Star Trek Ships of the Line book (2014) front coverEdited by Doug Drexler and Margaret Clark, with text by Michael Okuda

Gallery Books, out now

A beautiful collection of artwork depicting the Star Trek universe ships…

One of the joys of editing Star Trek Magazine for five years was the opportunity to commission new art for the fiction extracts that we ran in each issue from upcoming Star Trek novels, many of which were set on ships that hadn’t actually been seen on screen. It didn’t happen that often, but there was a thrill to seeing something new from the Trek universe unveiled just for us.

The Ships of the Line calendar has been one of the mainstays of the Star Trek publishing program for some time, and within its pages have been renditions of all the classic craft – from Jonathan Archer’s NX-01 to Voyager and the Enterprise-E – as well as many that have been mentioned, or only seen briefly. This book presents a wide selection of them in chronological order, with recreations of episodes sitting beside extrapolations of events, as well as new series created for the books.

The art is presented at full page size, with accompanying text setting the scene on the left. Again, sometimes these are extracted from broadcast stories; other times, they are little vignettes of life in the 22nd-24th centuries (and beyond).

If you love the visual aesthetics of the Star Trek series, then this is the book for you – a testament to the imagination of the original designers and all those artists represented here.

Verdict: A stunning collection that any Star Trek fan is going to want. Highly recommended. 10/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order Star Trek: Ships of the Line from Amazon.co.uk

Leave a comment