The Kross X Studio Death Star Ultimate Collector Set Tourbillon
“Fear will keep the local systems in line – fear of this battle station.” – Grand Moff Tarkin, A New Hope
Here at A Watch A Week, we often celebrate the brands and the watches that represent traditional high end fine watchmaking at its best. From Cartier to Rolex to Grand Seiko to Patek, and beyond, we like to think that we present as diverse a cornucopia of the most elevated haute horlogerie timepieces conceivable, and in doing so, foreground the profound and movingly elegant traditions which have made fine watches the objects of adoration, covetousness, and appreciation which they are today. However, there are also those watches which represent not only a shuffling-off of the constraints of tradition, but which outright revel in their outrageousness and the extent to which they show that sometimes, it’s better to not ask why, but why not. Such a watch is the star of this week’s A Watch A Week: the Kross X Studios Death Star Ultimate Collector Set tourbillon and as those great icons and disruptors of the art of comedy, Monty Python’s Flying Circus used to say, “now for something completely different.”
There are a lot of different ways to go if you want to include visual references to icons of popular culture. One way is to simple allude to them without actually using any concrete elements of those icons (which gives anyone who gets what you’re referencing the pleasure of being in on the joke). Another strategy, which is trickier for several reasons, is to get in touch with the owners and makers of the icon in question and work out an actual collaboration. This can present some challenges in terms of sticking close enough to the icon to make the relationship a delight to its fans but also making a free enough interpretation that your own identity is not obscured.
A recent case in point is the Audemars Piguet collaboration with Marvel, which has put microscopically detailed miniatures of the Black Panther and of Spiderman front and center in a couple of tourbillon watches and which have drawn both praise and fire, as, unsurprisingly, superhero figurines and fine watchmaking seem like an odd couple (my personal take is that at least sociologically, anthropologically and symbolically, it makes a lot of sense, especially for AP as it exists today, although I would probably have serious reservations if Lange were to cook up something like that).
Another approach is to just lean as hard as you can into the project and make something that is not only faithful to the icon in question, but which embraces it as wholeheartedly as possible on both a technical and design level. Firmly in the latter camp is a watch which is perhaps the ultimate Star Wars collectible short of scoring the original Luke Skywalker lightsaber prop from A New Hope, which is what we have in the Kross X Studio Death Star Ultimate Collector Set Tourbillon.
The watch was launched (or maybe constructed in zero gravity in orbit around Geonosis) by Kross X Studio in 2021 and it may have been something you missed the first time around, so now’s your chance to make things up to yourself. The Death Star Tourbillon is a large watch, at 45mm x 20mm, and I’m not going to put myself in the position of using the time-worn phrase “surprisingly wearable” but I think it is worth pointing out that given the inspiration, it could have been a hell of lot impractically bigger and that there are any number of modern sports and diving watches which approach and even reach similar dimensions.
All that, and we haven’t even gotten to the main event yet. The dial is dominated by a central tourbillon with a cage shaped like the original, planet-destroying Death Star (“Alderaan tested, Empire approved!”) which rotates once per minute and has a disk resembling the firing aperture for Death Star’s super-laser, including a central green dot. The hour hand is in the shape of the Imperial-class Star Destroyer seen first in the opening moments of A New Hope and the minute hand, with a little more room to stretch out, is a miniature of the Executor-class Super Star Destroyer (well, for the detail-minded enthusiasts among you, the Executor-class Star Dreadnought, brought to you by those hard-working folks at Kuat Drive Yards) and the former is carried on an assembly of satellite gears that lend a fine, fanatically mechanistic touch to the proceedings.
The peripheral ring duplicates the lighting panels found in the interior of the original Death Star, whose eye-straining contrast is proof if we needed any, that the Galactic Empire, in sweeping away the last remnants of the Old Republic, also swept away its human resources department.
The movement is the caliber KS 7 000, with a five day power reserve and the base caliber powers Kross X Studios other tourbillons as well, including the Space Jam: A New Legacy tourbillon. Although it’s obvious at first glance that this is a central tourbillon it’s worth pointing out that historically, central tourbillons have been pretty rare – Beat Haldimann makes them, and Omega enthusiasts will be aware that there is a De Ville central tourbillon as well.
On top of everything else, the Death Star tourbillon comes with a slew of other delightful collectibles. The watch and other goodies come in a carrying case (with a control panel sporting working lights and switches) which is a replica of the kyber crystal case seen in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (fans will recall that kyber crystals are the heart of lightsabers, but were retconned in Rogue One as a critical power source for the Death Star’s superweapon). The interior of the case has storage capsules for the tourbillon, a replica of a kyber crystal from the film, and extra straps, as well as additional capsules just in case you have extra kyber crystals lying around and your significant other has been on you to declutter your lightsaber workshop.
You don’t buy something like this without being a Star Wars superfan, I imagine, and while it’s ingeniously crafted and constructed, you will probably work to understand its appeal unless you are. But for the Star Wars collector as well as for the serious sci-fi paraphernalia collector, this is one hell of a lot of and dare I say, if you have the credits, a must-have.
We’re all major Star Wars fans in my family, albeit my older son has never really forgiven Disney for retconning the Extended Universe out of existence, and I remember many years ago, he’d fallen in love with a classic sci-fi interstellar space combat game called Homeworld. We found out that one of our favorite online sellers of collectibles had a good-sized model of the mothership from the game, complete with engines lit up by LEDs. I was waffling about the price although I did want it pretty badly myself, when the kid said, with real feeling, “But Dad … the engines light up.” Next thing I knew my credit card was in my hand as if by magic. If you’ve ever had that feeling that something is so cool, you simply must have it (I have a lot more Battlestar Galactica collectibles than any reasonable adult should) then the Kross X Studio Death Star Ultimate Collectible Set – with tourbillon! – could be jumping to hyperspace and into your collection.
The Kross X Studio Death Star Tourbillon: case, DLC coated titanium, 45mm x 20mm including crystal (without crystal, 12.5mm), with sapphire front and back, water resistant to 30M. Four individual sapphire panels on the caseback, with D-ring crown; function switching button at 3:00. Movement, caliber KS 7 000, hand-wound central tourbillon, running at 21,600 vph/3Hz in 27 jewels; five day power reserve. Storage case in the form of a kyber crystal carrying box, with replica kyber crystal storage capsule, two additional capsules for straps and the watch, and additional free storage space. Storage capsules in aluminum, 337.5mm x 113mm; weight, 2.7kg. Kyber crystal container, 1200mm x 22.4mm, weight 80kg; wood, aluminum and black polymer, 732 parts total with LED control panel and manifest panel. Official collaboration with Disney and Lucasfilm.