Review by C.J. Bunce
By my count there are six books so far in the Star Trek Shipyards library from publisher Hero Collector: Star Trek Shipyards: Starfleet Ships 2063-2293, Star Trek Shipyards: Starfleet Ships 2294 – The Future, Star Trek Shipyards: Federation Members, Star Trek Shipyards: Klingon Fleet, and most recently in 2021, Star Trek Shipyards: The Borg and Delta Quadrant (reviewed here), and Star Trek Shipyards: The Delta Quadrant Volume 2 (reviewed here). With two more volumes due out in the coming months available for pre-order now (Alpha Quadrant and Major Species Volume 1 and Alpha Quadrant and Major Species Volume 2), the publisher is taking a step back with the late summer release Star Trek Shipyards: Starfleet Ships 2294 – The Future, an updated and expanded edition of the second volume in the library, adding significant content to the original edition. The most popular of the Star Trek Shipyards library, this volume presents many of fans’ favorite ships of the line in high-quality illustrations. A lot has happened in the franchise in the past few years, and readers will find much of it making its way into this book, with vessels from all three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery to Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Picard.
The key reason to come back for this new edition is the all-new content–not only new to the library, but images not yet published elsewhere, since prior imagery in the Star Trek Shipyards library has seen appearances accompanying Hero Collector’s vast line of collectible model ships. So that’s seventeen new ships and 70 new pages in a giant, 312-page hardcover full of illustrated CG artwork and VFX models.
The ships are organized into five groups: small transports (like the runabouts), fighters (only three), multi-mission explorers (the bulk of the book, including the Enterprises C-E, Phoenix, and the Equinox), far future craft (the Enterprise-J and Relativity), and 32nd century vessels (including the Voyager-J, Nog, Curie, and Discovery-A).
Cool highlights include details of the flight trainer of Kolvoord Starburst infamy, Picard’s Stargazer, the early franchise designed Pasteur, Riker’s Titan, the animated Cerritos, the strange Jubayr, and Akira class ships.
Included are photographs and story background for ships designed by literally thousands of artists and artisans, and visual effects companies, including the visionary talent of Andy Probert, Rick Sternbach, John Eaves, Doug Drexler, Scott Schneider, William Budge, Ryan Dening, and Alex Jaeger, and modelers Greg Jein, Bill George, Adam Buckner, and Tony Meininger. As with earlier volumes, writers/editors Ben Robinson, Marcus Riley, and Mark Wright were able to compile images for this volume from the franchise archives thanks to the actual renderings used by the show’s art and visual effects departments.
Each ship profile features artwork from the original visual effects models, detailed technical specifications, service history, and annotated views of the ships’ features. Appendices include class listings and select commanding officers. Many of the ships feature breakout details and photographs of characters in screenshots from the relevant episodes. As with earlier volumes, the ships feature Michael Okuda’s familiar Okudagram design layouts, so readers will be immersed inside the world of Star Trek’s future as if they are onboard a craft researching a vessel via Memory Alpha or any modern Starfleet computer. The images used are crisp and detailed, and printed on sturdy paper stock.
The only downside is the omission of ships beyond the Prime Timeline, so readers will need to look at the previous Kelvin Timeline publications elsewhere to see those ships, like The Art of John Eaves (reviewed here), The Art of Star Trek: The Kelvin Timeline (reviewed here), Star Trek Encyclopedia (reviewed here), or The Art of Star Trek (2009) (discussed here).
Complete your Star Trek Shipyards library with Star Trek Shipyards: 2294 – The Future, available now here at Amazon, from Hero Collector.
