Rewrites: NONE YET
First Contact Day is a holiday celebrated to honor both the warp 1 flight of the Phoenix and first open contact between Humans and Vulcans on April 5th, 2063 in Bozeman, Montana. In June of 2020, Eaglemoss made first contact for us by releasing the Special Edition version of the vessel that made First Contact in 2063.
Per Memory Alpha and Beta, "The T'Plana-Hath was a Vulcan T'Plana-Hath-type survey ship that was in service with the Vulcan High Command in the mid-21st century. On the morning of April 5th, 2063, it was passing through the outskirts of the Sol system, when it detected Dr. Zefram Cochrane's warp signature during a test flight of the Phoenix from the vicinity of Earth, a planet which the Vulcan High Command had been monitoring for decades. As per Vulcan first contact protocols, they decided to land on Earth, to meet the person who flew the first warp ship of their world. They landed in Bozeman, Montana."
If you would like to read more official stuff on this type of ship, feel free to check out the following links:
T'Plana-Hath Class Information: Memory Alpha LINK and Memory Beta LINK
T'Plana-Hath Information: Memory Alpha LINK and Memory Beta LINK
According to some non-canon sources, the ship's name was actually called the Vesaya and was a Voroth Class ship. Since this information came from a non-canon source, I will simply share the information.
You can read this information from Memory Beta at this LINK (Vesaya) and this LINK (Voroth Class).
Eaglemoss' next Special Edition model brings us yet another Vulcan ship. This marks the second Vulcan Special Edition model in a row. This model comes in the largest Special Edition box yet as the model is gargantuan, both in width as well as height, After taking it out, handling it, photographing it, and of course scrutinizing it, I wonder why Eaglemoss chose to do this as a Special Edition rather than a smaller Standard Edition model. Originally, I thought it was a licensing issue with Paramount, but with the upcoming Issue #180 Borg Cube, which is from the same movie, coming to us as a Standard sized model, that sort of kills my theory.
Eaglemoss has presented the ship to us with the landing struts in the extended mode for landing. Honestly, this makes having a stand sort of pointless as the model can stand on its own.
As you can see from my Photoshoot pictures, the ship and therefore the model is very repetitive as far as parts go, which means that there isn't a lot of angles to look at this thing from. Due to this repetition, I'm going to present my review a little differently than normal.
The "top" of the model bears some nice molded details, which reveal lots of panel lines across the hull. The paintwork bears the traditional brownish orange color that we have come to expect from Vulcan ships of the Star Trek: Enterprise era, which makes sense as this ship predates the ones of that series. There are some darker patches as well which help highlight certain panels. There is also some etching across the hull that give the appearance of scratches on a heavily used craft.
I had to go back and re-watch the Vulcan landing sequence of the movie to catch this next part. I didn't know about the fact that the landing gear rotated and attached themselves under the engine pods during flight mode, until I read about it from another reviewer.
I feel that Eaglemoss did a fairly decent job of rendering the mechanics of the "underside" of the ship. You get a good idea of how these parts rotate and move when the ship needs to take off or land. The paint work continues to carry on down underneath with the colors and weathering as well. I particularly like the stipes on the landing struts the represent some sort of energy conduits.
The engine pods and struts are nicely represented on the Eaglemoss model as well. The mold work and paint work carry across the top and side of the model even into this area of the ship, and gives a nice conformity to everything.
Looking at the bottom of the engine pods, we can see that Eaglemoss did not choose to go with it's famous clear plastics, but rather used an opaque plastic instead. The painted the grill lines on this area and the overall effect looks good. My personal preference though would have been for them to use a yellow colored plastic instead to better represent the glowing effect of this part of the engines.
The feet or claws on the landing struts are missing the weathering details which makes them stand out a little bit. Other than that, the detailing is executed well for this part of the ship.
When looking at the top of the landing foot, we find that the lack of weathering is continued here as well. There is also a lack of any etched details for the door/doors that the Vulcans used to exit their ship. With a model of this large size, I don't see why they could not have included it.
I don't usually do this, but here is a YouTube clip of the Vulcan's visit to Earth where you can watch this ship touch down on Terran soil.
And that is all the pictures and comparisons I have to share on this ship at this time. At the time of this article's writing (February 1st. 2021), I was able to find the model on both eBay as well as the Eaglemoss US based Webstore for $50. If you buy it through eBay, shipping was included in that price, while Eaglemoss will charge you a fee to send it.
All in all, it's a nicely done model with only a few tiny issues. My issue with the model is it's size, and it's cost. Bottom line is that Eaglemoss should have done this ship as one of their Standard Edition or Bonus Edition models and saved us collector's $25. The model could have been produced just as easily and just as nicely at the smaller scale and I take issue with Eaglemoss gouging us for something like this. I'm sure there are collector's who like the size, and if something this big is for you, then go for it, I suppose it's worth the money, but for me, who wants and needs their models to be around 6 inches in length for space reasons, then this model should be a pass.
And with the conclusion of this review, it means that we have now been presented with every Vulcan ship to come out of Eaglemoss. They have given us quite a large collection of starships as well, matching the size of the Borg as well as the Klingon fleets of alien ships.
Pictured above, you can see the following vessels and I have included links to my reviews of those models: Issue #34 Vulcan Suurok class (REVIEW LINK), Issue #55 Vulcan D'kyr class (REVIEW LINK) Issue #88 Vahklas (REVIEW LINK), Issue #134 Vulcan Survey Ship (20th Century) (REVIEW LINK), Issue #141 T'Pau NSP-17938 (Apollo or Merchant (Vulcan) class) (REVIEW LINK), Issue #155 Vulcan Survey Vessel D'Vahl (REVIEW LINK), Special #7 Jellyfish (REVIEW LINK), Special #21 Surak VS-5047-81192259584-5 (Vulcan Long Range Shuttle (SW7 Class)) (REVIEW LINK)
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:
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