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A History of Enterprise Models

Over the years, we have spent a lot of time in the CultTVman Chat Room discussing the original AMT Enterprise kit.   One of the more interesting facets of this model is that it has changed quite a bit over the years.   A couple years ago, Jay Chladek and I sat down at Wonderfest and actually compared an original Enterprise  to a recent kit.   BIG difference.   From that conversation, Jay put together this exhaustive article covering the history of this model kit.

History and Evolution of the
AMT 18" U.S.S. Enterprise kit
by Jay Chladek

In all of science fiction modeling, the one kit that has been produced the longest and one which probably almost every modeler with at least a passing interest in science fiction has built at one time or another has been the classic 18" U.S.S. Enterprise kit  from AMT. The model stayed in AMT's catalog for almost 30 years, which has to be something of a record, considering the average sales life of science fiction subjects. However, the kit that has been issued in recent times is not exactly the same kit as it first appeared in the late 60s. The purpose of this article is to document the various  changes seen in the classic Enterprise kit and provide some clues as to why the changes were made over the years. It is also worth noting that although the Aurora plastics corporation also issued AMTs classic 18" kit for the European and Canadian markets, this article mostly covers the various changes made to the kit that was issued by AMT directly. There is some information provided on the Aurora issues near the end.

In the 60s, AMT had a very good relationship with the producers of Star Trek from the  early days of production. According to some accounts, when AMT originally tooled up the 18" Enterprise, they apparently had access to the three foot studio model of the ship, originally built for the pilot episodes, then modified for the series. Indeed, some features on the kit do match features on the three foot model more closely then those found on the larger 11 foot model, supporting that this may indeed have been the case, although not proving it entirely, as other features on the kit don't match  either studio model at all. After the Enterprise was issued, AMTs connection with Trek remained good as they also supposedly built the studio model of the classic Klingon  cruiser, in exchange for using it as a master and being allowed to do a kit based on the model.

The classic AMT Enterprise kit would also go on to share screen time with its studio model counterpart. An AMT kit was extensively battle damaged to represent the trashed U.S.S. Constellation, seen in the episode "The Doomsday Machine", with some footage being used later in the episode "The Ultimate Computer", this time representing the U.S.S. Excalibur. Supposedly another Enterprise kit (non battle damaged this time) was used to represent a tiny U.S.S. Enterprise shown out the window in an office of space station K-7 in "The Trouble With Tribbles", but there is  no confirmation of that. It is also worth noting that the last time AMT Trek kits were used extensively as studio models in a Trek series was during the DS9 episode "The Way of the Warrior", when several AMT/Ertl kits of the various Klingon ships were used to swell the ranks of the fleet around Deep Space 9 for the climactic battle  sequence and then blown up in spectacular fashion by the pyro department. This is not likely to happen again as computer graphics have pretty much replaced motion control in production of the Trek TV shows.

On to Part 2

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