I can't build anything straight out of the box anymore. But that's ok, because
it's more fun this way.
I was going to build the Polar Lights Enterprise straight out of the box,
as it appeared on the Original Star Trek Series,
but then I got to thinking about the new show "Enterprise" and the NX-01. This series is
set before the adventures of Kirk and company, on board the first Warp Drive
Starship (which is named Enterprise, NX-01).
What got me thinking was this idea: what if I tried to build the NX-01 from the
Kirk-era ship kit? What if I back-dated Kirk's ship into the first Warp Drive Starship,
using the basic design of the NX-01? It was certainly worth a shot.
I used the saucer section and engines from the Polar Lights kit. Everything else
was scratch-built, such as the support for the sensor dish, which juts out from
the bottom of the saucer section, as in the Scout Class ships. I simply made this
from several styrene tubes in various sizes and glued them together to make a
telescoping cone. The sensor dish was glued onto this cone and bingo, the crew
of my first long range starship had sensors (at least I think that's what the
sensor dish is for). For the engines that jut out from the back of the saucer (like on the NX-01),
I used square styrene tubes. I decided that the impulse engines would be at the
tip of each of these support beams, so I cut
them on the ends at a 45 degree angle. Then I took another square tube that was
only half the width and cut the tips off of that on a 45 degree angle. When I
placed these on the ends of the support beams, I thought they looked pretty good.
I needed some kind of shuttle bay, and I noticed that the real NX-01 had them on
the bottom of the saucer. So I replicated this by using the top portion of a box
used for dental floss. I cut out the section with the two holes, placed a plastic
backing behind them, and glued this to the bottom of the saucer section. Now
my ship has a shuttle bay. I used the smaller width square tube beams for the
engine struts and glued on the engines themselves. The brace between the support
beams came from my spare parts box; I believe it's from the old Spindrift model (from the kit that I got as a kid in
the 1970s).
When painting, I tried to keep to using only metallic paints, such as Aluminum,
Copper and Gun Metal (all from Tamyia). I figured maybe Starfleet at this stage in the game
didn't have much knowledge as to what paints to use. The bare metal look appears more primative,
anyway. I also added some greeblies
(basically some unused parts from an armor kit) to the inner portion
of the main warp engines, in an effort to back date this ship to an earlier period
in Starfleet history. In other words, this first warp drive vessel was sort of
like the clunky 1940s car that later evolved into the lean mean 1960s "sports car"
that Kirk rode. I went for a real "retro" look for this ship, using the early
engines with the pointy thingies sticking out of the domes.
I had fun building this. I now have to figure out what to call this ship! When I
get a name, I plan to post "in-action" shots of the vessel exploring the depths of space.
So watch this space (pun intended).
