LEGO Star Trek: USS Enterprise NCC-1701 Bridge 11385 Set Review
Growing up in the age of Star Wars prequels and Doctor Who revivals, where Star Trek seemed to be at its least popular, I had little exposure to the franchise as a kid aside from a vague knowledge of Spock, a guy with pointy ears who said “Live Long and Prosper”. Even when the J.J. Abrams movies came out I had fairly limited interest in the franchise. When it attempted its grand return in the streaming age with Discovery, I gave it another go and quickly abandoned it. It wasn’t until Lower Decks that I truly enjoyed a Star Trek show, quickly followed by Strange New Worlds on the live action side. But honestly, I don’t think it was until building this set that I became a real Star Trek fan, watching the old movies while assembling a bridge both familiar and new. The concept of LEGO Star Trek still feels so strange to me, Star Wars and Star Trek under the same company, but as LEGO expands to anime, The X-Files, Tintin, and more, it’s hard for anything to feel truly out of place. This is now the second set in the line, the first being the full Enterprise-D, from The Next Generation, and I can’t think of a better next option for the line and celebration of the franchise’s 60th Anniversary than a close up of the most iconic location of the franchise in its original iteration, complete with the cast of Star Trek: The Original Series.
The set captures probably the two most iconic locations within the original Enterprise; the bridge, and the transporter room. The set is packed full of easter eggs which I am nowhere near enough of a Star Trek fan to recognise all of. It wouldn’t shock me if each individual screen had been pulled from a specific episode. Even the piece count, 1701, matches the registry number of the Enterprise itself. There’s so much clear care put into the design of this set throughout. The bright, vibrant colours, making great use of the new reddish orange colour, do a great job of capturing the 60s feel, especially with the many, many stickers.
I mean seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a set with so many stickers. As a LEGO fan, you have to get used to them, but there are two particular issues with the stickers here that really annoy me: when there are more than 2 stickers of the same type (in this case multiple of at least 5), and when the sticker doesn’t fully fill the brick, making alignment particularly difficult. I’d assume the reflective nature of the stickers is partially the reason, but it makes it no less frustrating and there is still a second large sheet of non-shiny stickers. There are some delightful details on the stickers though, the scanning array of a Gorn, rendered on the sticker in LEGO style is just one of those details I loved.
The set does struggle a little from an identity crisis. It’s an 18+ set costing £159.99/$199.99, which you would expect to leave it solely as a display piece like so much of LEGOs recent output, a set aimed solely at adults, which makes sense for a 60th Anniversary celebration. Despite that, the set is filled with surprisingly many play features, suggesting a younger target range. The most notable of the play features is the modular nature of the set, with several elements designed to be rearrangeable to fit any shelf. These are largely pretty good, with pin connectors or clips, but for some reason the section of the bridge with the captains chair is held by a side-by-side 2 stud connection, giving it next to zero sticking power and leading it to fall apart at the slightest nudge. There’s no real constraints at the placement of this part of the bridge that could explain this, just poor design.
The rest of the play features work a lot better, the elevator door design is inspired and one of the coolest I’ve ever seen, and leaving the captain’s chair on a ball joint is a very fun touch to add extra detail. The rotating transporter bays, intended to show a “beaming up” effect, are probably the best interpretation in such a limited scale with a simple rotation. Unfortunately, the mechanism itself is a little flimsy – the two sides feel slightly out of sync and if any bricks are even a little out of place then it will get caught. That leads me to the biggest issue of all, how flimsy the thing is. If you’re building this set on anything but a superflat, rotatable surface, you’re probably going to have some issues anytime you pick it up to move it or rotate it. The floor may look fancy with its semi-circular design but the cost is that the segments pop out far too easily. Once you get it on your shelf it looks great, but it certainly won’t hold together under heavy play.
Onto the figures, and while I’m no means an expert, this feels like a fairly complete cast of the Enterprise to me, the only real additions I could imagine would be an enemy alien or two, but that doesn’t really fit the set. The figures obviously share a lot of pieces with 5 brand new torsos between the 8 figures, 2 of which have new dual-molded, printed legs, and the other 6 with unprinted black legs. While some way to capture the boots on the uniforms would’ve been cool, plain black legs still work very well. The “jumpers” and dresses are all perfect adaptations of the looks from the series.
While I’m not 100% on which faces are new or not here, I believe the majority are, and the set even comes with a brand new hair piece for Spock too, which feels almost strange after years of seeing the Wonder Twins hairpiece used for customs. There were 2 odd choices in the figures to me: the very generic face used for Chekov, one LEGO fans will recognise from being used for actors such as Paul Rudd, Tom Holland, and Pedro Pascal, and the use of the classic smooth hair piece for Bones that used to be worn everyone but now only makes an appearance or two a year, this time in one of LEGOs newer shades of brown. Honestly though ,after looking at the actors, both seem like pretty good picks.
I don’t want to dive too deep into the build itself to preserve some surprises, but there’s a lot to love here, both to look at and in building techniques. The screens and consoles are really smartly assembled and the way they capture the slight angle while not having too much wobble is great. We even get some printed pieces for the consoles themselves, which is good since there are 4 control bays. While the floor may fall apart a little too much when moved about, the way the set captures the semi-circular design with minimal gaps is great, circles have never been LEGOs greatest strength, but the strides in recent years are great. It’s also got some of the best hidden levers for playsets I’ve seen.
While the build itself can be a little flimsy at times and requires a few too many stickers, there are some fantastic techniques in place on this great set that’s clearly a love letter to Star Trek: The Original Series and serves as a fantastic celebration of its 60th Anniversary. It’s an essential display piece for any fan of Star Trek with LEGO capturing the likeness of both characters and the ship interior itself as well as they have. I hope this isn’t the end of the LEGO Star Trek theme as this set shows just how full of potential it is.
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