Polar lights 1/350 refit poll/ question

Hey guys!

Long time lurker here and I thought of all the people on the planet you guys would be the ones to ask.


I have all the large polar lights ships and decided to start with the TOS ship as It has the least lighting and easiest paint of the three.

At least the way I wanted to do it!

I was going to paint the ship as I remember it from the show, I know the actual model is grey but I assumed that that was b/c white would have been washed out by the studio lighting but that white is what they intended it to be.

After seeing so many darker versions I am no longer sure if it would look right and am starting to think of painting it a VERY light bluish grey and not adding any more flashing lights and such. to remain true to my vision of the ship.

BUT then I saw one painted with a more motion picture aztec pain job and though " hmmm it would look kewl painted that way and adding the same flashing lights and reaction control thrusters etc.


I know I can do it any way I want to but I am now sitting on the fence on this one. I think it would be kewl either way but the aztec version may look too different.


any advice wold be much appreciated,

and am I the only one who remembers it as a white ship??

sithman66 said:

Hey guys!

and am I the only one who remembers it as a white ship??

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Yes.

sithman66 said:

am I the only one who remembers it as a white ship??

Click to expand...

No. I was a kid watching TOS in the 60's on a B&W TV. It looked white to me, and that's exactly what it burned into my mind's eye.

All my Starfleet Battle miniatures as well as my original 18" where in white.
Until I started building up some 18" ships last year I didn't even know the ship was grey.

If by aztecing it you mean like the Defiant from Enterprise Mirror Darkly, it's a cool concept and I like it.
I am actually thinking of trying my hand at making it look like the CG version from deg3d.
I especially like the pictures of it in Earths atmosphere from Tomorrow is Yesterday.

Kind of ironic that I thought it was white even after I saw it in person at the Smithsonian 13 years ago.:facepalm

I saw it at the Smithsonian for the first time circa. 1978.

That's the year I saw the entire original cast at my first Con in Oakland (CA)

sithman66 said:

...and am I the only one who remembers it as a white ship??

Click to expand...

When I watched the series in it's original run in the 60s I though the ship was white, but realized as I grew older and watched the reruns that it was more of a very light gray (on our tv, anyway). Until the Internet, I never knew the base color of the filming model was called "concrete", a medium gray with a slight green hue.

To answer your other question, in my opinion the Aztec pattern does not belong on the original Enterprise; your mileage may vary.

Thank you all for your input.

I think I will go white, but am expecting it to be too much and need to paint it a very very light grey but I will see what it looks like.

I figure it must have been intended to be white and after all the spaceships of the time were all white as well.
I can always buy another one to do more trick work to like lighting the engines, strobes and adding reaction control thrusters and faint aztecing but for now I will make it as I remember it and be a quicker, easier build than my refit and nx will be with all the various lighting and paint effects.

It looked white to me, too. I always thought it was white and was very surprised to see the many grey iterations of the models much later. And I agree with Zombie about the aztecing--I don't think it belongs on the TOS E even thought the remastered episodes clearly show a very grey E with mucho aztecing.

It's hard to know what the studio intended the color to actually show as on the TV screen originally. I think if I were building one I would still probably paint it a VERY light grey with a VERY, VERY SLIGHT blue-green tint to it.

By the way, I very much like the color of the Master Replicas Enterprise. It is grey but it is light and subtly tinted. I believe it was molded in that color so that it wasn't actually painted. I don't know how they did it exactly but the result is a perfectly smooth, texture-free finish that just cannot be achieved with spray.