In fact, I think he got the Ent-E made when AA had trouble. And I'm pretty sure AA had abandoned the idea of more Enterprise-era ships before DST was even involved. Not sure what happened with the interactivity thing, might have been cool.
DST did indeed get the Ent–E made when AA was having some serious issues with it and their company as a whole. (In part because of the chance they took with Enterprise, and Paramount's unwillingness to let them drop it sooner, but that's another story.) Art Asylum had abandoned the idea of more Enterprise–era ships by the time they moved to the Enterprise–A; they might have come back to ENT if the ratings had improved with season 4 which was popular with the fans who actually saw it, but by then they had other problems and ENT toys that weren't "Trek Tek" or ships were warming shelves, so they probably weren't going to chance another ENT release. As for the interactivity thing, supposedly Digger Mesh loved how Playmates' ships had individually controlled sounds, (just as many fans do,) but absolutely hated that they each required a visible button, (again, just as many fans do.) The workaround to this was going to be "touch–sensitive" parts of the ship, so that for example, touching the front of the saucer might fire phase cannons/torpedoes, touching another part of it might engage warp drive or impulse engines, and so on. Unfortunately, this concept proved to be too expensive for 2002, and the "bridge dome button" became the workaround. The interactivity was supposedly an idea that was played with around the same time as the touch–sensitive portions of the ship, but how it was supposed to work is a bit of a mystery. Supposedly one idea was to have ships somehow "recognize" sounds from another ship and respond with one of their own sounds, while another idea was more along the lines of early NFC or bluetooth for connectivity, but I'm not sure how far those ideas ever got before being dropped.
Art Asylum must have thought very early on that Enterprise wasn't selling and so any plans for more ships beyond the NX01 must have been dropped years before DST came into salvage what would have become a dead company and toy line.
The interactive feature would still be awesome! Having ship sounds and lights interact with another ship from an app on your smart phone or iPad would be awesome.
I don't understand all the bashing on the Romulan Bird of Prey... Like the Enterprise, the Bird of Prey is an iconic Star Trek ship! It's distinctive contemporary design and the beautiful bird graphic on the bottom are I think what sets that ship out from other alien ships in Star Trek. Is it my favourite? No, will I buy it? I'm not sure yet, I'm a TNG guy so my preference is on that era but it's not a bad choice for DST to deliver to fans.
1701D, I believe Art Asylum dropped plans for more ships from Enterprise before the show's third season; I do remember that Tim Brazeal was a frequent contributor the the Art Asylum message boards, and before launching SaveEnterprise, was one of the first people to point out just how close the show actually came to being cancelled in its second season, and I don't believe Art Asylum really released any new ENT merchandise during season three or four. Supposedly Paramount forced them to release even more than they wanted too when season two nosedived harder than season one and the toys just didn't sell, (nobody wanted anything from ENT,) and that ultimately contributed to Art Asylum's downfall as they never were able to quite recover from the loss they took with the show. The Enterprise–A was supposedly going to come out after the Enterprise–E before Art Asylum ran into issues with the latter ship, but both were chosen on the grounds that the "E" was popular and hadn't received a proper toy release in the past, and the "A" was popular and had never been released as a toy before at all. Both were an attempt to bring in people who weren't going to touch Enterprise, but who would touch the TOS movies and TNG, as well as DS9 and VOY.
I'm not going to lie, depending on how it would work, I would probably sink stupid money into the interactive feature as well if an iPod Touch and iPad would allow me to utilize it. A starship app that allowed the ships to interact with one another would be wickedly cool. Unfortunately, I fear it'd send the cost to the same level as engines for Lionel trains, and those are several hundred dollars a pop, even for the lower end ones.
I don't get the BoP bashing either, although I honestly think some of it is misdirected frustration at DST basically stating that they're not able to do a D'Deridex–class Warbird from TNG. (I understand the frustration, but I don't "get" taking it out on the BoP.) I also understand that the Romulan BoP is a relatively simplistic design, but I agree that it's iconic, and I'm happy to replace my Playmates BoP with a DST BoP on a shelf that's increasingly becoming DST ships. (Once the Romulan BoP comes out, I just need a TNG–era Klingon BoP to replace the Playmates one from GEN, a Defiant, and a Voyager, and I'll have converted my Playmates display to DST. Heck, if DST does the Enterprise–C I'll move the alien ships to their own display and just do Federation ships mostly named Enterprise over my bed.) While the Romulan BoP isn't my favorite ship either, (I'm more of a TNG, and even more of a VOY or TNG–VOY guy myself as well,) I'm still going to buy it. I actually think that's another part of the reason why there's animosity toward this particular ship. It's not that fans don't want it, it's that there are other ships they want first, both Federation and alien, and they're viewing this as "obstructing" one of those releases, for lack of a better term. Personally I'm happy to have it, but I'm also happy to hear that Chuck might have a way to bring me a Borg Cube, and would love to hear that the next ship will be the Enterprise–C or Voyager, or pretty much any of the ships we've asked for that DST has denied will be the next ship after the Romulan BoP. I guess you can call me one of DST's happy customers when it comes to the Romulan BoP, and that's coming from someone whose not even a huge TOS fan.
