Measuring a full 12 inches in length, the Klingon Sarcophagus Ship — also known as the Ship of the Dead — is by far the largest, and one of the most impressive, models that Hero Collector has released to date — in any of its various Star Trek model lines, including the XL Starships series.
From the moment that it first arrived to challenge the USS Shenzhou in “The Vulcan Hello,” the Sarcophagus Ship was going to be a challenge for the Hero Collector team. The ship is big, dwarfing its Federation counterparts in “The Battle of the Binary Stars,” and it is intricately detailed with spindly pylons, ornate carving along the bow section, and actual coffins lining its hull.
The first ‘special edition’ ship from the Star Trek: Discovery Starships Collection, this model triumphantly succeeds and is an impressive, gorgeous achievement for the Hero Collector team. Regardless of how you feel about the ship’s design as a Klingon vessel – certainly one of Star Trek’s most interesting and ambitious – you cannot deny that this is a very pretty model.
Largely plastic, the only metal component of the Sarcophagus Ship is the central section just below the neck, which likely serves to provide the ship a good center of gravity as it is sitting on top of its stand (which grips the model from below.) The rest of the ship is injection-molded plastic that replicates many of the small details of the ship and evokes the same organic feel as the digital model.
A particular highlight of this model is the translucent plastic areas in the central section of the ship, as yet unidentified on the show but which looks like a large piece of carved crystal around which the rest of the ship has been constructed.
Light shines through the translucent blue plastic, casting shadows and shading over the rough-hewn surface, and the detailing really does make you feel like this ship and its component parts were carved rather than constructed.
The model also recreates fabulously all of the spindles along the aft section of the warp nacelles. Not a single inch of this model is devoid of some kind of detailing, which means there are interesting angles all over – none of your unfinished undersides as with some of the other models.
The Ship of the Dead even evokes the ship’s many sarcophagi attached to its surface through lots of tiny little paint marks over every smooth surface going. In order to render these features as anything more than tiny dots of paint the model would have to have been much larger, but including those small details certainly helps you understand the sense of scale associated with this model.
There is very little to criticize about this fabulous recreation of the digital model. Most of the debates about the Ship of the Dead, and any of the first-season Discovery Klingon ship designs, are much more likely to rest in the realm of “but are these Klingon?” or not. I cannot answer that for you, but if you enjoyed this ship’s appearance in Discovery it would be well worth adding to your collection.
It’s a very cool ship, if maybe even a tad too large. This was probably the smallest size that Eaglemoss could make without beginning to sacrifice significant detail on the model, but with such a large collection of starships from both the main subscription line and the Discovery line, not to mention the XL Starships releases, space is at a premium and this ship sure takes up a lot of it… but it is totally worth it. tlhIngan maH taHjaj!
If you are ready to honor the House of T’Kuvma and add the Discovery Sarcophagus Ship to your fleet, the ship is available now for $74.95 in the United States, and for £49.99 for warriors in the UK.
In case you missed it, we covered all the news on Hero Collector’s upcoming slate of Star Trek and Star Trek: Discovery that came out of the 2019 Star Trek convention, including word on the next special release, Emperor Georgiou’s flagship ISS Charon.
We’ve got more Hero Collector Trek reviews on the way, including a look at the recently-released V’Ger model, just in time for the 40th Anniversary theatrical screenings of Star Trek: The Motion Picture… so keep checking back to TrekCore in the coming weeks!