Well while I'm on here I guess I'll chip in my opinion finally.
First I understand taste is subjective so I'm not saying anyone on here who doesn't agree is wrong or stupid.
Second when I talking about the kind of Trek fan I am I'm not saying I'm better or worse than anyone else's style, it's just how I am and not saying it's right or wrong.
So hopefully noone gets all offended that I'm saying how great I am and others suck.....although I'm sure someone might find a way anyhow.
So I asked this question because of all the things, people, places and so in ST this is by far the most personal and special to me and was curious as to others opinions.
I'm going to skip reviewing all the ships because this will be long enough as it is. I will thrown in my least favorite though which is the reboot version....I cannot say enough bad things about it. I think it is ugly in about every way possible and I think it was JJ's was of saying FU to the long time Trek fans by basically "I'm going to totally change your precious little TOS Enterprise and there's not a damn thing you can do about it." There were MANY ways he could have taken the TOS ship, made some changes here and there to update it and make it acceptable for a 2009 film and still keep the essence of TOS ship alive and visible, but he never even considered it. I don't think the design was "bold" or "stylistic" or "daring". I think it was his ultimate wank off that "Star Trek" in mine now and what I say goes.
So anyway when I first saw TMP with my father I didn't really think much of the refit Enterprise. Mostly because I was six and had a hard time understanding the film anyway and because all my brain could understand at that age was the Enterprise in the film looked different than the Enterprise from TOS and when you're six usually different is "bad".
My father, a big sci fan and accomplished model builder, absolutely LOVED the refit. So when AMT/Ertl released the mode kit he bought one immediately and built it. Now that I had a kit I could look at for extended periods of time I eventually grew to love the refit the took the TOS version, which is classic, changed it's shortcomings and absolutely NAILED what the perfect Enterprise should look like. I only loved it more after TWOK and was crushed when it was destroyed in TSFS.
I always had mixed feelings about it coming back as the "A". On one hand it was nice to see my favorite design still alive, on the other it wasn't the original 1701 (despite the fact it literally was the same model as the 1701 refit) and part of me think they should have buried it after TSFS and moved on to a new design.
Between 1980 and 1991 my father bought 3 more of the AMT/ERTL kits (Including a "lighted version" which was cute but not really that awesome) to improve on things and make it as accurate as possible. The kit was/is a good kit especially given it's age but does has it's shortcomings. By his last effort I had become decent enough at model building that I helped a lot and we made the best one of his tries, which I still have today. Unfortunately he died suddenly in 1991 weeks before TUC was released.
So a couple of things about my personality....again not saying I'm better or worse....just how I am.
1. I don't often get possessed by a desire to own material things. Sure if someone gave me a Corvette I'd be happy as hell and I like my big screen TV as much as the next guy, but I'm generally not a "I gotta have that" person even when I see something I think is really cool.
2. I have hardly any Star Trek memorabilia. I have the aforementioned model, I have a diamond select TWOK battle damaged toy Enterprise, a toy phaser and communicator from TOS and that's about it. Don't know why I never got more, just never really felt that strongly about it.
BUT..........for the past 25 years I have had a EXTREMELY strong desire (would stop short of saying obsession) to own a top notch version of the refit Enterprise. I had the model we built, but it had it's flaws, it wasn't as big as I would have liked, and the decals yellowed over timed and were sealed so I couldn't replace them with an aftermarket set that came out later. I had the diamond select toy, which was nice but still a toy and was small.....and there really weren't any other practical options. I wasn't going to just but another AMT kit.
When Polar Lights released the 1/350 kit (which I think is the optimum blend between size and detail for a model) I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It got good reviews so I planned my attack, even got a lighting kit and going to fulfill this quest.
Well, even though I'm a pretty decent model builder, building the model to the level I wanted was extremely difficult and out of my ability and it was an EPIC FAIL on my part which ended up in the garbage. And I wasn't going to try again....and it looked like the quest was over.
HOWEVER around 2011 a company released a version of the Enterprise refit that was built by professionals and looked awesome in pics and videos of it saw at hobby shows and so on.....one problem.....it wasn't cheap. I personally had no problem paying that much..people pay vast sums of money for wine they can't drink or a little piece of mineral that used to be cool and most people couldn't tell if you replaced it with a place of glass....So even though many people would say I'm crazy for paying this much for "a model" to me it was a work of art and a very personal thing.
So I read reviews of people opinions on it and they basically fell into two categories.
1. It was incredible, but just too damn much money.
2. It was nothing but the polar lights and they could build one just as good for half the cost.
So I waffled and eventually contacted one of these guys. He sent me pics of one he'd built and it looked great, was all lit and painted beautifully and was significantly cheaper. So I bit and had him built me one.
Well in one of those "You get what you pay for moments. The model arrived months later, poorly packed with an engine broken off and, some huge ugly box to control the lights and looking nothing like the pics he showed. I don't know if he flat out lied or just didn't put much effort into this build. Needless to say I was disappointed and pissed but after a few months of arguing with him and FedEx I got most of my money back.
So I immediately decided to take the plunge and buy the one from the company.....again another problem....they were "temporarily" not taking orders. Temporarily turned to be over a year before they opened it up to orders. However one hurdle remained....my beloved wife. She just couldn't understand the concept of spending so much on "a model" and despite my arguments of what it meant to me and how it's more a work of art and people spend much more ridiculous sums on other items I couldn't move her. I thought about ordering it anyway using the old "It's easier to ask for forgivness than permission" approach, but that would have caused me problems I didn't want to deal with..............So again it looked like the quest was over.
However several months later my wife's father unfortunately passed away after battling cancer and in the aftermath of trying to keep things that of his that were special to her, she realized how little I had to remember my dad by (long story) and told me to go for it.
Fortunately the window was still open and I bought one. I was told it might take six months, which was no big deal, but it came in two.
In life you often anticipate something so much that the reality lets you down.....this was not one of those moments. Everything about the experience was top notch, the service was great, the model was packed so solid you could probably drop it 50 feet and there's a good chance it wouldn't be damaged and as for the model itself.....it is about as close to a studio filming version you can get.
Basically everything about the model, from the construction, to the paint and markings to the lighting is absolutely top notch and it is truly a work of art I marvel at almost at every day. Again you get what you pay for. It was the end of a 25 year quest and I display it with great pride and even my wife thinks it's pretty damn cool.
If you ever really badly want a model like this, or some others they do, and have the $ I would say do it, you won't regret it. PM me if you want the company info.
To me a starship is a difficult design. You don't wan't it to look menacing like a Star Destroyer or a Borg Cube, so it has to have style and beauty. But you don't want something that looks like a cruise liner in space. So it's a delicate balance of looking like it's friendly and not here solely to kick your ass.....but having it look like it can kick some ass if necessary. I think the refit Enterprise achieved this perfectly and is by far the best spaceship design ever put on the screen. I think the original Battlestar Galactica is second in achieving this blend of beauty and power a "good guy" ship should have.
I hate when it's compared to the other Enterprises in drawings to scale because it looks so puny compared to the "D" or "E"...but when you compare them in the same size I think is creams them hands down. I also love the fact that the actual studio model was 2 feet longer than Excelsior's...the ship that was supposed to be bigger and more powerful.
I also love they respected original design so much. Some people say it looks so different that it's not realistic to say it's the same ship as the one in TOS....Well I disagree. The US Navy had modified and changes ships over their lifetime (The Midway class carriers being the best example) that by the end of their careers they look nothing like they did when launched and if you didn't know they were the same ship you'd never believe it. Yet even with the changes it was always the USS Midway and was always CV-41 (or some variation the Navy used at times).
The refit Enterprise looks radically different sure, but if you held up a pic of TOS ship and the Refit to a ST stranger and said...can you believe this could be modernized into this...I think most people would say "yes" because the basic design was not changed, just improved upon.
Well that's my story....thanks for listening....hope someone out there has a similar story of something ST related that has brought them such satisfaction. Hopefully this will be my longest post ever.
Live long and prosper.
P.S. To this day I'll never buy anything with the "A" on it.....there was only one Refit 1701 in my world
