KIESCHE@RU-BLUE.ARPA (06/19/84)
A few possible explanations... Re--Klingons and way they look different from those in the television series and ST:TMP... If you consult either John M. Ford's (excellent) THE FINAL REFLECTION (Pocket Books), or the KLINGONS supplment for STAR TREK: THE ROLE-PLAYING GAME, you will learn that there are several "Klingon" races. The three most common are the Imperial Klingon Race (those seen in the first movie), and the various Romulan-Klingon Fusions and Human-Klingon Fusions. These Fusions were created in order to allow the Klingons to interact with various races...I recommend the Ford book at the very least--it is NOT a ST Kirk, etc. novel, it is a novel that takes place in the ST universe, very good... Re--Running a Heavy Cruiser with five people...The ship was being re-worked by Scotty, so that it was mostly automatic. You may have noticed that the automatic controls could only do things such as normal space navigation. When the Enterprise went into battle, the system became rapidly overloaded (Scotty made comments to this effect...)... Re--Why a Bird? I saw what was reportedly a earlier version of the STIII script. In this, the Klingons were NOT Klingons, but Romulans. If you want to look at it one way, it is possible that they changed the Romulans to Klingons, but forgot to change the name of the ship... I have come up with an alternative suggestion. It is established in the TV series that the Romulans and the Klingons have a technology exchange program going (See THE ENTERPRISE INCIDENT, in which we see Klingon ships manned by the Romulans, with cloaking devices). It is possible that the exchange goes both ways, with the Klingons getting the cloaking devices--and just possibly, Romulan ships...hence, the name, Bird-of-Prey... Incidentally, in gaming terms (for STAR TREK: THE ROLE-PLAYING GAME, as well as STAR FLEET BATTLES and FEDERATION SPACE) "Bird-of-Prey" is a "generic" name of a class of ships... More comments as they burble up through the brain... Frederick Paul Kiesche III -------