A little while ago I ran an interview with Ben Robinson, the manager Eaglemoss' starship model and magazine series, The Official Starships Collection. Talking to Ben he gave a ray of hope for thus who would love to see non-canon ships, such as the Titan, Aventine, or Enterprise-F, included in the series:
...if more than 5,000 people sign up solemnly promising to buy a Titan or an Enterprise-F, we'll almost certainly do it. If anyone wants to make that happen then feel free - it's a serious offer. But, whatever you do, don't email me! I'm not going to count 5,000 emails.Ben later clarified that if we can gather five thousand names, and email contacts to hand over to Ben to arrange a pre-order, then that would be enough for him to commission a ship as an additional special issue in the series. With that offer made, the mission was obvious: Pick a ship, and gather five thousand names.
There are several ships from the Star Trek litverse I would love to see included in the series, but I felt it would be best to focus on one at a time, and the strongest candidate to me seemed to be the USS Titan. The Titan is of course a canon ship (by name at least), and the design, by Sean Tourangeau, has also been around a bit longer than some of the other prominent litverse ships - As a result it's gotten around, having appeared not just on cover of Star Trek: Titan novels, but also in the pages of the Star Trek Magazine, in the comic series Hive, in Star Trek Online, and even as a large physical model at several Star Trek exhibitions! If you're interested in the history of the design, check out my Picturing the USS Titan article.
The petition has been going for some time, and today, thanks to a signal boost from the Star Trek: Titan TV series campaign Facebook page, it has passed over the two-thousand name mark.
There has been a constant trickle of support over the last couple of months, but by the normal daily rate of new supporters we're still a bit under two years away from the goal! I think we can beat that! We've got almost half way in less than three months! So once again I call upon all Titan fans to spread the word; tell friends, share the petition on Facebook and Twitter, blog about it, anything you can do to find those Titan fans! Thanks to all of you that have been shouting about it already. I'm sure this goal is achievable, and we will get the Titan, and hopefully the Aventine and others too.
Join the petition: 5000 names to include the USS Titan in Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection.
I really don't understand why they don't just make this a special order.. If 2,000+ REALLY want it, then they will obviously pay more than regular price for it.
ReplyDeleteThey're not doing it because they' don't really care either way. If they really cared, they'd simply send an email to every subscriber asking them if they'd like the ship, then they'd get the replies and know instantly if there was sufficient demand to justify the cost.
ReplyDeleteIt would certainly give them a more reliable idea than a random Internet poll.
Why are so many signatures needed? I bet you could count on one hand the number of people who were excited and the prospect of the Romulan Drone and they did that.
ReplyDeleteTime Lord, I think you under-estimate the on-screen effect. Even if we assume Enterprise is the least popular of the Star Trek series, still a relatively high proportion of trekkies have seen it, and are thus familiar with the Romulan drone, or any other even more obscure design from the series. Readers of the books are a much smaller faction, and smaller still are those who read Titan or Aventine books. To those of us familiar with prose ships it might seem so obvious to have these ships, but really we are a tiny insignificant fraction of the market Eaglemoss are tapping into. If a ship has been on-screen it's infinitely more recognisable to most trekkies than any books-only design.
ReplyDeleteAnd that is relevant to what Fox and Brandon are talking about. Those us who want these ships are a minority, why would they bother all their "normal" customers polling to see if they want a ship (several ships indeed) most of them have never heard of? I'm sure once we can demonstrate the number Ben wants they will indeed offer it out to their existing subscriber base, and probably get a good deal more than 5000 orders once they do. But they're not going to provoke those customers, who mostly couldn't care less about non-canon ships, without due cause, and that cause is 5000 ravenous Titan fans!