Monday 3 January 2022

Special Edition: Son'a Battleship


The Son'a Battleship marks the final major vessel from Insurrection in the specials line.

With its horseshow design origins, the craft is, in the most part, solid metal. With the "piano key" structure also present on the previous Son'a Command Ship, the Battleship ably continues the theme of the Insurrection aliens. 

The colour scheme remains simple grey with the occasional highlight on the surface although the plastic additional pieces do have darker grey elements.

Comparing to the movie is fairly difficult given the lighting. What you can make out are the thruster assemblies to the front and rear of the sweeping wing design in orange and yellow but that's as far as it goes for colour.

But the Battleship is much more about its design and the strength of the physical detail on the surface. There's not just that piano/rib motif across the hull but a surprising amount of low level weathering that ages the surface. This only really becomes obvious in close up while a step back blocks out the main coloured sections only.

In fact versus the cover of the magazine, the model has a much more slight finish to it and the big benefit has to be the almost total metal build. Only that top superstructure comes as the plastic add on and even that carries the "natural" wear and tear of its attached metal pieces.

Given its limited number of components (I'm counting two NOT including the stand), the Battleship is a big expense to complete your Son'a set and one I have unusually struggled to really go into any detail and depth with in the review. It ticks a box if nothing else to say it's been "done" but overall this is fairly uninspiring and, dare I say it, highly priced.

Give Eaglemoss their dues, they have done as much as physically possible to create something that represents how the ship looked in the movie. It's a decent reproduction and looks the part but some things just do look better on a cinema screen than in the flesh (or metal in this case).

The magazine reflects the small amount of time that the Battleship received in Insurrection, covering its role in the fleet all too briefly before turning attention to the always insightful designing article. Throw in some standard plan views to add a little something plus a piece on the creation of the Bak'u Village and you have a good little reference booklet on the ninth Star Trek movie. The writing in here is decent and the addition of the sketches and production work are always worth a look over. Even if the model isn't that amazing, the mag does help to round out the bundle in a decent manner.

As you can guess, this one's a tad underwhelming. Both the Collector and the Command Ship were much more interesting pieces and you can see why this one (possibly) ended up being the third wheel. A completist model if ever and certainly one of the toughest constructed given then solid metal frame!

Check out all our Online Starships posts HERE

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

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2 comments:

  1. Agreed on all points. And yet strangely, I have a soft spot for this one. Maybe it's due to the majority-metal construction or not having misaligned windows, or just nice to add more to my non-Fed fleet...either way, I'm glad to have gotten it.

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    1. See where you are with it. That 90% metalwork makes a big difference in the feel and the quality of the model. This one does what it says on the tin. No frills but has... something... going for it

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