The Dominion.
A vast empire grown up on the far side of the galaxy, a huge new group of alien races, creating technology and ships the likes of which we've never seen.
Of course, right now we don't know much about them. They won't let us test fly their ships, and any attempt to maneuver side by side with them seems to end in phaser fire.
So what, then, are their capabilities? Are they fast? Slow? Maneuverable? Comfortable?
To find out, there was only one place to go: The Gamma Quadrant. That hot bed of Dominion activity. If I was going to see one of those Dominion ships for myself, it would be there.
We got there the same way any proper Starfleet ship would: we followed a distreses beacon. At the beacon we found, well, a Dominion Ship.
It wasn't at all what I had hoped. Its life support systems were rubbish, it had a top speed of zero, and it had the hull integrity of swiss cheese.
To be fair, it was also crashed into the side of an asteroid.
Now you might think that this would be the worst Dominion ship we would see on that trip, but you'd be wrong. That award goes to this thing! (Insert picture here.)
This hideous, blocky thing can reach a top speed of a mind bending warp 4. It has the turning capacity of a fully loaded Bolean freighter with one engine out in a gravity well. It has comfortable seating for a vast crew of zero, and then only if they don't mind phasing out of reality every now and then.
Alright, so its big, slow, and you can't get into it. But what about weapons systems? If it isn't a cargo ship, it must have some of those, right?
Wrong. This stunning vessels weapon load-out is... nothing! It's like a ship a Ferengi would have built for a Klingon on a low bid, if the Romulans were paying him better under the table.
Now at this point, I imagine you're thinking "This can't possibly get any worse, can it?" or perhaps "If you can't get in, how do you steer the thing?"
Now if you've been paying any attention to our reviews, you probably have a pretty good idea by now that we have a bit of irritation with modern steering programs. Ships computers try to take over every bloody part of flying the ship, telling you when you aren't supposed to go faster, don't turn at that velocity, the G-force is too strong and what if someone in the ship has a pet cricket, all that sort of nonsense. There's all this rubbish between you and the ship when, really, all you need is a couple of warp nacelles and a decent pilot.
So you can imagine our delight to learn that this particular ship is flown by... an artificial intelligence!
That's right! There's not a person on board that ship at all!
And it gets better! You might think that the only possible reason to have an artificial intelligence for a pilot would be to get them to follow orders, to stop whining and fly the damn ship sort of thing. But you'd be wrong. Because this designer, this Dominion designer, must have decided that the trouble with human pilots is that they get all this confidence and skill, and that they don't spend nearly enough time whining and panicking.
Let me tell you, they have that problem solved.
So if you want a ship that can't go anywhere, couldn't get you there if it could, and will complain at you the whole way, then the Dominion has the ship for you.
If you want a ship that does something useful, you'd be better off, and I can't honestly believe I'm about to say this, in a Federation ship.
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