Yesterday's Enterprise - XL'd

Liam MacCreadie joins us once more to take a look over the latest XL Starship from Eaglemoss...

Originally published 28/11/2021. UPDATED 23/08/21

Welcome to this month's review of the latest starship to get the XL treatment, the second most anticipated supersize release since the Enterprise-A. 

I must start by saying I’ve always liked this ship since seeing her in Yesterday's Enterprise. Although she only gets a small amount of screen time I had to buy the AMT model kit so this release has been high on my radar since it was announced.

First impressions from opening the box is that she’s a very chunky ship. The level of detailing on the saucer is incredible; the top of the saucer is diecast with the bottom plastic and we have raised areas for phaser strips and lifeboat hatches which are well painted.  

The windows from a distance look well done and numerous, it’s not until you get close that you realise she suffers from the same window misalignment that afflicts other ships, however as the indents are so light it isn’t noticeable until you get right up on it. The big let down for the ventral though is the yellow either tractor emitters or sensors painted over the escape pod indents, something I’ve only just noticed, and something you can’t unsee unfortunately.

The registration and name look bold with the correct red outline on the black lettering that was missed on the previous XL USS Reliant. The underside of the saucer is much the same story with detail , raised escape pods and phasers, however the window alignment is a lot worse underneath with not only missing the indents but the black and white lines are on different heights, again from a distance it’s a trivial thing.

The secondary hull and neck are mainly diecast which adds the weight to the model and feels great. The windows are well aligned on this section on the diecast at least but the plastic slips again, all decals look great and mine has the pennants the correct way up unlike some. The biggest flaw though on this model is the deflector dish. This time we have the correct inset dish however as its transparent you can see the joining peg inside and a lot of models seem to be affected with glue visible on the interior. This could have been solved by having a solid backing, a simple addition that would make a lot of buyers happy.

Aft we have the much hyped impulse engine a detail noticeably missing from the regular sized model and something I’m glad was included, although I can’t help but feel it should be red and not blue - feel free to correct me if not the case! 

Carrying on down to the back we have a very nice shuttlebay, which is luckily well aligned, again on some models this is not the case.

Nacelles and pylons are nice and straight with bright plastic bussard collectors and warp grilles, something we’ve been use to seeing on a lot of these models. Registration numbers and pennants are all in place and correct too.

Before I finish I’d just like to compare her to the regular issue we had back in issue 46. First off we have moved the pylons from straight up to a more sloped back design with registry numbers now applied. The blue deck lines on the edge of the saucer have been omitted on the XL as happened on the Enterprise-B. 

As mentioned earlier we have the impulse engine present, the correct deflector dish and lastly the sensor dome underneath the saucer has changed completely from the Zhukov style on the regular to a correct Constitution class variant on the XL. 

Overall she’s a great looking model and I would rate her a solid 8/10. Like all the XLs it's a really great model only let down with silly little flaws but if a life long Trekkie I feel you can look past these . 

Have you been collecting the XL models from Eaglemoss? Which has been the highlight so far?

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You can also find Liam on Twitter as @prysmos1980