It’s well-known among Trek fans that the Ferengi were originally supposed to be the new bad guys for TNG, but the Borg, Romulans, and later Cardassians took over when no one took the Ferengi seriously. Sure they became comic relief for the most part, but they still contributed to the franchise in a way that suited their ridiculous appearance.
That aside, just what happened to their D’Kora Class marauders that showed up periodically in the first half of TNG? I don’t remember an episode where one showed up beyond Menage a Troi. It seems odd that they wouldn’t have one appear at least when the Grand Nagus showed up in DS9. Instead they used that pathetic shuttle model over and over again. What happened? Did they destroy the FX model for some reason? If that happened, why didn’t they make a new one in CG like they did every other Trek ship?
I thought I was the only one who remembered that the Ferengi were supposed to be the new bad guys.
I could never understand why they trotted out the Cardassians, either. What a waste of time; they already had lots of races they could have used. Where did the Gorn go? I loved those dudes.
Anyway, to answer your question, I think there’s two possible reasons:
Since the Ferengi were no longer a real threat, but rather a gang of clowns used for comic relief, it would have been out of theme to make them look threatening.
They just didn’t care enough to bother with continuity.
I mean, why do the Klingons always show up in Birds of Prey? They do have bigger ships, cruisers and such. One showed up in one episode, but for the most part they trotted out the BOP models when it was time to show Klingons. Even important Klingons, guys who ran the Empire, were flying around on them, which is sort if the interstellar equivalent of Admiral Chester Nimitz in 1944 making a submarine his flagship.
The Cardassians (and Bajorans and Maquis) were created specifically for Deep Space Nine even though they premiered on The Next Generation and each were much more interesting than any race or political entity that Star Trek or *TNG *had ever managed to create, save the Romulans. The Gorn were just hissing men in green Barney costumes, only not as scary.
As for the D’Kora Class cruiser’s disappearance, I’m betting it’s mostly RickJay’s 1 with a little bit of 2 thrown in. They kept showing the shuttles and hoping we’d just forget the Marauders.
The full list of episodes it was seen in are: The Last Outpost, The Battle, Peak Performance, The Price, Menage a Troi, Force of Nature, and Inside Man.
Yeah, they were pretty mental for the BoPs, weren’t they? Still, in DS9 they did unload on us with the Negh’Var pretty often, though not nearly as much. The Vor’Cha was neat too, but they pretty much abandoned that. And on the Federation side there was the Ambassador class, which was modern and nice to look at, but they abandoned virtually every other class in favor of endless Mirandas and Excelsiors.
I think it was kind of a way of making individual klingons seem badass… a macho thing. If you’re on a gigantic warship, sure it looks cool and can muster a lot of firepower, but you’ve got a lot of people to run one of those things, so the captain becomes more of an administrator than a warrior.
When you’re flying, or especially fighting, in a bird of prey though, the stakes are higher a true Klingon man just about feel his enemy dying.
Why not? IMHO, they turned out to be one of the best villian races in ST history. Sure, they’re pretty much the nazis of the star trek universe, but there’s somthing about them that’s so interesting, particulary compared to the klingons who seem little more then Huns who were civilized by the time of TNG. The Romulans just weren’t used much, which is a shame because they had a lot of potential.
