It’s been almost five months since Eaglemoss released a ship in their Star Trek: Discovery model series — the USS Discovery itself came out all the way back in February — but now after a long break the starship collection returns with the Shepard-class USS Kerala.
Discovery featured three Shepard-class ships in Season 1, with the USS Kerala and USS Ride participating at the Battle at the Binary Stars, and the USS Gagarin later in the season, a ship which met its end after a Klingon attack.
Named after astronaut Alan Shepard, the Shepard-class began life as a concept design for what later became the USS Shenzhou while designer John Eaves was working out the final form of Captain Georgiou’s vessel.
After rescuing the design from rejected Shenzhou concepts, Eaves flipped the ship over, smoothed out some of the less-streamlined hull areas, and stretched the length for to give the nacelles more Discovery-esque proportions.
The Kerala — which is named for the state in southern India — features the usual mix of materials in its construction, with the underside of the saucer and primary hull in metal and all other parts, including the secondary hull and nacelles, in plastic.
The ship’s registry markings are printed in small text that is somewhat plain compared to the other starships from Discovery, especially when looking at the Gagarin’s registry in big, bold characters. There’s understated, and then there’s an afterthought: this is clearly the second.
(This isn’t Eaglemoss’ fault, however — it’s accurate to the CBS design.)
Like the Walker-class Shenzhou, the Shepard-class design features a split secondary hull bridging the two nacelle struts, coming together at the rear of the vessel around the impulse engine assembly.
The warp nacelles themselves are very similar to the Discovery‘s spindly components, complete with a three-lobed Bussard collector (colored red, here, instead of blue). Unlike the Discovery and Shenzhou, there’s no translucent plastic in these nacelles to represent the warp manifolds; no part of the ship has color that isn’t from paint or a decal.
Red is the dominant accent color of both the top and bottom of the Kerala, with Starfleet pennants and hull lighting all painted the same cherry color — including the angled color behind the ventral deflector dish at the front of the ship.
The underside of the Shepard-class is where you can really see the Walker-class design lineage in this ship — when you flip the Kerala over, it really feels like the starship is a smoothed-out version of the Shenzhou, from the placement and design of the deflector to the shape of the ventral hull.
Despite the differences in color, hull markings, and nacelle design, the ships clearly come from the same family.
In terms of the model’s construction, we didn’t notice any major flaws in paint or decal application — there aren’t any molded windows to misalign this time around. The paint around the ship makes the Kerala feel like an older vessel, though it’s difficult to tell if that’s a deliberate paint application choice.
There is one annoyance that we did notice right away, however, one that seems to have impacted many purchasers: the deflector dish on the underside of the ship is glued on lopsided, putting it way out of alignment.
It seems like something that may have been simply rushed through assembly — but fortunately, it’s a plastic component that seems to be removable (with a bit of effort), allowing owners to re-glue it back into place properly.
We don’t have much else negative to say about Eaglemoss’ presentation of the Shepard-class, though with it being so closely related to the Walker-class design, it seems like it would make more sense to put this model out further down the line — flip it over, and it feels a bit repetitive.
That being said, if this was to be released this early in the Discovery Starships Collection, the short-lived USS Gagarin may have been a better choice (with its much more pleasant registry markings), since at least that version of this starship design got a time in the spotlight.
Here’s a full gallery of the Shepard-class USS Kerala model:
The USS Kerala model is available now as part of Eaglemoss’ Official Star Trek: Discovery Starships Collection subscription, and can also be purchased directly in the US for $54.95 (or for £34.99 in the UK).
We’ll be back soon to give you our review of the next two big Eaglemoss releases for the month, the redesigned Klingon Bird of Prey from Discovery, and the ‘XL’-sized USS Defiant!
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