Mini-Review: ENTERPRISE-D model by Eaglemoss

Mini-Review

USS ENTERPRISE (NCC-1701-D)

(Enterprise-D model from Eaglemoss, the first installment of the "Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection";
shown next to a standard fine-point Sharpie marker for scale)

I've been aware for a while now of the series of starship models made by British collectibles manufacturer Eaglemoss, marketed as "Star Trek:  The Official Starships Collection".  It's obviously an officially-endorsed series of collectibles, and has even been featured heavily on StarTrek.com.

Well, about a week ago I finally bit the bullet and signed up.  You can get these models in two ways:  Poach them one-by-one on eBay, etc. or sign up for a "subscription".  If you do the latter, you get roughly two models each month as they're released.  I opted for the subscription because...well, because what else is a Trekkie going to do, right?  They're fairly far along in the series by now, so I should have quite a few months of twofer shipments until I "catch up" with the production.

The first ship in the series is the second most famous starship in the Trek universe after the iconic original NCC-1701, the Enterprise-D from Star Trek:  The Next Generation.  This is my mini-review of that model.  I'm going to kind of break this down into categories...

(This mini-review does not include any video.  But if you'd like a bit more detail about the model, including a look at the accompanying magazine and some good video shots, check out this video on YouTube by "IrishTrekkie".  I'll be linking his review videos with each of my mini-reviews, as he's done the entire series of collectibles up to date and I think he does a great job.)

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Size & Scaling

I'm consistently disappointed in pre-painted, pre-assembled collectible starship models because of their scaling issues.  I understand that a Galaxy class starship is going to be much larger than a Constitution class starship if you scale them both at, let's say 1:2500.

But I wish they'd just do that, and go ahead and charge me more for the large models.  This problem has plagued me from the Star Trek Micro-Machines that I had when I was an adolescent all the way through the handful of Hot Wheels starships that I purchased a couple of years ago.

The Eaglemoss models are no exception to this disappointing fact of life.  If you were hoping to play Enterprise-D versus Bird-of-Prey and have everything be to scale, I'm afraid you're out of luck.

The Enterprise-D model is markedly teeny-tiny.  It fits easily in the palm of my hand.  Now granted, I have big hands...but my point stands.

Here it is next to an unfinished 1:2500 Galaxy model from AMT (don't ask about the paint job; it's not done and I was screwing around with some markers).  As you can see, it's a wee little representation of a massive starship.

(Hey, I said "don't ask about the paint job".)

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Plastic vs. Metal

The other big problem you run into with a lot of "die cast models" is the shockingly small amount of metal they seem to be able to include in the model and still get away with calling it "die cast".  This was a particular problem for me with the Hot Wheels edition of the original refit Enterprise, where only the secondary hull was metal and everything else (primary hull, neck, pylons and nacelles) was plastic--and warped, wobbly, rubbery plastic at that.

I'm happy to say that there are no such issues with at least this particular Eaglemoss model.  No, it's not 100% metal.  That would be a fairly unrealistic expectation.  But the bulk of the primary hull is solid die cast, and the parts of the model that are plastic still feel very solid.  No warped pieces or "wobbly nacelle syndrome" here.

The model as a whole feels very, very solid.

Here's a breakdown of what's metal and what's plastic.

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Details & Overall Quality

The detail on the model is probably its best feature.  This is leaps and bounds better than anything I've seen from Hot Wheels, etc.  My model had a few spots where the paint didn't get laid down correctly for windows and lifeboats, etc.--but those spots were very few and far between.

One not-so-small detail that a lot of people will miss is the saucer separation feature.  I'm disappointed that this model doesn't separate, but given its small size and construction I see why they didn't do it.  I think if they did so, it would either be too much or too little metal and it would be unbalanced.

(You can see in the front here were there's some botched paint...but that's really the only

noticeable occurrence of that on the whole model.)

(The detail on the ventral side of the primary hull is crazy good. They did about

as good a job with "aztec" pattern painting that I've ever seen on something this small.)

As I mentioned above, the overall quality is great.  Solidly-built, seams are hardly noticeable, etc.  I actually had to tap on the top of the primary hull with a coin to know for sure where the plastic center section ended and the metal outer section began.  The seams between the plastic enter of the primary hull, the metal outer part of the primary hull's dorsal side and the plastic of the neck connecting the primary hull and secondary hull are pretty much invisible. 

(The Eaglemoss Enterprise-D with the Hot Wheels Saratoga.  The Miranda class models are among some of 

the better Hot Wheels ones, and I don't really have any complaints. But the Eaglemoss model is worlds better 
even than the better Hot Wheels models.)

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Conclusion & More Pictars!

Overall, I'm very pleased.  Solid, well-detailed and the stand is even pretty cool.  It uses this sort of "floating" design that means that they didn't have to poke a hole in the bottom of the model.  I believe they use this same design for most or all of the models in this series.

I'm really looking forward to getting the next installment, which I believe is the original refit Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  I don't own the Hot Wheels version of the Enterprise-D, but I do own (and was sorely disappointed in) their version of the refit Enterprise.  I'm eager to see how the Eaglemoss version stacks up.  From reviews I've seen, I've every reason to believe that it'll be crazy good.

Oh, and the model came with a magazine all about the model and the creation of its television counterpart.  It's neat, but nothing you can't see on Ex Astris Scientia and the like.

Here are some additional pictures.  These are all relatively small because I didn't want this blog post to take forever to load.  But the full collection of full-sized pictures (whatever default size an iPhone 5S takes...3000px wide, I think) up on my webhost and you can see them all here.