Majestic and powerful, the U.S.S. Potempkin passes by the Bubble Nebula early in her career.

The second of the Polar Lights TOS Enterprise kits to cross my work-bench, the Potempkin was built in the "First Pilot" configuration--except for the production version shuttle bay doors. 

What do I mean by "First Pilot" version?  Back in 1964 Gene Roddenberry got the go-ahead from NBC TV to make a pilot episode of his proposed Star Trek series.  Matt Jefferies designed a ship--the U.S.S. Enterprise--for this episode.  When NBC executives screened the pilot, they said it was "too cerebral" for the audience, but authorized a second pilot.  The ship design had some details altered for this second filming.  Later, when the show went into production, the design was altered again--scaled up to accomodate twice the crew that the original was intended to hold.  As a result, there were two pilot versions and one production version of the famous starship.

Previously, I had built one of these kits as the U.S.S. Intrepid for a local club display.  When it became clear that one of the other club members wasn't going to be able to build his offering, I took on the challenge.  I had two weeks to go from an unopened box to a completed kit, knowing that it's first showing would be at the Seattle IPMS spring contest--just a bit of pressure.

The most notable differences between the pilot versions and the production version of the ship can be seen in the three pictures above.  Specifically, the bridge dome on top of the saucer is taller and rounder, the antenna dish is a larger diameter, the domes on the engine nacelles have a protruding spike, the inner panels on the nacelles are smooth, and the endcaps have different details.  Less noticable is a different window configuration.  Now, is any of this really of any importance?  Ha, no...not unless you're a Star Trek fanatic like I tend to be.

The kit recommended using Light Ghost Grey for the hull.  I felt it was a bit dark, so I lightened it with 25% Light Grey to 75% Light Ghost Grey.  As on the Intrepid, I marked the saucer grid pattern lightly with a pencil.  Rather than leave the grid as simple pencil lines, I masked along one of the lines and lightly airbrushed in a shadow line with straight Light Ghost Grey.  I continued with each grid line in turn and then masked and sprayed each concentric ring.  The result can be seen above, compared to the saucer of the Intrepid.  Other panel lines where randomly created on the secondary hull, pylons, and engine nacelles in the same manner.  The upper and lower domes on the saucer were painted in chrome silver rather than the customary white.  The rest of the paint details were as recommended by the kit--except for the nacelle domes.

On both pilot versions of the ship, the nacelle domes were a frosted red.  Little, if any, detail could be seen beneath them.  I couldn't bring myself to do this.  Instead, I painted the inner surface of the main dome with Transparent Red, concentrating on the edges of the dome.  The inner ribbed dome was painted copper.  When the copper paint was sufficiently dry, I sanded the surfaces of the ribs.  I did this for two reasons:  to slightly reduce the diameter of the inner dome so that it would fit more easily into the outer dome, and to give the ribs some contrast to the copper paint.