Out in the UK a month or so ago, and due in a couple of weeks in the US, is
issue six of
The Official Starships Collection, the Intrepid class
USS Voyager. Here are my thoughts on the model and magazine, as well as the subscriber "gift" Enterprise-D dedication plaque which I also got with this issue's shipment:
I really like this model; with the arrow-head design just making it look like its always going somewhere, I find the most irresistibly swooshable ship of the series so far. However it does have a couple niggling issues that stop being quite as impressive a model as most of the others in the series.
The biggest downside of the model is the odd inconsistency between the top and bottom. The top side of the saucer, and the upper spine of the engineering section are the metal component of this model. While the underside the saucer, the rest of engineering, and the nacelles are all plastic. The plastic parts of this ship are amazing! Every panel line, phaser strip, escape pod and hatch is very finely molded, with painted sections further picking out details. In contrast the upper metal sections of the ship have quite ill-defined edges on the molded details; it seems almost out of focus in comparison. Even with the same sort of detailing picked out with the painted sections, the paint just doesn't look as good on the less defined surfaces. That's not to say the metal parts are bad per se; if the whole model had that finish it would still look like a very good model of the USS Voyager, but the plastic sections are just so much better, the contrast is quite jarring. I find it particularly odd, when Eaglemoss have already demonstrated on other ships that they are capable of producing very fine details on the metal parts of their models.
The other unfortunate detail in the construction of this ship is the join between the metal and plastic components. Eaglemoss have generally been really good when it comes to hiding joins; if you're looking for them you'll be able to find them, but they're normally quite discretely placed. It's not worked as well as usual with one join on Voyager though, which has quite a noticeable zig-zag on either side of the engineering hull where there is a notched step in the metal section. It's a a problem common to many renditions of Voyager over the years; the flowing curved shape of Voyager is not especially forgiving to the limitations of molding techniques. From many angles this isn't an especially noticeable detail, but it is quite obvious from the side.
While certainly not the best ship in the series so far, it's still a really good model overall. It's also really sturdy; thanks to Voyager's design being a bit less spindly than the other Starfleet ships so far released, the model overall feels a lot more solid, and a lot less like you're likely to snap a bit off. Which also helps with that excellent swooshablity it has.
I've only owned one other model of Voyager before, a
tiny snap-together Revell model kit. This model is a huge improvement on that little ship, but how does it compare to
other renditions of Voyager? Well, at a similar scale we have many of the usual suspects:
Johnny Lightning and
Furuta have both released similar sized models before, while Hallmark have done
a comparable Christmas decoration. As best I can tell, Eaglemoss have once again topped them all, with much more carefully created details; the features on all the other comparable sized models seem to be much more exaggerated.
The Johnny Lightning version does have one notable edge: It features moveable warp nacelles, so you can recreate Voyager's warp-jumps. Eaglemoss have noted before that adding such features would make the models more expensive, so I'm willing to accept a well made model in place of a play-function. It undoubtedly looks better too, models that include moveable nacelles (
Johnny Lighting,
Playmates, and
Micro Machines) all had to compromise the design of the ship in order to accommodate the hinge mechanisms.
Another Johnny Lightning release of Voyager includes landing gear, which is fun, but not something I'd want sticking out permanently.
Other than a well-made
model kit, this version of Voyager is undoubtedly the best to be released so far. Looking around at those previous releases, they're all pretty expensive on the secondary markets now too. With
DST not exactly enthusiastic about releasing a new large toy Voyager either, if you're a Voyager fan, this is a model you need to get!
Continue after the jump for a few more photos of the model, plus a look at the magazine, and the subscriber dedication plaque.
