EMvTW 93: ECS Horizon (J-Class)

NOTE:  You can click on most pictures to get a larger view of them.

It has been a while since we reviewed a freighter, in fact, I forgot that this type of freighter even existed.  So let us now take a look at the ECS Horizon, a J-Class Freighter, which we were introduced to in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode titled "Fortunate Son".

Per this Memory Alpha LINK, "The J-class was a starship design of Earth origin utilized by the Earth Cargo Service as a freighter. They were operated by captains with an Earth Cargo Authority license. These vessels have a history dating back to the early 22nd century."  This Memory Beta LINK goes on to say "Ships of this type had a maximum speed of Warp 2, were equipped with hull plating and primitive inertial dampeners, and could transport up to 30,000 metric tons. Their warp drives were personally designed by Zefram Cochrane.".  The front section of the ship, which was basically a cargo tug, was capable of disconnecting from the cargo containers and operating independently.

If you would like to read up about the ECS Horizon, feel free to check out these Memory Alpha and Memory Beta links.

Before I get ahead of myself, let us take a look at Eaglemoss' model, and I do apologize for the darker pictures, but the flash on my camera was not liking this ship, and was washing out the pictures.  I'll talk more on this later.

 

 

 

 

The ECS Horizon is not the first Earth freighter from Eaglemoss.  Way back in Issue #49, Eaglemoss brought us the Y Class freighter called the ECS Fortunate.  You can read my review of that model at THIS LINK.  The ECS Fortunate was an awesome model, super detailed and worth every penny.  I was actually excited to hear that Eaglemoss was producing yet another one of these types of freighters.

I sort of felt bad putting the two models side by side.  When you do this, you can clearly see that there is a bit of a difference in quality.  Honestly, when I looked at the new ship for the first time, I was left feeling like this...

Where do we begin on this model???  Well, the ship's overall length is one of the things that hurts this model.  Because she is so long, she is also scaled down in order to fit into the standard Eaglemoss box.  And that scaling down means that details are going to be affected.

As far as the sculpted and molded details go, there are TONS of them.

The ship has lots of detail lines and if I was going by those by themselves, I would be very impressed with this model.  I mean, look at that antenna array on the top and the cannon on the bottom!!!

 

The problem that stands out for the whole design is the back spine and belly of the ship.  The way that Eaglemoss duplicated the look throws the whole thing off.  Unfortunately, there was no way that Eaglemoss was going to be able to duplicate all the pipes that made up those two areas of the ship.  Had they tried harder, the model would have been too expensive to produce and we wouldn't have one to look at.  They tried thier best, but unfortunately, the end result softens the crisp look of the molded details on the top and the bottom.

One other slight issue I had with the molding arises when you look at the back of the ship.  This is one of those things that when you compare the magazine to the actual physical model in your hands, you can't help but get annoyed.

 

Magazine                                               Model

They should have recessed the cargo door in more on the model.

I think the thing that really ruined this model for me was the paint job.  The entire ship is a light grey color and it plays havoc with lighting effects, like my camera's flash.  The paint job, when looked at from an entire perspective, looks bland and dull.  Eaglemoss tried to offset this with some weathering paint, and a few patches of color here and there, but it just isn't enough.

Sure, Eaglemoss did manage to squeeze the name of the ship on in tiny little letters.  Pretty tricky actually.  And yes, they did number all of the cargo containers.  But in the end, the all that light grey dominates the model and washes out the colors.  And for me, it makes all thee parts just sort of run together.

I did like the warp nacelles on this model.

They are tiny, but thier molding work was well done, and Eaglemoss managed to stick on thier clear red plastics for the bussard collectors.

Whenever I review a Starfleet ship, I like to hyper-focus on the deflector dish as it usually gives me a good idea of the level of attention to details that a manufacturer puts into thier models.  Let's face it, this is a very important part of the ship and should be accurately represented.

Once again, we're going to reference the magazine.

 

Magazine                                               Model

What the heck is that thing???  I immediately thought of Eccentrica Gallumbits from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.  But since this is a Star Trek ship, I'll just redirect your dirty little minds to the Cat Lady from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

That deflector dish isn't even sexy, so I am wondering why they made it that way.

OK, now that you have that vision stuck in your head, let us finish off this review.  At the time that I am writing this article, you can get the ECS Horizon on eBay for around $27 (shipping included) and Eaglemoss doesn't have it in stock.  Honestly, I can't say, in good conscience, that this is a good buy for the money.  Not when you realize that you can get yourself the much better ECS Fortunate for around $26 (shipping included) from eBay and around $22 (not sure on shipping cost) directly from Eaglemoss.  Sorry Eaglemoss, this one just doesn't measure up.  i hate saying that, because I love thier models, but this one is very disappointing.

As always, I hope you found this article useful and informative.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to comment below.

So for now, "Live long and prosper!!!"

Additional Links To Photos Of My Collection:
Eaglemoss