Well, I never really cared too much for the movie
Star Trek Generations. Didn't it seem anti-climactic, the way that Kirk died? To be honest, the Next Gen movies didn't work for me as a whole. But hey, there have been many a lousy movie with a great soundtrack, and likewise many an "okay" movie that has had its fair share of cool merchandise.
This film was one of those. The
Enterprise B, seen at the beginning of the film (if memory serves me), and initially the location for Kirk's "death," owes much to the
Excelsior from the third Original Crew movie (actually, it IS the
Excelsior with a little ridge horizontally bisecting the engineering hull). It has that "let's take an actual boat, and squish a spaceship atop it, then paint it all white and kick it out of drydock" look. Come to think of it, "squish" is just the right word, especially when this ship is view from the side. It's as if the ship were made out of silly putty, and they went wild with horizontal manipulation.
Though the kit was sadly smaller than I'd hoped (18 inches), and was missing some details, it proved to be a mega-challenge to paint, for numerous reasons. First of all, there's the forementioned size issue; small is always harder to paint. But more than that, there was the issue of conflicting paint schemes presented in various resources. For instance, if you consult the "Hanes Manual" for the
Enterprise series of ships, you'll see that not only is the color represented as a more dead blue, but also the blue shapes atop the dish are TOTALLY different than what is seen in photos of the actual screen model from the Christie's auction in 2006.
Then again, by the time that auction was underway, the screen model had been renamed the
U.S.S. Lakota, and who knows what else was changed! I believe you get the idea.
Assemblage was super easy, and the way the pylon-nacelle structure was set up, there was no way for there to be any "nacelle drift," as is common for ALL
Star Trek models.
The paint process was the most time-consuming element. I worked on and off with it for weeks. The first step was to paint it with grey primer, then paint it an icey grey/blue color. Next, I cut up some blue painter's tape into TINY rectangular shapes, and then applied them all over the ship in a random pattern. Next, I sprayed the kit white, let it dry, and then carefully picked off the formerly blue tape rectangles to reveal the blue/grey underneath. The end result was a panelling effect which, if I could do it again, would have been better with the tape pieces being even smaller, to communicate scale.
Quite a bit of crepe tape was used on this kit, to outline the curved shapes and pinstriping for painting. The decals, while not completely hopeless, nevertheless when it came to the thin red pinstripes, was indeed a lost cause. I had to cut narrow red strips of the tape in order to create the red trim seen on the pylon structure.
I salvaged a "U.S.S. Enterprise" tiny decal from the alternates from my Surak shuttle kit to place right below the shuttle bay's opening. I think it fit perfectly!
I will say this: thanks to the angular design of the engineering hull and the multiple impulse engines, hanging this ship securely and at the angle I wanted it to be was a piece of cake!
I have found that always at the end of a project, you take a look at it and see something that didn't work out as well as you'd like. That's why I always say to myself, "That's what next time is for." Each time out, it's a new lesson learnedl And besides, it gives me an excuse to keep building these things!
Click on the image below to be taken to a series of pics of the latest completion from Jeff's "Fortress of Solitude: West Coast!!"
...Or just enjoy a quick slideshow!