Another of Eaglemoss’ tiny Star Trek starships, the U.S.S. Intrepid proves that I’m a sucker for those “primitive” 22nd century ship designs, for here is another early Starfleet ship that flies alongside the NX-01 and the U.S.S. Franklin already in my collection.
Unlike the Eaglemoss ships in my little fleet, however, the Intrepid is far more representative of the company’s monthly offerings than the other ships, which were “special edition” releases. It’s a smaller replica than either of those (with a smaller price tag to boot) – to say this is a little piece of the 22nd century isn’t an error.
The Intrepid has an interesting pedigree, too.
The late ’70s were a fantastic time to be alive and to be a kid addicted to action figures. Once Kenner struck gold with Star Wars, the race to snag the license to the Next Big Thing was on, especially if it was a TV or movie license set in space. Mattel gave us Battlestar Galactica, Mego paid top rights for Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, The Black Hole and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and best of all, all of these figures were in more or less the same scale as Kenner’s venerable Star Wars range.
Funko had already made my action-figure-collecting year by finally putting Adam West-era Batman in the 3 3/4″ “Star Wars scale”, and they gave me a good chuckle by putting, of all things, Twin Peaks in the same format. Even though I knew they’d already snagged the license for Netflix’s ’80s-themed sci-fi-horror series Stranger Things, months of nothing but Funko’s Vinyl Pops had lulled me into thinking that action figures were highly unlikely.
The second coming of Star Trek, ten years after its cancellation, was a licensing goldmine for Paramount. Star Wars had already primed the public pump for science fiction, and Superman had proven that throwing a large budget and an existing, recognizable brand at that audience was a surefire recipe for success. Having already quietly cancelled a proposed second swipe at Trek on TV – a project so far along that sets had been constructed and scripts for half a season’s worth of episodes had been written – Paramount decided to take those sets, and the movie-length pilot script, and go large with it. The result was Star Trek: The Motion Picture… but who should the new Star Trek adventure be marketed to? 
That’s not The Three Doctors, but rather the third Doctors. After displaying prototypes at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con, Character Options followed up that year’s Comic Con exclusive first and second Doctors with the Doctor’s third incarnation, as played by Jon Pertwee from 1970 through 1974. Setting a pattern that continues through the most recent limited-edition classic Doctor Who figures, U.K. distribution was exclusively handled by Forbidden Planet, with FP’s U.S. arm, Underground Toys, taking care of North American distribution. 
The end of 2011 saw a sudden glut of classic series figure sets released by Character Options; common sense would seem to dictate that these were intended to attract last-minute Christmas shoppers, but in most areas they arrived too late for Christmas 2011. Some of these sets, rather predictably, landed in the Tom Baker era. This isn’t to imply a bias on Character’s part – there’s simply more of Tom Baker’s era than there is of any other Doctor’s reign, though Character does have an established bias toward masked characters so they don’t have to pay an actor for his likeness. 