Star Trek

[Andy Turnbull]

Shakes head.

[The Doctor]

[Llama God]

But there was never a toy of the USS Bozeman, so why do they open with a shot of that? Unless they though maybe it getting name-dropped in the steallar cartography sceene meant that a toy was on the way... Whatever the case, I'd never wanted Kirk and Picard to kiss so much as when I saw this advert.

[The Doctor]

The toy advert uses parts of the teaser trailer for Generations, which uses clips from the TV show as the effects hadn't been finished yet.

-Ralph

[Toph]

I am genuinely surprised Playmates never did a toy for the Reliant.
I'm also surprised the only reason the Excelsior happened was because it was a cheap repaint of the E-B.

I can't remember if there was ever one for either version of the Constitution Class, though.

[Toph]

In News for Ralph, I read tonight one of the upcoming Eaglemoss releases is the Reliant concept, with the nacelles on top.

[Philip Ayres]

Dec 3, 2019 13:21:39 GMT Toph said:

In News for Ralph, I read tonight one of the upcoming Eaglemoss releases is the Reliant concept, with the nacelles on top.

<celebrates>

Link?

[Toph]

No pictures, so not really anything worth while:

trekcentral.net/featured/new-hero-collector-star-trek-models-for-2020/

memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Official_Starships_Collection

[The Doctor]

Action figure prototypes up for auction.

www.thetrekcollective.com/2020/02/star-trek-action-figure-prototypes-at.html?m=1

-Ralph

[The Doctor]

This is amazing and I must have it:

www.thetrekcollective.com/2020/02/new-star-trek-model-trains-coming-from.html?m=1

-Ralph

[Toph]

The Romulan Ale and Tribble cars are genius. The rest sadly are just the low inspiration "slap a character sticker on it" type license stuff that has always disinterested me.

[The Doctor]

It demands a Vertiform City car!

-Ralph

[Fortmax2020]

Mrs M and I popped into a vintage toy/tat shop in Blackpool today. Very little TF stuff but practically a whole aisle full of Star Trek figures. I have spent the afternoon blowing Ralph's mind by sending him pictures of them.

[The Doctor]

VORTA VOR! EDEN!

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

Dec 3, 2019 16:51:34 GMT Philip Ayres said:

Dec 3, 2019 13:21:39 GMT Toph said:

In News for Ralph, I read tonight one of the upcoming Eaglemoss releases is the Reliant concept, with the nacelles on top.

<celebrates>

Link?

FINALLY found some images of this and it looks just as good as I'd imagined:

shop.eaglemoss.com/hero-collector/star-trek/u-s-s-reliant-concept-starship

[The Doctor]

Hmmm. What we got is better!

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

I disagree.


I feel this layout with the torpedo launcher underneath as a small secondary hull is much close the Enterprise - and thus Excelsior and Oberth - layout. The Reliant has always felt like the only one of the pre TNG ships that didn't quite fit the pattern.

Of course we know *why* now: the plans were approved the wrong way up.

And since that point there's been several other odd Starship designs so one more is less noticeable nowadays especially when that design has itself been homages several times.

[Philip Ayres]

Ah.

There's a hint of it in Eaglemoss' pictures but there's a bit more to this than the Rollbar and Nacelles being the other way up:

starbase8.de/epages/0b84ec6e-028b-42be-ad2a-9f5e0f4b2193.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/0b84ec6e-028b-42be-ad2a-9f5e0f4b2193/Products/STTEMB24

Each Pylon now ends in it's own Torpedo launcher rather than having one centrally mounted.


Hmmmm. Less sure now.

[Toph]

Personally, I kinda wish some of these rejected concepts got repurposed and canonized as civilian sector ships.

Like the three Excelsior concepts... None of them are striking enough to be hero ships. But as a ship that parks in orbit for three years while it's crew of biologists closely examine and catalogue this new planet? Or the ship that does nothing but ferries passengers back and forth between earth and vulcan?

The Federation is criminally lacking in civilian ships. These concepts are great for those roles, I think.

Mar 16, 2020 16:08:06 GMT The Doctor said:

Hmmm. What we got is better!

-Ralph

I'm with ralph on this one though. Like the Excelsior, the finalized Reliant is better than the concept.

But this makes a good background ship. Nice and distinctive.

[The Doctor]

Yes it looks fine. Just think the right call was made at the time.

-Ralph

[Llama God]

Yep, I think I'll agree - and not just because of nostalgia or familiarity, there's just something more distinctive about the underslung nacelles and the rollbar.

[Toph]

Hypothesis:
In Trek, establishing shots of starships have meaning. When from below, the ship is intended to look powerful. When from above, it's designed to make the ship look vulnerable.
Thus, we have more shots from the underside, and starfleet ships need to look more visually interesting from beneath.

The finalized Reliant looks interesting from both angles. The concept reliant kinda looks boring from the underside.

I think that may be why it feels off.

[Philip Ayres]

Possibly, yes.

But I think it would look much more interesting rollbar underneath:

Years ago I had a Wrath of Khan photo novel. One of the Nebula battle scenes was flipped. Enterprice looked terrible but the Reliant looked much better that way and the image has stuck

[Llama God]

It actually looks much more threatening that way up, to me, anyway. Maybe that's why they chose to invert it, so that it wasn't too obviously a "bad guy" ship...

[Philip Ayres]

[Shockprowl]

I used to love those little Micromachine Starship toys. I had a ton of them once upon a time.


And underslung nachelles for me re Reliant. I think the seperate rollbar/weapons pod is an odd design choice, be it underslung or overslung (I've said "slung" too much now. Slung). It's too much of a target, surely. Integration! Integration!

[Pinwig]

Slung.

[Shockprowl]

Slung.

[Llama God]

Khan Noonian Slung.

[The Doctor]

Playmates original box art:

www.thetrekcollective.com/2020/05/playmates-star-trek-toys-box-art-by-ron.html?m=1

-Ralph