The Die Has Been Well Cast For First Fanhome Star Trek Diecast Die Cast Starship Models – TrekMovie.com

U.S.S. Titan, U.S.S. Stargazer and U.S.S. Farragut starship replicas

Manufacturer: Fanhome – Starship Die Cast Collection
Grade: A

In 2011 Eaglemoss under senior product manager Ben Robinson began Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection with the modest goal of reproducing every spacecraft seen in the Star Trek franchise from TOS to (eventually) Discovery, at a rate of sometimes more than one ship per month. These were marketed as “diecast” which most people associate with metal collectibles, and indeed the products always included some metal, although sometimes only in the form of the weighted, black oval display stands that supported the ships. Based on a subscription model, the line included glossy informational mini-magazines and ultimately included over 200 different releases, expanding to include books, figures and other collectibles. The ambitious subscription model eventually came under strain with some fans complaining about quality issues and missed releases, and Eaglemoss eventually declared bankruptcy in 2022 just as Strange New Worlds, Prodigy and Lower Decks were adding ever more new spacecraft to the Star Trek mythos.

Two years later the project is back, taken over by Italian hobby company DeAgostini and re-launched under their Fanhome brand, but Ben Robinson is still in charge and the ships are more or less the same, right down to the display stands. The new Starship line officially launched at the end of 2024 and the first three releases include the popular U.S.S. Titan from Picard’s third season, James Kirk’s U.S.S. Farragut from Strange New Worlds, and the U.S.S. Stargazer from Picard’s second season.

Stargazer (Picard)

The Stargazer was introduced in season two of Picard and as you might guess, it’s basically an update of Picard’s old four-nacelled starship first shown in TNG’s first-season episode “The Battle.” In the first episode of Picard season two the refit Stargazer is shown under the command of Captain Cristobal Rios, a considerable upgrade from his season 1 runabout-sized cargo ship SS La Sirena. Most of the cast of Picard season 1 seemed poised to join Rios as part of the Stargazer’s crew with Jean-Luc Picard himself onboard as a visiting adviser and paterfamilias, and the production went to considerable time and expense to design the starship and build a large new bridge and other sets for the vessel in what could have been a new series of starship voyages for Jean-Luc Picard.

The new Stargazer’s design combines elements of the Enterprise-E (the oval, streamlined primary hull), the original Stargazer (the four-nacelle configuration), the Reliant (the rear superstructure with its dark gray parallel detail strips, which in this case appear on the bottom of the structure as well as the top) and even a bit of the Excelsior with its keel-shaped deflector housing underneath the primary hull.

The four warp nacelles are of the same design as the later Titan and given the size of the two models’ bridge areas it appears that the Titan and Stargazer models are very close to being in scale with one another. With all the complex paneling color detail borrowed from the Enterprise-E, what appears to be four impulse deflector crystals inset into the dark gray superstructure panels, the four vented canards that are part of the warp nacelle pylons, transporter emitters and abundant filigree the Stargazer is an impressive and detailed model, about 7 ½” long and 3 3/8” wide.

Titan (Picard)

The Titan miniature is also representative of the line–8 3/5” long and 4” wide, this is explained as a refit of Riker’s U.S.S. Titan which, if you’ve watched Lower Decks or seen (non-canon) paperback book illustrations, looks completely different from Riker’s ship. In fact, the ship seen in Picard season 3 has one of the more interesting development stories, as most people (including some of Picard’s design staff) assumed that season three would feature the Stargazer rather elaborately and expensively established in season 2. When executive producer Terry Matalas came onboard for Picard seasons 2 and 3 he had become enamored of a model starship made by modeler Bill Krause, originally designated the U.S.S. Shangri-La, and looked into borrowing the design from Krause as the ship commanded by Captain Liam Shaw. This caused a scramble in the Picard art department because it would call for the design of a new bridge that would have to have graphics of the ship’s exterior on display.

Production designer Dave Blass, graphics designer Geoffrey Mandel and visual effects artist worked with Krause and Matalas to revise the Shangri-La, primarily by swapping the original Enterprise refit-style warp nacelles for the ones designed for the new Stargazer and removing a weapons package from the front of the hull to make the forward view more resemble the 1979 Enterprise refit. All of this background is well laid out in detail in the mini-magazine included with the Titan release.

Krause’s design takes the familiar approach of combining elements of different starships and slicing out pie sections of the main saucer (something that goes back to the old FASA white metal starship gaming miniatures of the 1980s), beefing up the impulse engines and adding a more Excelsior-like engineering hull. Apart from the new warp engines, the look is very 1979/1984, which was very much Matalas’ intention—but that did get some blowback from fans who found the retro approach nonsensical for the always advancing Starfleet aesthetic. Nevertheless, Picard season 3 was a home run for most fans, especially after (spoiler alert) the Titan was renamed the Enterprise-G and relaunched with Captain Seven of Nine in command at the end of the season (and series).

So it’s a no-brainer that fans will want replicas of the Titan, and Titan replica’s detail is on a par with the previous Eaglemoss releases (the clear blue and red parts on the slender warp nacelles on both the Titan and the Stargazer give a very nice effect when light is behind them), as is the stand, which is a love-it-or-hate-it element of the collectible line. On the plus side, the clear acrylic stands that support the ships and snap into the metal base leave the models free of stand mount holes and other things that would disrupt the authenticity of the reproductions, but on the negative side the stands don’t always hold the models snugly and sometimes seem like an intelligence test in terms of figuring out where exactly they grasp the model.

Farragut (Strange New Worlds)

The third ship out of Fanhome drydock is the U.S.S. Farragut, a ship that carries a heavy freight of Star Trek mythology as the first ship James T. Kirk was assigned to after graduating from Starfleet Academy—and the site of a deadly attack by a gaseous space entity as recounted in the original series’ episode “Obsession.” The Farragut was never seen in the original series, but Strange New Worlds unveiled it in an alternate timeline in the season 1 finale “A Quality of Mercy,” which posits Pike’s Enterprise and crew undergoing the confrontation with the Romulans that Kirk originally faced in TOS’s “Balance of Terror.”

The Farragut is only briefly glimpsed in “A Quality of Mercy” but it returns in a couple of other SNW episodes as Kirk visits Pike’s Enterprise. Just as in the production of 1982’s The Wrath of Khan, the configuration of another starship facing the Enterprise was tweaked so as to not resemble the U.S.S. Enterprise too closely and thus cause confusion for viewers. And in fact, as illustrated in the accompanying booklet, the Farragut initially bore the influence of Khan’s U.S.S. Reliant in its designs by artist William Budge. Like the Reliant, the Farragut had its warp engines slung under its primary disc hull, and early iterations even included a roll bar, with the curved engine pylons continuing on top of the hull to create a curved roll bar and an overall oval configuration as seen from the front.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. As ultimately rendered, the Farragut features just the underslung warp engines and some of the details of the secondary hull compressed into a streamlined, elongated half-egg shape underneath the hull, with a copper deflector dish at the front of the shape and the familiar fantail scoop at the rear. Consequently, the Farragut is a very simple, straightforward design that can easily be seen as something that would fit in with the aesthetics of the original series as well as with Pike’s SNW Enterprise.

The primary hull and warp engines are more or less the same as Pike’s Enterprise, but instead of the bare metal look, the color scheme is the standard light gray seen on the original Enterprise, but with some subtle Aztec panels throughout. I’ve seen some people complaining about the simplicity of this design, but I love the way it fits in with the old TOS/TAS look and even the 1980s FASA gaming miniatures that broadened the look of Starfleet and its alien adversaries, even if it wasn’t canon. The Fanhome Farragut model is a nice size, about 7” long and a little over 4 ½” wide. Mine arrived intact although with all of these models I’ve seen examples of engines arriving separated from their pylons, something that can be fixed with super glue.

Die cast Trek is back

Fans frustrated by the disappearance of Eaglemoss and the starship line will be happy to welcome the line back. You can still subscribe and get first dibs on new releases, but you can also buy the ships individually after subscribers get them—but you may notice some sticker shock. Eaglemoss sold their regular-sized ships for around $30 with many smaller ones going for around $20—the mid-sized Titan and the Stargazer sell for $44.95 as part of the subscription package and $65.00 purchased individually, so the subscription model still offers fans some savings on what could wind up being a very expensive hobby. Subscriptions start with the USS Titan followed by the Stargazer and then the Farragut, which is just showing up now for those who subscribed previously.

More information about the Fanhome Star Trek Die-Cast Collection and details about how to subscribe can be found at fanhome.com.

Fanhome has relaunched the Starships Collection with some smart selections that will hopefully allow the new company to steer clear of bankruptcy for the next few years. The next planned is the larger sized (270mm) U.S.S. Enterprise-F from Picard season 3, followed by the SS Eleos. See our NYCC preview for the full planned list of ships through to mid-2026.

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