One of my favorite original series Star Trek episodes was The Doomsday Machine. That episode had the beaten and broken starship USS Constellation sent to its doom by Captain Kirk to destroy the giant planet-eating mechanized monster. When I saw the Polar Lights Star Trek Enterprise model being sold I knew I would be making a “Connie” starship. I get a lot more remarks from people looking over this customized Polar Lights Connie model than I do the Enterprise!

On TV screen the Connie's paint looked lighter than the Enterprise. Instead of the Polar Lights recommendation of using Model Master Light Ghost Gray paint I used Model Master Light Sea Gray paint. The Light Sea Gray has a nice greenish tint to it. The colors on the ship were airbrushed using an Iwata HP-B or HP-C airbrush and a Silentaire 20-A airbrush compressor. My finished model has a belly button light and fiber optic in one engine to give the engine a sparkling effect around the exposed engine and dome area. Each warp engine has additional details inside the engine holes for the more curious people to look at. Power is supplied to the belly button light from a wall-wart transformer.

Thin power wires go from under the base, up though the rear stalk of the stand and finally into the model. The wires were hidden by cutting a trough in the rear stand rail, inserting the wires in the trough, then filling and painting over the trough to make the wires undetectable.

The thin warp engine domes, or what is left of them after I mangled them with a Dremel MiniMite rotary tool, were made with my almost antique toy, a Mattel Vac-U-Form machine and a clear Vac-U-Form sheet. Since the Vac-U-Form domes are so thin and flexible I could get away with making ripped and folded over dome shards without them breaking off. I would never be able to do this with the model's original thick-walled clear styrene domes.

The saucer’s broken areas and exposed deck levels were grafted on the model using thin plastic. Then the MiniMite was used again with a burring tool to gouge out the damage to show the deck levels exposed to the vacuum and cold of space.

The Polar Lights model stand is not well designed. My other Polar Lights Enterprise models have fallen over repeatedly and broken because of this stand. With just the slightest nudge or, on occasion, vibrations from a door closing the models go fall over on my desk or worse, the models hit the floor. This happens because of the stand’s small base and flexible mounting stalk. The Polar Lights stand was too scary to mount my Connie on so I mounted the ship and stand permanently on a dressed up CD case. With my CD case-base my ship still wobbles at the slightest breeze but it won’t fall over.

Image: Bow

Image: Dorsal saucer

Image: Ventral saucer

Image: Vacu-formed parts