EMvTW 14 - Cardassian Galor class

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As promised in my last article, we are actually getting back into doing some comparative discussions with my "Eaglemoss vs. The World" series.  This article is going to focus on the Cardassian Galor class ship.  We first get to see one of these types of ships in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode titled, "The Wounded"

My current collection of this type of ship consists of an Eaglemoss, a Furuta, and a MicroMachine.

EMvTW 13 - Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser

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And now we come to lucky number thirteen in my series called "Eaglemoss vs. The World".  Since Eaglemoss is the only manufacturer to have made a small scale version of the Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser, this article, like my last one about the Akira Class, is going to be a super short article as well.

We are introduced to this formidable starship in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode titled, "In Purgatory's Shadow".

EMvTW 12 - USS Thunderchild NCC-63549 (Akira class)

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Moving along to issue number 12 of my "Eaglemoss vs. The World" series, we are now going to be treated to one of the shortest articles in my fledgling writing career.  This is the first Eaglemoss ship that no other small scale ship manufacturer has built in a pre-built and pre-painted format so it's going to be tough comparing her to anything.

It feels out of place not taking a "collection shot", but there is only one ship, so with out further stalling, here is my write-up on Eaglemoss' model.

We are introduced to this ship in the movie "Star Trek: First Contact" where the USS Thunderchild takes part in the Battle of Sector 001.

Lewis Payne Class Dreadnought

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This next kitbash that I'm going to talk about started out as a picture that I saw on a FaceBook Group and then is rapidly progressed into this formidable beast.

What I really like about this ship design is that it really messes with the techie heads.

Chiroptera Class

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Sometime you see a design that someone has built and think, "Hey, that would be cool to build."  But as you start gathering parts and start dry fitting the model together, it goes in a completely different direction.  

This is one of those builds.

Spartan Class Heavy Rescue

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Rewrites: Checked on November 12, 2021, but nothing major was needed.

I had been following with a lot of interest the production of a movie that would have been called "Star Trek: Axanar", which would have covered the time of the Federation/Klingon war that occurs between the ENT era and the TOS era.  Sound familiar?  Unfortunately, the guy producing this movie got a little too over zealous in his endeavor and attracted the attention of CBS & Paramount who basically sued him into submission.  They then went on to produce thier own series and told a rather botched story arc of the same time period.

Anyway... I am trying to avoid getting on my soap box.  LOL.

There were some neat ship designs to come out of Axanar that led nicely into some ship designs that make appearances in the Star Trek (2009) movie.  All those twin engineering hulled ships got me thinking and after many hours of consulting and planning, I produced a compact, yet tough little ship.

This is that ships's story...

Miranda Class Variants

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EDITOR'S NOTE: As of 03/10/2018, this article has been replaced by several smaller articles.  You may read on if you like, however, I will provide links to all the sub articles at the bottom in case you want more up-to-date information and pictures.

The Miranda class seems to be a favorite among Star Trek fans.  This is probably because it was the first Starfleet ship to be shown on screen that wasn't a Constitution or Constitution Refit class.

Since I like kitbashing in 1:2500 scale, I have purchased a lot of AMT Round 2 3-Ship sets over the last two years.  Although the Miranda class is not my top favorite, I can't deny that her unique hull and that oh so popular "roll bar" and weapons pod open this model up for some very interesting kitbashes.

EMvTW 11 - USS Reliant NCC-1864 (Miranda Class Refit)

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If the Borg Sphere was my shortest article in the "Eaglemoss vs. The World" series, then this will probably be the longest as I have quite a collection of Miranda ships in my fleet.  The Miranda class is probably one of the highest rated fan favorites in the franchise right after the TOS Era Enterprise and her TMP era counterpart.Refit.  We are first introduced to this style of ship in the form of the USS Reliant (NCC-1864) which graces the big screen in the movie, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan".  We then get to see this class of ship used quite a bit in several of the series.

My Miranda Class collection is made up of a Hallmark, Eaglemoss, Furuta, two Hot Wheels, and two standard MicroMachines.

EMvTW 10 - Borg Sphere

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And we now move on to my tenth "Eaglemoss vs. The World" review and this will be one of the shortest reviews I've written to date.  Let's take a look at the Borg Sphere.  We are first introduced to this ship in the movie, "Star Trek: First Contact".

Well, there you have it.  All two of them,  I own an Eaglemoss and a Furuta model. 

EMvTW 09 - USS Defiant NX-74205 (Defiant class)

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And now we are on to number nine of my "Eaglemoss vs. The World" series.  It's time to focus on a cool and tough little ship, the USS Defiant, which we are introduced to for the first time in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode titled "The Search, Part I".  After that, the ship continues to make it's presence known throughout the series as well as in the movie Star Trek: First Contact.

I've managed to collect several versions of this ship, in the form of an Eaglemoss, Furuta and Hallmark model, not to mention a MicroMachine and a clear resin MicroMachine wanna-be, which is supposed to make it look like it is cloaked.

EMvTW 08 - USS Excelsior NCC-2000 (Excelsior class)

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Moving right along with my Eaglemoss vs. The World series, we now take a look at issue #8, the USS Excelsior.  We are first introduced to this ship in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock where she tries to chase down the USS Enterprise as it escapes from Spacedock.

My collection of this ship is relatively small as there were not a lot of choices to go with when collecting a small scale version.  Currently, I have an Eaglemoss, a Hot Wheels, a Furuta, and two MicroMachines models.

lomqa' QuQ Class

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Since my last two articles were Klingon in nature, I figured it was time to share this ship with my readers.  I will hold off any witty comments until the "Real Universe" portion of the article.

IKS Gre'thor

lomqa' QuQ Class

1:2500 AMT Kitbash

Parts used: AMT TOS Romulan Bird Of Prey, Head and neck from an unknown sized Klingon D-7 (I’ve had the model for over 20 years), warp nacelles from a 1:2500 K’Tinga class cruiser, sheet styrene, a piece of PVC pipe, and one bussard collector from a Polar Lights NX-Refit kit.

D-7 & K'Tinga Class Variants

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Now that I have finished my Eaglemoss vs. The World article on the K'Tinga Class Battlecruiser (Read that article at THIS LINK.), I decided to share some of my kitbash work that share an ancestry with that ship classification.

As an extra bonus, Eaglemoss eventually produced the D-7 class battle cruiser and you can read my review of the model at THIS LINK.

The K-Tinga Class is the direct descendant of the D-7 Battlecruiser, hence the reason they look a lot alike.

Since I like kitbashing in 1:2500 scale, I have purchased a lot of AMT Round 2 3-Ship sets over the last two years.  And because of this, I ended up with a lot of D-7 and K-Tinga kits in my stash.  I eventually found some source material that gave me some ideas on what to do with those kits.

While doing some reading about the D-7 design history, I came across a Matt Jeffries set of drawings on Memory Alpha of his different concepts for what this ship was going to look like.

This gave me the idea to try to build a couple of these concept drawings and make them into "real" ships.  The reality is, I could have used either the D-7 or the K'Tinga kits for these builds due to the similar body, neck and head structure.

EMvTW 07 - Klingon K'Tinga Class Battle-cruiser

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My seventh installment of "Eaglemoss vs. The World" article will focus on the K'Tinga Class Battle-cruiser that we are first introduced to in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture".  This article will be a relatively small and short one as far as comparisons go.  I only have two renditions of this ship in my fleet, Hallmark and Eaglemoss.

Yup, that's it, pretty exciting huh?

EMvTW 06 - USS Voyager NCC-74656 (Intrepid Class)

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My sixth installment of the "Eaglemoss Vs. The World" series is going to focus on the USS Voyager from the series titled "Star Trek: Voyager".

Compared to some of the other ships I've reviewed from this series, this is a rather small selection of models to share.  I have an Eaglemoss, Furuta, Hallmark and MicroMachine model in my collection.

EMvTW 05 - Romulan D'Deridex Class (B-Type Warbird)

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Welcome to the fifth installment of what I am now going to call the "Eaglemoss vs. The World" series.  In this article we are going to take a good look at the Romulan D'Deridex Class Warbird.

My current collection of this type of ship is comparatively small when compared to my Galaxy, Constitution Refit and NX class ships.  I currently have an Eaglemoss, a Furuta, a Hallmark and two MicroMachine models.

NX Class Variants

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Having just finished up my Eaglemoss Vs. The World review on the NX class ship (Click HERE to read that review.), I have decided to take a quick break and share with you some of the NX class variants that I've built.

Johnny Lightning Kitbashes - Back Row: NX-R class, NX-D class, and NX-S class

EMvTW 04 - Enterprise NX-01 (NX Class)

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The fourth article in the Eaglemoss vs. The World series focuses on my favorite Enterprise.  I always liked the series "Star Trek: Enterprise" because it represented a time where we really didn't know what we were doing.  Captains made mistakes and literally ran things by the seat of the pants.  This series had so much potential in being able to tell some of the back stories of things we all take for granted from TOS and onward.  Unfortunately, when they finally got the formula down to tell good stories, mostly by telling them over two to three episodes, the series was canceled.

My current collection of (standard) NX Class ships consists of a Hallmark (hanging from the wire), and then along the front row, an Eaglemoss, F-Toys (Prime and Mirror), Hot Wheels, Johnny Lightning and a knock-off MicroMachine.

EMvTW 03 - Klingon Bird Of Prey (23rd Century)

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It is time for the third installment of my Eaglemoss vs. The World series, and this time, we will take a look at the Klingon Bird Of Prey.  I found it a little hard to write this article as this is not one of my most favorite ships.  I don't know what it is, I just find them a bit ugly as starships go, but I will look past that as I compare and review this design.

I know that there are other manufacturers versions of this ship out there, so I'll once again remind my readers that my collecting tastes tend to try for the 6" length range as well as affordability at the time that I bought these.

The picture above shows the collection that I own of this ship.  Currently, I own the Eaglemoss, Furuta, Hallmark, Hot Wheels and two of the Micro Machines variants.

EMvTW 02 - USS Enterprise NCC-1701 (and -A) (Constitution Class Refit)

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It's time to move along with my Eaglemoss vs. The World series and talk about the second ship in the collection.  The ship we will review this time round is the Constitution Class Refit, known as the USS Enterprise (NCC 1701 and the NCC 1701-A).  I will group both of these together as they are in essence the same type of ship.  In fact, the studio models used in the movies for both of these ships was in fact, the same model.

Just a quick reminder as to what this article will review... My collecting tastes tend to stay with the small scale starships.  I like the ships in my collection to stay under 6 inches in length as they tend to display better.

The picture above shows the various versions I own of this ship.  Across the front row, you can see an Eaglemoss, two Furuta, a Hot Wheels, and a MicroMachine variation of this ship.  Hanging on the wire is my AMT model and a Hallmark model.

EMvTW 01 - USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D (Galaxy Class)

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Welcome to the debut article for a series that I'm going to call Eaglemoss vs. The World.  As I stated in one of my previous blog entries, I will do a review of the ships in my collection as they are released by Eaglemoss.  I may change that policy later but for now, this will be the format I go with.  My collecting tastes tend to stay with the small scale starships.  I like the ships in my collection to stay under 6 inches in length as they tend to display better.

And without any further procrastination, the first ship in our series is going to be the Galaxy Class and more importantly, the most famous of these class of ships, the USS Enterprise (NCC 1701-D).

The picture above shows the collection that I currently have of this mighty ship.  Hanging on the wire are two Hallmark ornaments from 2012 and 1993.  Across the bottom, I own a beat up Galoob Die Cast model from 1987, a Hot Wheels model, the Eaglemossmodel, and on the right is a Furuta variant.  Sitting in front of the Furuta model are two tiny MicroMachines.

Nimitz Class Carrier

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I am going to take a little side trip from my usual reviews to show off some of my personal work.  In this particular case, I want to show of a ship that I call the Nimitz Class Carrier.

I will talk more about how this design came to be later on in this article, but needless to say, this model has gone through some changes during it's lifespan.

Alternate Timeline Writers Are Asses

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I am going to share a post I did on FaceBook, however, since this blog is more for Trekies, I'm going to edit my original writing a bit.

Time to put on my Trekie Nerd Hat. 

I've been on the fence for a long time about this new alternate time line that JJ Abrams has created. I am still sliding more and more quickly into disliking where they are taking the franchise. And it's mostly due to bad writing and a lack of continuity to already established source materials.  Not to mention a complete lack of respect to scientific fact.

Star Trek IS Science Fiction.  Yes, I get this.  And Science Fiction IS make believe.  Yes, I get this too.  However, the originators of Star Trek always prided themselves on trying to make things believable.  They had scientists serving as advisers so that they could come up with believable make believe.  In fact, they were so particular about this sort of stuff that years and years later, real world devices are starting to emerge that are very similar to thier make believe counterparts.  

 

Star Trek has motivated real world individuals to create things based off of that make believe world.  Ask most scientists what motivated them to become scientists and a large portion of them will say "Star Trek".

So it is a real big middle finger to that concept of trying to stay believable when you start ignoring science facts so that you can do something cool in a movie.

Let us start with this concept of the Enterprise being able to go underwater as well as land on a planet.  I could quote website after website of physics professors and structural engineers who can disprove the possibility of either of these things happening.  

To make it simple, a vessel built for space is built to handle the vacuum of space, a negative pressure being exerted on the hull.  A vessel built for traversing the depths of the ocean, is built entirely different, so that it can withstand the extreme positive pressure being exerted on the hull.  

 

My second point to this is that the Enterprise is physically unable to land or even stay upright if it did land.  I have quite a few models of this ship.  Here is a picture showing the size comparison of all of the ships named Enterprise.  the bottom one is the one from Abram's Alternate Timeline.

Now, take a good look at all but the top ship.  You notice that big part in the front, it's called the saucer section.  That part of the ship is a big solid part of the ship.  It's heavier than the back part of the ship where the warp nacelles are.  Every model I have, when placed on a flat surface, ends up doing a nose dive and rests on that saucer section.  

I suppose if you put landing gear that extended out from the engineering hull towards the front of the ship you could compensate for the nose heavy ship, but then you now have to contend with the weight of that saucer section being supported by the thin neck of the ship.  I'll point out the movie "Titanic" where the ass end of the ship was sticking up in the air and then suddenly buckled and broke.  Same thing would happen here.

One last point about structural integrity.  Those warp nacelles that stick out on the back of the ships are pretty heavy themselves.  Go back and look at the comparison picture again.  Those support struts are not meant to support the weight of those things.  They are there to keep them attached to the ship and transfer power from the warp reactor out to the warp nacelles.  Put that ship in a positive gravity and you will once again have the "Titanic Effect"

If you have ever read anything about how and why the designers made them this way, you'll see that they realized that it was impossible for this style of ship to land on a planet.  Which is why they came up with transporters and shuttle craft.  

The Alternate Timeline Kirk should have lost his captaincy simply on the fact that he jeopardized his ship and crew by taking it down to the surface of a planet as well as submerging it under water.

And now, let us go on to what originally sparked this whole post.  I will first share what I originally wrote and then I will share my follow-up post as well.

ORIGINAL POST:

I've been doing some reading on the Narada which is the big bad ship from the 2009 movie. 

Part of my reading on this ship brought up some comic books that told some back/future history of how this ship was built. For those of you who don't understand what I mean by "back/future", the Narada went back in time from the distant future (a future that was past all the Next Generation movies and TV series), and changed the course of events that would have occurred in the Original TV series. I of course go and track down these comics and read that Data (who is now captain of the Enterprise E) from The Next Generation is partially involved with the story of this ship. 

HOLD THE PHONE MISTER!!! Data could not be the future captain on the Enterprise, because Data was killed in the movie titled "Nemesis". His brother B-4 is the only known surviving android at that point in time. 

Come on writers, at least know your source materials, especially if you want to write stories for an already well established fictional universe. And because this story is supposed to be a tie in to the 2009 movie, you should especially have your facts straight. This story had to be approved by the writers on the 2009 movie as it is an official prequel story. Therefore, the 2009 movie writers have yet again shit all over the Star Trek universe.

FOLLOW-UP POST:

OK, it helps to do some research myself and I retract my previous statement about the writer's needing to know thier source material. I did some follow-up reading on Data's brother B-4. 

The Memory-Alpha website is considered the Wikipedia of Star Trek. According to thier entry on B-4, he eventually is reprogrammed to become Data, in essence, resurrecting him like they did with Spock in the third Star Trek movie.

SOOOO, I humbly submit that it would be possible for the events in the comic book to actually happen and that I was wrong.

That being said, JJ Abrams is still an ass. 

About the Manufacturers

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Before we get into looking at the actual collection, let's do some deeper looking at the manufacturers that I've collected.

Memory Alpha Link

The main driving force in my collection is this company.  These are the guys that got me hooked on collecting small model starships.

"Hallmark has been known primarily as an American greeting card company and was founded in Kansas City, Missouri in 1910.

Since 1991, Hallmark has produced many licensed "Keepsake" Christmas ornaments based on Star Trek characters, ships, props, artwork, and scenes."

I find that thier ornaments are very well detailed and for the most part, thier choices in what to produce each year are pretty good.  Their move to having the ornaments be self-powered was a good one, in my opinion as now the internal lights on the models won't burn out from being on all the time.  As I've stated earlier, I have questioned some of thier choices in ships over the years (Reman Scorpian... BAH!!!  PHOOEY!!!) and really, why do they keep making new versions of the TOS Enterprise?

About My Collection - Addendum

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So this is where collectors might yell at me about how I've defiled certain "models".

Back in the early days of Hallmark's Star Trek ornaments, they had wires attached to each ship that you would then need to plug into a Christmas Tree light bulb socket in order to get it to light up.

When I decided to start displaying the ornaments in bookcases, those wires looked really dumb sticking off the ships, as well as they threw the ship off balance so that it would not stay in a nice position.

And so, I cut all the wires off.

There, I've said it, it's out in the open.  I have sinned against the collecting world.  And I don't care.

As you'll read in my first review though, that's not the only sin I've committed so stay tuned.

About My Collection

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Note: This display setup is constantly changing as I add new models and have to re-arrange to cut down on crowding.

Originally my collection fit entirely on that brown bookcase you see in the pictures above.  When I decided to expand the collection and fill in the missing items, it became painfully clear that I needed to expand the display area.  That was when I bought the Dark Chocolate colored bookcase, some fishing twine and a bunch of eye hooks.

My Star Trek: Enterprise Rant

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In my opinion, Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT) was given the shaft way to soon.  This series had the greatest potential.  They had great opportunities to tell some really cool stories and show us what space exploration was like in the "cowboy" days before Kirk and all the rules that captains had to follow.  This series was based in a time when we as a race were learning what the universe was really like.  And it was a time when we learned from our mistakes.  For the first two seasons, they suffered from what every other sci-fi show suffered from and that was rushing thier stories.  The show had 45 minutes to lead into a great story line, but as will always happen in these situations, you find that they have to rush the solution in the last 5 to 10 minutes of the show. I would like to smack the producers for Season 3 of the show. Their attempt to fix the quick rush solutions by turning the entire season into one long story arc was just plain stupid and was in my opinion the shot to the head that ultimately killed the show.  Season 4 is where this show finally shined and was sadly thier last season.  They got back to telling the grass root stories and did some wonderful tie ins to stories from TOS and beyond.  And they finally got the formula right so that instead of rushing the stories, they did them over 2 or or three episodes which for me was perfectly acceptable.  It's a shame they killed the show at this point.  On a side note, there is a campaign to resurrect the show through NetFlix or ABC directly.  It's called Star Trek Enterprise Season 5 - Netflix Campaign and they are doing it through FaceBook.  If you liked the show, go check it out.  They even have pictures of what the NX-01 would look like as it was do for a major refit.

About Me and This Blog

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I am a Trekie.  Plain and simple.  Although I love the series and everything about it, I do not dress the part.  I was introduced to Star Trek The Next Generation (TNG) as a kid, so yes, I am a child of the 80's.  My mother also introduced me to The Original Series (TOS) crew through the movies.  I will admit that while growing up, I did not get into any of the other series after that.  The TOS TV episodes seemed crappy and fake to me after having seen TNG and the movies.  Deep Space Nine (DS9) lost me after only two episodes as I felt they had deviated away from what Star Trek was about, which was exploration.  While Voyager (VOY) was on I was going through a weird time in my life and just never had the time to watch it, although I did manage to watch the series finale when it aired.  Enterprise (ENT) was really what got me back into the franchise as I had both the time and the interest in stories.

I really like star Trek because it shows what we as a human race are really capable of if we would set aside religious and political bullshit and put our heads together.  Everything tech wise in the show is possible from a scientific point of view.  Medical, computer, star ships, all of these innovations can be achieved one day if we worked together.  As a computer technician, I particularly am fond of the technical side of the show.  And I'm a huge fan of space ships.  Lets face it, the show has tons of those.