The 14 Worst Ships In Star Trek Ranked

Beginning life in 1966, “Star Trek” is among the best sci-fi franchises of all time, and features arguably some of the most famous starships in all of fiction. From the Klingon Bird of Prey to the unmistakable Borg Cube, there are several ships in “Star Trek” that most folks on the street could name. And that doesn’t even include the original starship Enterprise, whose history is written in decades, and whose fame is so legendary that the original model is now housed in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

But for all the legendary starships we’ve seen in “Star Trek,” there are countless others that never became famous. And not just because they weren’t part of a critically-acclaimed episode or movie, but because they were terrible. Awful, ugly, downright cringe-worthy, even, these malcreated vessels are hardly the kind of incredible feat of design and engineering you’d expect from the most prestigious sci-fi series ever made.

Ranking as the “least worst” is the future version of the USS Enterprise-D from the “Star Trek: Next Generation” episode “All Good Things,” one of the most satisfying ’90s finales. We might rank it higher, but it’s hard to so harshly criticize a ship that’s simply a variant of one of the best starships in the franchise. As a variant from an alternate future, though, it’s sorely lacking in the creativity department. Because let’s face it: It’s really just the Enterprise with a third nacelle.

Now, it’s totally understandable why producers did what they did. It’s a quick, efficient, and effective way of showing a version of the Enterprise that clearly signals that it’s from the future without designing something entirely new, while still making it visually distinct from the regular version of the ship to avoid on-screen confusion. But that’s the problem: This is the hero ship, in the biggest episode of the series. Couldn’t they have come up with something … anything … better than this? 

Ironically, this version of the big “D” hails from the year 2395, an era that came to pass in “Star Trek: Picard,” and the ships in that era were far better looking. And when that series brought back the ship for its third season? Producer Terry Matalas, a lifelong fan of “TNG,” made the wise decision to make no changes at all.

It might surprise some to find the hero ship of a “Star Trek” series on a list of worst starships. But the reality is, almost everything about “Star Trek: Discovery” seems to have divided fans, and that includes the USS Discovery itself, for quite a few reasons. Not only is it unlike any ship in the franchise to that point, but it’s something of an eyesore to look at, an ugly behemoth that lacks the elegance of ships like the Enterprise and its successors.

More broadly, because the series itself is set before the events of the original “Star Trek,” many fans were downright angry that it looked wildly inconsistent to starships seen in that series. Admittedly, in defense of the producers and creators of “Discovery,” the design is an intentional homage to long-lost “Trek” history. It’s heavily based on a concept of the USS Enterprise developed by “Star Wars” artist Ralph McQuarrie, designed for a reboot film in the 1970s that never came to be. 

But even before “Star Trek: Discovery” debuted in 2017, fans had long been expressing their dislike of the McQuarrie design, with many feeling it just wasn’t right for “Star Trek.” Add in the ill-conceived and continuity-breaking Spore Drive, and it’s easy to see why the USS Discovery has become so divisive, despite the ship’s respectable historic origins.

When it comes to awful alien ships in “Star Trek,” there are a number to choose from, but few that really stand out as worst of the worst. One that does, however, is the Kazon battleship seen in the first two seasons of “Star Trek: Voyager,” the ship belonging to one of the worst villains in “Star Trek,” the Kazon. Arguably the least intimidating aliens to actually give Captain Janeway a measure of trouble, the Kazon are a weaker copy of the Klingons with their warrior culture and sneering visages. But unlike the Klingons, they don’t come across as frightening, and their ships aren’t anywhere near as cool.

While ships like the Klingon Bird of Prey have become legendary with their winged design, the Kazon battleship is, to put it simply, ugly and forgettable. Yes, it’s big, and its size might make it seem intimidating, but unless it’s part of a fleet, it barely gives Voyager a run for its money. Its weapons are weak, and when it comes right down to it, it just looks like a big fat sore thumb in space. 

There are ships in “Star Trek” that are ugly, even hideous. Then there are others that simply defy explanation in-universe. But only a select few manage to be both, and one such example is the USS Prometheus, a top-secret, experimental Starfleet battleship seen in the “Star Trek: Voyager” episode “Message in a Bottle.” That installment saw the holographic Doctor beamed back to the Alpha Quadrant, where he finds himself stuck on the Prometheus, which has been taken over by Romulans.

Designed for combat, the Prometheus is a deus ex machina and a MacGuffin all rolled into one. It’s the object of the Romulans’ plot and the very ship that saves the day, thanks to the Doctor and the ship’s secret function, which allows it to split into three parts and become a small armada of starships all on its own. But it’s still ugly as sin, and isn’t really a good idea.

For starters, while starships in “Trek” had been slowly moving away from big round saucers, the ship’s main hull is basically just a big triangular wedge. And when it split into thirds, it makes no sense at all. No single part looks good on its own, while it seems oddly risky to allow its “multi-vector assault mode” to be activated by voice alone — that’s what allows the Romulans to take the ship in the first place. All in all, it’s ship that seems designed by a middle schooler, and the fact that we never see it again seems like an admission by the writers that it was little more than a gimmicky idea.

The Kazon are a pretty lame alien race in “Star Trek,” but they don’t hold a candle to the Pakleds, the dim-witted aliens who hassle Captain Picard and his crew in the “Next Generation” episode “Samaritan Snare.” They lure the Enterprise into a trap by playing possum, but they are quickly outmaneuvered, because the reality is that they demonstrate a serious lack of intelligence. One of the silliest aliens we’ve ever seen in the franchise, they sadly have a ship to match.

A ship that doesn’t even have a warp drive, the Mondor is a fairly nondescript vessel that boasts technology that the Pakleds have stolen from other races. So it can’t go to warp, but it can cloak thanks to a device they swiped from the Romulans. But more than that, the Mondor is little more than a big triangle that the show’s designers slapped a bunch of random parts onto.

To make matters worse, though, “TNG” staffers doubled down and reused the ship over and over. The Mondor later doubled for a Cardassian cargo ship in “The Wounded” and a Trill transport in “The Host,” among many others, forcing us to look at this overly generic model more times than we ever wanted to. The Pakled returned in “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” but thankfully had a much different, much cooler ship.

It must be tough for starship creators in the “Star Trek” franchise to come up with new ideas that are both fresh and familiar, that also look cool and feel like they have an in-universe logic to their design. The latter two qualities are what elude the USS Grissom, a ship seen in “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock,” and whose design was reused many times in later TV spin-offs.

At first glance, some might find the Grissom an interesting ship with a unique design. It’s a science vessel, and thus its unusual configuration makes some kind of sense, but many have questioned the saucer and secondary hull being entirely disconnected. There could be in-universe reasons for it: Perhaps the science labs need to be housed separately for, um, science reasons. But that doesn’t explain how anyone gets from the saucer to that secondary hull. There’s no obvious place for a turbolift (fans have debated whether the nacelle pylons could even fit such a lift, given its small size), forcing us to believe that the ship was designed solely for aesthetics with no thought put into its use as a functional starship.

It seems Starfleet has trouble when it comes to science and medical vessels, because another ship of the line to earn a “worst” label is the USS Pasteur, a medical ship also seen in the “TNG” finale, “All Good Things.” We’ll also note that it’s just one of a series of similar ships, the Daedalus class, that differ by time period, but all feature similar bulbous ball-like primary hulls. This includes USS Essex from the ‘TNG” episode “Power Play,” but it’s the Pasteur that’s representing this group, because it got the most screen time.

On the one hand, at least the USS Pasteur is under the command of a future Dr. Beverly Crusher, and its part in the story is a fun one. But on the other hand, the ship is a blight on Starfleet design, and is so underpowered and understaffed that they can’t even hang in a fight for more than a few measly seconds. It’s such an awful ship, in fact, that it strains credulity that the ship dares to cross the Neutral Zone, especially when they’re expecting Klingon resistance to their presence. 

The USS Dauntless is an oddity in “Star Trek,” in that the design of this hideous, whale-like beast is inspired by an alien vessel that was originally created as part of a diabolical scheme to destroy Captain Janeway in the “Star Trek: Voyager” episode “Hope and Fear.” In that story, an alien madman named Arturis (Ray Wise) disguises his own highly advanced starship as a fake Starfleet vessel called the Dauntless, which uses a better-than-warp slipstream drive. 

Years later, during the events of “Star Trek: Prodigy,” we learn that Janeway now commands a real USS Dauntless, which also has a slipstream drive. But it’s a bulky, misshapen, disproportionate clunker that’s the equivalent of a Cybertruck: A vessel with advanced technology wrapped in an ugly shell that would make its own mother weep with embarrassment. But the real mystery is why Starfleet would design its own slipstream ship to look like an alien fake, and why they’d give it the very same name. Just incredibly dumb, all the way around.

If you’re not familiar with the Scimitar, we wouldn’t be surprised. It’s the villain ship in the worst and lowest-grossing “Star Trek” movie, so even if you saw it, it’s possible you don’t even remember it. The flagship of the Reman rebellion in “Star Trek: Nemesis,” the Scimitar belonged to Captain Picard’s evil clone, Shinzon, played by a young Tom Hardy. At first glance, the mammoth monstrosity of a starship looks generically cool, but that’s exactly the problem: It’s a mishmash of other, better villainous ships that seems designed solely to elicit the term “big scary bad guy.”

Jet black, with giant multi-pronged “wings,” big spikes, and loads of weapons littering its hull, the Scimitar appears to have been designed by a 14-year-old who thinks they’re being edgy. The writer, John Logan — who penned “Gladiator,” by the way — also decides to make the Scimitar bigger, faster, and more powerful than the Enterprise-E, but on such a scale that it almost becomes laughable, particularly because the Remans don’t seem to possess technology anywhere near advanced enough to construct such a ship. Yes, the movie tries to explain it, but it’s halfhearted at best, an apparent acknowledgment of just how ill-advised the very idea of the Scimitar is.

There are plenty of fans who aren’t in love with the classic Borg cube, a ship that, like others on this list, is just a mess of random model parts glued together into big box. Yet there’s no denying that it’s also one of the most iconic starship designs in “Star Trek” and even in science fiction as a whole. But there’s at least one more Borg ship that makes the worst list: The vessel used by the group of Borg rebels in the two-part “Next Generation” episode, “Descent.”

Clearly designed with an eye towards being different from the Borg cube while still looking relatively “Borg-ish,” the ship seen in “Descent” just doesn’t work. With no real rhyme or reason to its design, its asymmetry looks messy, and we’re not even sure how one could tell the front from the back, top from bottom, or any part of it from any other. Attempts at designing other Borg ships in “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Star Trek: First Contact” resulted in some interesting concepts — a sphere, for example — but this one just looks like its design was generated at random. 

Most of the ships on this list have been seen extensively, showcased in major episodes, or in the case of the Discovery, led its own series. The USS Enterprise-J, by contrast, only shows up on a viewscreen in a single episode of “Star Trek: Enterprise.” Yet it’s such an awful ship that one brief appearance is enough to earn it a place high on our list.

The episode, “Azati Prime,” has a time-traveling agent from the future telling Captain Archer about the United Federation of planets, showing him an image of the Enterprise-J, which is said to hail from the 30th century. The show’s designers probably didn’t expect to ever show it again, so they came up with something that at a glance would look “futuristic” when compared to the Enterprise-E, which was, at the time, the latest Enterprise fans had seen. 

For those designers, though, “futuristic” just means way bigger, with longer, skinnier nacelles, and a few odd features that make almost no sense at all. It doesn’t even have a secondary hull (probably to make it seem more like the NX-01 ship captained by Archer). We’ll admit, it might not be the worst ship in a vacuum, but that it’s a version of the USS Enterprise — again, the flagship of the entire franchise — makes it especially egregious.

Before “Star Trek: Discovery” it was JJ Abrams’ reboot of “Star Trek” in 2009 that most divided Trekkies. Its critics, of course, pointed to the new movie series’ penchant for fast-paced action over the more thoughtful, cerebral stories that the TV series was so famous for. But many of the complaints levied at the 2009 reboot film stemmed from the visual overhaul of the franchise, especially its reinterpretation of Starfleet’s starship designs. But while many fans weren’t happy with the Enterprise itself, it’s the USS Vengeance from the sequel “Star Trek Into Darkness” that comes near the top of our “worst ship lists.”

The Vengeance is the eye-rollingly named starship commanded by Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), who has created it as an ultimate weapon for Section 31, the clandestine Starfleet spy agency. But like a reverse version of the Scimitar, it’s a Starfleet ship that seems designed by the film’s producers for one thing only: To look frightening so we know it’s evil and poses a danger to Kirk and the Enterprise at a glance. Because, surely, a division of Starfleet that wants operate in the shadows would never design such a starship that screams for your attention and seems to say “Look at me, I’m Evil!” We’d also like to think that Section 31 has better sense than to design such an ugly vessel, but their black and blue uniforms aren’t much better, so maybe they aren’t as stylish as they think they are.

Like the USS Enterprise-J, the USS Yeager is unique among the worst ships in “Star Trek” because it’s not a starship that features in an episode or movie. Instead, it’s more of a background ship, cobbled together from parts of other ships simply to fill out multi-starship scenes in a handful of episodes of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” We don’t get a complete, high-definition look at the Yeager, but it’s a testament to just how bad the ship is that it takes the top spot.

Like many ships in “Star Trek,” the USS Yeager is what’s called a “kit bash,” a starship created by using parts from other models, slapped together in a new configuration to quickly and cheaply trick the audience into thinking they’ve created a new design. It’s most often used with ships that, like Yeager, only appear briefly or in the background, and it’s not the worst approach to take for such a ship, particularly in shows that weren’t broadcast in HD and had to be put together in mere weeks. Nevertheless, the Yeager is so egregiously ugly and nonsensical that it overrides any real-world justification for its design.

Without exaggeration or hyperbole here, we can confidently say that the USS Yeager is the laziest ship design in “Star Trek” history. It’s quite literally just the front of the USS Voyager slapped onto the back of a Maquis Raider. And if that weren’t bad enough, the fact that those two ships are wildly different sizes just makes the Yeager a complete disaster.