When the LEGO Star Trek Enterprise NCC-1701-D launched at the end of last year, it was one of the most wanted LEGO sets for the holiday season, remaining on backorder for months. Now, seven months later, the supply has finally caught up with the demand. After building and photographing the set in full, it’s clear what the fuss was about. This is the quintessential ‘adult’ build – highly specific and highly technical. It is also, without hyperbole, an exquisite end result.
In addition to the Enterprise itself, you also get nine minifigures of the Next Generation crew: Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Commander William T. Riker, Lieutenant Commander Data, Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge, Lieutenant Worf, Dr. Beverly Crusher, Counselor Deanna Troi, Guinan, and Wesley Crusher.
The minifigures are well-designed and detailed; Data has his signature yellow eyes, and Worf has a unique head accessory depicting his ridges. Troi is wearing her purple civilian jumpsuit from earlier seasons, before Captain Jellico ordered her to wear a standard uniform in “Chain of Command.” The only missing crew member you could make a good case for would be Tasha Yar, although no doubt, someone has already figured out a minifigure equivalent.
Each LEGO minifigure comes with a unique accessory that dedicated Trek fans will appreciate. For Riker, it’s his trombone (“Nightbird” sheet music not included). For Data, it’s his cat Spot. Dr. Crusher has a tricorder. Worf, the security guard, has a phaser (no Bat’leth?). I especially loved Guinan’s hat, which has its distinctive, vaselike appearance. The minifigures are displayable on a small, long platform bearing the TNG logo on its front.
The LEGO Star Trek Enterprise NCC-1701-D is divided into 30 separate bags and two instruction booklets. In the first half, you build the ship’s base, which consists of its Engineering Hull and warp nacelles. In the second half, you build the ship’s saucer and slide it into place.
The build is methodical and slow. You’re creating futuristic curves with plastic rectangular prisms, which means you’re gradually layering bricks, each slightly staggered from the preceding one. This process can often feel disjointed; you labor over a single section of the ship for a length of time, not quite understanding how it fits in with the rest of it. But it definitely will. An incongruent section could be one half of a larger symmetry, or it could be a tiny part of a greater, more cumulative effect.
Take, for example, the LEGO Enterprise’s saucer, which contains lots of sharp, straight edges when you’re halfway through building it. It looks nothing like itself, and you wonder how the designers will get the curve right.
But they manage it with a couple of creative tricks. You finish the saucer by building under it rather than over it, which hides the seams and the initial angularity. And each ‘slice’ of the underbelly has a single, curved portion facing outwards to create a single, continuous arc.
You mount the final model on a LEGO Technic black stand. The Enterprise’s design is disproportionately top heavy, which wouldn’t matter in the vacuum of space but does matter in a practical LEGO model. The designers offset the uneven weight distribution by tilting the stand back, so that the model tilts upwards and falls slightly back on itself. Gravity does some of the work, taking pressure off the bricks to support all the weight. You anchor the saucer to the hull with a pin that’s disguised as a docking runabout. Because the saucer canonically detaches from the rest of the ship in emergencies, this feels like a narratively appropriate design.
In the same area of the ship, you can remove a panel to reveal the shuttle bay. Unfortunately, this is the only part of the ship that hints at the ship’s interior. There’s no blue, pulsing Warp Core or Transporter Room. There’s no minimalistic, micro-depiction of the Bridge, which feels like a particularly significant oversight for a set of this size and price.
Having little to no play elements places a heavy burden on the model’s display potential. And there’s one thing the LEGO designers had to get right; the Enterprise-D’s distinctive silhouette, as seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s opening sequence. Ask anyone to picture the Enterprise-D in their mind’s eye, and they’ll picture one of two iconic shots, burned into our collective retinas by episode syndication. The first is this low angle shot on the Enterprise’s starboard side, right when Captain Jean-Luc Picard gets to the “continuing mission” part of his monologue.
The second shot is right before the Enterprise engages warp speed for the second time: an eye-level view from the ship’s aft:
Setting aside everything else it does well, the LEGO Enterprise absolutely nails both of these shots. Look at the ship model from either angle, and you’ll get a chill. I involuntarily started humming the theme music and shaking my head the first time I saw it. It was uncannily perfect.
I’m already brainstorming how and where I’m going to display this model. I may even get a third-party light set to enhance it further, so that any visitor to our house gets the full-on, glowing experience.
LEGO U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, Set #10356, retails for $399.99, and it is composed of 3600 pieces. It is available now.
Kevin Wong is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in LEGO. He’s also been published in Complex, Engadget, Gamespot, Kotaku, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinjameswong.
