Star Trek: Starships Model/Magazine Subscription

[137th Gebirg]

MAN that things looks bloody awesome! Many thanks for posting.

I remember when the original AMT model came out back in the 70's. It had a tiny little Enterprise model about an inch long, indicating what they believed was the scale of the station relative to a TOS Connie. The implication was that the doors in the bottom of the station could have housed the Enterprise and a couple others her size. Then, when DS9's Trials & Tribble-ations came out, you saw a Galileo-type shuttle and Cyrano Jones' ship in the same bay with doors open, totally re-scaling the station. Personally, I think the latter was more accurate, but still an interesting bit of historical trivia.

 

[Tomalak]

I love that K-7!

I think the station can be scaled to the windows, it can't be enormous.

 

[Tomalak]

So I finally got the big Enterprise! It was a bit of an impulse buy, but I'm happy with it. The printing of the windows on the bottom of the saucer is a little misaligned, but I gather that is common. Otherwise it's lovely, it must be one of the only models that doesn't have grid lines.

Can I have a big Klingon Battlecruiser to sit next to it please?

 

[Markonian]

The Klingon warbird is an upcoming Special.

 

[Tomalak]

The JJ one I'm guessing?

 

[137th Gebirg]

I really **hate** how they call anything Klingon a "warbird". It was bad enough that they mixed up the "Bird of Prey" nomenclature, and then started calling the original Romulan BOP a "warbird" too. Sorry... Off my soapbox now. Glad they're making a model of it!

 

[KennyB]

I've preordered my Franklin............waiting for it to arrive now.

 

[t_smitts]

I really **hate** how they call anything Klingon a "warbird". It was bad enough that they mixed up the "Bird of Prey" nomenclature, and then started calling the original Romulan BOP a "warbird" too. Sorry... Off my soapbox now. Glad they're making a model of it!

Really? I caught that when I first watched "Broken Bow", but I never had a problem with it. I think the name fits Klingon ship nomenclature as well as it does Romulan (both "bird" names). In fact, before they introduced the 22nd century Klingon BoP, I kind of assumed that the "BoP" term originated with Romulans and "warbird" term originated with Klingons and they just sort of swapped at some point.

I don't think anyone's started retroactively calling the Romulan BoP a "warbird". That's a different ship entirely.

My one grievance is that the BoP we saw in "Minefield" looks more advanced than the one from "Balance of Terror" (even the remastered version), despite predating it by over a century. It actually looks more like an intermediate step between the 23rd century BoP and the 24th century warbird.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Agreed, Enterprise often had troubles making things look more advanced than what came later.

My beef is that the moniker "warbird" and "bird of prey" has been used a little too ubiquitously for too many ships from both Klingon and Romulan fleets. If I were a starship commander, under attack from one of those things, I wouldn't want to waste precious seconds trying to figure out what kind of ship it was. A simple naming of the class, "K'Vort", "B'Rel", "D'Deridex", "K'T'inga", "D-5", "D-7", etc., is description enough to provide information as to how to proceed.

 

[t_smitts]

Agreed, Enterprise often had troubles making things look more advanced than what came later.

My beef is that the moniker "warbird" and "bird of prey" has been used a little too ubiquitously for too many ships from both Klingon and Romulan fleets. If I were a starship commander, under attack from one of those things, I wouldn't want to waste precious seconds trying to figure out what kind of ship it was. A simple naming of the class, "K'Vort", "B'Rel", "D'Deridex", "K'T'inga", "D-5", "D-7", etc., is description enough to provide information as to how to proceed.

It's possible that names like "Bird-of-Prey" and "Warbird" are more generic terms for types of vessels and that there are specific classes within that type.

Kind of like how the US Navy has carriers, and more specifically has Nimitz and Enterprise class carriers.

Regarding "Enterprise" ships looking too advanced, I wouldn't say that happened too often. In the case of Vulcans and Andorians, we didn't really have anything from later centuries to compare it to. As for the Klingons, with their cabling and stubbier proportions, I'd say they pulled off making them look more primitive. The Tholian ship initially looked a bit more advanced than the one from TOS, but the remastered version retroactively took care of that. (As for the Romulan drone, it doesn't look very Romulan, except for its color, but that was the point). The Romulan BoP is the only major standout in my opinion.

 

[Michael]

Thanks for all the feedback on the giant-size NCC-1701. Despite the shortcomings of the model (subtle gridlines like on the actual filming model would have been SO nice) I guess I will cave in eventually and get the model. Maybe I'll wait for another discount on the Eaglemoss shop. Will definitely get the giant-size Defiant and Voyager models, if they make them.

(As for the Romulan drone, it doesn't look very Romulan, except for its color, but that was the point).

If I remember correctly, it was stated in-universe that the drone ship was actually build from a Warbird. I would be so curious to see what that Warbird looks like before the retrofit. I wonder, has anyone ever done any fanart on this?

 

[137th Gebirg]

The Ent Romulan Drone CG model, IIRC, was a reuse from the "Flea" ship from Voyager. As for an in-universe explanation, I don't recall that line, although I did find mention of it on Memory Alpha. I agree that it looks nothing like a "warbird" of any kind. It's entirely possible that they repurposed intact modules and materials from a wrecked ship to build it.

 

[Tomalak]

I assumed it was deliberately designed to look like it wasn't Romulan so the finger wouldn't be pointed at them.

 

[Michael]

Here's some of the dialog from “United”:

VALDORE: That's the point of this project. No prisoners to capture, no bodies to recover. These Drone ships can never be traced back to us.
VRAX: This prototype's a modified warbird. The Vulcans would identify it the moment they inspected the propulsion matrix.

I imagine it would have wings stuck to its side and the front would look somewhat more bird-like. Plus, the holographic projectors all over the hull would be missing.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Heh...that line of dialog was likely written before the CG model was built. Seeing that they didn't just repurpose their "warbird" model instead of the "flea" one from Voyager, I'm guessing someone in the art department simply just didn't get the memo.

 

[Michael]

Heh...that line of dialog was likely written before the CG model was built. Seeing that they didn't just repurpose their "warbird" model instead of the "flea" one from Voyager, I'm guessing someone in the art department simply just didn't get the memo.

But isn't that the point? There was no “warbird model” they could repurpose. The only other Romulan ship we saw in this time period was the Bird-of-Prey from “Minefield”.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Which has also been referred to as a "warbird" (of course they wouldn't use a D'Deridex-class Warbird) - exactly my point with regard to using these terms too loosely and interchangeably - looks like it even confused the CG modelers.

 

[NOVE9]

Budget constraints by the 4th season are a far more likely reason they reused that model. You can see by the 3rd season they started reusing ships, before that just about every new ship in the series WAS a new ship.

 

[t_smitts]

Which has also been referred to as a "warbird" (of course they wouldn't use a D'Deridex-class Warbird) - exactly my point with regard to using these terms too loosely and interchangeably - looks like it even confused the CG modelers.

I don't think the ship in "Minefield" was ever called a Warbird. I'm not even sure it was ever called a BoP in dialogue. I think that might've been more a script thing.

Budget constraints by the 4th season are a far more likely reason they reused that model. You can see by the 3rd season they started reusing ships, before that just about every new ship in the series WAS a new ship.

I didn't have a problem with reusing the "Flea" from "Voyager". It had been on screen for only a few seconds in an episode of a different series several years earlier. I'd wager even most fans didn't recognize it without being told. (I didn't). There were only two recycles that really bothered me on the show. The first was putting a D7 in "Unexpected" (I really wish, for the blu-ray set, that they'd just had the Okudas go in and replace the shots in that episode with a D5). The other was reusing the Xindi-Arboreal ships for the Tellarite ships. Unlike the "Flea", that one involved a ship from a major race that we'd only seen a year prior (though admittedly, the Arboreals and Tellarites themselves are rather similar looking). Surely they had enough generic alien ship-of-the-week designs by this point that they could've found one that hadn't been used so recently.

While season 3 gave us a bunch of new Xindi designs, there really weren't that many memorable ships introduced in season 4, recycled or otherwise. The Vulcans, Andorians, Klingons, and Tholians had all had their ships established already. It was pretty much the drone and the Connie Defiant (and that's certainly not a new design!)

 

[NOVE9]

Yeah I'd agree with both of those. Particularly the tellarite ships was kind of disappointing.