After Star Trek Online had spent a good few years presenting its own vision for Star Trek‘s future while the franchise was away from TV, Trek paid it forward over the course of Picard‘s second and third seasons as it brought several of the MMO’s original ship designs into TV canon for the first time. Now, a few years later, Trek on TV is doing it again—with a far-future, Klingon twist.
“Vox in Excelso,” the fourth episode of Starfleet Academy, caught us up on what has been going on with the Klingons by the time of its 32nd-century setting, and the answer, for the most part, was nothing good. With the Empire fallen and the Klingon diaspora on the verge of total extinction, the episode ultimately found a path forward where Starfleet played to the Klingons’ sense of martial honor by mock-battling for a new homeworld for the Klingon remnant to call home.
But a new home wasn’t the only thing the Klingons gained: in their ragtag fleet of surviving ships, three more Star Trek Online ships made their on-screen debut. The Ketha Recon Raptor, M’Chla Bird of Prey Refit, and the QeHpu’ Advanced Light Battlecruiser all mark the first Klingon-aligned vessels from the MMORPG to make their way into Star Trek‘s canon, alongside the eight designs canonized in Picard—including the cruiser made for STO‘s own part of the Enterprise legacy, the Odyssey-class Enterprise-F.
“We are grateful to our partners at Paramount for allowing us to make a marked contribution on the franchise we love so much, and, as always, we are grateful to the amazing community of players who have made Star Trek Online‘s ships a mainstay in the zeitgeist of the fandom over the years,” STO Executive Producer and Art Director Thomas Marrone said in a statement.
What’s especially fun about Starfleet Academy debuting these ships is that it now spreads STO‘s impact on Trek to a whole new period of time, well beyond its typical purview. Set in its own vision of early 25th-century Trek continuity, it made sense for its Starfleet designs to make the warp jump over to TV for Picard, as that show established its own take on that time frame for TV.
Although Federation ship technology and aesthetics had rapidly evolved by the time of Starfleet Academy, it’s nice to see that some classically Klingon ships could still be around to make it into 32nd-century canon, even as the Klingons endured their brush with extinction. A fittingly honorable tribute to both STO and one of Trek‘s most enduring alien species alike.
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