LEGO Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 Bridge 11385 – Part 3
What was supposed to be a two-part mission has officially become Part 3 of two. The Enterprise is still in spacedock, bags ten through fourteen are waiting, and tonight there is only one acceptable outcome: finish the bridge.
After two evenings of missing pieces, technical problems, back pain and enough stickers to test anyone’s commitment to Starfleet, we’re finally approaching the command chair. Assuming, of course, that no essential grey component vanishes beneath the desk first.
🖖 About the Build
This special LEGO build celebrates Star Trek’s 60th anniversary with set 11385, the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 Bridge. Across 1,701 pieces, the set recreates the original Enterprise bridge, complete with crew stations, turbolift, viewscreen, captain’s chair and a separate transporter room.
It’s a fantastic excuse to build, talk Star Trek and gradually bring one of science fiction’s most recognisable locations to life—although I still have several opinions about the quantity of stickers.
🚀 Where We Are in the Journey
Parts 1 and 2 got us through bags one to nine. The main circular deck was complete, the outer bridge structure was taking shape, and two rear consoles had already been installed.
Over the weekend I also found the tweezers, dismantled the sections that needed attention and finally applied all the stickers we’d deliberately avoided on stream. I even opened the remaining bags, stickered the required pieces in advance and put everything back ready for tonight.
The difference was enormous. Those previously blank consoles finally looked like Enterprise control stations.
⚙️ What Happens in This Episode
Bag ten began with Uhura, complete with magnificent 1960s hair, as we returned to a bridge that looked considerably different from where we had left it. Over the weekend I had finally found my tweezers and dealt with the stickers we had deliberately avoided during the first two streams. That involved dismantling some of the completed sections, applying the missing stickers, opening the remaining bags to find anything that would need decorating later, carefully stickering those pieces in advance, and then putting everything back ready for tonight. The difference was enormous: the previously blank consoles finally looked like Enterprise control stations, and we could get on with building rather than stopping every few minutes to fight another sticker.
We still had bags ten through fourteen ahead of us, and I was not entirely convinced that we would finish them all. This had originally been planned as a two-stream build, but the heat from the studio lights and my increasingly unhappy back had already pushed us into a third night. Looking through the remaining instructions revealed that we still had the final two outer consoles, the turbolift entrance, viewscreen, central navigation and helm console and Kirk’s captain’s chair to construct. There was enough there that Part 4 did not seem completely impossible.
Fortunately, we found a much faster rhythm almost immediately. Normally, I work through LEGO instructions by checking the little box showing the components needed for each stage, finding all of those pieces and laying them out before beginning. This time we left everything in one large pile and simply picked out the highlighted components as we needed them. It sounds like a minor change, but it made the whole process considerably quicker, and the first section of the evening moved along at a surprisingly steady pace.
The final two consoles completed the bulk of the back section of the bridge, while the opposite side continued the clever corridor effect built into the rear of the model. With the stickers now in place, those workstations had far more character than they did during Part 2. Uhura could finally take her place at communications alongside the other stations, although getting everyone to remain at their posts was another matter entirely.
There were quite a few escape attempts during the evening. Minifigures and individual components repeatedly fell onto the floor, which meant trying to manoeuvre around the very small space beneath the desk without disturbing the cameras, cables and everything else required for the stream. Initially, the plan was to leave some of the fallen crew down there until the build was finished. Once we were already crawling around recovering other pieces, though, there seemed little point leaving anybody behind, so Dr McCoy was finally rescued from beneath the desk after spending most of Part 2 missing in action.
The search for tiny LEGO components continued on top of the desk as well. L-shaped pieces, flat grey sections and various other bits repeatedly vanished into the pile or blended into the surroundings, usually appearing somewhere obvious after we had spent several minutes looking for them. As established during the previous streams, this was clearly Gary’s fault. #blameGary therefore remained the approved explanation for disappearing components, incorrectly oriented pieces and most other unexplained engineering failures.
Chat was not particularly sympathetic about the build becoming a trilogy. FlyingFox21 accused me of deliberately milking it by stretching the Enterprise into a third stream, while Mr Smith compared the strategy to GTA V. Megxta’s arrival led us into another LEGO discussion after she asked how many pieces were in the set. The answer is 1,701, deliberately matching the NCC-1701 registry number of the Enterprise, which is a nice little detail in the design.
That conversation expanded into the other LEGO waiting around here, including the entire LEGO City collection I won in a competition about ten years ago and still have not built. We were moving house at the time, so the collection went into storage and has essentially remained there ever since. There are other large sets waiting as well, and after spending three nights leaning across this Enterprise, the increasingly obvious conclusion is that before tackling too many of them I probably need a bigger table.
That problem became more noticeable as the bridge expanded. Reaching the far side without leaning over finished sections became increasingly awkward, and pieces occasionally made a run for freedom. At one point we were back underneath the desk trying to work out how far something had travelled after falling from the table. This would have been an ideal moment for Gary to make himself useful; being a leprechaun, he could presumably have just run underneath and retrieved it.
Once the final outer consoles were complete, we moved on to the turbolift entrance, and for a while it was going remarkably well. The first side went together, the mechanism began taking shape and it looked as though we might get through one of the larger remaining sections without a major incident.
Then we installed the second turbolift door.
It immediately felt wrong. The door was not being held securely, the sliding action did not line up properly and the opposing side was beginning to distort as well. I went backwards and forwards through the instructions several times trying to find a missing piece or skipped step before eventually realising that part of the sliding-door mechanism had simply been installed in the wrong orientation.
Unfortunately, by then it was surrounded by the rest of the assembly.
We very carefully pried the mechanism apart without dismantling everything around it, rotated the offending component and worked the pieces back into position. Once it was corrected, the entire section suddenly behaved exactly as it should. The second door moved properly, the strange distortion affecting the opposite side disappeared, and the completed turbolift assembly slid neatly onto the back of the main bridge.
With that crisis resolved, we moved to the main viewscreen, which turned out to be the least structurally reassuring part of the entire evening. Until the final frame locks everything together, the assembly relies on several angled and hinged sections that do not feel particularly secure. I still think there were better ways LEGO could have designed that part of the construction.
While trying to press the pieces together, one side shattered.
Several components immediately disappeared beneath the desk, sending us back down among the cables to recover them. Once those had been found, we tried rebuilding the damaged section, only for one of the other angled pieces at the front—mounted on little hinge mechanisms—to fall out as well. At that point there was not much value in trying to patch individual bits back into place. We effectively dismantled most of the viewscreen and started that section again.
The second attempt involved carefully pushing the sides together, rebuilding the outer frame and trying not to put too much pressure on any single connection. Once the top piece finally went on, the entire structure suddenly became secure. The finished viewscreen was perfectly solid; getting it to that point was the problem.
The central navigation and helm console decided it also wanted a turn. Some additional pieces had to be attached above the console, and realistically the instructions would have been much kinder if they had told us to install those before connecting the assembly to the main structure. Trying to press them onto an overhang while everything was already fitted proved awkward enough that the whole console eventually snapped apart.
Luckily, this collapse was considerably easier to recover from. We slid the sections back together and continued, only to reach the end with two pieces still sitting on the table. Since they were the only unexplained components remaining, it was fairly easy to work out that we had missed a step. Going back through the manual revealed the exact point: in the distraction immediately after the console broke, we had skipped a piece that belonged on the front.
Even with the major structures finished, the Enterprise was not quite done trying to hide things from us. The pivot point for Captain Kirk’s chair was one of the final components required for the entire build, and naturally it disappeared.
We searched the remaining pile, checked around the model and went through the desk area without finding it. Eventually we discovered what had happened: the piece had rolled underneath the instruction manual, found the gap beside the spine and then escaped onto the floor. Against the carpet it was barely visible. Once recovered, it immediately tried to make another journey toward the edge of the table, so this time I kept it firmly in my hand until I was sitting down and ready to install it.
With that final component safely under control, Kirk’s chair could finally be completed. The remaining minifigures and details were assembled, the central navigation and helm section was ready, and all the major pieces we had been building separately could at last come together. Kirk’s central section, the outer consoles, the turbolift, the viewscreen and the transporter room were carefully connected until, after three streams and fourteen bags, the LEGO U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 Bridge was finally complete.
There was only one thing left to do.
Since introducing the DJI Pocket 4P camera, I had wanted to use the gimbal to get right down inside the finished model rather than simply holding the Enterprise up to a fixed camera. We rearranged things in OBS, detached the gimbal from its normal position and moved it around the set at almost minifigure height, giving everyone a close-up look around the bridge as though we were walking through it ourselves.
That final tour was also the first opportunity to properly appreciate how much the stickers had changed the finished set. The consoles now had all of their screens and controls, the bridge crew were at their stations, the turbolift had its shiny details, the viewscreen was finally where it belonged, and the transporter room sat alongside the completed bridge with Scotty and its spinning mechanism intact.
The plan is to make a better version of that walkthrough away from the live setup and put it together as a YouTube Short and TikTok video. I may even add some original-series Star Trek sound effects; I still have the original-series sound-effects CD that I transferred into my iTunes library many years ago, and throughout this build I could practically hear those old bridge sounds while putting the consoles together.
My opinion of the finished set remained much the same as it had throughout the build. I really like the design and the completed Enterprise bridge looks excellent, particularly once all of those decorated panels are in place. The stickers are still the biggest weakness. They transform the model, but on a premium licensed set I would have preferred far more of those important console pieces to be printed.
By the time we finished, the studio was once again becoming ridiculously hot beneath the lights. The modern LED panels are nowhere near as bad as my original studio lights, which used to turn the room into something approaching a sauna, but three evenings leaning over a large LEGO set has convinced me that future LEGO, board-game and model-building streams are probably better suited to the winter months.
For now, though, the mission is complete. What was supposed to take two streams became three, but the transporter works, the turbolift doors slide properly, the viewscreen survived its reconstruction, Kirk has his chair and the Enterprise bridge is finally ready for display. Normal programming resumes with Dysentery Simulator—or The Oregon Trail, as it is more commonly known.
We wrapped up by sending the crew onwards with a raid into RTUStreams. Until either another Star Trek LEGO set appears or we decide to tackle one of the other sets waiting in the collection, that brings this particular construction project to an end.
Three streams, fourteen bags, countless stickers and rather too many expeditions beneath the desk later, the Enterprise has finally left spacedock.
📺 Watch the Episode
See the final bags, collapsing viewscreen, elusive captain’s-chair component and completed Enterprise bridge in Part 3:
Watch LEGO Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 Bridge 11385 – Part 3
You can also visit Dr Ravenholm on YouTube. If you enjoy the build, give the video a like, leave a comment and subscribe.
Catch the whole construction journey in the LEGO Star Trek series playlist.
🔴 Join the Adventure Live
The bridge may finally be complete, but the next stream is never far away. Join us live on Twitch or YouTube for the next mission, whatever survives the schedule—and Gary.
🌌 Community & Links
The Enterprise has left spacedock, but the crew remains scattered across the wider network.
Live: Catch future streams and whatever goes wrong next on Twitch and YouTube.
Community: Join the conversation, share builds and stay connected through the Discord community.
Socials: Follow the signal on TikTok, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and X.
Support: If you’d like to support the channel, visit Fourthwall, Teespring or Streamlabs.
More: Listen on Spotify and Apple Music, or explore the Business Centre, service brochure, About Me and blog.
✨ Mission Complete
Three streams, fourteen bags, countless stickers and several expeditions beneath the desk later, the Enterprise bridge is finally complete.
Until the next build: live long and prosper—and perhaps keep the LEGO streams for winter.
— Dr Ravenholm
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