What happens when you try to cross your two favorite Sci-Fi universes together? This little project, The Borodino Class Battle Carrier is a cross-over of Star Trek with Space Battleship Yamato.
This project started life as a regular Space Battleship Yamato build that had seen better days. I have always wanted to crossbreed the two genre and this model seemed to be a great candidate for the project.
In Universe Story:
[TOP SECRET]
Section 31 Eyes Only
Article #: 749312FS
[1:2500 Scale Bandai and AMT Kitbash]
Carbon dating shows the ship to have been built around 2202 AD. DNA sampling of the crew remains shows the crew to be human, more importantly Terran. The ship had the name Borodino painted on her hull.
There is no record of a ship by this name or of this design ever being built during that time frame. Further examination of the ship leads us to further question the origins of the vessel.
The ship's computer core was completely destroyed and no data was able to be recovered. This made the examination of the ship take far longer than anticipated. The latest in Starfleet computer technology has been installed into the ship and has freed up some major internal space.
The main engine is of unknown design but still functional. Given the resources of Earth at the time that this ship was built, it is clear that the engine is of alien design. After extensive study, it was found that the engine converts the vacuum of space into tachyon energy. The engine then directs this energy out the rear nozzle of the ship, thus functioning like a normal rocket engine, and providing essentially infinite power to the ship. Further studies later found that this energy output could be further increased, enabling the ship to "ride" the wave of tachyons and travel faster than light. Although this method of travel is far faster than our current warp technology, the effects on the crew has been found to be very disconcerting as they report almost hallucinogenic visions during the transition between the jump points. The after effects on the crew after the jump were also found to be undesirable as they seemed almost exhausted and delirious for up to two minutes afterwards.
For this reason, Section 31 installed dual warp cores and the quad warp nacelles in the ship to provide her with a more traditional faster than light travel mode.
Section 31 engineers also removed the two side secondary engines and replaced them with standard issue impulse drives.
As for weapons systems, most of the original systems were damaged beyond practical use. The ship appeared to have three gun turrets that looked very much like the guns on a 20th century battleship. These weapons fired some sort of energy discharge however, their circuitry was too far damaged and the turrets were inoperable. Since the ship now had Starfleet technology to generate energy for the ship as well, the turrets were removed and several high powered phaser strips were installed at various tactical points on the ship’s hull. The ship also had several torpedo tubes on her. These tube launchers were replaced with photon/quantum torpedo launchers.
Perhaps the most promising piece of technology to come from this ship’s discovery was what was later discovered to be a major weapons system. It was wondered for some time what the two large holes at the front of the ship were for. It was finally discovered that it was possible to connect the engine to the enormous firing gate at the ship's bow, enabling the tachyon energy power of the engine to be fired in a stream directly forwards. Enormously powerful, this beam can vaporize a fleet of enemy ships with one shot, or even destroy small planetoids. There is a bit of a drawback in that it takes a brief but critical period to charge before firing. This drawback seems to have been rendered a mute point with the addition of the Starfleet technology.
As far as defenses go, it appears that the ship relied solely on its hull. This obviously was not very efficient given the condition of the ship when it was found. With the addition of the Starfleet engine systems, Section 31 was able to install shield emitters along the entire hull of the ship.
The ship also had two hanger bays at the stern bottom part of the hull. There were no small craft on board to study so it is presumed that a good portion of crew were evacuated from the ship before it’s demise. Section 31 engineers did not like the positioning of these hanger bays and sealed them off and utilized the space for other purposes. Since the main external deck of the ship was now clear of obstacles, the engineers moved the hanger bays topside and installed a gravity capable flight deck.
All remaining hull damage was repaired and the ship was given a new paint job. She was re-christened the USS Kutuzov (NX-2202) and assigned to the Borodino Class in recognition of her previous name.
Section 31 does not use this ship actively. It has been classified as a special needs ship and has been postulated as a possible weapon against the Doomsday weapon or as a last resort weapon against some future enemy.
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Real Universe Story:
Parts Used: (Badly Beaten Up) Bandai Battleship Kit, two sets of AMT warp nacelles and nacelle struts.
I am a Space Battleship Yamato SUPERFAN. I grew up watching it in the U.S. where it was called Star Blazers.
Over the years, I have collected and built the small scale Mecha Collection models. In fact, in some cases, I've built several of the same type of ship.
I had six of the EDF Battleships in my collection and had been dying to make an attempt at building some sort of crossover ship between Star Trek and Star Blazers (Space Battlehip Yamato). I picked out my worst v2 battleship and went to work on it.
Here is THE LINK to the photo library of the original ship before I "overhauled" her.
I removed the bridge tower and was originally planning to install a saucer section so that the ship had impulse engines.
After consulting with Paul Lewis over at Star Trek Modelers Group, I agreed that it just seemed too awkward looking so I opted putting the bridge tower back on after the refit, and replacing the two side wave motion engines with hand painted impulse engines.
I felt that the gun turrets just didn't feel Star Trek like for this build so I opted to remove them. At this point though, the top desk looked really plain and awkward, so I then decided upon the landing deck.
I had asked around the Star Trek Modeler Group on Facebook for some naming ideas and got a couple.
USS Hikaru Sulu NX-2991
Fukashima class Corvette
None of these names were really doing it for me. I finally decided to call it the Borodino class because that was the name of one of these ships in the Starships Schematics Database. I looked up Borodino and it apparently was a big battle in Russia against Napoleon. Using that theme, I then decided to call her the Kutuzov, who was the general of Russia’s army during that battle.
In my haste to finish the model, I accidentally bumped the ship really hard and somehow broke one of the nacelle pylons. They were kind of fragile already though, having been used in another model that was aborted.
A little super glue later and some model cement to help weld it further, and we were back in business.
As always, I hope you found this article useful and informative. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to comment below.
So for now, "Live long and prosper!!!"
Additional Links To Photos Of My Collection:
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