The Naked Silo

"THERE she IS!" Above is the model of the Enterprise I built in 1992 –in the most basic way possible: I separated the parts from the sprues (but I didn't use clippers and I didn't sand down the burrs), I glued the pieces together (rather messily, with Testors little tube of glue), I painted a few key parts (using artist acrylics and a paint brush), and I applied the very few decals provided (using just warm water and who knows what to apply them; some slightly crooked and/or not accurately/precisely positioned). See for yourself . While recently blogging about my past models (almost all built between 1992 and 1995) I felt a slight sense of remorse about not building them to their fullest potential (or at least cleaning up seam lines and gaps!). I do understand that this feeling is entirely hindsight based on my new knowledge and growing skills as a modeler, and I did have plenty of fun building them at the time (what other reason is there?), and I felt...

"All I ask is a tall ship And a star to steer her by" – John Masefield The original U.S.S. Enterprise , NCC-1701, designed by Matt Jeffries, first flew across TV screens in 1966 and was redesigned (chiefly by Jeffries, Mike Minor, and Andrew Probert) for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 (explained in the movie as having undergone a refit). I like the original design for its simplicity and elegance, but the refit really does it for me with its swept-back warp pylons and overall updated-yet-still-futuristic detailing. It's no wonder I picked this ship for my very first ever model. Check out this gorgeous scene of Scotty giving Admiral Kirk a tour 'round the outside of the Big E  in TMP (with beautiful music by Jerry Goldsmith). Which one did I build? The Star Trek V AMT/ERTL kit was issued in 1989, but I built it in the winter of 1991 (I remember there was snow on the ground in downtown Toronto, so it may have been early 1992, which means it ...

Sauceriffic. The Reliant made its debut in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982. The story called for another Starfleet ship, but the filmmakers felt –correctly– that if it was the same design as the Enterprise , the battles would be confusing, so the Reliant is different enough to be distinctive, but shares some design elements of the Enterprise to belong in the same Starfleet family. Box art. I could have sworn that I built this model between 1992 and 1994, but the model listing at Memory Alpha says that this AMT/ERTL kit was issued in 1995, the same year I bought and built the Voyager   (unless I built that ship in 1996...still, it was the last model I built until 2015), which means I had to have built this before late summer 1995 (or '96). Thinking more about this, unlike the other ships, I don't remember anything about building this model. Very weird... Head on. As with all of my starship models of the period, I assembled it, applied the supp...

Seven decades after Kirk. I'd been hooked on Star Trek since I was a wee lad in the 1970s, watching reruns of the original series from the '60s, and I enjoyed the movies that came out afterward. When a new series was announced to debut in 1987, I was excited and interested, even though I felt the subtitle "The Next Generation" was cheesy. Nearly 30 years later, I've definitely gotten used to it (but "TNG" is easier to say and type), but I still find it kinda bland. Anyway, the show had fresh new technology and a spanking new design for its main ship, the U.S.S. Enterprise , NCC-1701-D, now the flagship of the Federation. Andrew Probert 's design took some getting used to for me; it had the same basic elements of the original Enterprise  (saucer, neck, cylinder, and two cylindrical engines on pylons), but the shapes and volumes were distributed differently, weirdly. Everything looked squished and soft. The organic look of this new ship had me ...