The Excelsior made it's debut in the the third Star Trek film the Search for Spock, and had a few upgrades and a bigger role (And new Captain) the the sixth film The Undiscovered Country. The modifications between films as I understand were very minor. The first Saucer top had a blue and grey pattern, later replaced with a blue and gold pattern (mistakenly painted grey on the box art), and one big reactor, which where swapped for 2 smaller versions. One more that I can't confirm is the 2 fins, a few accounts said they were added to the new model, and others said they were made bigger, while one article said they were smaller, but with all the rivet counting aside, and believe me I've done plenty of that already, the box art depicts the Undiscovered Country Excelsior. The Search for Spock Excelsior also went under the name NX-2000 which was replaced with a NCC-2000. Why? I have no idea.
As I mentioned in my video review, Star Trek Generations opening scene featured the christing of the new Enterprise -B, it had a few new features like fins on the Warp nacelles, and bigger impulse engines on the saucer section and what I call "ribs" on the the lower hull, a nice looking ship, but what the studio did to build the Enterprise B was use the Excelsior model. AMT did the exact same thing destroying the molds to produce the Enterprise B. Making the Excelsior a rarer Star Trek kit. but wait, I've said rare, but I'm not saying it's a really, re-heally rare kit, they float around ebay quite a bit and are a bit higher in price, there are plenty more Star Trek kits out there that are rarer than this. And this one can usually be found for pretty good prices.
In an episode of Star Trek Voyager, they go back in time to visit the Excelsior under the command of Captain Sulu. For this episode they decided to build an completely new Excelsior model, but one tiny error, the swapped the light parts on the engines. On the Movie versions the top glowed blue, and the sides were black, in the Voyager episode the top was black and the sides glowed blue, a simple mistake that can easily be fixed by saying it's a later version of the Excelsior and they modified the engines, so there. But the kits has both these parts molded in clear plastic, so you can make your choice. It's just a weird happy coincidence.
Years ago I built the Polar Lights 1:350 Enterprise Refit and stumbled upon a picture of one next to a Garage kit of the Excelsior, and it was HUGE. After I got their 1:1000 Enterprise refit I wondered if anyone made an Excelsior kit, when I searched "1:1000 Excelsior" to my surprise the AMT kit cam up. Yes it's 1000th scale, typically AMT made Star Trek kits in all sorts of odd scales. So one day while searching on Kijiji I found a modeller in Nanton who was selling the kit. I made arrangments to pick it up and yahoo I've now got the Excelsior.
I want to start this one soonish, but I'm looking into some Aztecing decals and a lighting kit, and possibly some resin replacements. On it's own its still a pretty nice kit, and I really got a kick of seeing it's size compared to the Enterprise.
A rough measurement of the Polar Lights Enterprise next to the AMT Excelsior.
The Excelsior is around 19 inches, while the Enterprise is about 12.
