Probably the biggest surprise in digesting the contents of the newest volume in Eaglemoss’ Designing Starships book series, this one dedicated solely to the ships of the Kelvin Timeline, is that it might be an even more satisfying collection of work than the recently-released Art of Star Trek: The Kelvin Timeline book.
For fans of Star Trek starships and for fans of the Kelvin Timeline (and certainly for fans of both!), this reference book is a must have. The 158-pages of content are packed with probably close to a thousand different images of ship designs in every stage.
From early wire frames, to mock-ups with hand drawn notes, to a myriad of full artist renderings, this book is a feast for the eyes. Everywhere you look is an image to study and breakdown.
While the book is incredibly dense and packed with information, it is also an easy book tonavigate and glean information from. (As a side note, the Designing Starships series is hard to beat as a complete set of coffee table books. Each book is a manageable size to thumb through, without being so big that they become unwieldy.)
In Volume Three, as with the first two releases from last year, the book does not contain any kind of foreword or any type of introduction, it just jumps into neatly organized chapters detailing the design process of individual ships. And of course, as with the first two books, the majority of the content here is pulled straight out of the comprehensive magazines that accompany each of the models they continue to produce as part of their Official Starships Collection model series.
The 12 chapters in the book are broken down into nine different ships, one space station (Yorktown, from Star Trek Beyond) and two catch-all chapters (on “Designing the Armada” from Star Trek ’09 and “Designing the Forgotten Ships” that were designed, but never used for Star Trek Beyond).
The short, four-page chapter on forgotten ships from Beyond is a very interesting look at some new designs that hopefully will see the light of day in the future. One striking design in this section of the book features a ship with nacelles streaking off the edges of the saucer section, providing a very different take on the familiar shape of Matt Jefferies original Enterprise design.
In the “Designing the Armada” chapter, 15 unique designs from Alex Jaeger and John Eaves that were briefly featured as wreckage over Vulcan are showcased. Jaeger had previously designed an armada of Starfleet vessels battling the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact, so he was well suited for the role.
“We wanted to see a bunch of other ships that we hadn’t seen before,” said Jaeger in a quote from the chapter. “It was a bit of mix and match. It was just me playing around with the shapes. I was basically thinking, ‘This one has two nacelles, this one has four, this one has three. How can we rearrange it, so they don’t all look the same?'”
The detailed section on the mammoth Yorktown station exclusively includes several artist renderings from production designer Sean Hargreaves. Once finalized, the Yorktown was the largest space station ever seen in Star Trek, and according to the detailed prose breaking down the design, ended up being “a combination of a city and planet, that took the movie’s vision of the future to another level, and gave it a new sense of grandeur and scale.”
As for the other ships featured in their own chapters, including the Enterprise, the Kelvin, Spock’s Jellyfish, the Narada, the Vengeance, the D4 Bird of Prey, the Franklin, the Altamid Swarm Ship, and the Enterprise-A.
Each section includes impressive specifics on the design process from start to finish, down to the nitty-gritty of notes like the one from Justin Lin late in the design process for the Altamid swarm ships that they needed to fly like darts so they could pierce the Enterprise as part of their attack.
And, much to the chagrin of ship designer Romek Delimata, who was putting the finishing touches on Sean Hargreaves original design, that they needed to add a cockpit. That last-minute addition to the design was made so that McCoy could be featured more prominently at the end of film as he helps save the day while piloting the ship through Yorktown.
“The cockpit suddenly got introduced. So, I had to put a cockpit in. It was a pity – I felt it looked nastier without a cockpit,” said Delimata.
For those of us interested in that level of designing minutiae, that’s what makes this publication such a success. Overall, Designing Starships: The Kelvin Timeline collection from Eaglemoss feels more cohesive than Volumes One and Two, but that’s clearly because it features looks and designs exclusively from the three recent films.
The truth is, all three books contain a staggering amount of detail and are worthy additions to any Star Trek reference book collection. This new Kelvin Timeline-centric Designing Starships book is available from Eaglemoss’ web shop for $34.95, and the previous two volumes can be ordered in a combo set for $59.95.
In addition to these three hardcovers, a few new additions to your bookshelf have made their way to early web previews this weekend, including a new wide-release reprint of the first Designing Starships book — here subtitled The Enterprises and Beyond — from Eaglemoss’s ‘Hero Collector’ label in November.
And due out in the fall, a new two-book hardcover set called Star Trek Shipyards: The Encyclopedia of Starfleet Ships is due out from publisher Penguin Random House, also under the Eaglemoss ‘Hero Collector’ imprint.
Eaglemoss’ Ben Robinson gave a little insight into these two forthcoming releases on Twitter this weekend, stating that these encyclopedias will be “based on the [Official Starships] material, with the additions from the Discovery [magazines]. The idea is to create an equivalent of Jane’s Fighting Ships for Star Trek.”
While not yet available for preorder, Volume 1 (2063-2293) is due in September, with Volume 2 (2294 – Future) scheduled for release in November.
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In Eaglemoss’ US store, TrekCore readers can use promo code TREKCORE at checkout for 10% off any ‘Star Trek’ collectible purchase $60 or greater (some exclusions apply).