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The Excalibur was one of 12 Constitution class heavy cruiser starships which were part of the Starfleet in the original Star Trek series. In the episode "The Ultimate Computer", the Enterprise is outfitted with an advanced design computer - the M-5 - and sent off to test it out in wargames. Sounds like trouble already! Of course, the M-5 takes the games personally and engages the four "adversary" starships, the Excalibur, Hood, Lexington, and Potemkin in actual combat. All four ships are damaged, but the Excalibur takes the full onslaught of the M-5, resulting in the death of her entire crew of 430.
I built the post-battle Excalibur from an Enterprise model kit. The damage was designed to represent 8 full-power phaser strikes on an unshielded - or minimally shielded - starship. This was in 1980, before VCRs, and none of the local stations were airing Trek at the time, so all I had to work from were audio tapes. (Hey - admit it! You had some too.) I could hear four phaser firings by the Enterprise (2 beams each), but had no clue where they struck Excalibur. Only years later did I see the episode again. Much to my delight, one shot shows a direct hit to the fore section of the port warp nacelle - right where I'd built up the heaviest damage. Lucky lucky me.
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