The Kelvin Associates: USS Armstrong, USS Newton and USS Mayflower

Destroyed only minute after they appeared, the Kelvin fleet has made a first appearance in diecast form.

For fans of the 2009 film will recall that the Enterprise was not alone on its mission to evacuate Vulcan but was the only surviving craft.

Over the next few months Eaglemoss will be releasing three Kelvin Timeline starships. The USS Newton and the USS Mayflower will be following with the USS Armstrong hitting the online shop this week. 

Delayed for a month, the Armstrong has a lot of familiar features in place. There's the saucer connected to two nacelles at either edge, no secondary hull and that rollbar carrying weapons or whatever might be needed for the mission. In essence this is a beefed up Miranda Class with a third, longer nacelle planted in the middle of the ship's underside.

As you become aware from the magazine, the metallic finish is to age the ship and ensure that the Enterprise stood out against the rest of the fleet. If the Armstrong is older though, how come its registry number is NCC-1769? Anyhow, numerals aside, this is a decent little model with a fantastic paint finish that reflects a more industrial perception of the universe in the Kelvin Timeline.

The weathered effect on the metal works as well as it has on Shuttles 4 (which we discussed recently) and what I like there is the continued theme across this range of ships. You know where they're from and they all physically and visually link together. Oddly the Enterprise stands out like a sore thumb being shiny white!

But let's stick with the Armstrong here. The registry on the saucer is super legible namely because it's huge. Both the name and number are edged red but overall the detailing on the hull is basic to say the least. You can make out possible phaser emplacements and the RCS thrusters are just about visible but that's it. The bridge module is recognisable but you can see how far they modellers needed to go when they were making the Kelvin fleet since there's not a lot of very intricate detail anywhere. In fact, we know from the magazine that the fleet itself was a mix of bits reworked for the few craft we got to see.

The top of the saucer is rendered in metal with the engines, the ventral saucer section and the rollbar all plastic addons. The engines do have a familiar feel to them as well since they are almost identical to the one found on the USS Kelvin. The third is longer and just a stretched version of the other two. Detail again is sketchy at best but you can make out the exhaust points and the bustard collectors. Sadly the latter are just moulded parts of the ship due to their scale. 

In all honesty though, the Armstrong leaves me a little cold and has also let a tiny bit of concern in as to the quality of the upcoming Newton and Mayflower. It’s an OK model but there have been many far superior replicas done on this scale since day one of the original collection. Even the multiple Miranda variants have been more impressive and this, while it’s a rare chance to see the Kelvin universe fleet, just doesn’t match the Prime Universe quality in any way. I’d be as bold as to say that it shows up just how much of a cut and paste job the other ships in Starfleet were.

The magazine didn’t fair too well with me either. There’s some glossy CG of the Armstrong but under that it’s a recap of the disastrous mission to Vulcan and an extensive (and decent) look through the design process of the Kelvin Starfleet vessels. Reading this does make you look back at the model and perhaps be more harsh towards it but, strangely, my biggest gripe was the use of dark blue font on a black background. With the shrinking of the magazines, the text was already microscopic but now it’s verging on illegible especially the picture captions. Sort it out Eaglemoss!!!

To conclude - a steady and average model backed with an interesting magazine. Not the stuff dreams are made of but an interesting aside if nothing else.

Second in this Kelvin trio is the USS Newton NCC-1727. This is the most diverse of the three ships when it comes to design however the news that they were all effectively variations on one design makes these a bit disappointing upon arrival.

Anyway, the Newton continues the same blotched stained steel paintjob from the Armstrong but you have to look deeper than a couple of shades of grey here. First up she has a semi-circular primary hull connected to both a pair of warp engines on the top and twin secondary hulls below. 

The main hull is cast in metal and carries adequate bridge detail and also phaser emplacements. Everything beyond that primary piece though is in plastic but the painting helps draw all the elements together. The hull colouring really suits these ships and accentuates the already quite deep deflector grid lines curving round the ship. 

On the two warp engines above the primary hull the bussard collectors are a dulled yellow/grey in translucent plastic with the exhaust tips at the other ends recessed in blue, mirroring their onscreen appearance. The joint lines on the tops of the nacelles are strangely raised with the rear tips not quite fully closed. Not the best bit of model work to date by any stretch. The connecting rollbar arm is fairly bland with only the blip of gold paint to help isolate the warp field regulator.

The bottom two attached tubes are a bit more interesting with twin shuttle bay doors at the back and deflector dishes to the front. From memory this is the only ship with such a configuration especially with the double blue dishes facing forward. The joins on these shorter tube sections aren't as noticeable and the "caps" that are provided by the shuttle bay doors certainly help. It's only on a closer look that you realise the split for them is horizontal beneath the doors rather than top to bottom.

To the rear of the structure connecting them back to the main hull you can just make out the red of the impulse drive. It's a narrow slip of paint but nicely touched in.

The USS Newton is a sturdy build with no flex or movement in those rear outslung hulls and engines. The look of it easily makes it the most interesting of the three Kelvin fleet starships.

The 18 page magazine still doesn't clarify what class of ship the Newton is but does revisit the events of Vulcan's destruction and the ship's fleeting involvement before its destruction by the Narada. For anyone who loves John Eaves' work, the second second focuses on concept art for the 2009 movie and ties in well with Shuttle set 4 as well as exploring the aesthetics of such things as the police bike and the Enterprise's dry dock.

Last up in this sequence of bonus editions is the impressively bland USS Mayflower NCC-1621. The easiest way to explain this one would be to remove the rollbar and the middle nacelle, Hey presto, it's the Mayflower.  

There is, sadly, very little to say about it. It is for all intents and purposes the basis for the Armstrong but does benefit from a slightly larger finish. Notable points are that the registry is located in the same place as the USS Kelvin, just behind the bridge and the nacelle design is identical to the other two ships featured here. That said, it's not just a straight reuse on at least one of them since the Newton's engines are longer by a few centimetres. The front and rear caps are the same colours with the engines and the lower saucer insert all in plastic. 

Apart from the thin impulse engine to the rear and some minor greebling on the underside - also identical on the other two ships so you see a pattern - the Mayflower has the distinction of being totally indistinct. Even the Reliant had a rollbar yet this may well class as the dullest Starfleet ship to ever grace a HeroCollector box. I can't even raise an eyebrow in excitement here. 

Its included magazine is a familiar story since it glosses over the details of the fateful rescue mission to Vulcan. The Designing the Mayflower section is, ironically, short and to the point. They needed ships designed, there wasn't a lot of time; hey presto in four paragraphs.

Last up and taking a good chunk of the issue we have an article on the design of Nero's Narada. Given that this will never ever get produced in the collection its a good choice to add in but also fair confirmation that Eaglemoss won't try and replicate the upgraded Romulan mining ship. 

OK. Let's be straight on this trio. The Newton is the outright best of the three because of the variations but overall these are pretty uninspiring and very very completist. The magazines are almost too apologetic in mentioning the speed at which these ships were CG'd for the 2009 reboot and building them for collectors highlights how much CG kitbashing went on to get them ready for the big screen. Even worse? The damn numbering. It makes no sense when it comes to sequence and starship class which was set up Back In the Day. I can't imagine that logical numbering would have gone the way of the dodo in the Kelvin Timeline - 1727 commissioned before 1701? Really?

Check out all our Starships posts HERE

You can find out more on the Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection by visiting the Hero Collector website HERE

Enjoyed this article? Why not like and share to spread the word!

Like our page on Facebook 

Follow us on Twitter