The USS Defiant is quite the vessel in Star Trek history, with its exploits spanning three television series across half a century. The Constitution-class starship, first appearing in TOS’s “The Tholian Web,” later served at the center of Star Trek: Enterprise‘s two-part “In a Mirror, Darkly” saga, and then became woven into the background story of Star Trek: Discovery‘s first season.
The newest Constitution-class release from Eaglemoss’ Official Starships Collection focuses on the Defiant as she was first encountered by Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise back in 1968, trapped in a fluctuating phenomenon known as an “interphasic rift,” which we later learned was a rip in both space and time — leading to the starship being catapulted back to the mid-22nd Century… and into the Mirror Universe.
As the fourth small-size Constitution-class ship in Eaglemoss’ armada — following the classic Enterprise and ISS Enterprise releases from 2015 and the SS Yorktown special from 2016 — the Defiant is on one level a familiar construction from the model series, build from the same molds and tooling as the earlier releases. From a build standpoint, the ship is virtually identical to those three prior ships, so there’s not too much to say about that side of things.
The differences, however, are what sets this starship apart from the others — and we’re not just talking about the USS Defiant or NCC-1764 markings on its hull. This model is one of the most unique in Eaglemoss’ model line to date, as it features special luminescent paint to recreate the iconic interphase glow right in your own collection.
It’s certainly a neat gimmick to differentiate this model from just being another relabeling of the Constitution-class design; with the right amount of light infusion the Defiant really does seem to be deep into an interphasic rift from its included model stand.
To prep for this review, we surrounded our Defiant model in bright lighting for more than an hour to get the dark photographs you see here; with that amount of illumination prep the green glow became extremely pronounced when we shot the images in a completely darkened room.
We’ve seen some feedback in discussion groups that the glow isn’t very visible for some collectors; for us it seemed to ‘charge up’ quite well when we prepped it for this article.
Two of the plastic areas of the Defiant also mark a notable difference in this model — when seen in the light of day, that is.
First, the deflector dish includes a relatively translucent central spire, which serves to add some needed glow action to that part of the ship. The dish itself is a bit of a disappointing orange color — rather than the ‘real’ golden bronze found on the filming model — but that again follows the standard coloring Eaglemoss has presented on this ship class in their past releases.
The most obvious change, though, is the yellow bussard collectors on the front of the warp nacelles. Now this is an alteration we understand is to serve the glow-in-the-dark aspect of the ship, which makes sense for nighttime viewing of the Defiant, but it does make the ‘daytime’ version of the starship look a bit odd compared to the expected orange-red nacelle caps that are supposed to be there.
The caps themselves are also bit unclean in their appearance, with some plastic blobiness around the edges instead of a smooth, rounded seam where they attach to the nacelle. Perhaps this is due to the material used for their molding, but either way it’s a little sloppy in appearance for such a high-visibility portion of the model.
The included magazine with this model focuses on the pre-Discovery adventures of the USS Defiant, from the first appearance in “The Tholian Web” through 2005’s “In a Mirror, Darkly.” There’s also a nice, lengthy feature on rebuilding the Original Series-era sets for the Enterprise two-parter, which served as the center of those fan-favorite episodes.
Overall, adding the glow paint to the mix really gives this Constitution-class model a reason to exist in the Official Starships Collection, and does make it feel much less like a repeat that other later-release ships in the series have seemed to be (like the wings-down Bird of Prey, for example).
The glow-in-the-dark USS Defiant special release is available from Eaglemoss now (for $24.95 in the US and £14.99 in the UK), and isn’t the last TOS-era Constitution-class model in their collection — watch for our review of the Star Trek: Phase II USS Enterprise refit in the coming weeks!
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).
