The giant piece of cardboard is gone with this issue, leaving the magazine and model packaged one in front of the other in a plastic bag. This means you look slightly less ridiculous leaving a shop after having purchased it.
The third issue covers the Klingon Bird of Prey, as seen in...well, after being introduced in Star Trek III it was seen in pretty much every film and Star Trek TV episode. They made damn sure they got their money's worth out of that model! Yep, somehow the ship remained in service for over 100 years (of fictional time), which was explained away with the occasional line of dialogue saying it was an 'updated' model.
After the disappointment of last issue, the Bird of Prey is back up to the standards of the Enterprise-D. The BoP is nicely painted, with some, much needed, 'dirt' on top which brings some realism. The die-cast element for this model are the wings, with the main hull being plastic. It would have been nice if the photon torpedo launcher at the front had been painted and the warp engine at the rear had been done in plastic, like the Federation ships, to allow the light to shine through. More years ago than I care to remember, I made a BoP model kit and the engine there was transparent and it added a lot to the overall look.
Worth noting is that the BoP comes with wings fixed in the horizontal 'flight' position. You can't move them up and down for landing or attack poses. An HMS Bounty variant in the future in landing mode? A distinct possibility.
The stand is much improved with this model...and a little bit worse. Whereas for the earlier models the stand engulfed rather more of the mid-section of the ships that would have been nice, this time the stand clips onto the engine, right at the back of the BoP. This means that the ship is relatively free of stand, however to ensure the ship doesn't simply tumble off the stand you have to push the stand on with a slightly scary amount of force (scary considering you've paid a tenner for this thing). Once on, the stand stays firmly and I don't think either the stand or ship become damaged in the process, but as I said - it's a bit scary. Another thing to watch is that the phasers on the ends of the wings are very delicate (I've read about a few being broken during removal) so take extreme care with them.
Of the three magazines released thus far, I found this one the most interesting as it contained the most 'new' information for me. Once again it's in the half-fact, half-fiction mode of the previous issues.
Overall, a good model but there's no denying things are getting pricey. Still, there's only 67 more issues, right?
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