often hailed as the worst Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Nemesis. Tom Hardy's antagonist Shinzon captained a rather impressive Reman warbird with a truckload of firepower. According to Shinzon, it was built specifically in mind not only to destroy the Federation fleet but to overthrow the Romulan government and its forces entirely.
With warp 9.7 capability, photo torpedoes, pulse disruptor cannons, and a unique and entirely terrifying thalaron biogenic pulse weapon able to destroy all planet-side life within seconds, the Scimitar easily falls into one of the Enterpise crew's most deadly technological terrors and is only thwarted by ramming the Enterprise-E straight into its hull. It certainly does earn Picard's observation as being 'a predator.'
The Nomad MK-15C/Tan Ru (Star Trek: The Original Series)
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One of the first doomsday type technologies glimpsed in Star Trek canon, the Nomad was a 21st-century space probe with artificial intelligence that, during its voyage to find new life, ended up merging with alien probe Tan Ru and re-hardwires itself to believe all organic life was imperfect and ought to be destroyed, echoing future Borg ideology. Despite its diminutive size, the Nomad wiped out four billion Malurians, ranking it high among Trek genocides of note.
With energy bolts capable of warp 15 and impact power a hundred times that of The Original Series' standard photo torpedoes, it packed quite the little man punch. The only way Kirk was able to counter it was by convincing its AI that it, too, was imperfect.
U.S.S. Vengeance (Star Trek: Into Darkness)
While the JJ Abrams-directed film Star Trek: Into Darkness was met with mixed audience and critic reactions, there was much to like about it nonetheless, including Section 31's secret Dreadnought class ship, the U.S.S. Vengeance. Captained by Admiral Marcus (Robocop's Peter Weller) and designed by Kahn Noonien Singh himself (Benedict Cumberbatch), the all-black massive combat ship with no markings or designations boasted the groundbreaking ability to be able to fire its phaser banks while warping, thusly able to knock other ships out of warp as it does quite easily to Chris Pine's Enterprise.
Additionally, Marcus set its automation systems up so that it could be run by just one person, which allows Kahn to crash-land the Vengeance into San Francisco.
V'Ger (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
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Central to the entire plot of the very first Star Trek film, the titular ship in question was a Voyager 6 probe which was launched from Earth in the 20th century but returns 300 years later as an evolved hybrid A.I. entity traveling within an extremely massive and powerful energy cloud.
Having been incorporated with advanced intelligence and knowledge by alien species along its long journey, Alpha Quadrant forces prove little trouble for it, as shown in the movie by it easily dispatching three K'tinga class Klingon battle cruisers via plasma beams. Things looked pretty grim for the Enterprise crew as usual, and much like how they handled the Nomad, they only overcame V'Ger's encroachment by appealing to its evolved senses.
The Krenim Weapon Ship (Star Trek: Voyager)
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Considered by many Star Trek: Voyager fans to be one of the top-ranked stories of the series, the two-part episode 'Year of Hell' showcases a dismal twelve months of Delta Quadrant existence for the intrepid Voyager crew. Though the time displacement ship has shield-penetrating chronotonic torpedoes with temporal-flux shielding, the real reason the Krenim warship tops the body count list is because of its madman Captain Annorax, who wields a horrifying primary weapon.
It's a time displacement beam capable of erasing entire species from the time-space continuum as if they never existed at all. The Krenim's temporal warships top the list of fleets captained by delusional Trek despots simply for their repeated eradications and restorations of billions of beings across hundreds of worlds.
The Sarcophagus (Star Trek: Discovery)
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The 'Ship of the Dead' as it was known to the Klingon House of T'Kuvma (killer of Captain Phillipa Georgiou), was an impressive command vessel seen at the onset of the Klingon - Federation War as seen in the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. Many times larger than any Federation craft of that era, it had the most advanced stealth technology known to the quadrant at that time and wielded enough firepower to level the surface of an entire planet.
Discovery fans embraced the new Klingon ship's design as one of the cooler Discovery tweaks on canon, though the same couldn't be said for Disco's revisions of the Klingons themselves.
The Doomsday Machine (Star Trek: The Original Series)
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One thing the Star Trek franchise has no shortage of across its many iterations and separate series storylines is the array of world-ending technological horrors always facing the constantly hounded Federation, and The Original Series started it all with this planet-destroying weapon of unknown origin which appeared in the episode of the same name.
Though the crew never quite figures out exactly what it is or where its origins lay, Kirk theorized it was constructed as a bluff to deter one side of an undetermined galactic war, reflecting the Mutual Assured Destruction fears of the time between the U.S. and Russia. It's pretty much Star Trek's famous answer to the Death Star, albeit ten years before Episode 4 would make its debut.
Romulan D'deridex Class Warbird (Various Series)
First seen in the early seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, then again in Deep Space 9 and Voyager, the Romulan D'deridex Class warbird was rendered in an even more ominous CGI fashion than typical Klingon birds of prey. Often appearing in pairs, such as in the stellar episodes 'The Defector' and 'Tin Man,' and often outflanking and bullying the Enterprise D, Romulan warbirds were a feared entity throughout the Alpha Quadrant.
They were powered by a forced quantum singularity and bristled with disruptor arrays, photon torpedoes, phasers, and their signature cloaking device. Worf even used a holographic feint against Captain Picard featuring a Romulan Warbird in the infamous TNG episode "Peak Performance.'
The Borg Cube (Various Series)
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The alpha-omega big bad fear-inducing baddie ship across the franchise is the always spine-tingling Borg cube...or more than one. First seen in The Next Generation episode 'Q Who' when Q flicks the Enterprise to the Delta Quadrant to show Picard what awaits him out there, the Borg's most pervasive weapon at their disposal is their hive mind and reputation of assimilation. They offer an always overwhelming force to both Captain Picard and Captain Janeway many times.
At the infamous Battle of Wolf 359, one cube managed to destroy 40 Federation ships with barely a scratch. The ships themselves are nearly impossible to destroy with their regenerative abilities, and they also have transwarp capability, cutting and tractor beams, guided missile charges, and phaser arrays.
Source:gamerant.com