For the second year in a row, fans have the opportunity to make the final frontier part of the holidays with a Star Trek advent countdown calendar — but this time, it’s Numskull warping your December into the 24th century.
2021’s Borg Cube advent calendar from the now-defunct Hero Collector wasn’t much of a success, after unpacking each daily box revealed one cheaply-produced Trek-themed item after another, leaving most feeling dissatisfied. Numskull has taken a different approach with their Star Trek: The Next Generation countdown calendar, giving collectors one piece of the Galaxy-class Enterprise-D each day of the month with a completed model to display at the end of the holiday season.
It arrived in festive silver wrapping paper — and including a multi-piece Star Trek: The Next Generation-era combadge-shaped display stand, the 2360s Federation flagship slowly grows into the vessel commanded by Captain Picard and crew over 24 days as each day in December adds another part for construction.
Some days have more substantial additions than others, of course; for each day you get a large piece like the base of the stardrive section or the upper half of the Enterprise-D’s saucer, there are two days where you may get one part of a five-piece warp nacelle or the small golden deflector dish that clips in at the front of the starship.
The snap-together nature of the model makes it easy for novice builders; there’s no glue, labels, other adhesives needed, and even the smallest parts only fit “one way” into their required positions, making it tough to place a part in the “wrong place” or stick an impulse engine into its slot backwards.
The sculpt of the 9.5-inch-long model has very crisp and clean lines, as it’s entirely made with injection-molded plastic (rather than the sometimes soft-detailed die-cast metal utilized in Eaglemoss models), and the robin-egg blue hull coloring, gold and tan surface details, and red-orange-blue warp nacelle highlights are nice and bright.
Another difference from the long-used Eaglemoss Enterprise-D model? The two shuttlebays on the back of the ship’s “neck” are nearly correctly sized — with the smaller Shuttlebay 3 on the left, and larger Shuttlebay 2 on the right — compared to the incorrect equally-sized aft shuttlebays on Eaglemoss’s build.
There’s still a bit of a feeling that the Numskull team had to really stretch this build out to full 24 days, as a full 12 days of the build-up is comprised of engine components — each warp nacelle takes five days to complete, which seems a bit excessive. It’s fun to pop in the bridge module or the underslung captain’s yacht as part of the Enterprise-D puzzle, but when the only thing in a day’s box is a tiny sliver of plastic (impulse engine), it’s a disappointing reveal.
If Numskull revisits this again for 2023, it might be worth making a few days of parts add up to a small shuttlecraft (or similar companion build) to both quell the need to drag out the large build with multiple tiny one-a-day pieces — it would also allow collectors to have the satisfaction of a completed build mid-month, while the overall larger build will feel less over-extended.
(Also, if there’s any way to shave the price down a bit, it would become much more attractive to collectors, surely; while materials costs and distribution is certainly more expensive than ever, the $90+ USD cost still feels high for the end product.)
Overall, Numskull’s Enterprise-D countdown calendar is a huge step up from the first Trek advent calendar and hopefully just the first of this style of annual build-up kits — maybe a Deep Space 9 and Defiant calendar next year for the thirtieth anniversary of Deep Space Nine? One can only hope.
Numskull’s Enterprise-D “Countdown Calendar” box is available today; you can get it through Numskull’s partner shop Just A Geek for $91 in the USA, for £79.99 in the UK, and for €89,99 in Europe.