Review: Star Trek Attack Wing

Firstly, I'll be completely honest and say that, so far, I've only played with the 'quick start' rules for this game. This simplifies absolutely everything down to its absolute minimum: move and shoot. The cards and counters are, essentially, completely ignored. At some point, I'm sure, we'll start adding in more of the full rules, but at the moment the kids are more than happy with the basic rules.

Before getting the starter set I read many recommendations from people to buy X-Wing instead. The game is similar, they say, but the models are far superior. I chose to ignore this mostly because there are far more ships I'm fond of in the Trek universe: Defiant, numerous Enterprises, Excelsior, most of the Dominion ships etc etc. In the Star Wars universe, on the whole, it's more about fleets of the same few ships that lots of different ones.

Review: Star Trek Generations Engineering Playset

It's been rather a delightful week for me. First the Garax Swordship arrived on my doorstep, then this, the Star Trek Generations Engineering set from 1994.

The Generations line by Playmates was, well, remember the 'new' Star Trek line Playmates put out a few years ago? Well, it wasn't that bad. But it was pretty bad.

Overall the Playmates 5" figures had been very good. The likenesses were more than acceptable and the articulation, for the time, was extensive.

And then they screwed it all up.

It wasn't all their fault. Due to a last minute change in uniforms for the film (the production team threw out the new uniforms that had been designed and simply stuck to the stuff the cast had been wearing during the time of the Next Generation TV show), Playmates were stuck with making a line of figures which didn't look anything like the people in the film. There was still the main villain, Soran, and the boob-tastic Klingon ladies, but as for the Enterprise-D crew...

And then, presumably because of the uniform problems Playmates could no longer be bothered putting any effort in, articulation was reduced to a sole 5 points. Considering at the same time there were fully poseable Next Gen figures on toy shop shelves, this was bizarre.

But enough of the figures, this review is all about the playset.

Review: Eaglemoss Star Trek Starships collection #3

Welcome to my third and likely final review of the Eaglemoss Trek range. Why last? Well, with this issue the price jumps to £9.99 which, at a fortnightly release, puts it out of my price range...or at least out of my price range when you take into consideration the Masters of the Universe sub, Transformers Masterpieces, etc. Oh, and utility bills. Apparently they have to be paid too. And food. Yes, seems the children like to be fed occasionally and the 'free school meals' don't kick in until next September.

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.

Review: Eaglemoss Star Trek Starships collection #2

Two weeks have passed and thus it's time for the second issue of the Starships Collection to be released, accompanied by a price jump to £6 (next issue it's up to its full and regular price of £10. Eep!). Since it's an Enterpise issue I've walked to the newsagent and bought it.

Sadly, after the great start with the last issue, I'm half wondering if it was worth the walk for this one.

Review: Eaglemoss Collections Star Trek Starships collection #1

This is not a toy. It probably says that somewhere on the model Enterprise that comes with issue 1 of the new Star Trek ship collection from Eaglemoss Collections. But, hey! I'm going to review it anyway (and attempt to keep technobabble to a minimum so everyone understands which part of the ship I'm talking about when describing it).

I first heard about this last year at Star Trek Destination London, though it was likely being advertised before that. Finally the first issue (of 70 planned + specials) has been released for the bargainous £2.99.

Upon handing over your shiny gold coins at the newsagent you'll be given a rather large (these things always are) piece of cardboard. On one side is a magazine, on the other a 'die-cast' model of the Enterprise-D, as seen for seven years flying through space in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Review: Star Trek Monopoly

There can be only one.

Hahahahahahaha!

Yes, once upon a time there was only one version of Monopoly, the game which...well, pretty much everyone has played at some point in their lives. Be it a rainy day, a Thursday afternoon at school, or family gathering [spoilers!]

The game was created in America, then very quickly (before the game went into production in the US) brought to the UK in 1935, where the 'outside the USA' license was bought and the locations changed to those of British streets.

Roll on a few years and some genius decided that it'd be a good idea to start selling more versions of Monopoly. When you sat down and thought about it, there are loads of other things that can be adapted to fit a Monopoly board. The problem with a lot (actually, all) of them is that the designers didn't change the game board much at all. The picture in the middle of the board changed, sure, but the bit where the game pieces went round looked almost identical. The corner pieces were exactly the same and ruined the whole experience.

My home-made Monopoly board looked a bit like this.

I thought of one in the mid-90s. It wasn't licensed, obviously, but it was pretty darn cool. It was based on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The board was a circle (predicting what would actually happen many years later in the official 'Monopoly Revolution'), based on the space station in the TV show. Instead of buying streets you bought up bits of the stations - the infirmary, docking pylons, holding cells, etc.  The most expensive bits were Quark's bar & the Ops (or was it Ops & Sisko's office? It's been quite a while since I made it).

Monopoly Revolution. Again very similar-looking to my board.

Mine looked a 1,000 times better than any of the 'official' versions out there because I'd altered the board and pieces to make it into a game of Monopoly set in the Star Trek universe, instead of a game of Monopoly with a couple of Star Trek pictures.

At around the same time, Star Trek was popular. Hard as it is to believe, but around the 30th Anniversary (1996) Trek was in a golden age. Next Gen was finishing, DS9 three quarters of the way through its run, Voyager just beginning...

So of course someone else thought Trek would be a good idea for a Monopoly version too. Someone who had the ability to get it manufactured and into the shops.

Review: Star Trek by Playmates

I know you'll find this hard to believe, but in the not-so distant past, Star Trek was popular.

'Shut up, you crazy fool!' I hear you say, but I'm not talking rubbish here. There was a time in the mid-90s when you could buy Star Trek merchandise in almost every shop. The Next Generation was drawing to a close, the films were crossing over from original to TNG casts, Voyager was just starting, and DS9 was hanging on in there in the background like the relative you try to avoid at family weddings.

There was a crash shortly afterwards, of course. Voyager turned out to be a bit terrible. Insurrection was a bit of a disappointment. DS9 hung in there and people began to realise that actually it was really rather good.

And then Faith of the Heart and Nemesis killed it completely.

But in those prime years, you could buy Playmates Star Trek action figures in Toys R Us.

This meant that children were buying them. Children!