And we glimpsed the (Mirror) Buran, too. But the blurring out of the de Milo in the Mudd short, and the avoidance of these ships in general, did suggest that there was something horribly wrong with them.
I just wonder how much wrong, and how much work it is to now make use of them. Perhaps none at all? Perhaps it was all time pressures, and quality of model didn't figure in at all?
Those are pretty thick nacelles, too: the warp coils could take up a minor part of the top or bottom, really, leaving the saucer "intact".
I sort of want to think the nacelles are primarily big longitudal cargo bays or whatnot, three side by side (but only the outer ones featuring warp engines). But the massive "ramps" or "hatches" at the aft ends of the outboard ones glow intense white here.
That's still big enough - at the official 225 meters, the ship is actually bigger than Kirk's TOS one by useful volume. And there does seem to be a deliberate shuttle fight deck at the aft end of the centermost "nacelle".
It could also be half that, though. The two rows of light on the saucer edge, licking the upper and lower surfaces, have the same issue as the multiple rows of light on the Oberth class saucer: if we truly take them seriously as indicating decks, the ship suddenly becomes several kilometers long (and paradoxically also surprisingly porthole-free, save for these anomalious rows)! We more or less have to ignore them instead - either they are not portholes at all, but sensor lights of some sort, or then those rows of portholes for some reason denote the very upper and lower edges of the single deck.
The exterior views from the Eaglemoss models appear to be the real deal, though, and are as good as anything we ever got on any other Trek ship.
Whatever be said about the Battle of Binaries ships, they all appear extremely detailed and self-consistent, both in absolute terms and especially considering the low level of use they actually got when first made. We can easily identify classic starship bits and count window rows, say. So the minor omissions stand out all the more: the Hoover lacks dorsal detail even though the ventral side has detailed phaser turrets and whatnot, say.
It's all the more amazing considering how much reworking there was going on. The Discovery mess hall wall art is a nice example: the Europa kept changing till the very last, and the wall art does not match the "real" ship, e.g. it's missing a pair of pylons connecting the upper and lower nacelles in the "real" one.
Timo Saloniemi
