We continue our coverage of the Eaglemoss Official Starships Collection today with the first of several Star Trek concept-design starships in their growing fleet, designer Andrew Probert’s original Ambassador-class Enterprise-C!
The Ambassador-class Federation starship design made its formal first appearance in the form of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-C, appearing in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise” — but the starship seen in that classic adventure isn’t the first design created for the Enterprise-C.
The ship design seen in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” was finalized by designer Rick Sternbach, but began as a significantly different-looking vessel by artist Andy Probert during the earliest days of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The above painting, by Probert, featured an Ambassador-class ship with an elliptical secondary hull and saucer, later streamlined into circular hull elements by Sternbach to facilitate the manufacturing process needed to build the final Enterprise-C model in the time allotted for the episode’s production.
Probert’s design did make it on-screen in one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it format: the golden Enterprise-C seen in the Enterprise-D observation lounge for the first several seasons of the show.
Eaglemoss’ model takes that original concept and brings it to life for the first time in their new 4.75″ model, a finely-detailed miniature joining the ranks of the Aventine and Titan as the line’s “non-canonical” starship specials.
Like many of the other Official Starships releases, the Probert Enterprise-C is a mix of die-cast metal and molded plastic, with a solid metal saucer section topping the ship. The secondary hull and warp engines are plastic, with bright blue and red translucent components in the nacelles to liven up the aft section.
Unlike the right-angle nacelle struts on the “real” Ambassador-class ship, the struts on this design are forward-leaning and curve up from the secondary hull in a sloping arc.
The front of the ship features the same ribbed ‘neck’ that first debuted on the Excelsior-class starship model in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, continuing the Starfleet design lineage from this ship’s predecessor.
The entire shape of the secondary hull is quite reminiscent of the Excelsior-class design, and serves as a fairly reasonable middle-ground between that older ship and the profile of the Galaxy-class starship which followed.
Overall, this is a nice rendition of this often-overlooked design, but there are some unusual issues with the Probert Enterprise-C that we need to mention because they’re something that are some disappointments in the presentation of this ship.
First, large swaths of the saucer section seem to be missing their ‘black’ window markings. While the white ‘lit’ windows are in place across the top and underside of the saucer as they should be, nearly half of the saucer has no black window markings in place. The secondary hull has the standard alignment issues, however; in some places black window markings are over top of the tan lifeboat hatches.
The deflector is a bit bland as a giant blue oval with a dot of bronze in the center, but the biggest issue with this model is that it seems there’s a large section of the top of the secondary hull where there’s just no detailing at all – no surface markings, paint, or aztecing.
It’s very strange, almost like a texture on the CGI file was turned off before sending the design to the factory for construction. The top of the forward hull, and either side of the neck, simply has nothing applied to the blue plastic base sculpt.
Lest you think this is just an error on our model, unfortunately we can confirm that this is something that seems to be plaguing all of the Probert Enterprise-C models out for sale — the Away Mission online store even has ‘correction decals’ for sale for a home remedy.
This is one of those things that you may not notice from a distance, but when you’re up close it sticks out quite obviously. We can forgive a lot of issues when it comes to minor paint alignment or certain detailing due to the size of these ships, but this is a pretty glaring issue that’s difficult to overlook.
The Probert Enterprise-C concept design debuted in January, but is already to wait-list status in both Eaglemoss’ US store and UK web shop, but is available for $34.95 over at the Away Mission online store as of this writing.
Here’s our full gallery of photos showcasing this new model.
We’ll be back with our next round of Official Starships Collection reviews soon, with the next Eaglemoss Star Trek concept model on the way to our sector — the Star Trek: Phase II version of the Constitution-class refit — and of course the new Crossfield-class USS Discovery!
In Eaglemoss’ US store, TrekCore readers can use promo code TREKCORE at checkout for 10% off any ‘Star Trek’ collectible purchase $60 or greater (some exclusions apply).