REVIEW: 7065 Alien Mothership

[Dunjohn]

Woot-woot-woot-waddawadda. Woot-woot-woot-waddawadda. Woot-woot-woot-waddawadda. Woot-woot-woot-waddawadda. The question of whether or not we are alone in the universe has been answered with weird, perplexing bleeping noises.

The Alien Mothership may not have a mass roughly one-fourth the size of our moon like the one in Independence Day but it's sure big enough to make a mess of my already ad-hoc photography setup. Try to ignore some of the more distracting backgrounds. I've badly photoshopped the worst of them.

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Set Name: Alien Mothership

Set Number: 7065

Theme: Alien Conquest

Year Released: 2011

Number of Pieces: 416

Minifigures: 2½

Price: €64.99 on release

Lego.com

Bricklink

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

The big, square box keeps to the green theme of the rest of the line. The entire city seems to be glowing with radioactivity.

The back throws spotlights on some of the set's play features and gives us a hint about how the invasion will eventually be defeated - GOD HIMSELF.

The Alien Commander clearly hates the new accessories-to-scale policy as much as I do.

The set contains two manuals of different sizes, which may be a pain in the neck for some people (I store mine according to size) and a rather modest sticker sheet.

Both manuals look substantially the same inside. The bigger one features one step per page. The smaller one contains four pages of multilingual safety stuff dealing with the sound brick.

The DSS has no major surprises on it. Unlike the Tripod and the Abduction sets, there aren't any comedy bumper stickers here. I didn't apply these to the finished model, I rarely ever do.

THE PARTS

The box also contains three numbered bags, one non-numbered bag and eight loose train track parts. The train tracks are 6-wide (or 4-wide at the wheel, I don't own any train sets so I'm not sure of the terminology) and made of solid plastic. They've only ever appeared in one set before - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - but they were dark grey in that.

Here are a few of the more interesting bits. Eight purple mudguards - I have sooo many of those now - and a few purple studs is all the purple in the set. It's actually a very scarce colour in the theme, and appears in less than a dozen different brick types throughout the line. There's the sound brick, push the orange thing in and it makes the campy bleepy noises that suit the theme so well. Those 2-wide curved bricks are brand new, and exclusive to this set (one of the Cars 2 sets has them in light blue). 1-wide versions have existed for years so I don't see them as a particularly useful addition to the catalogue. I suppose the company can put 2-wide stickers on them, but it doesn't happen in this set.

Some more interesting stuff in the transparent categories. The 8-wide dome appears only in this set and in the Abduction one. The 1x4 trans light blue tiles made their debut in last year's Portal of Atlantis set. There's a couple in this theme's Jet-Copter set, but the twenty-four we have here makes this set the best one to get if you need them. The trans neon yellow stuff has all been seen before but it's all good.

Couple of saucer sections and curved bricks.

The set has a small Technic element with these parts being the most specialised. The large black and grey parts fit together to form a "H"-shaped spinning unit. The small black ball fits onto the end of a Technic rod and acts as a knob. It's mainly seen in Bionicle but has been breaking into System sets in the last six months or so.

And here's the rest of the stuff, all basic parts that most people should be used to.

Here we have the foolhardy reporter. I love the unorthodox hairstyle, the stereotypical image of this character type would have flowing blonde or brown hair but I've enough of those hairpieces.

The reporter's clipboard is dripping with detail and looks great, even if it breaks the unwritten rule about partially-obscuring words that end with "-ck." It doesn't have many applications outside of Alien Conquest. The red handwriting, and the fact that the reporter brought a microphone up to the roof of a tall building, suggests that being abducted is what she's after all along.

Here we have His Disgusting Horribleness himself, the Alien Commander. The torso printing is excellent, but it's front-only. I also like the head; some of his minions push things a little far but his facial proportions look just right. Seeing villains with eye scars is starting to get a bit old, though. The tentacles are obviously on loan from Atlantis.

His Tentacly Revoltingness' head is made up of three elements. The green brain could become quite a fashion statement. It's built onto a trans-green head which slots over... wait a second... trans-green head.... Dear Lord! Those God-awful Mars Mission aliens are trying to get back into Lego! Somebody stop them!!

Lastly, we have the alien head clinger. I've recycled this image from the Tripod review because they're identical.

THE BUILD

To begin construction of his majestic flagship, His Cackling Hideousness gathers his best, smartest and most colour-blind engineers to build the the saucer's cockpit module.

A few steps later, some rimming is added and the handle is installed.

A second layer of rimming is added. The single control stick is there, but kinda hard to see. Ah, the idiot-proof spaceforce.

This quick and simple laser cannon is fixed to the front. Four more will later be added to the outer ring.

Finish the handle and canopy and add some antennae and that's the upper central module (and first manual) finished with.

The cockpit has enough room for His Slobbery Rottenness and his pet clinger, but as usual there's no place to put his pistol. I suppose you could jam it into one of those empty studs at the back. Four studs belonging to the bright yellow underbricks remain exposed, which is really sloppy.

Here's a quick comparision with the saucer from the Abduction set. Slightly smaller, less detailed, inverted colour scheme but otherwise very similar.

Flip open Volume 2 and we start on the outer ring. Here it is a few steps in with the Reporter to give a sense of scale.

Then the arms are added and a couple of round black plates are attached to act as supports. They're only relevant during construction, as the final model has a central column in the middle that supports the whole thing.

Add some detail to the ring....

Add some more detail... the construction experience kinda grinds to a snail's pace during this bit, having to do all this stuff four times around the ring left me praying that each page turn will let me finally start on the central module.

And here it is. It houses pretty much all of the set's play features - the sound brick, the claw and the spinning mechanism.

The sound brick is built up like so...

And slotted in like so.

Here's how the claw's arm is constructed.

The claw itself is straightforward.

That's attached to the side.

The whole unit is attached to the underside and locked in place with the large black Technic thing.

Now, when I attach the two Technic parts together and spin the ring, the red part on the underside of the cockpit will repeatedly hit the sound brick switch. The two technic parts do not separate easily once connected.

Add some fins to the outer ring and the ship is finished! Time for humanity to roll over and play tasty.

Not that many spare parts, though the long antenna is unusual. That green plate had me worried, they don't usually include spares of those, but I realized while typing this up that it's supposed to go on the claw's "palm."

The claw has good range and is very maneuverable. It's not exactly easy to grab a minifigure while holding the saucer up but kids'll manage.

It just about reaches up this high. Being positioned beneath one of the ring's beams is a slight restriction but it's not really meant for this anyhow.

IN CONCLUSION:

It's the most expensive alien set in Alien Conquest and, even if you know there's a lot of empty air inside the ring, its size certainly matches the price tag. Some people don't like the sound, others love it; I think it's great. Really old-fashioned and kooky, and just as improbable as everything in AC is supposed to be. The spinning mechanic is smooth, the ring is sturdy despite looking frail and the claw works well. The only real dowsides are the spartan cockpit design that feels unfinished (that's common to almost every AC set, but it's particularly bad in this case), and the very low minifigure count for a set this size.

Design: 9/10: It looks beautiful and the function matches the form. Everything works. The use of train tracks is good and well done, so while there's nothing amazingly clever and the various features are quite independent of each other, it all adds up to a quality model. It would have been a solid 10 if not for that cockpit.

Parts: 7/10: The two minifigures are great, but more would have been better. As with the other AC sets I own, the overall parts mix comes from the outer reaches of normal so there's nothing really remarkable. I've already mentioned that the new slope parts aren't exactly radical, and the purple elements border on useless. It's still a very good mix of parts that are found elsewhere, but not all at once.

Build: 8/10: Building the outer ring dragged a bit, but everything else was fine.

Playability: 9/10: It can be awkward to handle but the considerable array of features will usually distract from that fact.

Price: 8/10: I'm not so good at gauging sets of this size since I rarely stray beyond €50, but minifigures aside, I think it's alright.

Total: 86%: It's certainly the most eye-catching set in the theme and it has the playability to match those first impressions.

Thanks for reading!

Some planets were a lot easier to conquer

- Dunjohn

Edited June 2, 2011 by Dunjohn

[Rumble Strike]

Top class review as always! Very useful to see the comparison between the alien saucer and the mothership saucer. Any chance of a shot of the two with the mothership completed?

Love the last pic

[Dunjohn]

Here's a quick photo of the three sets I've done:

[Rumble Strike]

The scale of it is pretty impressive then! Thank you for the pic!

Edited May 29, 2011 by Rumble Strike

[Aanchir]

Great review! I was very interested to see the Technic turntable piece which is used-- I had thought that version had been discontinued in favor of the studless version, but it seems that isn't the case. Doesn't bother me one bit-- that's one part where the studless version is incredibly frustrating to incorporate into System. I was kind of unsure about how I liked the claw, but seeing this review it seems amazing. This won't be the first set I get if I end up collecting this theme, but it's certainly nicely-designed.

[prateek]

Nice review. Even though this set is the Flagship, I don't really like it. The design looks okay from afar, but close up it's not that great. And that sound brick is annoying!

[Ceroknight]

Thank you for the review!

I need to find some shopping time to get these!

[RoryoCox]

Although I'm not to fond of this new theme I find some of the sets interesting. This being one of those few. It makes a nice change from the normal chase style small vehicles and TLG have really pulled the shape of the UFO off. The train track pieces make for a good technique and overall I think this is a fine little set.

Thanks for the Great review Dunjohn, Really makes me want to get this now.

[Bfahome]

Wait, the commander and cyborg have three-piece heads? Why is like no one talking about this? That's cool!

Anyway thanks for the step-by-step, I was wondering how some of this went together.

[Gregorovich]

Thanks for the great review, Dunjohn!

I like this set, but there's a lot of room for improvement. First of all, two minifigures in a set of that price? Yes, the two of them are great, but there should be more. There should at least be an ADU trooper, and another civillian would be nice. Also, the ship just seems so bare. It's just a frame with a cockpit, not a mothership. There should be something in between the cockpit and the outer ring, like rooms or a docking station for smaller crafts. And the room we did get is too empty - there's nothing in it!

Thanks again!

[Vindicare]

I do like this set, especially that reporter. I agree, it's a bit sparse and small for a mothership. My TRU still doe ant have this though, or the smallest set.

[user]

Here's a quick photo of the three sets I've done:

Haha! I literally cracked up at that rage face on the guy in the corner. That's hilarious.

[Vindicare]

I was thinking...to make this thing more mothership-y, you could stick the little ship from 7049 Alien Striker on those 4 2xXX however longs. To portray a kind of docking bay. Also, it may not look too bad, aesthetically.

[Lordofdragonss]

The fearless girl reporter who wants interview the aliens is amazing character! Don't you agree?

The ship looks great- it's big, colorfull and... it make noises! I love sound it makes!

Edited June 5, 2011 by Lordofdragonss

[Ogre]

Great review. Love the last pic!

My complaints about this set:

1) too sparse on the minifigs...more required for the set size and price

2) ship is WAY too small for a 'mothership'...lose some of the 'open air' and expand the cockpit size

An 'alien mothership' is supposed to be where all the other alien vehicles are carried and disembark from. Obviously, there is NO WAY IN HECK that's going to happen with THIS dinky little ship. Very disappointing.

Love the figs though.

[fieldbricks]

Nice review. Love the comic at the end. I was wondering, does the brain piece of the commander (or android) fall off when you turn its head? The brain on mine tends to loosen up and eventually fall off. I was wondering who else had the same problem.