Lego 6893

6893 is a Lego set I have known by two names.  For some of the world it is called Orion II Hyperspace, and in America it is better known as the Galactic Starship.  Additionally, I've discovered another name for the set; Roboprobe Transporter...for once it sounds apt.



The ship is a three part vessel with a detachable middle seat that can serve as a distinct vessel.  The starship can be split into two space vehicles, a garage, and a ground robot car/transport.   Overall this set could reasonably support 4 Futuron Spacemen, giving you something to do with 6703 Minifig Pack.  This is the largest space ship in Futuron without the giant angled Space Station Windows. 

The first segment of 6893 is a two man carrier with matching moveable motorcycle style windows for stopping space lasers and asteroid dust.  It's a very open design compared to the other big Futuron space ships. The Futuron theme's standard black stripe accents are heavily used on this portion of the model across three separate parts.  While the stripes were merely accents on Classic space they were often the only consistent designed print across much of the Futuron range and go a long way towards representing the theme's austere color scheme.  Okay, okay, you've caught me, the arrow prints are equally present.  But then we would have to call it arrow-tron: onward to the future; or some other nonsense.

In the middle we've got a rocket chair with hefty controls for such a tiny seat.  It's by design just a bit unfinished looking when unpaired to the larger vessel, but it does give the overall model some nice accents with the white rockets, computer slope, and blue dishes.

The Two man carrier and command chair can each take over carrying the garage.  This thanks to careful design of the segments to ensure a snug fit.

The back Garage carries Rover inside.  Rover is a self propelled car that has two too small claws for examining who knows what.  He's got what appears to be a removable bot aboard as well as a handy set of wrenches, ahem, bigger, better claws for use by the spacemen, or for automated examination of crashed moon rocks, or destroyed Black-tron spaceships. 
The garage uses two of the octagon canopies for the walls as well as the octagonal wall clips to give the back section a cool globe look.  The biggest transparent piece sits atop the front of the garage and a door in the back drops down to let the rover roll out.  There are two transparent green pieces on the garage, making this one of the two Futuron sets to contain trans green as an accent color.

  

Arrow-tron! 

 

There's a spot for the spacemen to stand on rover, although he appears to not have any controls.  Perhaps he is to be operated via the middle chair's oversized controls?  Once again he's got a striped print.

The garage design was heavily borrowed from for a later starship in Blacktron Future Generation's main base 6988 Alpha Centauri Outpost.  I consider that Blacktron spaceship, as seen to the left in this image, to be a slightly better design, but the sameness of the Blacktron II cockpits across that theme means Orion II Hyperspace stands out better by having a unique front and middle design.

This is one of Futuron's most iconic spacecraft, as it struck out in a new direction with its design, and was never truly copied in whole.  It still feels refreshingly different after all the many iterations of Space that Lego has put out over the years, and I can't fault anyone who considers this to be their favorite Lego set. It really is a wonderful toy.

I suppose we should get to the parts now.

Here's an exciting piece.  The part itself is actually pretty common, but the print, while well used, only appeared on this piece in one set.  That's right.  This part and print combo is a Galactic Starship/Orion II Hyperspace exclusive.  There are two of them, and they are a great addition to the collection.

While it may not look like much, this piece here is quite special.  It is the rarest color variant for the 2x2 standard axle plate.  11 parts are available across the entire Lego production history; primarily within town.  In the entire space theme these two pieces are all we've got.

 
Here we have a holdover from classic space brought in for one use in Futuron.  It's a nice window.  This was its last transparent entry in the space theme, and for the original space ship canopy it was a fitting sendoff.  The transblue window's next and last appearance in a set was 11 years later in 1998 for the then new theme Res-Q before it was retired for good.
The piece appeared in the space theme once more when M-tron came out in 1990.

While not especially interesting this part does represent the scarce use of trans green within Futuron.  The only other example being 6770 Light and Sound Magma Carrier.  The part here is different, albeit also available in white and trans red throughout the theme.  To some degree the use of trans green parts in this line feels confused as if blue would have been a more apt choice, but that was the designers call, I am merely making an observation.

This piece is the original variant of the octagonal window, which was updated in 1994 for Spyrius to allow for a technic axle to go through the top of it, or a minfig tool.  The original white version appeared in 1 castle set that was issued twice (Knight's Challenge), and two space sets from 1987.  One of those space sets was Polaris 1 Spacelab, which looked very similar to the futuron theme with its color scheme, but belonged to classic space.  The final entry for this piece was with the axle hole in the Star Wars Tantive IV  There are 11 of these parts available across the five sets including the repeated castle sets.  All in all a very desirable selection of sets, and a very nice piece.

I've brought these together because they work in unity, there are two of each and Galactic Starship/ Orion II Hyperspace has the black color to the exclusion of Futuron's other sets.  These are fairly common otherwise, although given the Lego group's current fondness for clickity hinges these are no longer in production. 

 

 That's a grand total of 13 pieces which Galactic Starship/Orion II Hyperspace brings to the Futuron collection.  All in all, an excellent showing.

And now for a selection of alternate models.

This thing carries a robot inside it.  I would liken its movement to that of a crater jumper.  It jettisons upward and lands somewhere else.  Kind of weird, but cool all at the same time.

The token transport rover and scooter.

This is a great little surface speeder that could fly either way.  And of course I had to give it a robot.

Here's a space fighter.  It's got a very quirky look due to my shortcuts to integrate the octagon canopy.

If I keep up at this rate there will be nothing left to build.  As it stands the set has a few parts that are big, namely the octagon windows and frames.  These gave me some trouble given the Futuron theme's heavy reliance on plates.  The set has a nice selection of parts with decent part repetition to provide many intriguing options.  I kept building new things because unlike a certain Aero Module... it was a fun set of pieces to work with.  This is a well balanced assortment of parts and colors.

Final Grade: A
Pros: Two colors of Spacemen, lots of printed parts, lots of transparent parts, excellent main model, varied part and color pallete
Cons: Hard to find