Back in May we reported that Quantum Mechanix had picked up the license to make replicas from JJ Abrams Star Trek movie. Today QMx revealed their first replica, a limited-edition studio-scale detailed replica of the new USS Enterprise. QMx will begin taking orders on this replica in September, with the first models (of a total of 500) shipping to customers in October. See below for more details, including how you can customize your Enterprise.
Your very own Enterprise Replica
Probably one of the most talked about elements of JJ Abrams Star Trek movie was the new USS Enterprise, designed by Ryan Church and brought to the screen by the digital artists at Industrial Light and Magic. Combining both classic elements along with new design cues, the new Enterprise personifies the movie itself.
USS Enterprise in JJ Abrams’ "Star Trek" – QMx bringing it home
QMx promises that their U.S.S. Enterprise Artisan Replica is "screen-accurate in every respect" and built to "studio-scale" (which is: 34” long x 15.75” wide x 7.5” high, with a stand that adds 5.25” to the overall height). The replica is based on the ILM digital master files used to create the visual effects in the movie. No detail was spared, from the hand-painted graphics to the tiny shuttlecraft docked in the shuttle bay, as well as many features which could only be barely glimpsed on screen.
QMx Studio Scale USS Enterprise (click to enlarge)
Each Artisan Enterprise is entirely airbrushed by hand with 24 colors of metallic and flat paint, creating the ‘aztecing’ pattern. Like real filming miniatures, there is an automotive base lacquer underneath which primes and protects the replica. In addition, each replica features around 200 lighting effects, both interior and exterior. These include animated effects for the warp and impulse engines, and even details inside the shuttle bay. QMx promises their Star Trek movie USS Enterprise is "the most detailed and accurate replica of a Star Trek starship that’s ever been offered for retail purchase."
QMx Studio Scale USS Enterprise (click to enlarge)
The QMx Artisan Enterprise will come in two editions: standard and SFX. The standard edition is built exactly the same as the SFX edition, but excludes the lighting system (with a cost savings). You can also request additional customization of your replica, including battle damage and a custom engraving for the base (at additional costs). QMx will begin taking orders September 30, 2009. The pricing has not yet set, but will be revealed by August. Each replica is made-to-order by hand, and will take 30-60 days for delivery.
QMx Studio Scale USS Enterprise impulse engine and shuttle bay detail
(click to enlarge)
More details and pictures of the QMx Artisan USS Enterprise at quantummechanix.com.
See it at Comic Con
Quantum Mechanix will be showing off the first of their new USS Enterprise replicas at San Diego Comic Con later this week. You can see it at the Sideshow Collectibles Booth (#1929).
QMx Studio Scale USS Enterprise base (click to enlarge)
What’s next for QMx – 15" Enterprise & Kelvin
While the studio-scale Enterprise is the ultimate item for fans of the new movie, it is going to be pricey. As noted in our last article, QMx is also working on a smaller (and much more affordable) "Collector’s Scale" version of the USS Enterprise. QMx’s CEO Andy Gore tells TrekMovie they have decided to make the smaller Enterprise 15" long, instead of 10" like their other mid-sized replicas. Gore explains by saying "the Enterprise demanded it." The plan is to have the Collector’s Scale Enterprise available by the holiday season of 2009.
Gore also confirmed that QMx is in early development for both a Studio-scale and a Collector’s scale version of the USS Kelvin, to be released in 2010. They are also looking at other possible replicas from the new Star Trek movie. TrekMovie will provide updates as they become available.
USS Kelvin in JJ Abrams’ "Star Trek" – the next project for QMx
Awesome LONG LIVE STAR TREK!! GET GOING ON THE KELVIN LOL
QMx makes really awesome stuff. i wish I could afford it…
cool very cool! wonder how big the shuttles will be in relation to the bay
Wooo-hooo! Gotta save up some more cash I see.
So what class is the new girl? The JJ class?
Sheesh…Looks great good luck to those that can afford it! Its gonna be wayyy outta my league price wise….
Commence drooling.
Nice toys for the rich boys and girls among us! Yes, I’m jealous! ;-)
Just wondering, what is “studio scale”. Can we get a definitive answer from someone about actual size/scale so we can resolve that? For better or worse……… ;-)
This new Enterprise is so cool, even the pictures of the model of it have Lens Flares!!!
Love it!
How Much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Studio scale is measured in gigs and megs these days. :)
Wow, that is beautiful! I would have preferred to see “…no man has gone before” but seeing as this is the movie replica, even the opening statement has to be exact I suppose.
And yeah, what’s the price points?
I gotta say, I like their version of the beauty shot SO much better.
The fish eye lense Abrams used just distorted the ship way too much. I bet if we got their version, there would have been a lot less complaining about the ship…
Looks beautiful but… would still rather have the modified Constitution class……………. ;)
4 – According to her dossier on the Star Trek movie website, she’s still a Constitution-class heavy cruiser.
*sigh*
I guess I can begin to understand part of why the ILM guys felt compelled to turn this version of the Enterprise into a hulking behemoth the size of an Acclamator-class assault ship after looking at the shuttle bay.
It’s pretty easy to tell from the design of the shuttle bay that the shuttlecraft in this continuity are significantly smaller, compared to the vessel herself, than the original F-type shuttlecraft were compared to the Constitution-class vessels of the Prime reality – if I’m remembering correctly and the shuttles were stored on the sides with their noses facing inward.
I still don’t understand why they just had to redesign the shuttle bay that way. Although I’m very happy with the movie and I sincerely appreciate the fact that the film and its popularity have, in a sense, vindicated us and our fan community in the eyes of the general public, with whom we have always had and continue to have a turbulent love-hate relationship, the design of the shuttlebay and its forcing the alternate continuity version of the starship to be a giant, 760-meter (according to ILM art director Alex Jaeger) behemoth, and the completely unrealistic, almost silly, “barrel-flipping” mechanism of the ST:09 phaser pistol (which hearkens back to the days when science fiction props weren’t designed with any eye toward realism, a big downer compared to the classic phaser, which was far more practical and complicated than most people realize) are the two things that I really wish the designers hadn’t changed so much.
But this is just meaningless nitpicking. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, and I wasn’t the one in charge of the art direction. In the end, we were given a package, and although I’m sure none of us liked every aspect of it, we had to take it or leave it – and the movie was a great enough and fulfilling enough experience for me that I’ll take it, any day, changes and nitpicks and all.
And in the end, Church’s Enterprise may look quite a bit different, and some careless shipbuilder must certainly have dumped growth hormone in her plasma coolant, but she’s still beautiful, and I can still see the old girl’s soul alive and well in her. May she fly on into the unknown, warp speed ahead and steady as she goes, and may she always carry our love, pride, hopes and dreams with her.
Where can we go to order the replicas?
Wow, I thought their original model was pretty, this is just absolutely jaw dropping. If I could afford it AND had a place to put it, I would certainly be getting this ship come September.
OMG, they have one of these of Serenity too! @#(*%&@!!! I hate being poor and not having places for collectibles. :(
15
Okay… so the ship is a lot bigger now.
Don’t really see the problem. After 40+ years, the original and refit Enterprises were starting to look positively CRAMPED.
It’s about time the ship got scaled up a bit.
Though gorgeous, I imagine this will be out of my price range, and I spend quite a bit on this stuff. My question is this; when is the Mattel Hot Wheels Church Enterprise hitting shelves? I have all the others, but that one hasn’t shown up anywhere. Another example of poor marketing for this film. Hottest ticket at the Box Office for weeks, and Mattel puts out 20 year old ships while the movie’s in theaters. Where are the card sets in stores? Model kits? Art of and making of books? I can see holding off on mass producing something pricey like this studio scale model, but the fact the only options I had for buying the new Enterprise were the really awful Playmates version or the keychain is pretty substandard.
I’m not so sure the scale is as oversized as some make out. It seems simply that the Alternate E’s engineering hull has a lot more interior volume than that of the Prime E.
You can judge its size more accurately by the other details like windows, the escape-pod / airlock, and by the scene where they pan out of the bridge window and across the saucer. This indicates the bridge is in the thicker “base” of the dome – presumably the actual bubble on top contains sensors and the like, which is plausibly realistic.
Most bridges being roughly the same in size, it’s clearly not scaled up to Galaxy-class dimensions — it’s just been working out a bit ;)
It seems more plausible that we’ve been mentally underestimating the TOS/TMP-generation Enterprises due to a lack of clear and consistent scale indicators – like the scale of shuttlecraft and the shuttlebay (it looks like a 2-car garage in STV, but it’s a massive warehouse in TMP) and other ships (the ever-changing Bird of Prey).
Plus, consider the fact that our visual memory of the TOS E / TMP E is colored by low-resolution analog TV / VHS and, compared to this movie, the “faded” quality of traditional matte effects shots which, through multiple stages of printing, degrades detail.
Im hoping its around 1500 for the fully lit one. if not, then i will have to look about digging into my savings.
Oh, WOW! QMX sure did the lady proud! Nice beauty-shots here too! Can’t wait to see more about this fine ship!
Nice job, QMX!!!
18-
This is more personal preference than anything else, especially since, now that the movie takes place in an Alternate Reality where Starfleet’s spent several years actively studying and reverse-engineering Romulan/Borg hybrid technology from 2387.
The reason I am finding the new Enterprise’s size very difficult to swallow is because it feels less believable to me that we’ll be able to build something that large (we’ve had conflicting reports from a number of “official” sources that suggest anything from 600 to 900 meters) in 249 years – even with the help of over a hundred other races plus the aforementioned technological kickstart.
The original Enterprise was a mere 289 meters long – about the size of your average real-world aircraft carrier. Because of that real-world connection, the 289 meter size feels more realistic, and more plausible, instead of some abhorrently big, arbitrary number dreamt up via artistic conception with no boundaries or grounds in what we could ever hope to realistically achieve within a good 200 to 300 years – we’ve been advancing faster than many of us could ever have expected in the last 200 years alone, but I don’t think we’ve advanced that quickly.
The Ryan Church Enterprise model was originally designed to be about 370 meters long, and if you just look at the model’s proportions, she does look about that size. (It’s also part of why it’s hard to believe she’s so much bigger. That the resizing was arbitrary means that certain landmarks on her hull now look out-of-proportion compared to how big they are claimed to be.) That’s okay, that still feels more realistic and grounded.
But 900 meters? That’s the size of a Star Destroyer – the Victory I Star Destroyer, to be precise. And the Star Destroyer is usually where I draw the line – I love those designs, but their lengths just scream “Mary Sue” to me, and I am an avowed enemy of unrealistic characteristics or Mary Sue-ism in any form, especially in the one large, mainstream science fiction franchise that tries above all others to stay as realistic and grounded in our own world and the pacing of our own accomplishments as it can. It disrupts the feeling that “this could really happen someday” to have the new ship being anywhere from the size of an Acclamator to the size of a Victory Star Destroyer. It makes her feel more out of reach – and that makes me feel a lot more hopeless about our future.
I can get used to it, though. I’m not obsessed enough to the point where I would insist on decoupling fiction from real life, and in the end, canon is canon, even in the alternate reality, so I guess she’ll be as long as the writers, model makers and director want her to be, right?
not decoupling* – sorry, my mistake.
yep and at 34 inches, based on ILMs original given size, that would have put this at 1/350th scale. All that spin control afterwards was transparent BS trying to explain the inconsistencies away. I dont care about the size but I do care when movie folks think youre stupid and they can just sell you a line of BS.
Its a beautiful model but I fear it will be way out of my price range. Looking forward to the PL version…
25 – Agreed on the model… there’s no way a money-strapped college brat like me could ever reasonably afford one. I do own the Playmates ship, but it’s still a little big for my liking. I am waiting for the Hot Wheels one to come out – it may be inaccurate and more based on Ryan Church’s original drawing, but it’s the right size to stick on my work desk or my nightstand at home.
Or, better yet, hopefully someday Johnny Lightning or one of those Japanese trading miniature-making companies, like Furuta, Romando or F-Toys, will make their own “micro-machine” versions of the new girl. Those are often smaller than we’d like, and sometimes not even 80% accurate, but they’re certainly portable and affordable!
FYI, the hotwheels JJ Enterprise was released. I saw some in a K-mart with the -A and -D back in May. Didn’t realize they were going to be (apparently) so rare.
Oh, by the way, the Playmates version may not be all that pretty, but boy, can she take a hit! Mine spent the better part of a month perched precariously atop my PC tower case when I was preparing for my last round of final exams, and then dismantling furniture and setting up to leave my apartment, and as you might expect, she’s accidentally fallen off and hit the ground a few times.
But none of those falls even seemed to dent the shields – even the tumble from the kitchen table that sent her plumetting to the hard linoleum floor instead of the bedroom carpet! I know that I shouldn’t be treating the poor girl so roughly, and it was quite careless of me, but those incidents do make a statement about just how tough the Playmates product can be.
This is a sideshow. Here’s the real deal:
http://www.collectormodel.com
27 – Thanks for the heads up! I don’t have a Kmart nearby, but there is a Target. I’ll take a look when I’ve got a day off from work, and if there’s one there, I’ll spare the money to pick her up.
NX 2000–
The latest edition of Cinefex magazine quoted an ILM staffer to the effect that the ship was supposed to be around 1200 feet long. Obviously there is a continuing difference of opinion on this issue even amongst those who worked on the film itself, which to me only underscores how sloppy and lazy much of the conceptual thinking behind it really was. :-(
(And no insult to the craftsmen at QM–the model is a very credible realization of Ryan Church’s design–but I would personally much rather own the Master Replicas version of Matt Jeffries’ original. Does anyone know when those will be available for purchase again?)
Now if they could do the exact same thing with the Enterprise refit (preferably without the A), I’d buy it in a hot second.
No matter how detailed you get – this version of the Enterprise is and remains clunky, showily, and inelegant.
looks good. probably won’t be buying one, but it us still awesome. can’t wait to see the kelvin, as its a ‘tough little ship’
Nice! But it’ll cost a King’s Ransom!
I wonder if it’ll include a detachable hull section so we can see the brewery? : D
Wow! Simply, Wow!
I know that if I have to ask, “How much?” I can’t afford it.
Still, it’s a gorgeous reproduction!
@37lol me too.
That would make a beautiful companion to my Master Replicas Enterprise (roughly same size as well) if I had the money and space. Given all the detail I shudder to think what the final price will be. Oh well, I’ll be very interested to see what the 15″ version looks like and sells for as well.
Oh well…I supposed everything has to end sometime.
about the “flip barrel” phasers… you forget the socket wratchet laser pistols of The Cage era, with the typewriter keys on them. Hopefully we’ll see something a little more solid-state in the JJ-verse’s future.
#31 – Master Replicas was acquired by another company a few months ago and is in something of a state of limbo. I very much doubt they still have a Star Trek license so I wouldn’t hold my breath that they’ll be making any more Trek replicas, assuming they’re ever heard from again.
In spite of that, there are lots of their TOS Enterprise replicas floating around. I got a brand new one off Ebay a couple of weeks ago, that was still sealed in the original box, for a very good price that was well below Master Replica’s MSRP. That would probably be your best bet if you really want one.
I didn’t see the bridge front window on the Qmx model… a shame, it would have been cool to look in and see the bridge done with some sort of lenticular slide or something.
Look at those windows on the saucer rim. 700 meters… ridiculous! :-)
Lens flares and all!!!…Now that is awesome merchandise…one cool model!! noe bring on Kelvin…in any capacity… love that ship too!!!!!!!!
like I said with the tricorder article…collecting is fun and insane…and I must have this Enterprise like the others…
First, did they get the scale corrected for a 302 metre long starship instead of a 725 metre long starship?
But loving it, loving it!
And SO cannot wait for the Kelvin!
#31 is absolutely on point. I am hopeful that later productions will spend more time on concepts behind the execution than on simply getting things that look cool on screen. That has always been the issue with ILM: they create wonderful images but have limited thought behind it – which is why they should be treated as skilled artisans, not creative input.
Huh. If the scales between the ship and the shuttles are accurate, you could put two shuttles inside the bridge.
That ain’t right. Long live the Jeffries’ version! At least that one is a little more realistic in terms of scale.
I anticipate the price on the 34-incher will be $2500 USD minimum.
somebody watched the abyss when they designed that nacelle.