No Starships Here: The Official Starships Bonus Editions; Cardassian Weapons Platform and Friendship One

Rarely has The Official Starships Collection stepped away from items in flight.

We've had the occasional space station but in the Cardassian Weapons Platform we have the first item that doesn't fit into either category.

Featured in the sixth season conclusion of Deep Space Nine; Tears of the Prophets, the Weapons Platforms defended the system of Chin'toka and were controlled from a central command asteroid.

Aside from a trio of weapons points and inserts, this is 90% solid metal and fairly heavy. In keeping with Cardassian architecture it's based around threes with the weapons arms to the front and rear (plastic) both set in that formation.

A base coat of bronze covers the whole of this unit and the similarities in design to the pylons and docking rings of Deep Space Nine are immediately obvious. The recesses, the grilled panelling and the very curvature of the arms arcing out from the centre couldn't look more alike to the former Cardassian space station. While easily replicated across the metalwork, the panel details for the platform are well marked with brown sections painted up on the "top" to breakup the base coat. 

Inset into the ends of the three longer weapon arms we have almost florescent discharge points which are painted up a great deal more precisely than some of the orange energy signature pieces around the sides of the circular core. They don't have the bronze capping across the ends due to the inserts but that's not the niggle on this one.

The magazine shows that the power elements are very much bubbling and flowing with power but on the model it seems that the painters have managed to blotch the fiery orange across onto the main body of the weapon with little care for the final look. Why not compare the power insets to the green "fanning" pattern below the three smaller arms to see this has been achieved on the same model!

It's a disappointment as we've seen better recessed painted in sections across the regular issues not just in the bonus and specials and this laziness does take away a little of my love for this unique attachment to the collection.

The three "rear", smaller prongs are plastic add-ons and replicate the feel of the docking arms on the inner ring of Deep Space Nine. These are as nicely detailed up as the rest of the platform and even have those circular stand out nodules that are converted into phasers on the station.

Displayed in its active position, the Weapons Platform is maybe the most badly posed item in the series. Sitting facing downwards on the stand it would have been better bent upwards looking as through it were ready to attack. Logistically this might have been difficult but just plopping it onto the stand here makes it look utterly pap when it needs something with a bit more of a wow factor to hit it off.

Explaining the capabilities of the platforms that swarmed Chin'toka, the magazine covers the details of the combined Federation, Klingon and Romulan attack that launched the decisive strike during the Dominion War and also how the fleet defeated the Cardassian defence system. 

The second section is turned over to the design process and how these smaller units evolved from the huge platform that John Eaves had believed it would be. Using Eaves' original sketches, this four page piece weaves together the story of the platforms' development, giving comprehensive coverage to a very interesting topic especially how it was paralleled to other Cardassian designs in the show.

Finally and one you won't want to miss are six pages, again from John Eaves, stepping back a couple of years from the Weapons Platforms' appearance to the transformation of Deep Space Nine into a heavily armoured battlestation for the fourth season opener, The Way of the Warrior. Remembered for Worf's return to the franchise, the closing battle takes the spotlight as we uncover the work that went into concealing the additional weapons and what was able to be done or restricted due to existing models.

If you're still all excited after this quirky little entry to the bonus editions then you'll definitely want to pick up the Friendship One issue that dropped online a few weeks after. Oddly it also doesn't fall into the spaceship or spacestation categories instead being an unmanned probe from the United Earth Space Probe Agency which caused catastrophic events for a civilisation in the Delta Quadrant.

Coming from the latter years of Voyager, Friendship One is a marvel of modelling and encapsulates the early years of Earth space exploration through recognisable classic Star Trek elements as well as pieces we would identify from contemporary sources.

This one looks the part and Eaglemoss have chosen wisely to go with the probe as it arrived in the Delta Quadrant rather than as it was out of the factory. 

The tragedy with Friendship One is that you can't get everything replicated on a budget and this is true right from the front end. The plastic satellite dish does include two "rips" in its surface although f you compare it to the magazine the curved structure is actually not solid nor do the fineries of the "real" thing translate through very well. The antennae to the front as well as those protruding to the rear of the dish are there in form but the smaller points have been lost in the scale and while the metal on the rest of the main body is weathered, the dish itself looks oddly clean and unpainted.

The body of Friendship One is where this one really excels though with the metal - and plastic pieces all bearing dents and buckles from damage collected during the journey. It also bears the United Earth Space Probe Agency logo and coupled with the recent SS Conestoga we're building up a cool catalogue of ships from the "lost years" between the 21st Century and the beginning of Enterprise.

The metalwork is then grey-edged with a dirt wash over the top to intensify the aging of the space probe. To the rear we have the spherical antimatter pods and generator sitting proud from the hull before extending out to another series of aerials. The thing is that the excellent bodywork in the centre isn't matched by the plastic sections although at the back here there has been a good attempt to dirt wash the elements and stay in keeping with the bulk of the item.

The combined warp/impulse engines are incredibly reminiscent of the original NCC-1701 and NX-01 power units. These are plastic add on pieces with familiar bussard collectors and "golf ball" ends. The plastic here also carries that signature dented effect plus the UESPA logos. As to the construction, the metal half of the ship splits vertically with the starboard side plastic although the joint line is well concealed along the grey panel separation ridges and the detail on both sides is indistinguishable. What also strikes me with the Friendship One model is that the alignment of the engines, the dish and the hull are all spot on. The aerials aren't as fragile as I expected either with the bendy plastic providing a bg advantage should it ever take a shelf dive - not had one of those for a while!

The bonus magazine's CG does show how off-point the plastic sections are, looking more plastic than fake metal when alongside each other. That colander-esque dish looks a lot better in the CG since it's able to replicate the slits across the surface. 

After covering the basics of the story and the origins of Friendship One we look over the process that took the probe from page to screen. The first version bore more resemblance to the Nomad probe from The Original Series episode The Changeling and its transformation is illustrated through a lot of 3D renders.

Last up is a full piece on the work of Voyager and Enterprise modeller Pierre Drolet. Friendship One was the first model he constructed for the franchise but not the last with the artist working on the NX-01, many ships-of-the-week plus other projects for Nemesis and later Discovery.

Both of these are inspiringly diverse entries to the collection, skipping outside the starship boundaries allowed in the bonus strand. Of the two, Friendship One certainly offers the most due to the unique state in which Eaglemoss have chosen to display it versus it's cover photo from the magazine here. Could the Ares IV be far behind as a bonus edition to complete this lost history series?

Read all our other reviews of The Official Starships Collection from issue ONE here.

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

Like our page on Facebook 

Follow us on Twitter

Find us on Tumblr