tarship models from the TV series Star Trek, and the films based on it, have been in demand since the first ship was seen on televisions in 1966. And many, many companies have complied, with model kits and toys based on the various ships featured in the series, and the subsequent films and spinoff TV series, The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.
Most recently, Johnny Lightning, known for its highly detailed and highly respected lines of die-cast automobiles, has issued two series of small-scale plastic toys of some of the best-known ships in the Star Trek universe.
Wave One gave us the main character of the original TV series, the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701), the Klingon D7 Battlecruiser, the Romulan Bird of Prey and the Galileo shuttlecraft, as well as the U.S.S. Reliant (NCC-1864) from the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the U.S.S. Enterprise from the most recent eponymous series (NX-01).
Wave Two, recently released on the heels of the first wave, gives us the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701) with battle damage, the U.S.S. Enterprise (refit), the same ship with battle damage, a clear plastic Klingon D7 Battlecruiser (cloaked), the U.S.S. Reliant (NCC-1864) with battle damage and the Enterprise NX-01 with battle damage.
Each ship is given a nice paint job. The ships from the original series were never designed with great detail to begin with, so they are a little plainer in detail and paint, but only due to the fact of the ships' original, simpler design. And the paint on the newer ships is quite nice.
The ships come packaged with a die-cast metal display base featuring a ball-joint mount and the name of the ship it comes with.
Wave Two features a small cloth embroidered patch of a version the Federation crest as seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation, packed on a bubble card brightly decorated with colorful images and details about each ship.
Huge legends in tiny form
Until this line from Johnny Lightning, perhaps the best-known line of Star Trek ships was the Micromachines from Galoob. These soft-plastic ships were many and varied and were quite nice, but due to the soft nature of the plastics used the ships often warped, and they didn't always take the finer details of their molds.
About twice the size of their predecessors, Johnny Lightning's ships each measure approximately 4 inches in length, are molded of a more solid styrene-like plastic and hold paint and detail very well.
Each snaps solidly to the ball-jointed stand, so they can be displayed at almost any angle.
Of the dozen ships currently in the line, some of the best-looking are (for their accuracy) the Shuttlecraft Galileo 7, which is accurately molded and painted, and is just a personal favorite of mine; the new Enterprise NX-01, which features pretty amazing aztecing for its size (aztecing is the practice of painting plates of different colors on the decks of spaceships); and perhaps my personal favorite, the clear plastic Klingon D7 Battlecruiser. This is meant to represent the ship cloaked, as we see it in the episode "The Enterprise Incident," in which a Klingon-built Romulan ship is fitted with a cloaking device. It is an exact copy of the first wave's Klingon Battlecruiser, except molded in clear plastic.
My main complaint with the lines is the "battle damage," which doesn't always look terribly realistic. It's simply painted on. The accuracy, though, is hard to complain about. On the refitted Enterprise, there is a line of charring down the midsection of the ship painted almost exactly as we see it in The Wrath of Khan when the pirated Reliant strafes the Enterprise with phasers in the infamous scene in which Engineer Scott's beloved nephew is killed.
Overall, this is an exciting series for Star Trek collectors. And the best news—Wave Two's package promises Wave Three is coming soon!
