Polar Lights Star Trek 1:1000 Classic Enterprise TOS
Dec 29 2003
This kit was built straight out of the box with no additions. The fit of the parts was very good. It is a snap kit but I glued certain parts together. The kit is designed so that adding lighting is not hard at all. The kit provides parts for quite a few variations of the Enterprise as it appears in the show. There are decals and parts for the Enterprise from the pilot show, the second pilot show, the TV series and the Mirror Mirror Enterprise. Decals are water slide or peel and stick. I understand there may be an error in the instructions for putting the kit together for the TV version.
I did not dig into this as I followed the instructions for the TV version.
The parts lined up very well and the saucer and nacelle alignments are very good. There was some puttying needed to be done to get a smooth finish. The main ones are the two saucer halves and the rear section where the nacelle struts meet the secondary hull.
The only letdown for the kit is the small base. This is too small and every so often the model may fall over. Mounting this base to a bigger one is an option.
I see a potential problem with the decals that will be explained in the text.
Overall a great kit and the price makes it very attractive.
All finished. I painted the model white instead of the light grey as called in the instructions. I prefer the cleaner look of the white model. Alignment of parts is very good.
Underside of the model
A classic shape that still looks good and is nice and clean looking.
Close up of the saucer. For me the bridge looked a bit big and stood out a bit too much
The top of the dome and the bottom of the saucer section are clear parts that were supposed to be partially painted. This is good if you plan to light the kit but since I did not I painted them white. I thought leaving them clear might look funny.
A close up of the Secondary Hull.
Close up of the dish. Note that two different sizes are provided in the kit to represent the differnt ships for the different shows (Pilot No 1, Pilot No 2, TV series) Also notice the clear nacelle fronts. These are 2 part clear parts with the inner one painted red and the outer one partially painted white. Again this makes it easy to add lights. With the snap kit build sequence you are supposed to sandwich the inner red part between the nacelle halves. I chose to close off the nacelle halves and putty and paint before putting in the clear part. To do this I had to cut off the lip on the clear part. This is no problem as this part cut off is not seen and if there is a small portion of the lip left over it actually still snaps into position without glues.
The rear of the nacelle. This is one of three options provided.
Decals are provided for the inner grill work.
The rear lower view along with the shuttle dock
The underside of the ship. The two holes are the mounting points for the base. Surprisingly the model has quite a few colour accents. Quite a few are not seen on screen due to the angle.
Decals
I had little to no problem with the decals on my model. I used Solvaset to help get the decals to snuggle down. The decals did not always react to the decal solution and one decal never did snuggle down properly. The other thing I noticed was that even though my surface was smooth, it looked like there was some silvering but with the white model this did not show up. So if you plan to paint the model a light grey be careful that the decals do not silver on you.
Conclusion
As I said before this is an excellent kit for the price. There is sure to be aftermarket items. Most welcome will be a light kit. The size s a bit small but if Polar Lights produces the rest of the Enterprises in the same scale it would be very welcome.