The crew of the Merchantman seemed human enough, but that is hardly proof of the ship's origin or allegiances. So far, this specific design has been used as a freighter by at least Klingons (DS9 "Rules of Engagement"), Cardassians (DS9 "The Maquis pt I") and the Altec, or was it the Straleb (TNG "The Outrageous Okona")? Other races use variants for other purposes.

One could argue that the design was probably created by the most advanced of these races and then sold to lesser races, which would probably make Klingons the original designers. OTOH, perhaps lesser races can compete on the freighter market as well, and sell to their superiors?

In any case, Federation cargo haulers have not used the design in any episode we know of. Unless, and this is a big unless, this model was used in the super-brief scene in the beginning of TNG "Legacy" where a Federation Deneva-class freighter explodes. Then we'd know for sure that it's a Fed design... But the pictures I have seen of that ep are beyond fuzzy.

Timo Saloniemi

The Merchantman could be anything. We don't even know the name of the ship. The only thing that makes it look Terran is the bridge structure, everything else is "alien". My suggestion is that the ship is originally Klingon, became outdated by the mid-24th century, and some of the ships were sold to the Cardasssians. Some ships also made it to lesser races.

It would be a bit awkward for a ship of Klingon design to be in human civilian hands in that time of great hostility. OTOH, it would open up interesting story venues if smooth-headed Klingons by ST3 were put to demeaning labor like piloting these freighters...

Also, does it strike anybody as odd that the ship would look so small in ST3, yet hold hundreds of passengers in "Rules of Engagement"? I know you love these scaling paradoxes...

The scaling paradox, eh?
Perhaps the "Rules of Engagement" Merchantman is converted. The cargo hulls were fitted to be able to carry passengers. Anyone thoughts on that?

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"The things hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!" -David Bowman's last transmission back to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey

The 359 Webpage

I think that the bumps were some sort of mutation or side effect probably from the praxis problem... sort of like a Chernobyl problem... Of course if the whole moon was to explode, it was probably pretty unstable for several years before that.

The Klingons are bitter enemies of the Romulans and they don't like speaking about the bumpy problem, And sometime after Star Trek VI Romulans started getting the bumpy brows too, maybe the reactors/facilities on Praxis were Romulan designs, obtained during their brief alliance.

The Klingons went on a rampage of revenge against the Romulans for what they did inflicting similar ecological problems on the Romulans, i.e. destroying these reactors etc.

(remember Klingons and Romulans have similar physiologies according to Dr. Crusher, thus similar manifestations...)

Thus with the Klingons over their campaign of revenge, the Romulans become isolationist dealing with this distaster that has befallen them - hence the problems that they were dealing with "The Neutral Zone"

The Klingons brought nearly to their knees, accept help from the Federation.

This would also explain why the klingons even by the time of 2365 were still using 100 year old Battle Cruisers and Birds of Prey.

Only by 2367 were the new K'Tinga's being produced and then finally the new Klingon Flagship by 2372.

Andrew

In ST3, when the BoP first decloaks, or when it swoops to destroy the Merchantman, the latter ship looks barely larger than the front pod of the BoP. Yet in the "crashing into SF bay" scene in ST4, we see that the front pod apparently consists of nothing more than the bridge on an upper deck and the torp tube on a lower one, and the BoP is a grand total of 60 meters long. So where did the crew aboard the Merchantman find leg room?

I guess we could assume that the Merchantman was at least 50 meters long (against a roughly 110m BoP), and the scenes where it looked tiny were because the BoP had turned on its cloak's "cat in a corner" mode that makes the ship look bigger... Still, fitting hundreds of people in a ship 50m long (half of which seems to be engines) would speak volumes of Klingon standards of passenger comfort.

Bigger Merchantmen were seen in some episodes, most notably in "The Maquis pt I".

Timo Saloniemi

Does this mean they did not understand the language in which the conversation was held? This might mean they weren't Klingons after all (but even if they were human mercenaries, was their UT broken or something?). Or did they get the words but not the meaning? This might mean that they were "dishonorable" Klingons who would not understand the absolute necessity and honor of Kruge killing his lover. Or then they were stupid humans.

In any case, their confusion doesn't exactly support the idea that they were smooth-head Klingons...

Timo Saloniemi

Though if one was strongly in favor of this interpretation, I suppose it would be reasonable to suggest that while they were speaking a Klingon language, it wasn't one that everyone was familiar with.