Star Trek Discovery Series USS Enterprise

As with many of the incarnations of the U.S.S. Enterprise molded in 1/2500 scale, this kit is a little low on the molded details. The nacelles are very well detailed, but the rest of the ship is pretty bland. The neck and the area around the impulse engines especially are lacking detail. The decals attempt to make up for the lack of detail in the plastic, and for the most part accomplish that task fairly well. A plus is the clear plastic parts for the Bussard collectors, warp field coils, back ends of the nacelles, impulse engines, and even bridge dome, view screen, as well as the new observation window on the dorsal front portion of the saucer. I'm not sure how reasonable it is to actually light the kit (the pylons are probably too thin to hollow out and route wiring through), but the clear parts still help to create a gloss/bright finish to those pieces. One con regarding the decals is that certain portions of the nacelles end up not color matching very well to reference photos. I ended up painting over those decals, but would have preferred to not apply them all together. Additionally, although the nacelles are very well detailed and that is a plus, the downside is that the paneling decals are a bit oversized and will need to have either the excess trimmed, decal setting solution applied to shrink them, or both due to the complexity of the nacelles. On the other hand, the lack of detail and smoothness of the saucer really aids in the paneling decals looking really good, except at the center of the ventral side, where there is obvious overlap because they are too large. The decals were pretty sturdy and easy to work with in general. Overall, although I think John Eave's reimagining of TOS U.S.S. Enterprise is beautiful, I generally find it as a 1/2500 scale kit little more underwhelming all-around compared to it's co-star, the U.S.S. Discovery, which is larger, more detailed, and in my opinion presents better as a finished kit. That said, I still recommend this kit as a fun, small project.