Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Mini-Review: ENTERPRISE (REFIT) & KLINGON BIRD-OF-PREY models by Eaglemoss

Mini-Review
USS ENTERPRISE (Refit) & KLINGON BIRD-OF-PREY

 (Klingon Bird-of-Prey and the USS Enterprise (refit) from Eaglemoss)


I previously reviewed Issue 1 (the Enterprise-D), which I found to be nicely detailed and well-made  These two ships in Issues 2 and 3 both feature in my top five favorite Star Trek starship designs, so I was quite excited to receive them both.  I like the Galaxy class just fine, but I like these two designs much more.

Like the first issue, both models came with a glossy collector's magazine that includes lots of cool information about the ships.  They're neat to flip through, but as I said with the previous edition--it's nothing you can't find online.  I won't really discuss those.

This shipment also came with my first "subscriber gift", a binder for holding all of those nice magazines.  Here's a wide shot of all of my Eaglemoss schwag to date:


I'm going to do my mini-review for these one at a time, but I'll again link you to the two video reviews that YouTube user "IrishTrekkie" did of these models.  He covers them more in-depth, and includes coverage of the magazines and so forth.
But now on with my own mini-review(s) and photos...





Issue 2 of the subscription is the refit version of the original USS Enterprise, first seen in Star Trek:  The Motion Picture and subsequently appearing in Star Trek II:  The Wrath Of Khan before being destroyed in Star Trek III:  The Search For Spock.  

The Enterprise-A was a nearly-identical ship (the refit Constitution class), but this model is specifically the original Enterprise (post-2265).  This is the ship that explored V'Ger and battled Khan.

I was very, very disappointed with the Hot Wheels version of this ship (almost no die cast, warped plastic, very little detail), so I was really hoping that the level of detail and build quality that I saw on the Enterprise-D would carry over.  The results were...mixed.  


As I mentioned in my review of the Enterprise-D model, one of my biggest complaints about "die cast" models is how little of them turn out to actually be metal.  With that model, I was pleasantly surprised.  While there was still a good bit of plastic, the bulk of the ship's sizable primary hull was solid die cast metal.

A similar approach is taken with the refit Enterprise.  The entirety of the primary hull (the saucer section) is die cast, while the secondary hull, neck, pylons and nacelles are all plastic.  However, because the Constitution class' primary hull is much less of its overall bulk than the Galaxy class, much more of this model's overall mass is plastic than metal.  I'd had hopes that both the primary and secondary hulls would be all or mostly metal, with the pylons and nacelles perhaps being plastic.  The larger percentage of plastic in this model is a bit of a disappointment.

That being said, the parts that are plastic are still pretty well done.  They're obviously less hefty (and thus less-satisfying to hold) than the metal saucer section, but they're rigid (no warped plastic), mostly straight (there's some barely-perceptible crookedness) and the paint and details are just as good as on the metal primary hull.

 

The level of detail is good--especially for a model of this size (I'd guess that this is somewhere smaller than 1:2500 scale).  That being said, the detailing on the Enterprise-D was much better.  That was a much larger ship scaled down into a not-that-much-bigger model, and they managed to put all kinds of great "aztec" patterning and window detail on that model.  I know that there wasn't as much of that stuff on the refit Enterprise's filming model (which Eaglemoss claims to use as the baseline for all of their models), but I think they could've done a little better with the detail.  It's not bad, but it could've used more.

It's worlds better than the unbelievably crappy level of detail on the Hot Wheels version though.  So it's got that going for it :)

 (alongside its much-maligned Hot Wheels counterpart, which is larger but both poorer
in build quality and lower in detail)

Overall, I'm happy with the model.  It's not perfect, but it's better than any other commercial attempt I've seen at a pre-painted die cast model of this particular ship at this small a scale.




Issue 3 of the subscription is the ever-popular Klingon Bird-of-Prey, first introduced in Star Trek III:  The Search For Spock and featured in nearly every film and series since then.  

One of the franchise's most recognizable "villain" starships (although the Klingons weren't always villains, of course), the ship was scaled up and down by the effects department as needed.  Variously referred to on-screen as the "B'rel", "K'Vort", "D12" or just "scout" class, the ship has been depicted as everything from a small 12-man escort or raiding vessel to a much larger cruiser-type ship.  

It's popular in fandom to consider the "B'rel" classification to be the smaller scout-type iteration of the ship (and the oldest type), and the "K'Vort" classification to refer to the larger cruiser-type iteration.  But the truth is that they've thrown around different terminology and scaled the ship up and down so much that none of the names can really be definitively tied to any one size or type.  So technically, it's simply the "Klingon Bird-of-Prey".

If you're a turbo-nerd like me, you can check out the excellent article that Ex Astris Scientia has on the Bird-of-Prey scaling issue (which I've posted in other blog entries when discussing this ship).

In any case, it's an awesome design.  The folks at ILM did a bang-up job when they built it for ST3, and it's just one of my absolute favorites.  Were Eaglemoss to deliver a disappointing execution of this ship, it'd really be a bummer.

Fortunately, I don't have to worry about that.  This model is awesome.

For starters, it's almost entirely metal.  Yes, even the frickin' wings.

 

The model has great weight to it and feels sturdy as hell in the hand.  Now, the one thing that I know everyone wants to know is "Do the wings articulate?"  Sadly, they do not.

 (No, the wings don't move.)

That being said, I understand why they don't.  Making a BoP model with moving wings that isn't mostly plastic and prone to hinges that wear out after a while is hard.  Trust me, I've owned a lot of BoP models.  So I'd rather have one that's mostly die cast but doesn't articulate.

I have the Hot Wheels version of this ship as well, which does have movable wings and is generally a pretty high-quality model itself.  But it's also mostly-plastic and its hinges are starting to wear out.  I suppose they wouldn't if I didn't play with it so much.  However, buying starship models and not playing with them from time to time just isn't something I'm prepared to do :P

(The Eaglemoss BoP (top) and Hot Wheels BoP (bottom)

The Eaglemoss BoP is smaller than the Hot Wheels BoP, although it has nearly as wide a wingspan.  Given Eaglemoss' devotion to replicating the filming models as closely as possible, I tend to think their proportions are probably more accurate than Hot Wheels' (and that's not to bag on HW--I like their BoP model...I even gave it a custom paint job).

The Eaglemoss BoP is also better-detailed overall than its Hot Wheels counterpart.  In fact, it's the best-detailed BoP model I've ever seen that wasn't a large 1:1200 scale model build and painted by a modeler.


There's also some cool weathering to the paint job that gives it the feeling of a used warship.  It's present all over the model, but especially around the forward command module and torpedo tube.  I tried to capture it well in a photograph, but I'm afraid my iPhone wasn't up to the task of focusing in on the detail very well.  You can see some of it in the picture above of the front of the ship and the position of the wings.  But trust me, in person it looks crazy, awesome, wicked sick good.



Conclusion & Photos

In summary, I'm pleased with both of these models.  The refit Enterprise could definitely be better, but it's satisfactory.  The Bird-of-Prey is completely awesome.  If I had to rank the ships I've received so far from this collection, it'd go something like:
  1. Klingon Bird-of-Prey
  2. USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)
  3. USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) (refit)
 (Yes, I realize these aren't in the order in which I ranked them above.)

I believe the next two I should receive are the Enterprise (NX-01) and the Romulan D'deridex.  I'm very excited for the warbird, as the Romulans are my favorite Trek aliens and the D'deridex is also in my "top five".  The warbird is also one of the biggest Trek ships (although depicted as equivalent in size because of the big void in the middle, it's actually almost twice as long as the Galaxy class), so seeing how they do detail on something so huge will be interesting.  Hopefully the execution is good.

And while it's no secret that I'm not a big fan of Enterprise as a series, I think the design of the NX-class itself is fine (I'm not blown away by it, but it's okay).  And it's a relatively small ship but from a relatively recent production, so the original filming model was very detailed.  I look forward to seeing how that translates to the model.

Here are the remainder of the photos that I took, but didn't end up using in the individual reviews above.  These are all relatively small because I didn't want this blog post to take forever to load, but you can view high-res photos in these two directories on my webhost:

http://samtrek.lab1663.net/02_enterprise_refit/
http://samtrek.lab1663.net/03_klingon_bird-of-prey/
















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