Star Trek releases new Ships of the Line poster compilation

Star Trek: Ships of the Line is a series of calendars first begun in 2000 for the 2001 calendar year, featuring starships from all series and even ships created specifically for the calendars. The idea was the brainchild of Adam Lebowitz, a computer graphics animation supervisor on Star Trek Voyager who wanted fans to be able to see highly detailed images of some of the work created for the franchise. The 2016 calendar is available now here. Well-known Star Trek graphic designer Mike Okuda released a compilation book of cropped images from most of the calendars through 2006 called Ships of the Line, still available from Amazon.com here.

For the Star Trek 50th anniversary, Universe Publishing is releasing a new version of the Ships of the Line series, Star Trek: Ships of the Line Posters, featuring 24 “posters” of images formerly included in the calendar series or as novel cover artwork, but never released previously in this format. The posters are images shown with a white matte border and can be easily pulled from the boxed flip cover book and mounted in 11×17 inch frames. Each photographic image is approximately 7×14 inches and includes the printed artist’s name and title of the work.

You’ll find images of various versions of the Enterprise, as well as images from Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, Enterprise, and alien worlds including Vulcan, Romulan and Klingon environments. The best? Probably Robert Bonchune’s Assignment: Earth (shown on the cover) and It Would Have Been Glorious, and Pierre Drolet’s Wind Tunnel and None Too Soon, The Skies of Home, each a striking, standout image, featuring the original Enterprise, a Romulan battle, a Romulus homeworld scene, and an experimental craft.

Artists highlighted in the poster set are Robert Bonchune, Steve Burg, Daren Dochterman, Doug Drexler, Pierre Drolet, John Eaves, Robert Holmes, Koji Kuramura, Meni, Dave Morton, Dax Pandhi, D.M. Phoenix, Sean Scott, Lee Stringer, John M. Teska, and Bob Witkowski. Some artists have multiple contributions.

What’s missing are descriptions that could give some context to each image when sometimes the title doesn’t tell the full story. Where were these first featured? Which were used in the actual series and which were made for the calendars? When the ship name and number cannot be seen it would be useful to have a legend showing something about the ship pictured. This is no doubt a product made for diehard fans of the ship models who may very well not need this information, but passing fans could use more detail.