Egard is a brand I’m very familiar with, as I’ve reviewed a good number of their watches over the last year or two, and have had the opportunity to see their designs improve and mature. William Shatner is also someone I’m very familiar with, as my earliest SciFi memories are from watching reruns of Star Trek with my dad. For the past year, Shatner has worked with Egard’s founder, Ilan Srulovicz to create a timepiece that’s out of this world – the Passages.
Were it not for Shatner’s involvement in this particular model, this is a watch that would still, definitely, make me take notice. You can’t help but have your eye caught by the interestingly shaped case (officially, it measures in at 45mm). What makes this particular case more of a technical feat isn’t readily apparent – the domed sapphire crystal. As you might imagine, combining that case shape with a domed sapphire was no small feat – and it’s something I’m looking forward to checking out in person one day.
Under that domed crystal you’ve got another Egard signature – a dial that offers a variety of textures and finishes. On this particular dial, you’ve got a carbon fiber surface offsetting the two sub dials and the view into the balance wheel of the Miyota 8S27 automatic movement. While these sorts of variations can seem a little jarring in pictures, they generally work pretty well once you see them in steel, and have some time to acclimate to the layout.
With the sub dials, you have a fairly common small seconds display. What’s less common is that this is off-center. While I’d normally mark this down as throwing off the symmetry, it actually works well here. The overall cluster of the circles kind of defies normal symmetry rules to my eyes, and I’m surprisingly liking it. I also like the day/night indicator that they have. Here, they’ve designed photo-realistic discs to correspond to the sun and the moon, which are then coated with actual asteroid dust. Yes, Shatner’s watch is bringing the final frontier (space, for you non-Trek folks) right to your wrist… more »