While the second starship of this class warped into collectors’ hands last summer, the original and best Excelsior-class starship joined the XL-sized Official Starships Collection in late 2019 — bringing Captain Sulu’s first command home to your personal armada.
Designed by ILM artists David Carson (no relation to the Generations director) and Nilo Rodis — whose various prototype designs for the Excelsior-class have made their way into the subscription-sized collection — the USS Excelsior first appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (under registry NX-2000) and its starship class made subsequent appearances in the remaining classic Trek films and all the 24th century television series.
Carrying its appearance and registry number from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the USS Excelsior NCC-2000 is a 10″-long, weighty model, with a die-cast metal saucer section and molded plastic secondary hull and warp nacelle assembly. It’s certainly got a decent weight to it, but can be slightly front-heavy if not mounted well on its display stand.
Though the Enterprise-B studio model was a modified version of the Excelsior studio model, the Enterprise-B and Excelsior XL starships are not based on the same digital files — in fact, this XL-sized Excelsior release is a totally separate creation than the XL-sized Enterprise-B.
The changes manifest themselves when stacked up side by side. In addition to the changes added for the Enterprise-B in Star Trek: Generations, the XL Excelsior has a very different paint scheme, thinner secondary hull, and slightly shorter nacelles than the XL Enterprise-B model.
The discrepancy appears to be due to the fact that the reference photos available to the digital modeler working on the Excelsior were from the three-foot studio model that was constructed specifically for the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Flashback,” rather than the original theatrical shooting model.
When the production concluded that the modifications made to the Excelsior model to turn it into the Enterprise-B could not be undone, a new physical model was constructed to serve as the Excelsior in that episode.
The digital model of the Excelsior used to create the XL model, therefore, largely relies upon that 1996-built model which means — while it may be rather accurate to the Voyager appearance, it has some noticeable inaccuracies from the starship as seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
The secondary hull is thinner than it should be, and the overall proportions are much better on the Enterprise-B XL. In addition, the deflector dish is set much further back on the Excelsior XL than in its on-screen movie appearances.
However, the Excelsior XL notably gets something right that the Enterprise-B XL neglected: the blue stripes around the edge of the saucer section. For most buyers of the model, they would never have cause to notice (nor care about) the discrepancies, thankfully these differences rise nowhere near the level of the rather poor Enterprise-A XL model, which had several very noticeable flaws.
The Excelsior has much heavier aztecing than the Enterprise-B, with much higher contrasts between coloring. It certainly makes the colors on the model pop, where the Enterprise-B has a more muted color scheme to it. The fine paint details across the model appear to be more pronounced on the Excelsior than they do on the Enterprise-B.
Overall, the Excelsior XL is a very nice model. Though it is not completely accurate in every detail, it looks great on the shelf, and the vibrant aztecing and stark colors ensure that it stands out among your ships.
If you’d like to add Captain Sulu’s ship to your fleet, it’s available in the US for $74.95 and in the UK for £49.99 now.