I've always been a fan of the Miranda class cruisers in Star Trek; I was 15 the first time I saw the Reliant go toe-to-toe with the Enterprise on the big screen in 1982. It was really the first Star Fleet vessel ever depicted that was different from the established Constitution class design; in fact, this ship really set the design template for everything that came after it. As a result of the Reliant's appearance, every Federation ship had a saucer and nacelles.

Over the years, I've always wondered what the Miranda class might have looked like before it received an Enterprise-style "refit" of its own. There have many different interpretations over the years, but none of them really satisfied me personally. As a result, I started work on my own variation.

I started by using the tiny 1/1600 scale Enterprise from Ertl's 3-ship Star Trek set (the set also included a D-7 and a Bird of Prey). The saucer and nacelles were the easy part: all I changed was the bridge and A/B deck shapes, and repositioned the pylons so they would correctly join the tops of the nacelles. For the nacelles, I wanted to model a different type of warp engine, so I replaced the rear portion with a kitbashed combination of parts from my spares box (in case you're wondering, the cones came from a 1/72 Hind helicopter!)

The main hull was entirely scratchbuilt. I wanted to retain the basic shape of the existing Miranda design, but I didn't want it so complex that it might seem out-of-place next to the original Enterprise. The trick was to adhere to Matt Jeffries' TOS design ethos while reverse-engineering the design. For inspiration, I imagined the steps needed to reverse-engineer the Enterprise-A to the original TV version. The final step was the roll bar-mounted nav deflector, and a spare Star Wars display stand from my spares box.

I painted the ship in Model Master camouflage grey, and used variations of grey to weather it. Panel & grid lines were drawn in pencil, and decals were made using a series of PNT's 1/2500 alpha generic and Constitution Class decals.

The ship itself is named after the H.M.C.S. Bonaventure, the last aircraft carrier to serve Canada (she was retired from service in 1970). The hull number is derived from the real Bonaventure as well: the "18" is a nod to the Reliant's number, and the "22" is the hull number of the real "Bonny".

Image: Saucer port high

Image: Saucer starboard

Image: Saucer ventral

Image: Port clsoeup with nacelle

Image: Starboard closeup with nacelle