Friday 17 September 2021

Shipyards: Starfleet 2294 - The Future


Unless you're a Trek fan living under a rock since 1969, you'll more than likely be aware that Eaglemoss/HeroCollector are responsible for the largest starship model collection in eternity.

As part of the collection each ship is accompanied by a magazine of varied size which contains background info on the ship both in and out of universe.

Collected here in this updated work, we have a lot of reprinted material stretching from 2294 through to the Timeships Aeon and Relativity and the Enterprise-J however HeroCollector haven't been resting on their laurels and have added some substantial bonus bits into this 300 page volume.

Ok, so we can cover the first chunk easily especially if you're familiar with the ship collection. While it only covers the ship in detail as if we are part of the Star Trek universe and none of the behind the scenes work, this book does help with the occasional memory jog plus it cuts down a heck of a lot of shelf space which the huge A4 binders once did.

You'll have some fun flicking back through the First Contact fleet and the ships of Wolf 359 but the huge draw here is that we have vessels included from Picard, Discovery and Lower Decks for the first time ever.

The Picard entry is the rather clunky Wallenberg tug but from Lower Decks we have new CG for both the California Class and the Parliament Class as seen in season one. Their descriptions are on the VERY brief side but even to have them in here is amazing. There's also the Titan now that it's onscreen canon, again thanks to Lower Decks

Perhaps an even bigger draw for fans are the 32nd Century ships viewed fleetingly in Starfleet Headquarters during Discovery's third season both on the namesake ship's first trip there and substantially during the season finale battle.

Having only been glanced in the series, to see these on the page in great detail is another thing. Every single one is a complete curveball and you find yourself immersed into a whole new starship language unlike anything that's been conceived for the franchise before. The detached nacelles are a bit of a trademark now but there's the chance to see all the angles and add in an even more titillating paragraph of background into the newest additions to the fleet. Yes, the Discovery-A is in there as is the Voyager-J and the Nog which means the important ones (and the weird ones) are all covered.

The CG on these new ships is, as you would expect, beautiful and we have several views of each to really cover off everything you would want to see. Unusual doesn't even cut it slightly and I hope that in the future we find out just why starship design has taken such a turn to the left in the 32nd Century. I would be inclined to think that we'll have more designing aspects when the 32nd Century ships are included into the Star Trek Universe ship collection.

Shipyards updated 2294 - The Future book is the biggest starships volume produced to date and covers every Starfleet ship you can imagine and more from the time frame noted. Definitely a volume to pick up even if you already have the original in your library and with more coming in the next few months, this is quickly turning into the must-have reference material.

Starfleet Ships: 2294 - The Future is available from HeroCollector HERE

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