“Ode to the Antares Class”

By Michael Bartel

The untold decades pass
Empires fall in the void so vast
With everything changing, on what could we rely?
What stone to hold onto, what security in the changing sky?
What common thread could these eras together tie
Then we realize what links all of these casts
A ship called the Antares-class

Improbable you say, what could this magic thing be?
A ship unhindered by bounds of design, lineage or fleet
Moving from Empire to Empire and even through all of the Quadrants
A design so magical that its design must be too complex to be glimps’d
Could it be a freighter? A humble cargo transport?
Would it be a fighter? With fifty men in a scaled version of some sort?
Is it owned by Terrans, Bajorans or Talarians?
Why is the Delta Quadrant home to some of its variants?
The design is ever-present, like the versions used by the Maquis
Or does it refer to the old freighter from V?

The scholars of ship design all shake their fists in anger.
“We curse you, and your halfhearted ‘Charlie X’ homage, Naren Shanker!”
They all wonder, why would Bajorans use old Starfleet ships?
And why would old Starfleet freighters look like nacho chips?
Why couldn’t they keep track that that wasn’t the ship in “Face of the Enemy?”
Perhaps the Romulans made an error in keeping track of miscellany.
When they referred to the Corvallen’s ship as an Antares
Thereby classifying the Batris and Xhosa and all of these

And Jeri Taylor doesn’t know a freighter from fighter full of castaways.
She displayed her error in the novel “Pathways”
She doesn’t write the show anymore, but her mistake lives in our heart.
All of the Maquis raiders are somehow like the ship commanded by Captain Ramart?
The models get recycled, their parts we are rearranging
The producers, their idea of continuity always changing
Now we have a single name for dozens of our spacecraft
I can only throw back my head and laugh
Whenever it is explained, I think it isn’t true
To know the answer, I think I do

The untold decades pass
Empires fall in the void so vast
And ALL starships belong to the Antares-class.