Customer Reviews

Star Trek : Starship Spotter

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Starship Spotter fails for a number of reasons. Lets start with the title. The title indicates that this would be a book that could be used by cadets and other Starfleet personnel to identify starships. This would suggest that we would have multiple views of each chosen Starship. Well that isn’t the case here at all. What we get is a wire frame shot that is next to useless and a two page beauty shot. That brings us to the beauty shots. The vast majority of these beauty shots are entirely too dark showing little detail not to mention the fact that they cross two pages rather than be presented in fold out form. Voyager, Enterprise-D, Defiant are all from angles that we have seen time and again. All they offer are too dark renderings. Parts of the Akira class rendering seem to be out of focus. Another irritating thing was the inclusion of the Work Bee, Spacedock, The MIDAS communications array, and the various shuttle craft. These are not exactly starships. The one bright spot of the book is the excellent text provided by Jonathan Lane and Alex Rosenzweig. I just don’t think the editors or art department know what fans want in this area. Why didn’t we get multiple views of each ship and some schematics to go with them? The book measures about 8 X 10 inches and is a bit over a ¼ inch thick. It is 128 pages in length. At a cost [I got it for] it just isn’t worth the price for what one gets. One can only hope that Mojo brightens up the rendering for next years coffee table book.

The "Star Trek Starship Spotter," by Adam Lebowitz and Robert Bonchune, is a good example of a great idea that is spoiled by a poorly thought out execution. The book seems to be modeled on classic "real world" reference works like "Jane's Fighting Ships." The "Spotter" contains profiles of starships seen in the fictional world of the various "Star Trek" TV series and motion pictures. Both Federation and alien ships, of all sizes and configurations, are included.

Each type of ship gets two 2-page spreads. The first is a technical overview with information on manning, propulsion, weapons, etc. The second 2-page spread is a full color illustration of a representative ship from that class. And therein lies the problem. Each illustration is actually spread over two pages. Thus, you can't fully and clearly see each ship unless you break the spine of the book in an attempt to flatten out the spread. This poorly conceived presentation greatly detracts from what could have been a great book.

The previous reviews are quite accurate, and should be read before deciding to purchase. For my part, I was overall content with the book, since I was more interested in the ship statistics and some of the "historical" descriptions than the artwork, so the admittedly disappointing nature of the ship renderings did not put me off as badly. However, the omission of key ships (see below) was a major disappointment, particularly galling was the insistence on describing things I could care less about, such as the Midas Array, "worker bees", etc. If one is going to limit oneself to 128 pages and 30 ships, then perhaps a little more common sense ought to have been devoted to selecting which "ships" to describe!

Another problem I had with some of the more exotic alien ships was a lack of information on their statistics, especially the Species 8472 bioship. While one cannot reveal all secrets, having everything listed as "unknown" is more than a little unsatisfying. At the least simply state observed qualities (i.e. maximum warp (observed) 9.46) or something similar.

I also agree that the line drawings of the ships were not as useful as they could have been. I would suggest either replacing or perhaps augmenting them with more standard 3 view drawings (front, profile, and top) as are given in the Star Fleet Technical Manual, for example.

It is my sincerest hope that a revised and heavily expanded 2nd edition will be released. Should the author(s) read this, here are some glaring omissions in need of being added:
- Excelsior class
- Ambassador class
- Constellation class
- Oberth class
- Daedalus class
- Borg cube
- Borg sphere
- Borg tactical cube
- Enterprise NX-01
- Klingon Negh'Var battleship
- K'Vort class cruiser

Very nice and much appreciated additions would be:
- Vulcan ships from Enterprise
- Klingon ships from Enterprise (a number of new designs are in evidence)
- The Romulan ship from Enterprise (the minefield episode)
- Other Earth ships from Enterprise (particularly the 2nd season finale)
- "Kobyashi Maru" Neutronic Fuel carrier
- Freighter destroyed in STIII by Bird of Prey
- Tholian ships
- Kazon ship

In spite of the unflattering reviews, this is a neat little book. For the price (on Amazon, that is), it is not a terribly bad buy. Wouldn't pay any more for it, though! However, there is much room for improvement, and I fervently hope the authors will take it upon themselves to release a vastly enhanced manual in the near future.

I've been a fan of sci-fi technology for a while. Books like the cutaway Star Wars guides, the various Star Trek technical manuals, and the like just tickle my fancy. I was really looking forward this book as being finally what the ship lovers had been asking for - a real guide to what all the different star trek ships look for.

What I got instead was a book that tries to serve too many masters and fails at them all. It can't decide if it's a cgi junkies book, a trek fan book, or an art book.

First off, by being called a "spotter's guide", it immediately raises some expectations because there *are* spotter's guides, and they have things in common. Like, after reading one, you should be able to recognize what you're spotting, regardless of the angle. Uh-uh. The back text points out this is a publication of starfleet academy, preparing cadets for their time in space. Poor cadets. Unless the bad guy happens to come in at just the right angle, they're toast.

The textual descriptions are nice. You'll probably pick up some tidbits. But included with the text is a *cgi wireframe* of the ship in question. Say what? What in heaven's name is that useful for, other than to show off how complicated your lightwave models are? I'd rather have had a simple line drawing that clearly shows the ship if you're going to be too lame to do real graphics.

Then the next two pages are a rendering of the ship. From *a* (i.e. 1) random angle, and not always a useful angle. In the middle of the darkest blackest region of space you might find. Printed across both pages so a good chunk of the ship is lost in the binding. Did I mention dark?

They also left out a surprising number of ships that I thought they'd include, being as how they appeared more than once, and featured instead "ships" like spacedock and the midas array. Although it was nice seeing just what in heck the shuttle that's stuck to the bottom of the voyager saucer supposedly looked like.

All in all, extremely dissapointing, given the expectations. It's pretty, and entertaining, but given the shoddy job they did, and the size you get for the money, probably not worth it except for extreme "must have" fans. Stand in the book store and read it, then put it back.

There's plenty of Star Trek websites that feature schematics of starships featured in this book. Most of them provide more information than published. A Google search will turn up these sites and you'll enjoy the lot of them.

This book is a disappointment. As a lifetime Trekker I thought it would be wonderful. But there were too few ships and the illustrations were poor.

What they did put in the book was alright, however, what they left out made the price seem a little hefty. It almost appears as if they said, "hey, here's a quick way to make some quick cash, slap this together and the devoted fans will buy it." Which I'm sure is the case. If you do some quick cross referencing with the encyclopedia, you'll also discover that some of the "facts" do not match up. This one is for the collector's, like myself. It does provide some eye candy, but not too much substance.

I was very much looking forward to this book, but it was a major disappointment. I was expecting a piece of work of the same quality as the Ships of the Line calendar. Instead the renderings were muddy, poorly anti-aliased and lacking in any kind of dynamics. The renderings were further marred by being double-page spreads. To actually see the rendering properly you would have to break the spine of the book. Included with each entry is a pointlessly geeky wireframe model of the ship. The text is the one bright spot in this otherwise poor product. These guys are capable of much better work. I can only hope that in 2002, the long awaited Unseen Federation will be up to their previous quality levels.

Unbelievably, Pocket Books has put out a book focusing on the ships of Star Trek. Even more unbelievably, they didn't think, and/or do the research, in presenting the art of these fine ships! Every ship is presented on two pages, that's right, the binder for the book cuts the ships in half.

I was sooooo looking forward to this book! But, didn't buy it. You'd figure the folks who put the holes in the calendar so you could hang it sideways would appreciate the obvious, and lengthen the book so the entire art of each ship has it's own single page.

Major disappointment! :-(

Dan

I was very happy to see this book at my local book store the other day and I was happy with alot of the pictures and the ship info. Sadly I wish there would have been even more ships. They only seemed to brush the surface.