EMvTW 95: USS Kyushu NCC-65491 (New Orleans class)

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

And bringing up the rear from November's Eaglemoss vs. The World purchases is the USS Kyushu (NCC-65491), a New Orleans class ship that we sort of get to see in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode titled, "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II".

Per this Memory Alpha LINK,"The USS Kyushu (NCC-65491) was a 24th century Federation New Orleans-class starship operated by Starfleet.  This frigate fought the Borg at the Battle of Wolf 359 in 2367, and was destroyed along with 38 other starships."  This Memory Beta LINK has a little more to say about the ship's history, including, "The Kyushu was among the first New Orleans-class starships launched in the 24th century."  There is other information regarding the New Orleans Class of starship, including how and why the original model was built and what happened to that model.  You can find that information at these Memory Alpha and Memory Beta links.

I say that we sort of get to see her because when she appears on screen, she has already been destroyed by the Borg.  And that view is from a distance.  In fact, most images online are all the same, tiny, versions.

I felt it necessary to point this out, because in my opinion, this is where the Eaglemoss collection really shines through.  No other manufacturer has produced a pre-built and pre-painted model of the intact ship.  There ave been plenty of model builders out there who kitbashed thier own version of the ship, but if you are not skilled enough, or lazy like me, then Eaglemoss has come to the rescue by providing us this model.

 

 

 

 

The other thing that wows me about this model is that Eaglemoss had to create thier own digital version of it.  The original physical model was purposely damaged for the filming of the episode.  after that, the damaged model has moved on to some collector's private vault.  Eaglemoss was lucky enough to find some profile pictures of the model before it was "modified" and used these to digitally re-create the vessel.

This is one unique looking starship.  The sculpting and molding of details on this model are OK.  I say this because the molded details do not look all that crisp to me.  If anything, they appear softened and rounded.  I'm not sure why this happened.  We've seen Galaxy Class spinoff models that are much more crisp in detailing.  It may have happened because the scale for this ship is different.  Apparently, the New Orleans class is a lot smaller than her Galaxy class counterpart.  In fact, the original model featured larger escape pods hatches, windows and even a larger bridge module.

The most exciting molded feature on this model, and the most talked about is the "pods" that are mounted on the top and bottom of the ship.

 

Top Pods

 

Bottom Pod

This is what this Ex Astris Scientia LINK has to say about them: "The New Orleans class sports two additional pods on the top of the saucer and one pod underneath the engineering hull. It is in dispute among fans whether these pods are supposed to hold auxiliary warp engines, photon torpedo tubes, sensor arrays or even shuttlebays, but this has to be clarified by the starship designer, provided they are intentional design elements at all. Considering the text marker nacelles of the Cheyenne class, the pods are apparently made of text markers (most probably from Schwan Stabilo) likewise, which would work perfectly with the 1/1400 Galaxy model kit."

My thoughts on this are, maybe the pods could be any of the above mentioned items.  Perhaps they are modular, like the pod system on top of the Nebula class vessel.

The detailing on these pods is decent, however, some of the painting is a bit messed up.  They still add some personality to the ship though.

As far as the paint job goes, this is a rather colorful model.  There is a super subtle aztecing applied accross thee entire vessel, however, the lighting in my pictures don't show it that well.  Eaglemoss did paint and highlight all sorts of important areas, however, as is rather common with Eaglemoss models, some of the window paint does not line up properly with the molded windows on the model.  You can definitely tell where the impulse engines are, so good job there Eaglemoss.  Although the hanger bay has landing markers, the actual door is not painted and just blends into the model.

The joins and seams are hidden well.  The one place that they do show is on the bottom of the engineering hull, but Eaglemoss did a good job of making them look like panel lines.

The warp nacelles are slightly longer looking than on a Galaxy class ship, and this is because the original designers tacked on and extra piece to each one.  Eaglemoss did a fine job with the nacelles and they even treated us to thier great use of clear red and blue plastics.

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.

Let's look at the facts first.  This model is a kitbash of a Galaxy Class kit.  That being said, it is safe to say, that the original creators would have used the Galaxy class deflector dish as well.  With that in mind, I went back and looked at my Eaglemoss models for the Enterprise D, the future Enterprise D Dreadnought, as well, as the Nebula class USS Honshu (NCC-60205).

After looking at those previous Eaglemoss Deflector dishes, I have to say, Eaglemoss did a fantastic job with this one.  I would even dare say, that it's the best Galaxy class dish that they have done to date.  The detailing is crisp and the paint is well placed and used in good proportions.

We now come to the part of my article where I give you my thoughts on whether this is a good buy or not.  At the time that I'm writing this article, this model is going for around $38 (shipping included) on eBay.  Eaglemoss doesn't even have them in stock, which makes this a more rare model to get.  And quite frankly, given the nature of the ship, I get why it is valued so much.  But is it a model that I would invest close to $40 on?  Would I buy this one, especially when I have previously said in other articles that I get uncomfortable when these standard sized Eaglemoss models go above the $28 mark.  Based off the fact that I buy these sorts of things because I'm too lazy to build and paint them myself, and given the fact that a model kit of this ship is rather expensive (more than $40), then I would have to say "Yes, it is worth it."  Honestly, it's a well done model of a rare type of starship, and it would look great in anyone's fleet or collection.

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