Attack Wing Wave 24 - Updated Classics

Firstly apologies because the Wave 24 review will be a ship short.

It seems that the repaint of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 is already out of stock due to stupid levels of demand so we are only privy to the IKS Drovana and the IRW Algeron for June.

The big thing you'll immediately notice is that there have been some shakeups in the waves with shuttles, warbirds and Xindi ships seemingly cast aside for a trio of reboxes. However while this is true of the Enterprise it's not strictly speaking the case for the Drovana or the Algeron. 

The Drovana is the first time since the Starter Pack that we've had a Vor'Cha Class Attack Cruiser released to retail and it's been worth the wait just for the playing piece. The matt green paint now has a slight metallic glint to it and the surface detail really stands out. It's a thinner paint job certainly but the engine colouring is much more accurate and  really makes a difference to the ship as you can see from the comparison. 

The second craft, the Algeron is a bit disappointing just for the fact it's the same old K'T'inga/D7 mould to the point that it's even carrying a Klingon emblem on the underside. Straight rebox if ever there was one! Still the  entire pack is purely Romulan themed and, contrary to the scattered focus of the Drovana it's based around the classic third season episode, The Enterprise Incident. Sadly there's no Romulan imposter Kirk (now there's a card - dual faction, high skill...) but we do get lots of tasty new goodies to take your mind off the very average model. 

Offering five in attack, one agility, five hull and three shields, the Drovana will be able to hold its own in a battle and costs 28 points for the ship. You can upgrade her with a Tech, two Weapon and a Crew upgrade as well as being able to utilise four standard actions - Evade, Target Lock, Cloak and Sensor Echo. As a unique action you can discard a non-disabled upgrade during Compare Results to cancel out a Damage or Critical Damage result.

The accompanying generic ship holds the same stats as the version in the Starter Pack, losing a shield, a Weapon slot and the unique action for 26 points. In terms of movement, we have a max speed of four with red 90 degree turns and a red Come About at speed three. There are also green forward and bank turns at speeds one and two.

Unusually the Drovana comes with two equally strong command options in Gowron and Kurn. For a cost of three points and with a skill of five. Also allowing you to equip him with an Elite Action, Gowron can be used as a Fleet Admiral however, oddly, he won't improve your captain's skill but will be able to pass his skill across to another of your ships. What he does offer in that case is the chance to drop a Battle Stations token next to your ship and, if you're a Klingon captain on a Klingon ship, the opportunity to then perform an Action Bar action as a freebie. Seeing as the Drovana doesn't carry Battle Stations it's a very useable feature that doesn't leave you disabling features.

Kurn also costs three points and has a skill of five and allows you to re-roll one of your Battle Station results each time you defend. If it's assigned to a Klingon ship you can re-roll two. Nice card to use since it offers improved defence and costs nothing extra - no Auxiliary Power Tokens, disabling cards  or removal of upgrades. Low cost, big value. He can also field a Klingon Elite Action even though he doesn't have the emblem on the card.

As for that Elite Action, the Drovana comes with Detonation Codes for four points. An Action, it allows you to target a Minefield Token within range and then roll the number of attack dice on the Mine card minus one. It results in every ship within range one of the mine to suffer Damage or Critical Damage as normal and without the chance of using any defence against the results. Of course it does rely on there being a minefield in play!

Which is a good thing that Cloaked Mines is one of the three new Tech options. A discard for three points, it lets you drop the Minefield token within range one of your ship but not within range three of an enemy vessel. If any enemy ship passes within range one of the token it has to roll three attack dice and suffer the consequences of any Damage or Critical Damage results. The craft does not get the chance to roll any defence in this case which is standard against such an item.


Second there's Emergency Power costing four points. Effectively it allows you to ignore any  Auxiliary Power Tokens you have in play on that vessel and perform either a red manoeuvre or an Action. Certainly super-useful and reusable since it's a disable not a discard. Certainly a card that will help you get out of a sticky spot quickly.


The final Tech upgrade is Security Sensors costing five points. If you're targeted by an enemy captain or upgrade you can immediately place an Evade in play even if you already have one active. Good news here that it's something you can keep on using and therefore an absolute essential to any Klingon fleet because of its reuse factor and increased defence. 

Bo'Rak is your new Crew option (five point cost) and can be disabled to force a defending ship to re-roll a die of your choice. He also allows you to defend with a full set of dice even if your opponent is fielding the Scan token. As you might be seeing, this is a Klingon set which offers a lot of increased defensive chances which, for a ship with a single agility point, will be very advantageous.

For a Klingon vessel the offensive capabilities are a bit limited beyond the standard five attack dice. Indeed even the Photon Torpedoes offer the same number as standard however if fired from a Vor'Cha Class you do get to use six dice. There's no specification that it can be fired a certain way, only that it will result in using three Time Tokens. With the note of the use on a Vor'Cha it does push this card to be used on a specific ship which doesn't have a rear firing arc (possibly hence the lack of detail).

As for the mission cards, the Drovana adds Detonation Codes. It's a very different mission, placing the Detonation Codes card onto a Federation ship which must be destroyed by two Klingon vessels including one Vor'Cha Cruiser. The Federation ship can use the Klingon Elite Action once per turn as the ships skirt in and out of the minefield which is also set in the playing field. The Federation player can win by damaging one of the Klingons and destroying the other (must be some damage caused by Detonation Codes), both Klingons are destroyed or all the minefield tokens are obliterated.

The Romulan ship here in Wave 24 is the IRW Algeron, a member of the D7 Class. A Klingon design given to the Romulans in exchange for cloaking technology (or a cheap reuse for the third season of The Original Series), it's another miniature reboxed.

The K'T'inga/D7 cruiser in this pack has a decent paint job and still carries the Klingon emblem on its underbelly which is a disappointment but I suppose re-hacking the mold would be a nightmare.  I can't really say a lot on this one aside from the point that the finish is fairly crisp and the engines and bridge module are actually on the right way.

The Algeron fires with three dice, defends with one, has a hull score of three and two shields. Standard actions are Evade, Target Lock, Cloak and Sensor Echo with slots for one Tech, Weapon and Crew option. This basic ship will cost you 18 points to field. As for your unique action, the Algeron will let you perform a one speed ahead move before declaring a target as long as you're not cloaked. I love this feature as it will give you a lot of flexibility to get into range for that final shot. Note that there's no limit to when and how often you can use it. 

The generic Romulan Battlecruiser loses a shield point and the chance of using a Crew upgrade plus the unique action to bring the cost in at 16 points. As to moves, you can max out at a speed of four with only the come about at range three requiring an Auxiliary Power Token to be deployed. There's a full set of turns available at speeds two and three plus green banks and aheads at speeds one and two. This is the standard it seems and it's been a while since we've had a strong, fast ship that gives us a five or a six like Voyager or Prometheus.

As we said, the pack is based on the third season's The Enterprise Incident with the female Romulan commander, Liviana Charvanek (not her name from the episode for note) as your first choice to captain. With a skill of five she costs three points and does have the badge to perform an Elite Action. Charvanek will let players cloak and then perform a free action during their turn which means you could pack out a turn with this and adding that one manoeuvre in too. This captain can be flipped to a fleet admiral role and therefore pass this action out to other ships in your armada. She does also add one point to the captain of the ship you assign her to.

Along with the generic captain card you have a second option to use Tal as your commander. He bears a skill level of three and costs two points and lets your ship use the Battle Stations action even if its not on your standard actions list. Tal won't allow an extra free Action for that round but for Romulans it will offer more in game chances to bear down on their opponents (as long as you're not cloaked).

Command Pod is one of two Elite Actions (four points) and simply lets you cancel one die result when defending. It's a discard that can only be used on a D7 Class ship. For five points you might want to employ Cloaked Attack where you can discard the card and spend your Cloak token and gain two dice for attack. That would effectively give you a five dice attack with the Algeron which makes it a very strong opponent for a turn - especially when you combine it with the ship's additional move ability and Charvanek's free action for example. That's a lot of bits you can pull in for a single turn.

The Weapon slot can be filled with a standard Plasma Torpedoes upgrade giving you four dice in attack and lets you re-roll any blank results. It does incur the Time Token penalty an can be fired fore or aft (if you have those arcs). Nothing new here although very useful and costing three points. There's also a lone Crew upgrade with Romulan Technical Officer (two points) who can be disabled to place a Scan token next to your ship. It's another one of those cards that gives you access to a "standard" action not available with the core ship card as there seems to regularly be with a lot of expansions.

The final upgrade here is Impulse Drive which can be disabled to perform a "white" manoeuvre even with an Auxiliary Power Token next to your ship. It does however mean you skip performing an Action for that round. For a two point cost and the fact it can be reused it might be useful however movement-wise there's only the 180 turn that will bring about an Auxiliary Power Token on the Algeron so there might be better ways to spend points or look to assign it to a ship where there are a lot more red turns that you could abuse and therefore warrant the need for this card.

The mission also plays to The Enterprise Incident with a Federation ship attempting to outrun three Romulan craft (including a D7) and install a stolen cloaking device. Mission tokens represent steps of installation and once all six are active the device is online. Rolling Damage points will mean that process is successful and if all six rolls have the Damage result then it's a free action. The Romulans need to stop you before exiting the north end of the playing field.

Another cool and different scenario to play out that isn't a straight one on one rehash with a planet in the middle. I reckon this could easily be changed to a one player mission with you controlling the Romulans. The big challenge here is that you'll only be able to use a Federation ship with a hull of four or less and Romulans with hulls of three or less.

So a good wave overall once you get past the disappointment of some reshuffling between 24/25/26 and having three ships that are repeats. The cards however for the Drovana and the Algeron do offer new features and the missions have some originality which is very refreshing. I'm a bit gutted I have not yet grabbed an Enterprise but from what I understand it's a straight rebox and repaint job from the earlier version. If I acquire I will update!

UPDATED!!!

With some scurrying around across the internet I picked up the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 repaint which completes Wave 24. First thing is first - if you've bought the original pack don't bother with this one unless you want a second The Original Series Constitution Class starship because aside from a new silver coat of paint it's the exact same pack. Luckily I didn't so this hasn't been a waste of money because it's a brilliant set of cards even if I fear that the model is so small I could lose it.

Cudos on the detail of the Tinyprise because Wizkids have managed to add in window detail, get those nacelles aligned and finish the model off with some nice touches such as the red bussard collectors, a golden deflector and a gold, highlighted bridge module. It's not the most stunning item to come out of the game but it does what it needs to do and you can tell exactly what ship it is. I've only seen the original version a couple of times and to be honest there's not a great deal of difference between them. Perhaps the paint job here is a bit neater.

The Enterprise has an attack of three, agility of one, four hull points and three shield points. In relation to the refit version that's a single shield point less. As with all Federation craft we have the standard Evade, Target Lock, Scan and Battle Stations actions as well as four Crew slots and a Weapon slot to upgrade the starship. The basic ship will cost you 22 points. As for its unique action, the Enterprise can still perform an Action from the standard bar even if it has an Auxiliary Power Token assigned. That has to be one of the most useful options available to a ship in the whole game. The generic Constitution Class vessel loses one shield point, two Crew slots plus the unique action to cost 20 points.

Movement is pretty flexible with a full set of turns at speeds two and three (sharp right and left on three are red) plus a top speed of four although you can't bank at that level. Speed one will allow bank turns while there's a most welcome speed two reverse to help you back off a bit sharpish. Odd point but the move card and the generic card both carry a picture of the refit Enterprise rather than the one from The Original Series. 

Clearly the first captain option in this pack has to be James T. Kirk (six point cost). Carrying a skill of nine and the ability to field two Elite Actions it has to be one of the go-to command cards for Federation players. Kirk costs six points and any Elite Action cards you pick for him cost three points regardless of their face value. Also being able to keep them face down until "activated" means other players can't see what you're planning although I expect Cheat Death will be in there.

Second option is Christopher Pike. A logical choice since the movie version has Decker. While not as amazing as the Kirk card, Pike does offer a skill of six for four points and has an Elite Action slot so don't dismiss him straight away. He'll also mean that those Crew upgrades cost a point less each and considering the Enterprise can take up to four that's a good saving when it comes to budgeting. Finally there's the generic captain with a skill of one and a zero point cost. It uses the image of Ron Tracey from The Omega Factor and I would have liked to have seen him as a "proper" captain rather than to fill out a useless card.

You get five Crew choices with the Enterprise with only Chekov not making the cut of the standard crew (no sign of a Rand of a Chapel card either but y'know...). Both Spock and Montgomery Scott cost five points to equip while Sulu, Uhura and McCoy cost three.

Spock allows players to convert Battle Station results into damage during an attack as long as your ship carries the Scan token. Nicely there's zero need to disable or discard this one wich makes it eternally useful not does it say that you can't utilise the Scan ability when altering your attack result. Scotty offers a double advantage which, like Spock, makes that higher cost much more appealling. Firstly he can be used to disable two shield points  and add two attack dice (in the case of Enterprise it would take you up to a five) or you can reduce the attack roll by two dice and repair a shield. Super useful and that second one doesn't specify the need for the engineer to be disabled. This is another huge win card and beyond question one that you will always want to have on the table.

So to the three pointers and Leonard McCoy. Offering a "medical" alternative, the good doctor will let one of the other Crew upgrades operate as a freebie for that round. He is a discard so make that one extra ability count!

Sulu on the other hand doesn't specify that discard/disable handicap and adds two dice to your defence (agility) for the round. It is an Action so you have to note it's enabled rather than it just being there all the time. Potentially one to use with McCoy depending on how bad things are getting! Sulu will also let you convert a Battle Stations result into an Evade during the round in which you declare him active.

Finally there's Nyota Uhura who is again a discard but will let you change your manoeuvre before you move. It's a bit of a classic card and one that helps a lot especially if you're loaded with a high skilled captain (i.e. Kirk). Does mean you can check out the enemy and then do what you need to do to better position for the next round.

As for Weapons you get just the original version of Photon Torpedoes (cost of three points). Yep, that's right it literally is a repack with not even a Time Token update for the later waves. In fact even the inners of the packaging are from the original box and there's no reference to it being part of wave 24. This does make me think it might have been a very late - and cheap - swap for something else. Photon Torpedoes here still utilises the disable feature which hasn't been used for a while now. Standard two to three range here with an increase to four dice and the chance to convert one Battle Stations result into a Critical Damage hit.

Unusually the pack has three Elite Action cards included all costing five points individually (or three if coupled with Kirk). Cochrane Deceleration Maneuver is a discard which lets you Come About right after performing a forward speed one move but will incur the old Auxiliary Power Token penalty. A risky move but one that could well put you into a much better firing position and turn that retreat into an attack. Chancey but if the enemy don't know it's coming it will be a big surprise.

Second you have Corbomite Maneuver taking its name from the classic first season story. Again a discard it stops you being attacked but you can't go on the offensive either. Might give you a chance to reform your fleet and get some repairs completed. Last but by no means least is one of the most controversial cards in the history of Attack Wing; Cheat Death. Man have I heard about this one over the years!

If you're destroyed then you get to remove one Damage Card at a time until the amount of damage is one less than your  Hull Value and then you can flip the remaining card face down which eliminates their effects on your ship. I guess this means one Damage Card per round so for the Enterprise for example you can ignore the fact you've been obliterated and then each of the next three rounds you remove a Damage Card. The remaining card is then turned over and treated as normal damage. You can see why that's caused a stink and certainly if you're playing Kirk and this is hidden face down its going to always be ready to play. Probably the biggest game changer but with your enemies always assuming it'll be played, whatever ship it's on will be taken out damn quickly.

The legendary Kobayashi Maru scenario comes with the Enterprise pitting your 50 point ship against a triple Klingon threat of 80 points. Set out as a standard two player game it's all about strength of character as it's severely weighted to the Klingons. Will you rescue the stricken freighter or die trying? Sadly there's no chance to just re-programme the simulator and win. Dammit. I don't believe in a no win scenario!!!

For anyone who already has the USS Enterprise from Wave Zero I wouldn't bother. I'm happy to have been able to find it given that the earlier one is a hard find (not as hard as Excelsior) and there are some serious killer upgrades in this set that you would be stupid to miss out on. Late adopters will find this pack one of the most essential to get their hands on and use if only for that Cheat Death although the crew choices are solid as well.

What Wave 25 will look like is potentially still in the air as I've had trouble locating exactly what it will include and it's been a while since the Wave 24 previews. It might be a shuttle, a revamped Negh'Var, Xindi. Who knows - will we even get a wave 25 or are we going to be looking at Frontiers...?

What are you waiting for? Are the Klingon and Romulan expansions here what you wanted?

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Make Or Break? Eaglemoss Official Starships Collection Issues 20 and 21

Note to readers: I'm dropping this line onto the blog with the full intention of reviewing both the Klingon Vor'Cha Attack Cruiser and the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E however...

Somewhere between Eaglemoss and SKoST Towers the delivery has vanished. It was due on Wednesday 14th May and now it's Friday 16th May.  The team over at the STSS page have assured me that it is on it's way. Fingers crossed, hey?

***

Incredibly just before heading out for a bit of shopping with the family what should turn up this morning (Saturday 17th May)? Yep, one Eaglemoss-sized box containing the very two ships released this month. Opinions on the whole, according to the Facebook page, seem to be praising this month's ships but we're always skeptical until that box gets opened and the craft are on their stands. So what can we say about the Klingon attack cruiser and the Federation's flagship?

The Vor'Cha cruiser first hit screens back in 1991 in the episode Reunion, carrying the dying Chancellor K'mpec to begin the process of succession. As with the USS Enterprise special recently, my last experience with this ship was in  model kit form but this time more expertly constructed by my dad back in the 1990's. I recall the colour being a lot lighter green than we see here but this is direct from the CBS archives - the paint job is officially what we saw on the screen. 

For once, the third Klingon ship to feature in the collection seems to have more metal than plastic in its build. The weapons platform, flying bridge and nacelles are in plastic with a fair portion of the ship cold to touch. Good call, Eaglemoss - and it really does matter when you examine the upper hull detail. The main body even appears to have some weathering applied giving it a dirtier look than we have been used to before. Another tick on this one is the point that there aren't any horrible join lines. Everything fits together well. Not a first but after off-centre nacelles, badly-fitting pylons and all the other errors, it's good to have a model solidly made. On the point of nacelles, the warp radiator grilles and collectors are formed in red clear plastic as are the well fitted impulse engines on the rear. To back that point the three Klingon ships in the series have all been built exceptionally well (the other two being issue three's Bird-of-Prey and issue seven's K'T'inga). Additional plus points for the Vor-Cha being that it's one of the less flexible ships we've seen. I don't recommend dropping it out of a third storey window to test this but it's not as fragile as the nacelles on the Equinox or the whole of the Solar Sailor.

Even the underside detail is great and comparing the whole thing to the plan views in the magazine show how close the two are this time. Aside from some minute browner-coloured panelling the two are indistinguishable. Comparing the detail across to the older AMT kit, I'm hard-pushed to find anything out of the ordinary or any discernable mistakes; this really is a great finished Klingon Vor'Cha Attack Cruiser. Ok. There is one thing that makes me wince here (you'd be disappointed if there wasn't) - the stand is one heck of a tight fit, squeezing in under the weapons pod and the underside of the hull. I was worried that I'd be popping the pod off as I positioned the ship - anyone out there broken it yet?

Evolutionary Tales

Opening up Issue 20 there's a potted history of the cruiser class which also confirms that the first ones we saw in The Next Generation were a lighter green (nice one Dad).  The later versions did have the same paint job as the model accompanying this magazine. The following section deals with the evolution of the Klingons rather than focusing on the ship (something I guess we'll see more often going forward), examining the reinvention of the warrior race from The Motion Picture onwards. Significantly this highlights just how much influence Ronald D Moore had in their backstory from the third season of The Next Generation onwards. Shamefully though their continued cultural evolution in Deep Space Nine is conspicuous through its absence. However, it did help jog my memory on some events from the past which will come in handy for our review of The Klingon Art of War which I'm reading at the moment!

As we've said before the highlights in here tend to be the design and filming sections and Issue 20 doesn't disappoint. Featuring some stunning sketches from the library of Rick Sternbach you get a true sense of the evolution of the Vor'Cha Class from it's origins within the shape of the D-7 of The Original Series and the K'T'inga Class which first appeared in the movies. Only criticism we could point at the magazine content was the lack of any new images beyond the CGI recreation of the Vor'Cha on pages four and five. Other than that, a totally flawless package and one of the best yet without a doubt.

Golden Sovereign?

Issue 21 however is the hot coal of the collection. It's been 17 regular issues since we were rewarded with an Enterprise and the arrival of the "E" marks the fourth in the collection as a whole after NCC-1701-D, the movie refit, NX-01 and the alternative timeline special edition (fifth if we're counting the All Good Things... subscribers model). Over on the Facebook page opinion has certainly been polar on this ship - is it really the make or break model for the series? What's the consequences if it isn't up to standard?

On arrival this was the first one to be unboxed and placed on its stand. Initially it looks stunning but after a few seconds something else seems to drift in - dismay. Considering the amount of hull detail that is present here, this really could have done with being made into a larger special edition. The surface is litterally crammed with lifeboat hatches, captain's yacht, light and dark panelling, phaser strips, registry... the list goes on. Just bumping down the scale a bit would have made this even more impressive.

As it goes, the result is very, very good - the top section of the saucer is forged from metal while the secondary hull and nacelles (a pattern consistent in the collection) are plastic moulded. Compared to the plan views there's a good deal of accuracy - until you flip her over.

Whether this is a one off error or not but I have misaligned decals on the lower hull and the saucer registry does seem a bit blurred (or I've been on that green stuff of Scotty's) and your heart does sink - so close to perfection but once more let down by some minor details at the last post. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with the ship and think this will reassure a lot of fans but the consistency and quality time and time again seem to ebb and flow from collector to collector and from model to model.


Importantly here the detail isn't limited to the main body of the ship with the specialist paint job making its way all along the nacelles and their sleek, sweeping pylons. I suspect that having a physical model for reference would have been a great help here - in fact as the magazine reveals, this was the last of the great Star Trek Enterprise models built (for First Contact) before everything went CGI. 

Strangely she does feel a bit stumpy having no neck section between the two hulls and without all those blue and red hues it's one ship that does seem a little, erm, dull in the flesh (or plastic/metal). That's nothing against the publishers and model makers, more a nod that the power of technology in the movie world can do some great things.

The USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E has gone some way to repairing the disappointment from earlier editions - there's no massive open gaps, ill-fitting pylons, wonky nacelles or "screen correct" errors to fuel discussion for once. It's a good solid result that reassures me the collection is being handled well and fan reaction is being listened to. Yes, this could have been a disaster but for those who aren't subscribing and are waiting for it to hit the shelves, you'll be happy with the result. Even the decals on the side are the right way up and the right way round.

You Say Narada...

Flipping through the magazine I was, inevitably drawn towards the filming section. I'm gradually discovering that my knowledge of starships in the last 14 years has been a bit lax and the details regarding the adjustments and modifications to the Enterprise-E between films were genuinely interesting to read (as I'd found with the JJ-Enterprise special). Unlike the previous Vor-Cha issue there are a good number of pics that were unfamiliar  to me alongside the usual fodder of Enterprise versus Borg cube, Enterprise versus Schimitar and the like. For note there is one cock-up referring to the Narada as the ship Troi rammed which does niggle seeing as it's correctly referenced just a page back. 

I'm now finding that I end up skim-reading the first couple of pages as when they focus on the more popular ships it does tend to be a plot summary (as here) of its appearances on screen which won't be new ground to existing fans. The designing and filming sections are excellent once more. The stretching of the Galaxy Class lines to form the basis of the Sovereign Class is fully explained while we also get to see some bits that never made it on screen. I do think that the double page on internal layout could have been better utilised. 

While LCARS images are always welcome, why not look at the features John Eaves never managed to update for the "lost" fifth film but get hinted at almost on the final page. Could we even have had a section devoted to the extra craft the Enterprise-E carried such as the yacht, the Argo or the shuttle that we saw in the latter two The Next Generation movies? 

One thing that does manage to get avoided is the manual helm control used in Insurrection. Just that omission ensures that Issue 21 is a winner in my eyes. The USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E might not have received anything like the screen time of some of its illustrious predecessors but fans can be reassured that the production here has done her proud. Surely this must be one of the best month's to date for the series and long may this trend continue. 

Perhaps with recent announcements as well as the ever-increasing number of markets our opening statement is extreme - success has certainly flowered with the collection and I would suggest that a run of 70 issues is now more pessimistic than optimistic.

Eaglemoss Updated

We're still waiting for the official update on 41 - 50 but we have now seen a better image of the Krenim Temporal Weapon magazine cover and an in-focus still of the Nebula Class starship from issues 22 and 23 due for UK release in June. Aside from that it's been very, very quiet from the publishers. However, we would like to offer them a few questions for their Facebook page...

1. What was the first starship named after a fictional Star Trek character? USS Gorkon
2. Where is Admiral Kirk's shuttlepod granted permission to dock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? Portside Torpedo Bay
3. Two starship classes are involved in the rescue of the USS Prometheus in Message in a Bottle - what are they? Akira and Defiant
4. An Intrepid Class starship has only been named onscreen twice - once is, of course, USS Voyager; but what was the other? USS Bellepheron
5. Which Galaxy Class starship was dispatched to assist Deep Space Nine during The Way of the Warrior? USS Venture

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Trekollections VI: The First Rule of Star Trek Club

Dorn to DS9.

I read the headline in Dreamwatch one more time to see if it would sink in any more. Only a year previous Deep Space Nine, the unloved child of the Star Trek universe, had been provided a lifeline and a revamp with the arrival of the USS Defiant and the introduction of the domineering Dominion. It hadn't quite worked. They were 99.9% there and this was the solution to get the elusive 0.01%.

Problem was that I'd really enjoyed season three and everything that the new improved series had introduced. In all fairness I was both excited and disappointed to read that Worf would be taking up a position on the station from the beginning of the fourth season. Did Deep Space Nine really need him? Was he going to fit in seeing as he'd been on The Next Generation for all seven seasons plus the recent Star Trek: Generations feature? Surely this was too small for Michael Dorn? I had no say in the matter and so would be have to wait until February of the following year (1996) to see The Way of the Warrior.

However I couldn't wait that long and my gran bought me the novelisation of the season four premiere for Christmas. At this time I was revising for my GCSE mock exams over the Christmas holidays (I was that dedicated) but Christmas Day was certainly not going to be the time to have my head in the books. That was until I got ill and stayed clear of everyone else for the day - the perfect chance to read The Way of the Warrior. It changed my thoughts on the coming series completely and I couldn't wait.

At this time it was always Deep Space Nine over Voyager which was entering its second season at the same time and the fourth year of the space station drama blew everything else out of the water. Worf was a great addition and it felt like the show had taken yet another massive leap forward and a considerable risk at the same time. It was one great episode after another but 1996 was also a great year for another reason. The Star Trek Experience made it to the UK and I got the chance to see it in Birmingham.

I've still not managed to get to a convention to this day so this was quite a big thing. Walking in you were presented with a replica of the TV series Enterprise bridge and of course its one of those things you have to have a photo of whether original or not. Before I could get into an adequate pose the guide who was overseeing the set asked a fateful question; "Do you want to sit on the set?"

Now that was a silly question as the answer was undoubtedly, "Yes."

So now the only picture which still exists in my possession from that day is of me on the mock up of the original USS Enterprise bridge apparently under guard by a Vulcan-salute waving The Next Generation uniform wearing exhibition guide.

That five minutes is actually something of a blur as I hadn't expected it to happen and it did so at a fair speed - in, photo, off and done. I wish now I'd taken more of a chance to look around the replica and get a few more pics. Oh well, the wonders of hindsight.

The exhibition featured a lot of costumes and sets, particularly from Generations. There was the original Enterprise-D transporter room, Picard's desk and chair from his Ready Room and his command chair from the bridge set. Alongside them were Soran's missile and his handgun as well as a few uniforms including Kirk's The Motion Picture admiral's uniform, and Troi's blue dress. At the time Deep Space Nine and Voyager were in their early years so there were only a few bits of makeup as well as the monolith from The Alternate and the holo-generator from Shadowplay. I just wish I could find the photos as I had quite a number!

These were the first real Star Trek items I ever came into contact with and I made sure that I went over the exhibition a few times before we went into the gift shop. One thing I do still have  is the half-size combadge I bought from the shop and the set of Star Trek First Contact collectors cards (four pictured left). Even back then I thought they were expensive for the mid-1990's! which is why I didn't buy a lot - most of it had probably been ploughed into the VHS collection.

The memory of that day has stayed with me very strongly and is one of the few moments where I have managed to come face to face with the objects directly linked to my favourite show. In fact it would only be in 2010 when I would finally meet someone who appeared in Star Trek.

First Contact was my film of the year and tragically the high point of The Next Generation's movie career by some distance. As an experience it was far more satisfying than Generations and one of the best movies of the whole series. When it came out on video it was an essential purchase and came with a holographic card which switched between Picard, Data and the Borg Queen to Locutus, the damaged Data and the Borg Queen in a slightly different pose. Admittedly Generations on VHS was a better and more expensive package as I spent a bit more and bought the limited edition numbered widescreen version complete with booklet and postcards. It was a lovely set however the DVD version obliterates it for quality with ease.

Now 1996 would be a year more focused on exams than it would be on the world of Deep Space Nine or Voyager which in turn reminds me that Star Trek was a part of my English GCSE. We had to do a presentation on something we were interested in, or at least some part of topic we had an interest in. While Star Trek itself would have been too easy and obvious I went for a little more of a curve ball and produced a five minute, prompt-card remembered talk on the career of William Shatner. It might have been due to my having recently read one of the two Memories books he wrote around that time!

While it was an education-heavy twelve months I would still buy some of the videos including The Visitor/Hippocratic Oath and Body Parts/Broken Link but there are two volumes which stick in my mind for other reasons apart from their episodic content. One was the Voyager Volume 2.7 which contained Dreadnought and Death Wish. Two great episodes but the reason I remember them so well is because this is the video my parents bought me when I got my GCSE results in August of that year. When asked what I wanted as a "well done" for my work it was only ever going to be Star Trek related and this Q appearance was top of my "Must See" list that year. It didn't disappoint and whether or not I view it through rose-tinted spectacles it's in my top five Voyager episodes and one of the best Q episodes ever made. 

The other volume was 4.12 from Deep Space Nine. Again, it's not the episodes that are on the cassette that make it significant in my life story but rather the sequence it kicked off over the next few years. We'll roll back a little bit actually here because there's more to it than a single volume. I might have said that 1996 was significant because of GCSE exams but it was also the year I would get my first girlfriend.

Kate was from the high school and we met while I was on a family holiday to Paris which was intended to help me with my French linguistic abilities in preparation for the upcoming exams (as you'll see I had quite an "educational" direction forced on me). Kate also liked Star Trek which certainly helped and I introduced her to Deep Space Nine. I was even nice enough to lend her my TV recording of Emissary. A week later however Kate returned the tape however she'd left it in the VHS player and her dad had recorded over it with something totally NOT Star Trek. Possibly One Man and His Dog or World Athletics. I was, as you can understand a tiny bit gutted however what I didn't expect was that my girlfriend would buy a replacement - the collector's edition - and give it to me. 

OK, that sets the scene and for my birthday in 1996 Kate bought me another video - the aforementioned 4.12 so that I would have seen all the episodes of that year as I had already purchased 4.13. I was very grateful and we watched it together. However about a week later she split up with me. It wasn't the end of the world but I got concerned when I bought Deep Space Nine volume 5.3 the following year and my girlfriend at that time split up with me on the same day. I was starting to see links between purchasing Star Trek and the end of relationships. Not a good sign really as In the Pale Moonlight was the video I purchased shortly before my next relationship also crashed and burned. The other thing I learned was that dating someone with an interest in Star Trek was more of a curse than a blessing.

1996 was also the 30th anniversary of the franchise marked out with two special episodes - Deep Space Nine's Trials and Tribble-ations and  Voyager's Flashback. The former excellent, the latter not so good. With the video releases being somewhat behind the US, I was still relying on magazines to get my info on upcoming episodes and these two were getting some major column inches. Trials and Tribble-ations was clearly the bigger featuring the space station crew alongside Kirk and co. It was all "Wow". The episode looked amazing and marked the 30th anniversary as more impressive than the 25th. We can only hope that the 50th in just three years time is honoured in style. I even forked out a few quid for the (very) thin novelisation that accompanied the episode.

Deep Space Nine by this point had firmly cemented itself as my favourite series with season five. Worf had turned out to be a brilliant addition and the show felt complete. The year also included some of the very best of the show including Children of Time and Call to Arms which concluded the year. As usual I'd already "looked ahead" to find out what would be happening and seeing that Sisko lost the station to the Dominion was groundbreaking. While Voyager saw the namesake ship taken over by the Kazon for a two-parter, Deep Space Nine stayed in enemy hands for six episodes and a never-before-attempted six part story arc. The series was doing Star Trek like never before and yet the following sixth season would push the envelope even more.

But what of my collection? What about all the other things that made up my Star Trek world?

I had a couple of posters up of The Next Generation crew in my room but I also had a few more models by this time. The USS Enterprise from The Original Series and the movie refit from The Final Frontier were now joined by three more vessels.

The first addition was the USS Excelsior from Star Trek VI. Smaller than the Enterprise-A it was a great little piece only let down by a cup-like stand that meant it kept slipping every time you walked near the shelf. The second and third were both Klingon ships; a Bird of Prey from Star Trek: Generations and the Vor'Cha cruiser introduced in The Next Generation. For many years these craft adorned the top shelf of my unit in my room but now, due to space restrictions they are currently all in storage in the loft waiting for the day when they can once again get their own place. The two Klingon ships are currently with me while the Excelsior is foam-chip packed at my parents' house.

There would be another addition to the collection shortly after however I'll keep you guessing for the moment. At this time modelmaking wasn't my forte and it's only recently that I've tried my hand at the plastic arts, namely the JJ Abrams-verse USS Enterprise which progressed slowly but is now finished and I'm very proud of the result.

I'd added some novels to the collection as well as Larry Nemecek's The Next Generation Companion, William Shatner's superb Star Trek Memories and Star Trek Movie Memories. They were read in a flash and added a lot to my knowledge of the series and the films through to Kirk's final appearance in Generations. Sadly other autobiographies from the crew such as Takei, Doohan and even biographies on Roddenberry have never lived up to the quality of these books in my opinion. A shame but Shatner appears to have cornered the market!

If you remember from previous editions of Trekollections Bondy and I were showing episodes of Star Trek in the library over lunchtimes and the audience had gradually increased towards the end of my GCSE exam year. When we came back to start A-Levels it turned out that there had been such a demand that one of our teachers, Miss Hurton, had started a lunchtime club to watch episodes and talk about the show. Bondy and I were installed to help run it and this would be my first attempt at writing a newsletter using early versions of Word and a rather temperamental printer. 

Each week I would produce the newsletter as well as quizzes and there would be showings of new episodes from both Voyager and Deep Space Nine. I've included this edition from early in 1997. I crammed a lot on from the looks of things including episode airtimes and dates, video reviews, news snippets and an episode of the month which in this case is the already mentioned Children of Time. I also used my 365 day Star Trek quotes calendar  for the script down the side.

It was great to produce this as my interest in English and journalism had already helped get me a work experience placement over the summer which eventually led to a five year holiday and eventually full time job with a local newspaper. Having a passion for writing had continued to drive me towards the creative aspect however not with Star Trek after I'd attempted and failed to write something distinctively different based in that universe. Apparently when Bondy and I left the club folded the following year as some of the kids attending wanted to expand to other sci-fi material which went against why it was originally set up - I'd have kept them in line of course!

So where are we now? About 1998? Was that all just a year's worth of Star Trek and me? Apparently so but what's left for us? Deep Space Nine's finale; Voyager returns to the Alpha Quadrant and some serious changes take effect on my time with Star Trek. Aside from that, I would be entering the leanest Star Trek period of my life...and it wasn't good.

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