Ship class marauder11/1/2022 ![]() ![]() One of the plans was to have several Ferengi ships to enhance the Feregni figures, one was the "Ferengi Fighter" and the other was a six-inch die-cast "Ferengi Battleship" that would have been the counterpair to the Enterprise-D die-cast toy. One of the promised D'Kora toys by Galoob in their TNG toyline of 1987/1988.which FWS will cover soon. ![]() The ship would pop up in Trek video games, models, and in the card game, it is a rare ship that speaks to a moment in TNG history. Over the lifespan of TNG, the D'Kora class was only seen a handful of times and was gone completely from DS9, but an CGI model D'Kora class was seen in one episode of Voyager. ![]() Sadly, this awesome alien armed transport vessel was the victim of the move from the original concept of the Ferengi species to what we saw more in DS9. This neck extending trick was only seen once in the show and it was hard to see in the actual episode. Some of the design by Andrew Probert of the class was based on a horseshoe crab. During those early days of the Ferengi being the new enemy to the Federation, the only canon Ferengi warship was developed, the D'Kora and it was listed as a "marauder" in the noncanonized 1988 FASA ST:TNG Officer's Manual, but also in canon material as well later on. This was directly opposite to the Federation, where money and the massing of material wealth does not exist. Wright took inspiration from then current 1980's in American society where greedy, money-making, and material possession were the national obsession. In the early days of TNG, the Ferengi were being installed as the big bad enemy of the 24th century due to the Klingons being in an alliance with the Federation and the race was developed by Roddenberry and Herbert J. The Ferengi D'Kora class Marauder from the Star Trek Universe With these tradition cemented into the popular culture, it has been carried on by characters like Star Lord and his Milano, the Guardians and their jumpships, and Captain Harlock and his Arcadia. It then exploded in the 1970's with anime and manga stories like Cobra and Crusher Joe, that were fueled by our favorite space pirate, Han Solo, and the Millennium Falcon. ![]() This trend can be seen hinted at with Zarkov's Rocket Ship in the early days of Flash Gordon. The Raiders, Gunboats, and Marauders types of spacecrafts are the hero ships of different types of stories that feature space pirates, space traders, bounty hunters, desperate people in desperate situations, lone wolves, and mercenaries. While many think that just the big & sexy warships like the Galacticas and the Yamatos, get all of the attention and love there is just as many stories that feature the smaller starships as the primary vehicle for the story. Throughout the realm of science fiction, many different kinds of starships have been cast into the role as the primary spacecraft of a story, like the Enterprise, Serenity, the Far Star, the Razor Crest. It requires in those situations where we must counter it, and these are the kinds of challenges that will be before us in the next decade if freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training.In this installment, in the nearly finished Ships of the Line series, we will be examining some smaller ship classes like gunboats, raiders, and marauders that wage space warfare like a guerrilla or assassin. It preys on economic unrest and ethnic conflicts. It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what has been strangely called "wars of liberation," to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom that they have finally achieved. When I thought about the mission of these little warships, I thought of the quote by President Kennedy: This is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin - war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat by infiltration, instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. Some of the most famous starships in sci-fi like the Millennium Falcon and Serenity are not some dreadnought or space battleship, but smaller ships devoted to other missions and roles. Much of the attention is garishly paid in both to the big sexy warships and carriers, and no worship is paid to the smaller warships…or so it would seem. For years, FWS has been diving deep in the starship classes commonly seen in science fiction and real-world water navies. ![]()
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