50 x 50 ==> 2500 TOS (pic heavy)

[slawton]

6-13. Romulan Birds Of Prey (x8, 5 new)

Here's 5 more Romulan Bird of Prey ships mostly from the 1/2500 TOS Cadet Series kit in addition to the 3 shown previously:

The top left 3 are the previous 3 (original plastic, steel & interior green). The top right is a Federation Models kit painted steel with silver rear nacelle. The 2 on the bottom left are different shades of gray (Rustoleum spray from Walmart) with silver rear nacelles. The left one has aluminum nacelle dome while the next has fluorescent blue. The next is a true blue spray with fluorescent blue rear nacelle and green nacelle dome. The bottom right is painted light gray with silver rear nacelles and fluorescent red nacelle domes.

[slawton]

The Animated Series

Well, part of this contest, at least for me, is to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Trek. Something I had been meaning to do was to get ST:TAS from Amazon. Then I noticed I could watch it on Netflix, so I recently watched all 22 of the 1/2 hour (really about 20 minutes) episodes which was produced by Filmation in 1973-74. It had its plusses and minuses.

Starting off with the bad... It is dated by today's standards. The animation was only so-so at the time (lots of reused footage, only small parts of the screen were moving, only passing resemblance, no emotions displayed, etc.). The characters felt monotone and lacked dramatic expression. My son expressed how silly a scene was where a spaceship takes a lot of time to slowly move across the screen. The opening music was redone and sound effects were typical Filmation (used in other produced series) not from TOS - definitely loses the Trek-y feel. The audience was meant to be more childish and 70's TV children standards were lame (lighthearted, not dark in any way). Some of the stories plots reflected this (crew shrinking or getting younger, turned into water-breathers, etc.) and were not scientifically feasible. The stories were short, tended to lack substance. The other characters lacked depth and believability.

Now for the good ... It's Star Trek with the original cast (minus Checkov) and they are not old! It revisited people (Harry Mudd, Cyrano Jones, Sarek, Capt. Koloth, Capt. Kor, Klingons, Romulans, Orions, tribbles, etc.) and places (the Guardian, Vulcan, Shore Leave, etc.) and ideas (superhuman, ancient gods, alien zoo, Spock's brain, etc.) from TOS. Many of the scripts were written for the live-action series before it was canceled. This helped flesh-out the TOS Star Trek universe. Aliens looked exotic, not a make-up enhanced person. Even two new crew members the 3-armed/legged Arex and the cat-like M'Ress. No time wasted on Kirk's next female conquest. Uhura earned her chops to take command of the Enterprise and save the day. It introduced the new technologies (holodeck as a Rec Room, Stasis Field, Slaver weapon, etc.), new aliens (Kzinti, Edosians, shape changing Vendorian, etc.) and new ships (Kzinti, transports, Kukulkan serpent ship, small craft, etc.). I see similarities between "One of Our Planets is Missing" (a gigantic cloud creature threatens to destroy a planet) and ST:TMP. Also between "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" (a god-like creature at the center of the galaxy) and ST:TFF.

I would say TAS is pseudo-cannon, where some things are consistent with the rest of Trek (and have even been confirmed in some way, shape or form) and others discarded. Continued live-action TOS would have been better, but that wasn't going to happen, so this is a fair compromise. Trek may have essentially died at this time except for the financial success of Star Wars, which loosened purses to continue Star Trek... now at 50 years!

[Moongrim]

Well stated Slawton.

[slawton]

Haven't posted a pic in a while, so here's a bunch of mostly assembled ships:

There a bunch of Constitution class starships, with the left side being mostly 1st/2nd pilot versions. The top right will be the Constellation. The bottom left is the Hermes scout. The bottom middle are the DQ Warrior& Emperor. The mid right are the DQ Surak class Vulcan ship and the DQ Andorian Kumari. The tiny ships below those are the Aurora and Tholians (both 25 & 15m versions), provided as Shapeways prints from marcnoonan. Below that is a custom wooden/cardboard made Klingon scout from "Friday's Child", which I based on the Kalath K-3 gunboat from FASA.

Lots of sanding on the Constitutions... Of course, still need to finalize assembly, paint and decal.

[Vahmp]

Haven't posted a pic in a while, so here's a bunch of mostly assembled ships:

There a bunch of Constitution class starships, with the left side being mostly 1st/2nd pilot versions.
Lots of sanding on the Constitutions... Of course, still need to finalize assembly, paint and decal.

I've a question...
How did you make, or what did you use, to make the bridges for the 1st/2nd pilot versions?
The other differences are easy to modify.

[slawton]

How did you make, or what did you use, to make the bridges for the 1st/2nd pilot versions?

Really quite simple and convenient...

Since I would not need the deflector dish for the original pilots (the dish is too small), I removed the antenna bit and glued the dish facing downward onto the bridge, with a little putty on the sides to fill in the gap. After it was solidly on, I cut off the rod meant to connect the dish to the secondary hull and used the small cylindrical plastic bit to build up the elevator.

[el gato]

How did you make, or what did you use, to make the bridges for the 1st/2nd pilot versions?

Really quite simple and convenient...

Since I would not need the deflector dish for the original pilots (the dish is too small), I removed the antenna bit and glued the dish facing downward onto the bridge, with a little putty on the sides to fill in the gap. After it was solidly on, I cut off the rod meant to connect the dish to the secondary hull and used the small cylindrical plastic bit to build up the elevator.

Genius!

[Vahmp]

How did you make, or what did you use, to make the bridges for the 1st/2nd pilot versions?

Really quite simple and convenient...

Since I would not need the deflector dish for the original pilots (the dish is too small), I removed the antenna bit and glued the dish facing downward onto the bridge, with a little putty on the sides to fill in the gap. After it was solidly on, I cut off the rod meant to connect the dish to the secondary hull and used the small cylindrical plastic bit to build up the elevator.

KOOL!
I'm doing my 2 versions abit different.
I'm using fake pearl halves (the kind people that make Costume jewelry use).

[slawton]

How did you make, or what did you use, to make the bridges for the 1st/2nd pilot versions?

Since I would not need the deflector dish ...

KOOL!
I'm doing my 2 versions abit different.
I'm using fake pearl halves (the kind people that make Costume jewelry use).

You'll have to let us know how it turns out...

[slawton]

14-18. Small Ships (x5)

Here's 5 more completed small ships (sorry about the poor photography with my older cell-phone) with some screen captures for comparison:

IMG_1122.JPG (14.05 KiB) Viewed 1315 times

The left one is a Klingon Scout ship seen in "Friday's Child" as a glowing greenish/yellowish shape (see bottom middle) modeled after the FASA Kalath K-3 Gunboat. It is painted using a whitened Green Zinc Chromate with PNT Klingon decals and was made from wood, cardboard and a small Klingon model engine.

The next orangish one is the Ekos unmanned nuclear-armed probe from the episode "Patterns of Force", based off a Nazi V-2 rocket. It is painted with a mixture of fluorescent orange and cadmium yellow and was made from a round toothpick and small cardboard pieces.

The middle one is the Aurora, seen in the episode "The Way to Eden", obviously reuse of the Tholian triangular design from "The Tholian Web" episode, with 2 representatives of those ships on the right. They were painted a light ghost gray with aluminum triangles for the Aurora and orangish ones for the Tholians. The nacelle domes on the Aurora were painted light gray and the center tip was dotted with silver. These are all Shapeways designs from marcnoonan.