Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Wave 1

I first learned Playmates were going to be doing a line based on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on the cardback for one of my Star Trek: The Next Generation figures. In fact, on the back of my new Sela figure you can still see in bold red lettering the excited announcement that “toys and accessories” from the new show are “coming soon!”. Some of the figures from Star Trek: The Next Generation Wave 2 and the Original Series line (here called “Classic Star Trek”, which is how I knew that show for ages) even came with a mini checklist of all the Playmates toys released so far, with headshots of the figures and close-ups of the vehicles, playsets and prop replicas.

On the back of that checklist was one of the first-ever promotional shots of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast-It's the one where everyone's standing around in costume in front of a brown shag curtain haphazardly draped over the walls and floor of a photo studio somewhere. This was the first static image I ever saw of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast together in one place, and it was the first chance I had to get a good look at them. What's also interesting about this promo is what it promised was coming in the Deep Space Nine line: All of the characters you'd expect, as well as vehicle toys of Deep Space 9, the Runabout and a Caradassian Galor Warship. That will be interesting to go back and examine in a few months, methinks.

Even though I followed this launch fairly closely (well, as closely as I could at the time at least), it took me a *very* long time to actually bring anyone from this line home. At first it was due to simple wariness: While the characters looked cool and all and I dug the general design aesthetics, in 1993 I still wasn't completely 100% sold on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as an overall thing yet. So while I definitely saw these on store shelves at the time, I took care to admire them from afar-I was afraid to outright ask for them, and given a choice between spending my action figure money on one of these as opposed to a Wave 2 Star Trek: The Next Generation figure, the choice seemed clear. This turned out to be a cripplingly poor decision on my part, however: Within just a few months I was utterly hooked on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and I would have killed for these figures and, of course, that was just when the Playmates Star Trek line in general was starting to retreat from department stores, and the first casualties were the lowest selling toys. Namely, the comparatively more niche Deep Space Nine figures, which seemed to disappear as quickly as they had appeared.

For practically an entire *decade*, I languished in regret knowing I had very likely missed my one chance to bring home my second space family, as well as the last remnants from the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew (namely Tasha Yar and Ro Laren). It wasn't until the Internet and eBay became available to me (which was later than pretty much everyone else on the planet because of circumstances surrounding where I live) that I was finally able to adopt my own plastic Deep Space 9 team. It happened in stages-I found a couple assorted open figures at flea markets, then I got one or two from eBay auctions. Eventually I hit the jackpot and found one guy who was selling almost the complete first wave in one go, and the day I won that auction was one of my most triumphant moments as a collector. It wasn't fully complete though, and it took me almost another decade to fill out the holes in my collection. But now, I can happily say I have the entire main cast of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in plastic form, plus a few interesting assorted comers-and-goers. Let's talk about a few of them.

At the time of writing, my Deep Space 9 population lives in a Matrushka doll of nested plastic bags that is beginning to look increasingly ratty. This is because, as I mentioned in the last chapter, Playmates never released any playsets for its Star Trek: Deep Space Nine line, likely due to the aforementioned sales issue (which is more of a topic for next season). The flipside to this is that, along with the fact these are all comparatively recent acquisitions, all of my DS9 friends are in complete and near-immaculate condition. I would still really love a proper place to display them one day, though.

Commander Sisko is one of my favourite Playmates figures. With Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Playmates started to trend a bit closer to the “adult collector” side of the “adult collector's piece”/“children's toy” binary, so the figures from this line boast more of an attention to detail and realism than even this year's contiguous Star Trek: The Next Generation wave (though this year's TNG toys are more realistically proportioned than last year's). It's with Benjamin Sisko that Playmates really nailed this-I mean, he looks *exactly* like Avery Brooks. A very tall, stocky and imposing figure in real life, no other Sisko figure captures Avery's impressive physique as well as this one does. Commander Sisko stands tall, walks tall, but has a serene expression that lets you know this is a kind and gentle soul as well.

Ben comes with a set of what will become standard Playmates Star Trek: Deep Space Nine accessories. A PADD, a phaser, a base and a laptop terminal. These terminals are cool, because instead of reusing the ones from the Star Trek: The Next Generation wave, Playmates took care to craft a visibly Cardassian-looking laptop with an all new display sticker showing a schematic of the station. This is one of my favourite Playmates accessories because it looks so distinctive, and because I love the look of DS9 so much. The Emissary also comes with an Orb, most assuredly his. It doesn't open, but in every other respect it's a dead ringer for the prop from the pilot, except for the fact that it's blue. It's also got a nice bulk and heft to it for its size, which means it's the Playmates accessory you're least likely to lose down a floorboard or under a cushion somewhere.

Major Kira was the figure I remember seeing in stores the most. Pretty much any time I went into a department store looking for Playmates Star Trek toys, if they had a display of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine line it was primarily or exclusively of her. I don't know whether this means Kira was the most popular figure in this wave, or the least. One thing's for certain though, she's absolutely one of the most important and groundbreaking action figures Playmates ever produced. Why? Because Major Kira is the first unambiguously action-oriented figure based on a female character in either of Playmates Star Trek lines. Remember, in 1993 Tasha Yar is still over a year or two away, as are Duty Uniform Deanna and Beverly. At this point we still only had one Doctor Crusher and two Deanna Trois, both of which were effectively identical and neither of which could do much of anything action-wise. And sadly, as we'll soon see, this wave's Jadzia Dax couldn't either. Sela could at least hold her weapons and look cool, but she's still more of a display piece owing to the strange way she's glued.

But Kira is built from the ground up to be a woman of action. Her sculpt is very tense, trim and rigid (again, just like Nana Visitor's posture in character on the show), and the way she's jointed you can put her in some really tight and kinetic-looking action poses. She has a special set of Bajoran accessories (including a unique Bajoran phaser) that, mercifully, she can actually hold. And indeed, she looks damn cool holding them too. I love to put her phaser in her hands and imagine she's running across no-man's land in “The Homecoming”, leading the charge to rescue Li Nalas. Also, in what might be a neat nod to her origin as a Ro Laren expy, Kira comes with a messenger bag or satchel you can sling over her shoulder. I can't remember Kira ever using a bag like that, but it certainly puts me in mind of what Laren brought with her when she joined the Enterprise crew in her titular episode.

Oh wait. I'll bet that's supposed to be Bag!Odo from “Emissary”, isn't it? From the scene where Kira gives him to the rowdy Cardassians in Quarks so he can sneak aboard their ship and sabotage their long range sensors? I'm a fucking dipshit.

Anyway, speaking of Quark, he's one of the most fun figures from this set. For one thing, he's sculpted to be a surprisingly action-ready character for a bartender, and he comes with a lot of neat accessories that are unique to him, and are of course painted gold. He's got a bottle of something or other, a Ferengi base, the ubiquitous gold pressed latinum, and the staff and that weird anteater-looking thing he has with him in “The Nagus”. But the most surprising thing he comes with is a Ferengi disruptor pistol-The exact same one the Ferengi pirate (who just so happens to look a bit like Letek from “The Last Outpost”...who was also played by Armin Shimerman) from the Star Trek: The Next Generation Wave 1 set had, even down to the awesome metallic blue paint scheme! You kind of feel obliged to come up with some backstory to put them together on a Ferengi Marauder somewhere.

Quark was also in charge of the marketing campaign for the first wave of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine toys, if you can believe it. I distinctly remember seeing a flyer in my comics and magazines from the day featuring Shimerman in character as Quark trying to sell you a complete set of Playmates Deep Space Nine figures from across his actual bar. It was great.

Earlier I said I got most of my figures form this wave as part of one big eBay haul that had most, but not all, of the crew. Miles O'Brien was one of the ones who wasn't included-I got him as part of a second shipment sometime later, and in fact this isn't even my first O'Brien action figure. It is, however, the first produced, and to my mind it's still the best. The sculpt is of course excellent, and really is a spot-on likened for Colm Meaney's build. One thing that's distinctive about Miles is that Playmates took care to depict him in his most iconic look, with the sleeves to his uniform all rolled up. Just like on TV, he's the only character to sport that look in the entire crew, which makes him really stand out (well...until Playmates started messing with DS9 variants that is. But we'll get to that next year). Miles doesn't have a ton of accessories, just a thermos and a toolbox, but they're unique to him and fit his character really well.

Odo is another of my favourites from this wave. One thing that's great about the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine line is that even though Playmates started going in a more realistic direction for their sculpts, they never once sacrificed playability in the name of accuracy, and Odo is a terrific example of that. He looks exactly the way he does on TV, but he has a ton of joints and hinges that allow to to pose him in a lot of colourful ways that really accentuate his character. Odo probably has the most personality of these figures (which says a lot as they're all excellent), and no matter what he always seems to look at once suspicious, guarded and exasperated, which is a lot of fun. He shares Major Kira's Bajoran accessories, which makes sense as he's posing as a Bajoran, all save for one: Rightly, he doesn't have a phaser. Instead, he has his beloved bucket, which, while more of a prop than anything else, still gives you some room for creative play and experimentation.

The only sad thing is that you can't have Odo transform into anything. I know that would have been physically impossible, but it might have been fun to have some cups or a little bird or something that came as accessories to represent this, or even a pile of amorphous gel to go with the bucket! Well, I guess there *is* that messenger bag...

My most cherished figure from this line is naturally Jadzia Dax. She was also the first boxed Star Trek: Deep Space Nine figure I ever got, long before I got any of the others. So she's in slightly worse shape then her colleagues, if you couldn't tell. I have to say though, even from the beginning Jadzia was something of a disappointment. For one thing, unlike Kira, she is absolutely a casualty of Playmates' design philosophy for female characters at the time, so Jadzia is very slight and delicate and her hands can't hold very much. However, this time Playmates *did* alleviate at least a little bit of this by giving her equally small accessories, mostly sample collectors and diagnostic tools, so Jadzia can at least feel like she's being useful and actually contributing something to the team. She also comes with a Trill. Like, an actual symbiote. Which was...awkward, to say the least. One fun thing about this figure, and actually all of Playmates' Jadzias, is that her hands, while dainty, are sculpted and her arms are jointed such that the most natural way to pose her is to have her clasp her hands behind her back, which is a physical tic Terry Farrell actually has on the show if you look close enough for it.

Granted, we hadn't seen Jadzia in a lot of action on the TV show by this point (and no, fucking “Allamaraine” doesn't count), but it's still a *massive* bummer for me considering she's my favourite character. More egregiously, this doesn't even fit with Playmates' mandated true-to-life realism for this line: In reality, Terry Farrell is actually very, very tall (she's a former model after all) and can actually stand head-to-head with Avery Brooks. But this Jadzia Dax figure, because she's so slight, is actually the *shortest* figure in the line, at least by proportions if not height. *Yes*, shorter even than Quark and Kira (who is *tiny* as an action figure). Thankfully, this would all be remedied in 1994 with the release of “Emissary” Jadzia Dax.

Going by the name, you can guess this Jadzia is meant to represent her very first appearance, in which she wore a Next Generation-style science division uniform instead of one of the open-collared DS9 team uniforms. And naturally, this is a Wave 2 release instead of a Wave 1, but, just like I did with Season 6 Deanna, I'm talking about it here in the first wave anyway. Additionally, because, “Emissary” Jadzia *also* uses the same outstanding female body sculpt made for Season 6 Deanna! So Playmates finally did make a Jadzia you can play with, and it was worth the wait. Actually, in my opinion Jadzia rocks this body even better than Deanna does: The slightly more caricatured look of the Star Trek: The Next Generation line really suits her, and gives this Jadzia a willowy, yet toned and muscular look that really fits the character, and she inherits Deanna's rank of commander to boot!. Furthermore, she can now finally see eye to eye with Benjamin. It's also kind of sweet, considering my old Season 6 Deanna used to do double duty as Jadzia until I got a proper Dax figure, and Terry Farrell and Marina Sirtis were roommates in real life. Or maybe that's more creepy, now that I think of it.

Either way, even though she's not wearing her “standard” look for the show, “Emissary” Jadzia is without question my preferred plastic representation of my favourite Star Trek: Deep Space Nine character. She even comes with all of the accessories as the original Dax, except hers are a fun hot pink instead of the original's more subdued purple. That's what this figure is to me-Fun. Even the paint apps on her face give her a wry, mischievous and warm expression, and while the original head was perhaps more “realistic”, this is how I prefer to remember Jadzia Dax. Maybe the Star Trek: The Next Generation build carries more weight than I thought it did.

Doctor Bashir was one of the last figures I got from this set, and I only got him in the past couple of years. For some reason, it took me forever to find him-I'm not sure why, as he's not an especially rare figure or anything. Although I suppose my waxing and waning interest in Star Trek over the years combined with the equally changeable ebb and flow of money probably had something to do with that as well. Either way I'm happy to finally have him. As you'd expect, his is a great sculpt that really captures the character. His accessories are mostly boring things every Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine figure comes with, although he has a couple unique medical accessories that are pretty cool. I know it's nothing special, but I think it's particularly fitting that he comes with both a discharging phaser and a set of medical tools: Julian's always gotta be the hero.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gul Dukat is one of the two non-DS9 team DS9 figures to be released in this line. He's also pretty much what your options are limited to if you want a “generic” Cardassian, which makes sense as Marc Alaimo is the guy who Michael Westmore basically designed the entire Cardassian species around. As such, Dukat has a bunch of unique Cardassian accessories, mostly weapons that you can pose him with in a variety of various fierce-looking stances. They look sleek and cool and are done in a similar metallic electric blue to those of the Ferengi figures (I guess it's a villain thing, though I prefer the Ferengi by far), although Dukat's are I think a little bit darker. I confess that as dynamic as he looks, I don't dig Gul Dukat out very much because, to quote Eddie Izzard, he's a mass-murdering fuckhead. As far as Cardassians go I can't fault the inclusion of Dukat, but I'd really have liked Marc Alaimo's first Cardassian role as well: Gul Macet from “The Wounded”.

More surprisingly, the other alien figure (well I mean as Quark says in that ad they're *all* aliens, but non-aligned Non-DS9 team DS9 figure takes too long to type, even though I just typed it) is Morn. Yes, *that* Morn. He's one of the best figures in the line, as a matter of fact: His sculpt is incredible. I mean, you won't be doing much playing with him (he can't even hold his glass because it's a square, which seems like an odd oversight to make) but come on, what the hell are you going to do with Morn? Apart from his glass, he comes with some triad dice, gold-pressed latinum and a special phaser that seems specially moulded for him, all in bright neon Data orange. He also, bewilderingly, has an utterly unique custom base designed especially for Morn, which are words I never thought I would see myself typing. If nothing else, he looks pretty rad posed next to Quark.

Or he would, if they'd ever made a Quark's Bar playset.

Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation Wave 2 Errata

You can't have action figures without some place to put them. Even if you're too embarrassed to move them around in a playset, you've got to admit having a lavish plastic display to pose them all in looks awesome on your shelf. It was Wave 2 that started giving us those playsets for our Star Trek: The Next Generation friends-I've already talked about the bridge playset in this book. Although it technically came out as part of this wave, I felt compelled to talk about it back in the first wave because I really just wanted to go all-out gonzo with the first Playmates essay. This leaves me with one extra essay to write about and not a whole lot to fill it with here, however. So, let's see how long I can talk about what's left of Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation Wave 2.

The other playset released this year was a transporter room. Now this was really cool because it actually worked by way of an old theatrical trick called Pepper's Ghost. In a Pepper's Ghost illusion, a one-way reflective surface is placed between the audience and a hidden room on the other side. There's also an overhead light source that, when raised or lowered, makes any objects in the room appear to appear and disappear out of thin air. This is how the Haunted Mansion in the Walt Disney resorts create the illusion of the dancing ghosts in the ballroom at the beginning of the ride, and it's also how Tupac Shakur appeared onstage at Coachella in 2012 and Michael Jackson did the same at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards (not, as is often reported, through the use of holography. We don't have holodecks yet).

A lot of times in a Pepper's Ghost trick the hidden room is painted black so that the “ghost” seems to materialize right in front of the audience, when really they're in another closed off area. The Playmates transporter conveys the illusion a little differently, with the mirror dividing the transporter pad in two. You put your prospective away team member in the area behind the mirror, close the door and manually raise the sliders (which wonderfully take the form of the LCARS finger panels from the TV show and make a satisfyingly accurate shimmering sound when activated either way) as the overhead light gradually shifts. Obviously to give the illusion your character is standing on the pad both sections have to look identical, and this also necessitates the transporter becoming more of a chamber than a pad. As a matter of fact, during the seven years I didn't watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, but did have these toys, I completely forgot the transporter room was even a pad on the show at all-I completely mentally retconned it as being a chamber and always remembered it as such until I saw “Encounter at Farpoint” again for the first time. I was utterly shocked-That's how deeply rooted these little pieces of plastic had become in my mind.

The box for the transporter shows a realistic Captain Picard, in full captain's jacket regalia, beaming down in the chamber, delightfully with a full-size child's fingers engaging the transport. I like how the implication is that Star Trek: The Next Generation exists in this miniature Gnome-world of playsets that interacts with playing children. That's exactly what it felt like. What's also cool is how there's an accompanying screenshot from the TV show of the transporter in action, and in spite of this being 1993 they went with one from “Encounter at Farpoint”! This means we get to see Tasha Yar, Skant Deanna and Babyface Will in all their glory in one of those glorious glitter water composition shots. I seem to recall this shot, or other ones from “Encounter at Farpoint” being used a lot to promote the Playmates line, actually: That's probably why my sensory memory of Star Trek: The Next Generation is a mash-up of imagery from the first, sixth and seventh seasons alongside the box art from the Playmates toys, as I held onto all of them.

It's also fitting because Tasha was far and away the character I stuffed in the transporter chamber the most. You were supposed to only beam down one person at a time because the chamber could only really accommodate one at a time (there was only one foot peg, for example). So I figured the best person to send down would be the action/scout/recon character, and that's who I imagined Tasha to be. But I sometimes tried to fit a whole away team in there, because even then I knew that, outside the Game Boy game, the Enterprise always sent people down in teams. And let me tell you, things got pretty crowded in there.

It wasn't a playset, but the “Star Trek: The Next Generation Collector's Case” was an important addition nevertheless. It was a little vinyl carrying case with some great sci-fi art of the Enterprise and the show logo on the front and back. Inside were plastic trays where you could store your collection of figures and accessories. The box says you could keep six-eight figures in the case, but I've seen some people stuff a whole lot more in there. And frankly, that was probably a better solution, because I always found that the trays tended to slide around a lot, leading to your precious accessories getting mixed up and sliding out through the cracks. You could, of course, avoid this travesty by bagging everyone up in snack bags beforehand, but I didn't figure this method out until much later in life. And anyway, at the time, for me this was an imperfect solution until I got ahold of the bridge playset. After all, where would you rather store your Star Trek: The Next Generation toys? Posed heroically on the bridge or stuffed away in a box somewhere? Admittedly, it is a very nice box: The skeleton in mine broke a long time ago, the vinyl is all ripped and the cards that form the picture got dislodged, so I've been on the hunt for a new one. It would actually be a really nice way to store my Star Trek: Deep Space Nine figures, who sadly never got a playset of their own.

But that's for next time.

Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation Wave 2 Vehicles and Role Play

The first wave of Playmates' Star Trek: The Next Generation toys focused primarily on the Enterprise and its crew: For action figures we got (most of) the bridge crew, and for electronic light-up ships we got the Enterprise itself as well as a Shuttlecraft. Following along with the accompanying Wave 2 action figure releases, which both expanded upon the Starfleet crew and gave us a greater assortment of aliens, the Wave 2 vehicles included a Klingon Attack Cruiser and a Romulan Warbird.

Both of these ships are very nicely detailed. Actually, in hindsight, I have to say they're a bit more impressive than the Playmates Enterprise itself: The colours and proportions of both are screen accurate, which is really important when dealing with starships this distinctive and memorable. The Attack Cruiser does fare a little better in this regard: All of the little details and elevations Rick Sterbach sculpted onto it to emphasize shadowplay with the studio lights have translated perfectly to consumer-grade plastic, and as such I've always considered it one of the most bang-on replicas of the Playmates line. The Romulan Warbird only suffers a bit due to limited lighting: Just like all the vehicles, only the Warbird's nacelles light up, and while that's nice, one of the best things about the Warbird studio model is all the beautiful windows on the...prow I suppose, or beak section. That gives the ship an incredible sense of scale and grandeur the toy just isn't capable of recreating, and this hurts the Warbird more than probably any other ship in the fleet, save perhaps the Enterprise itself.

(One of my biggest disappointments is that Playmates never made a Ferengi Marauder. You'd think given Letek's headlining role in the first wave this would be one of the light-up starships they'd release first, but it never happened. Maybe it was because the Ferengi didn't play as prominent a role in the sixth season, although given all the callbacks to first that seems strange. Or maybe they were holding it back for a possible inclusion in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine line. Although perhaps its for the best, as a Ferengi Marauder without windows would have left me heartbroken.)

What the Warbird does have are some awesome sound effects. Both the Attack Cruiser and the Warbird have four sounds: Cloak, Disruptor blast, “shield hit” and impulse. Neither one has what I'd call especially accurate samples, but the Warbird's at least were terribly cool sounding. I think I pounded that disruptor cannon button enough times to wear both it and the sound chip out. At least, that's the excuse I'll give for the electronics in mine no longer working. Also, my Attack Cruiser is missing its battery case cover for some reason, as well as one of the “prongs” at the front of the ship, which is really annoying. I seem to recall getting my Attack Cruiser (and maybe my Warbird too) one Christmas at my great-grandparents' house on my maternal grandfather's side. It's a nice memory, but one that's due to be replaced. Maybe someday when I have all the money in the world I'll get a new set, but the Playmates ships are getting harder and harder to find these days and thus more expensive (in stark contrast to the action figures, which are damn near ubiquitous).

If my sources (meaning Memory Alpha) are correct, this wave also saw the release of the special “7th Anniversary” edition of the Enterprise model. It's literally the exact same ship as the one from the first wave (even with the 1992 date stamped on it) except it was gold-plated and marked as a collector's edition limited to 50,000 units. I'm not sure if it was common knowledge at the time that Star Trek: The Next Generation seventh season would be its last on television, but this toy was the first I recall hearing that the seventh season was important somehow. Anyway I do have one of these, and it's probably far more battle-worn than a “collector's edition” toy ought to be, but who cares. I got this while visiting a Toys R Us with my aunt one day, and it became my primary Enterprise for a few years due to a couple of reasons. One, the electronics on my original model stopped working for a time, and two, the gold finish made this one quite a bit nicer to look at. Still not the azure blue and rainbow I wanted (the deflector dish is *still* a boring red and doesn't do anything), but better than flat off-white. A few other differences between this release and the previous: The nacelles are glued to the struts so you can't take them off, and the sound effects are much deeper and lower pitched. This makes them sound richer and more powerful, but even less accurate. Still, a really nice model, and the light-up nacelles really pop against the gold finish in a way they don't on the original.

Not my box. Obviously.

There was one other ship released as part of this wave. It's the Enterprise again, but a really weird version of it, because instead of an electronic replica it's a lightweight Styrofoam *glider*. There was a little handle on the bottom of the saucer section, and the idea was you'd grab hold of it, toss it forward and ideally it would glide on its own power for some distance. Mine crumpled into a heap years ago and the box was long ago the victim of my person-of-interest level fixation with scissors and random logos and promotional art so I can't show you any pictures of it, but I seem to recall that in practice it flew about a foot before taking a swift nosedive into the ground. This is also probably why my glider is crumpled into a heap somewhere. One thing I definitely remember is that I was really impressed with the design of the thing: It managed to resemble the actual Enterprise to an uncanny degree (probably why it had the aerodynamic capabilities of a rick), and I seem to recall the nacelle struts being better than the ones on the actual electronic toy. The deflector dish was definitely the right colour too, and I always loved that about the glider. Being styrofoam it was still an uninspiring white though.

(Funnily enough, while doing research for the Galoob chapter in the previous book, I learned that they too were planning a Styrofoam glider model of the Enterprise, but theirs would have had a more exaggerated saucer section that resembled a Frisbee. I guess kids who were fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation really wanted an Enterprise they could make fly.)

As fun as the ships were though, the real highlight of this wave on the replica front was the role-playing stuff. Considering my communicator toy broke within hours of getting it, I was stoked to get this set of communicator badge walkie-talkies! There was a badge you could attach to your shirt that worked as a speaker, and a receive/microphone pack you could clip to your belt. Of course if you really wanted to play a Starfleet officer you'd hide the packs, but you wouldn't want to because they were so beautifully designed! Each had a lovely glossy black finishing sticker adored with the show's logo, the insignia itself and its own individual waveform display. It doesn't look quite like anything from the show, but it does look very much of its time and I absolutely loved that.

Even better was the tricorder, the final piece needed to complete your away team set. This has got to be one of the best replicas in the line hands-down: I mean, as far as I can tell it looks exactly like the prop from the show (I'm sure hardcore Star Trek nerds will be able to prove me wrong though). Either way it's just the coolest thing-It has a screen that lights up when you turn it on (via a power switch on the back) and it has three buttons you can press to activate sound effects that are expertly worked into the face design of the toy itself. The scanning sounds don't have actual names on the show as far as I know, but thanks to this toy I will forever know them as “GEO”, “MET” and “BIO”. The screen is an amazingly detailed little LCARS display that shows a topographical overlay of a planet and an interface link to the Enterprise computer, and when you push the buttons a set of lights on the side lights up in sync with the sound effects! This tricorder is one of the prize gems of my Playmates collection: It saw action decades after the fact and, miraculously, is one of the only electronic toys of mine from this era that *still works*.

I think that's somewhat sweetly fitting: A tricorder is a scientific tool designed to scan things, and thus learn about the natural world. If there's one object the sums up my feelings on what Star Trek: The Next Generation means to me, I think it might have to be this.

Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation Wave 2

As the Playmates line of Star Trek: The Next Generation action figures expanded, I have to confess I started to get less of them. I know it's hard to believe and that I have to keep stressing this, but I was actually never a hardcore Star Trek fan, and thus didn't possess an encyclopedic knowledge of every single character and every single episode. When it came to toys, I was primarily interested in the Enterprise crew and the most recognisable aliens: My fondest memories of Star Trek: The Next Generation are of images and scenes, not specific episodes or stories. So, as Playmates began to expand beyond the main cast of characters I wasn't as feverish about keeping up with their releases.

It's the second wave where this began to manifest. That's not to dismiss the toys from this wave and beyond in the slightest: They're all of the exact same peerless quality you'd expect from Playmates Star Trek, just to articulate and further highlight where my interest in this franchise really lies. This is the wave where variants, one-shots and reoccurring characters started to become more pronounced (for obvious reasons), and the simple fact is I just wasn't as interested in that stuff. I still had a fair amount from this wave, but I didn't have *all* of it. In fact, I still don't, and I'm not likely to ever finally “complete” my collection as it were. I'm not the kind of collector who has to horde absolutely every release from every line imaginable: I like to have representations of my favourite characters, and I don't really need more than that. So I'll review the figures from this line that I have, and only give a passing mention to the ones I don't.

A few of these ones I've already looked at as part of the bridge crew retrospective last season. Even though they weren't part of the Wave 1 1992 releases, it would frankly have been ridiculous of me *not* to look at Doctor Crusher and Guinan,who in fact didn't actually get plastic likenesses until 1993. It's especially dumb that Doctor Crusher wasn't among the early releases. Normally I would grumble about sexism in the toy industry leading manufacturers to believe that action figures based on girls don't sell and aren't popular (which is sadly based on real, material sales figures in spite of what certain activists would have you believe and how much we might want to think), except Deanna Troi was part of the initial wave, and she seems like far less of an action-oriented character, and thus a weaker candidate for an action figure, than Doctor Crusher. Maybe it's because Deanna's not a mom. The Bev released as part of Wave 2 is the rather boring, unplayable version with the lab coat moulded to her body and hands that can't hold anything, but for quite some time she was the only Bev we got.

Speaking of Bev being a mom, Wesley Crusher is (regrettably) another new release from this wave. And, unlike Bev, I can totally see why he was held back a year for the second wave. This Wesley is dressed in a Starfleet Academy uniform and is therefore intended to be based on his appearance in “The First Duty”, which strikes me as just an incredible idea: “Hey kids! Here's a new toy for you of a boy, just like you, whose criminal negligence led to the death of one of his classmates in a story intended to patronizingly browbeat you into always telling the truth and trust authority figures! Have fun!”. I actually do have him, but he's buried in a box somewhere and I couldn't be bothered to get him out for a picture. I have no idea where his accessories are. All I remember is that he barely ever saw any action, but not out of spite: Wesley Crusher was, believe it or not, actually a character I never really knew at the time. I was vaguely aware Doctor Crusher had a son somewhere, but we never saw him and thus I didn't care about him one way or the other. So my Wesley figure was basically only used if I needed a random, generic-looking crewman extra to hang around in the background somewhere. I *think* he may have also been Julian Bashir prior to me getting the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine line as well.

There's also, as I said, a fair amount of variants and a surprising number of reprints. I don't have any of them, personally: I was never a fan of variants, always preferring to have one neutral, “definitive” figure who could represent their character in the vast majority of situations. So a bunch of figures based on alternate uniforms or outfits they only wore in one or two episodes didn't appeal to me. The variants in this wave predominantly feature the original uniform designs by William Ware Theiss, that is, the spandex jumpsuits the crew wore in the first and second seasons before Bob Blackman radically redesigned the uniforms to be two-piece cotton suits with collars in the third season after the actors complained about asphyxiation and back problems they were developing as a result of spending long filming days in the inane original ones. So here we get Captain Picard, Commander Riker and Data with the full spandex treatment. Will's sculpt is specifically a second season one because he has a beard, and Playmates didn't want to spring for the new head mould that would have been necessary for a babyface first season Riker.

(However, much later they did release a line of alternate universe “Starfleet Academy” toys depicting the Enterprise crew as teenagers, and that line's Will is a new clean-shaven sculpt. This figure is a favourite amongst hobbyist customizers who like to take its head and affix it to a Wave 2 Second Season Will body to create a functional Playmates First Season Will.)

Also like Will, Deanna Troi gets a specifically second season variant in a figure depicting her maroon jumpsuit and later hairstyle (although this is less specific as I believe she has that look in a number of third-fifth season episodes too). Once again, Playmates obviously did that because it's very cheap to change one colour injection for an existing mould and call it a new figure. In contrast to Will and Deanna, the Geordi and Worf variants are specifically first season, as they're in command purple and are referred to as Lieutenant J.G. (Junior Grade) Worf and La Forge. Geordi and Worf actually get two variants this wave: In addition to their early days figures, Geordi is also the first character to be depicted wearing the dress uniform, and Worf gets a “Klingon Warrior” variant based on the traditional Klingon warrior caste uniform he wears as part of Kurn's crew following his temporary resignation from Starfleet in “Redemption II”.

I'm fairly certain, by the way, that it was these exact Playmates toys that first jogged my memory that there was in fact an older uniform design from the first two seasons (and, for that matter, that Geordi and Worf had been promoted at some point). I seem to recall reading about these figures on a cardback or catalog, then going back to my ViewMaster reel of “A Matter of Honor” and having a sort of lightbulb-clicking moment. The uniform redesigns had become so ubiquitous and familiar to me that I'd completely forgotten they weren't the original ones. Even to this day, when I go back to the first season, seeing the old uniforms feels ever-so-slightly wrong to me. And it also makes my back ache in sympathy pains for the actors.

There's also no less than *three* Original Series characters in this wave, which frankly seems somewhat stunning. Looking back, it does make a lot of sense: Not only had both Ambassador Spock and Captain Scott had significant roles in comparatively recent episodes, Playmates' line of Original Series action figures had just come out too, so naturally they'd want to do a little cross promotion, perhaps in the spirit of that ever-present 25th Anniversary that's now two years old. I do have the Original Series line but, fair dues, I'm not going to review it here for purely personal reasons. I don't have a lot to say about them anyway: If I wasn't re-enacting Star Trek: 25th Anniversary with them I was using them for whatever spare roles I had lying around that needed to be filled.

What's neat about the Next Generation versions of these characters is that they're not cheap kitbashes which, given what some of this wave looks like and the fact a contemporaneous TOS line did in fact exist, would have been understandable. Playmates could have just taken the Spock and Scotty heads, repainted them, stuck them on a new body and called it a day (though admittedly this would have been harder with Scotty), but no: These are entirely new sculpts with all the appropriate aging moulded in. This is especially evident in Admiral McCoy, the third Original Series character in this line, who's practically unrecognisable from his counterpart in the Original Series set. I'll admit he's one of my favourite releases purely for his uniqueness: Not only does his presence reach *all* the way back to “Encounter at Farpoint” (and hey! maybe that's why we got so many first season variants in this wave!) he's quite possibly the least “action” action figure Playmates ever released.

(I do actually have Scotty and McCoy, but not Spock, though I often forget I do. They never saw a ton of play time either, though McCoy made a fun “Old Man” figure.)

The big draw in this wave for me where the new aliens, in particular the new figures based on reoccurring characters. There was a re-release of the Borg drone from the first wave, I'm guessing because it was a popular character (this is the one I think I have, by the way, because mine comes with a trading card and Playmates didn't start packing trading cards in with their figures until this wave) along with Locutus (just in time for The Worst of Both Worlds too!). I was always deeply uneasy about Locutus: I didn't like seeing Captain Picard's face staring back at me from a Borg drone, and it seemed wrong to commemorate the worst moment of his life in plastic form. If I used Locutus, it was only ever as a second Borg drone (I just had to pretend that wasn't Captain Picard's face) or, rarely as a Borg “clone” of Captain Picard. There was a also a Vorgon, who I don't have because he was utterly random and forgettable (remember the Vorgons? Those guys from “Captain's Holiday”? Yeah, them) and K'Ehleyr, who I also don't have, because she was a non-presence whose episodes I never saw.

Captain Dathon though I definitely knew. Even back then I knew “Darmok” was incredible, and he was far and away one of the most unique characters in this set. He looks dynamic and noble, as befitting the character he's based on, and I think he was one of the only aliens in my collection who never wound up doing double duty as someone else. He comes with the two daggers from the episode, one of which you can actually fit into the holster on his uniform, just as Dathon does on TV. Dathon also comes with the book of poetry he reads from and, most interestingly, the burning branch from the iconic scene where he helps Captain Picard get his fire going. The branch is a truly lovely bit of design: It's very stylized, completely eschewing any sort of representationalist look. It's the last thing you'd expect would be given an artistic design, but it's incredibly appropriate because, if you think about, what better accessory to represent the themes of the episode than that one? No wonder Playmates' toymakers took care to sculpt poetry into its design.

Then there's Q, and you just have got to have Q. As far as characters demanding a figure go, he's practically right up there with Doctor Crusher as being people you just expect to have from the beginning of a Star Trek: The Next Generation toy line. He's depicted in his most usual form here, wearing a Starfleet uniform with captain's rank insignia. He comes with some really cool accessories too, like a big scepter, once again invoking “Encounter at Farpoint” (though he wouldn't be depicted in his iconic judge's robes until next year) as well as a miniature purple Earth and USS Enterprise, really driving home his omnipotence. He also comes with a dilithium crystal for some reason, I guess in case you ever needed a spare dilithium crystal for something (you wouldn't. You never, ever need another dilithium crystal. They're like phasers, tricorders and computer bags: Every other guy comes with one). Q I actually never used much, though I can't for the life of me think of why. I certainly liked the character; I guess I just couldn't think of any good stories to tell with him.

One of the biggest standouts of this line for me was actually Lore. I've loved him as a villain since the very beginning, and have always felt he was almost the definitive antagonist for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Q always has a more complex relationship with the crew I'd be hard pressed to call antagonistic, and at the time the Borg didn't appeal to me as true dark mirrors: To me, they were cannon fodder at best, likely due in part to how underwhelmed I was by the Playmates Borg action figures in terms of playability and how absolutely overblown fan opinion on “The Best of Both Worlds” was and is. Lore though was deliciously, skin-crawlingly evil and played with charismatic aplomb by Brent Spiner, and I'd just been blown away by the “Descent” two-parter. As such I do wish Lore was wearing his black jumpsuit from that episode instead of the slightly doofy Pakled uniform from “Brothers” he is in his figure. If for no other reason then the Pakled look limits his mobility, and thus his playability. Lore's accessories are pretty standard as well, but it was enough for me to have him.

The second most used figure from this set in my house, believe it or not, was the Benzite! For everyone else I'm sure he'd be like the Vorgon-Some utterly random one-off alien from an episode a million years ago everyone's forgotten about. But the Benzites were always very iconic characters for me because of how intimately familiar I was with “A Matter of Honor” thanks to my ViewMaster reels. But to me he was a necessity, and, as Ensign Mendon, he was actually a bridge crew *regular* of mine for quite some time. Of course, this Benzite is meant to be Mordock from “Coming of Age” instead of Mendon from “A Matter of Honor” (perhaps another reason for all those first season variants, though strangely enough Wesley wasn't one of them). But because it was the exact same actor and the exact same prosthetic, he passes for Mendon just as well, barring his lack of a Starfleet uniform. Mordock also comes with the usual stuff you'd expect from a Starfleet officer.

(Both my Benzite and Dathon are probably due a regeneration. As you can see, poor Mordock/Mendon is broken in several places due to how popular he was, and my Dathon is missing a few of his unique and lovely accessories.)

But the big standout for me in this wave, and far and away my most loved figure from it (not counting Doctor Crusher, who I mentally don't even associate with this wave) is none other than Commander Sela. The stories my Sela could tell. First of all, she's an incredibly cool character, both on TV and in figure form: She looks sleek, svelte and fiercely determined, and those pointed shoulder pads and sharp-edged sashes let you know she means the most serious kind of business. At first glance, you might think she suffers from Playmates female dainty hands syndrome, but then you might notice one hand can hold a Romulan disruptor just fine, while the other is posed in such a way that should you move her arm to her chest, you can make her do the Romulan salute!

Interestingly enough, though she comes with the same “Romulan phaser rifle” that the previously released Romulan guy came with, Sela is completely incapable of holding it. But you know who is? Tasha Yar. In fact, Tasha's hands seem to be sculpted *specifically for* this particular accessory. Tasha never used the rifle on the show, so this is another example of Playmates opening up avenues for storytelling its source material would never do. And it totally makes sense: This is exactly the sort of pose you'd expect a space marine to adopt.

From the moment Sela was released and I brought her home, she became *the* go-to Romulan character for every single story involving Romulans that would get told. She even rendered the original Wave 1 Romulan obsolete (she even comes with every single one of his accessories, except hers are cast in an *awesome* electric blue instead of his boring black), although he did wind up finding second life as Commander T'Alar from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Hearts and Minds. Either as Sela or some other female Romulan/Vulcan character, although increasingly just as herself, Sela was absolutely *everywhere* in my plastic Star Trek: The Next Generation. And naturally, once I eventually made the connection, she became Tasha Yar until I finally at long last picked up the real Tasha Yar figure. But Sela's time spent as her mother from an alternate universe (gotta love genre fiction) left her with an interesting legacy in my head: I wound up having to explain away this “Tasha”'s very Romulan mannerisms and dress sense as being the result of some significant amount of time spent with the Romulan Star Empire, perhaps as an undercover Starfleet intelligence officer or, most intriguingly, as a Romulan operative herself involved in a form of officer exchange. Much like, actually, Ensign Mendon.

 
The only annoying thing about Sela is that she's glued together in such away that it's extremely difficult to have her sit anywhere. Every time you move her legs, it puts stress on the seams that hold the two halves of her torso together, and if you do this enough eventually the glue will dry and separate and she'll collapse into seven neat compartmentalized parts. Of course, since I played with her *all the time* this eventually became an inevitability. The nice thing is this also makes her a very easy fix, which I did with some modelling glue. Problem then is that just bought me time until she fell apart again. So in this way she's actually a great deal like Season 6 Deanna Troi, although in Sela's case I was able to keep all the pieces together so she never became Crewman Just-a-Head or something. However, this did mean that Sela is my most recent figure to be regenerated, partly because she kept falling apart, but also because the paint apps on mine had faded to the point she was starting to develop an uncanny resemblance to Angela Lansbury.

I mean nothing against Angela Lansbury: She's a great actress and I'm a fan of hers and all, but, y'know.

Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation Part 3 - Wave 1 Vehicles and Role Play

The USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D is one of my favourite designs for anything ever. I have been fascinated by this starship and the way it looks for *literally* almost as long as I can remember to a degree that borders on outright obsession. I cannot fully put into words what the Enterprise means to me because even I'm not sure I fully understand the true depths of that meaning myself. Whenever I look at it I'll sit entranced its curves, the vibrant colouring of the panels and the deflector dish or the slope of the stardrive section as it flows elegantly into that giant saucer. I don't even think there's just one thing about it that makes it so incredibly beautiful; it's a genuine work of art in the sense everything about it sings together in perfect harmony such that you could stare at it forever.

The Enterprise is the centrepiece of Star Trek: The Next Generation's iconography for me. It's the one piece that sums up everything that I found so powerful and captivating about this series' look and feel. When I would get merchandise for the show, I would often cut apart the various boxes and hold onto them: To me, the artwork and iconography was so beautiful and it so consumed my imagination I wanted to somehow be able to physically *hold* it, as if that would bring me closer to the emotions and atmosphere they conveyed, or that I might perhaps be able to channel that through me and bring some of it into my own being. My room would be littered with various carboard effigies of the Star Trek: The Next Generation logo or Playmates' own space art that adorned their packaging: Dissociated, scattered signifiers of some ethereal confluence. And there always was that azure tinged Enterprise.

When I finally got the Playmates Enterprise toy it was an absolutely monumental moment in my life. Here finally was my very own spirit totem of this ship of the imagination, in three dimensional plastic instead of cardboard. My constant exposure to various representations of the Enterprise and my obsession with its design meant that I had become an expert on its every detail, but not in the classic Star Trek Nerd sense of memorizing deck blueprints or anything like that: My resources were disjointed publicity stills, toyetic caricatures, half-remembered effects shots and ViewMasters. What I knew best was the Enterprise's *soul*, not its body. And even then my intimate familiarity with every detail of the Enterprise's vibe allowed me to make some specific observations about this new toy.

First of all, even I could recognise Playmates' Enterprise was based on the four-foot shooting model, not the six-foot one. This may sound like pedantic nerdery, but it's actually hugely important to me because there are significant and noticeable visual differences between the six-foot and four-foot models and I think the six-foot model best captures the Enterprise's divine essence. The struts that connect the nacelles to the stardrive section are thinner and have much more of an elegant and organic curve on the six-foot model, whereas the ones on the four-foot one are squarer and more angular. The six-foot model is thinner and wider overall, most noticeable at the back end and in the more pronounced deflector dish, to the point it almost seems top-heavy with its overwhelmingly dominant saucer section. But this just adds to the almost impossibly mystical and futuristic nature of the technology that we can imagine went into building the Enterprise, as does the fact it's so eerily smooth all over. And it's only the six-foot model that has that striking azure blue colour scheme.

I probably like the six-foot model the best because it was the first and is thus closest to Andy Probert's original vision. The four-foot model was introduced midway through the third season to make filming easier, and, by contrast, is visibly chunkier and squatter than its predecessor. It also has a lot of engraved detail all over its body, the idea being the studio lights would generate a lot of eye-catching shadowplay on the model that would show up nicely on television. But this has the side-effect of making the four-foot Enterprise look grungier, more utilitarian, less graceful and less futuristic, and that's to its detriment. This is especially noticeable on the high definition restoration, where it becomes clear there was no loss of visual interest in shots using the old six-foot model. Even back then I could tell watching the show that there had to be more than one Enterprise model used for filming: I could tell some shots looked different (and better) than others, even if I couldn't place my finger on precisely why at the time.

So as overjoyed as I was to finally have an Enterprise of my own, I couldn't help but feel disappointed by this. Stuff like the nacelle struts and the general stoutness bothered me, as did the colour scheme. In lieu of the Enterprise's signature azure, or even its iconic battleship grey, the Playmates model is a flat dull white. The windows are nothing more than little indentations in the plastic, which is sad, but it probably would have been time consuming and expensive to do them any other way. But what upsets me the most about the Playmates Enterprise is the deflector dish: It's cast from a solid piece of translucent red plastic, and there's no light bulb behind it so that it could light up with the rest of the ship. But what annoys me even more is that the deflector dish isn't supposed to be bright red: It's actually supposed to glow concentric circles of neon blue and dull maroon. In fact, some publicity art even has the deflector dish glowing a *rainbow*, which I absolutely loved. This was actually so important to me I even remember once having a dream where that was fixed on the toy, that's how much I thought about this stuff.

Happily, even though the struts are a letdown, the nacelles themselves are pretty cool. They're the only part of the ship that lights up, and while it's not the bright and captivating neon of the TV show, they're still quite striking. The Enterprise has four buttons running down its dorsal spine, and pressing each one activates the internal sound chip for a unique sound effect. From the bottom up, it's photon torpedo, phaser blast (and explosion), warp drive and impulse cruising, respectively. Each button also activates the lights in the nacelles, and one of my favourite things to do was go into my closet, shut the door, turn the overhead light off and just stand there making the ship light up over and over again. Another thing I always thought was fun is that the nacelles are removable, probably to pack and ship the model easier, but for some reason I thought that was really cool: If nothing else, it all but demanded “Cause and Effect” style alternate timeline ship explosions as it made doing them effortless.

Speaking of those lights and sounds, my Enterprise has a little bit of battle damage, as you might be able to see from the photos. One day they stopped working, even though I was reasonably certain the batteries were fresh. So my dad took a knife to the stardrive section to try and open it up to get at the electronics inside, but to no avail (in hindsight, it probably would have been a better idea to unscrew the screws at the bottom of the model). Thankfully they started working again of their own accord sometime later, though they're still intermittent sometimes (there's got to be a loose wire in there somewhere). This does not, I should add, have anything to do with the fact the registration decal is on upside-down. That's all on my stupidity: The original ones fell off ages ago and I tried to replace them with decals from other Enterprise models (you better believe I have a bunch of them), but in my haste and ignorance I grabbed the wrong ones and put them on incorrectly.

Even though I'm a bit harsh on the Playmates Enterprise, it's only because it's representing one of the most profoundly powerful and personally meaningful things in existence for me and I care so much about it. That's not to say that, like the four-foot model itself, that I don't have fond memories associated with it, or that I didn't share a great many special experiences and adventures with it or that's it's still not one of my absolute most treasured possessions. I would be hard on *any* effigy of the starship Enterprise, and in fact I've not yet either seen or acquired one that I'm fully comfortable with. I'm still looking for a model that embodies everything I love about this remarkable design, but that may well be an impossible goal.

Now the shuttlecraft was an absolute blast, because it was actually *to scale* with the figures, and even had a fully decked out interior you could put them inside! Playmates' shuttlecraft is modeled after the Goddard, which is going to become famous next year for its appearance in “Relics” but at this point would have been best known for its role in “The Next Phase”. Like its parent vessel, the shuttlecraft has light-up nacelles and two sound effect buttons that trigger them: Phasers and impulse engines (though the battery terminal on mine is corroded so they no longer work). It also comes with a pallet of cargo sensors that you can slide onto the back via a set of tracks. Inside, there's a cockpit with a whole array of control panels that was frankly mesmerizing at the time, as well as two little benches that you could either use to seat passengers or fold up to accommodate the cargo pallet. Theoretically speaking you could fit five guys in total in the shuttlecraft, four in the back and one up front, but that makes an already cramped living space all the more of a tight squeeze, so I usually do no more than two at a time.

There are also little wheels on the bottom of the nacelles so you could scoot the shuttle along the floor, but I usually just swung it around in the air, because, after all, isn't it supposed to be flying through space?

It was probably the Playmates shuttlecraft that really inspired my love of small starships. Cramped as it may have been, I loved how confined the space was and it always felt cozy to me. To me it was a good place to put two characters in for a little outer space camping trip of sorts, and I always wished I had a little starship like that of my own. Well I mean I did, but one that was *my* size and that I could actually go in and fly around in myself. Sadly, Playmates never made life-size starships for role-playing purposes, but they did make prop replicas from the show.

The first was a type 2 phaser, modelled after the one used from the third season onwards (as opposed to the earlier model that had the derisive nickname of “the dustbuster”). Like on the show, it has two settings, stun and kill (it would be best not to confuse them), and you can even switch between them using buttons that correspond to the exact ones used on the actual props, and then fire using the exact same fire button! The neat thing about the Playmates phaser is how it has a unique sound effect for each setting: During that seven year period where I didn't watch any Star Trek (or any statistically significant Star Trek at any rate) I had assumed that worked the same way on the show. It turns out it didn't though, and that was purely an innovation by Playmates, which I think is a neat thing. Obviously I have it, but sadly, like a lot of my electronic Playmates toys, it doesn't work anymore. This time I attempted my own repair job on it, taking it apart to see if I could get at the loose wire that was preventing the circuit from completing. Sadly however I was not skilled enough electrically to actually fix it once I took it apart, and I have since lost a great many vitally important pieces, like the bulb, the bulb casing, the battery cover and all the screws. It will likely never be fixed.

There was also a personal communicator accessory. Now this is an unusual one, because while I still have the original box it came in...I can't for the life of me remember what happened to the toy itself. I think that's the only time something like that's ever happened to me. It's a pretty box, mind, with a lot of bright colours and exciting rays. Captain Picard is on it. Based on what the box says, I can presume you would clip the communicator to your shirt pocket and press a hidden button to make the communicator sound play. It also advertises “authentic lights” as well as “authentic sounds” from the TV show, which is interesting as I don't think the communicators ever lit up on the show. I do seem to recall my communicator breaking not long after I got it (for reasons that may or may not have something to do with the clip failing and dropping it on a cement sidewalk somewhere). I don't know why we never tried to fix it, or why I would have committed such a blasphemy by permanently losing it: I'd always wanted a communicator badge of my own, and had I kept that toy I might not have peeled the nametag stickers off my figures' bases. Maybe it's with my copy of The Star Lost.

Revisiting my Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation toys (of which what you've seen over the past few nights is but a small fraction) has reminded me, possibly more than anything else, of what these characters, images and memories mean to me. I can't put it into words and I'm not even entirely certain I know what it is, but...Somewhere in all of this is the Star Trek: The Next Generation that I love and that has inspired me all my life. And while this may not by readily apparent day-to-day on the TV show, the fact that the TV show was able to spawn all of this is significant in and of itself. Star Trek: The Next Generation is far grander and far more important than its egoistic sense of self-identity as a materiel artefact of television production: It's something timeless, transcendent and profound, and each individual manifestation of it is simply a small part of a much greater whole. The most important truth is in the understanding of how it manifests in you.

Totemic Artefacts: Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation Part 2 - Wave 1 Aliens

Any self-respecting toy collector knows you've got to have bad guys for your heroes to fight against. And yet this is Star Trek: The Next Generation, and in spite of what certain creative figures might thing, fighting is pretty much the last thing we ought to be considering. And so we see another manifestation of the curious dual role the Playmates line must play: Fun enough for kids to want to play with and bang together, and sophisticated enough to engage adults.

Playmates knew the Enterprise crew had to meet some people while they were out there exploring space, so as part of the first wave of releases they included a handful of aliens you could either speak or spar with: A Borg drone, a Ferengi, a Romulan commander and Gowron. In hindsight these are sort of interesting picks; the first wave came out in the wake of Star Trek: The Next Generation's fifth season and was clearly meant to capitalize on it-Just take note of how Captain Picard is wearing his “captain's jacket” and, of course, the Star Trek 25th Anniversary branding. But while these aliens are in many ways the iconic ones for Star Trek: The Next Generation, none of them played especially major roles in the fifth season (with the notable exception of the whoppers that were “Redemption” and “Unification”): If anything, you'd at least expect a Cardassian to be among the initial releases, but nope. Presumably Playmates figured that since this was the first set of Star Trek: The Next Generation releases, it'd be best to start with the recognisable staples.

Even so, the inclusion of a Ferengi pirate, particularly one who looks like this, is an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. Although they were intended to be Star Trek: The Next Generation's primary antagonists, they were supplanted at the beginning of the third season by the Romulans, and they haven't really played any significant role in the TV series' plot in three years. But Playmates' Ferengi is explicitly modelled after the ones in “The Last Outpost”: He's got it all, from the animal skin uniforms to the fur boots to the crackling energy whips, down to the fact he looks eerily like Armin Shimerman's Letek. Even the clip-and-collect card cites the same Federation intel the crew went over in “Encounter at Farpoint” and “The Last Outpost”. Furthermore, this Ferengi is most assuredly not meant to be a joke, with the card making numerous references to how cunning, dangerous and ruthless his people can be.

Here I am finding myself talking out of two sides of my mouth again. Because I have to write this with the conceit that I'm just now discovering this toy and the Playmates line now, when in truth this guy was one of the very first pieces of Star Trek anything I ever got. To me, this is *always* how the Ferengi have looked and acted, and this figure gave form to the half-remembered dreamlike imagery from half a decade prior I could only hazily recall. With this Ferengi, Playmates invoked and caricatured the imagery of “The Last Outpost”, and in the process made it bigger, grander and more memorable than it had ever been: Apart from the whip, he comes with a unique stand, a set of dilithium crystals (not in the picture) and two Ferengi standard energy weapons (again, I cut the phaser beam off of mine), all clad in unforgettably striking metallic blue. It's that whip that still sticks with me though: It looks menacingly lithe and as if it's constantly crackling with electricity, ready to discharge it all with a strike on some unfortunate victim.

This Ferengi seems feral, dangerous and intimidating, yet also oddly bewitching and captivating. He seems almost...Dare I say it? Cool. He's one of my favourites from the first wave, probably one of my favourite Playmates figures in general because his iconography sets my imagination running wild like little else in this line. I maintain there's a haunting, ineffable power to extremely early Star Trek: The Next Generation, something fluid and intangible belonging to the realm of dreams. This is very possibly connected to it being made in the High 80s, and for me it showcases Star Trek: The Next Generation at its most raw, pure and powerful. “The Last Outpost” is one of the key defining moments in this for me, and this Ferengi figure captures that. To me he embodies everything that was evocative about “The Last Outpost” and also everything I projected onto it. This is what real modern totemism looks like. Naturally I looked for any excuse I could to use him, up to an including subbing him in as an understudy for Quark.

As we go along, you may find. I have some very unorthodox views on Ferengi cultural norms.

Like just about everyone in the first wave, the Romulan saw an incalculably massive amount of action. Although he bears a passing familiarity to a few Romulan commanders, most notably Tebok (another call-back to the first season!) and Tomalak, he's ultimately meant to be just a generic Romulan. Which is fitting, as that's precisely how I used him: Apart from Tomalak himself and T'alar from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Hearts and Minds, this guy was wheeled in literally any time a Romulan of any status or distinction was required. He's got the weathering to show for it, though he's held up surprisingly well over the years all things considered as far as my Playmates Star Trek figures go. He comes with a Romulan PAAD (which I have since lost), a disruptor, a “Romulan phaser rifle” described as a “perfect copy” of the Starfleet phaser rifle (which really just meant Playmates didn't want to spring for the extra mould to make the Romulan disruptor rifle from “Unification”) and a unique base.

(That disruptor, by the way, has had just as storied a life as its owner. Partly because of the distinguished role they played in Hearts and Minds, but mostly because the Playmates figures idiotically couldn't hold normal phasers, Romulan disruptors became the weapon of choice for *everyone* in my plastic Star Trek universe. As a result, Romulan figures and accessories became quite precious and sought after recruits for my crew.)

The base has a funny story attached, because for the longest time I visualized the Romulan insignia upside-down. That is, I thought the part that was pointing down was meant to be pointing up. See, I thought the pointy end at the bottom that's meant to be the bird's tail feathers was really it's beak and that we were looking up at it in flight from the ground. Actually, the beak is an indefinable squiggle in the middle of the symbol and we're meant to be looking at the bird rearing up head-on. One thing I will give Star Trek Nemesis credit for is coming up with a new emblem for the Romulan Star Empire that looks far more striking and distinctive, one of the only times I prefer something about Star Trek: The Next Generation that didn't have its origins on the TV show.

I have very little to say about the Borg drone, because he is very boring. He's got a bunch of wires and cords and shit coming off of him that restrict how much you can move him, and indeed you can see in the picture one of the cords on mine is broken off because I had the audacity to actually want to play with him (in fact, I even think there's supposed to be one more of those rubber hose things that just came completely off). He does come with two swappable arms though, which is cool. The silvery one I've got on him now is my favourite because it has a little claw grip you can move up and down. He also has a base and a trading card (which leads me to believe my Borg is a reissue from a later wave rather than one of the initial releases). Because he was boring and useless the Borg drone was mostly cannon fodder for action scenes, or comic relief as we watched him topple over under his own lopsided weight hilariously.

Gowron, by contrast, is a true warrior. The would-be chancellor of the Klingon empire is one of the most unique and exciting figures in the first wave and has lived many lives. He comes with a Kligon scepter/painstick, an eye-catching imperial insignia base, a disruptor and, delightfully a targ minifigure! Targs are awesome and minifigures are awesome, so this makes Gowron awesome by association. Once again, Playmates has gone back to the iconography of the first season and evoked it with style and flair: The targ from “Where No One Has Gone Before” was a boar with some fur and sticks glued to it, but this little guy looks positively regal, as if he belongs on some heraldic symbol somewhere. Also neat is how Gowron actually has a holster for his disruptor: Unlike the bridge crew's phasers, which you had to cut the beams off to fit them in the holsters and even then it wasn't a perfect fit, Gowron's holster is meant for his gun and it first very snugly. So snugly, in fact, it can be a bit of a chore to get it back out again.

Like the Romulan commander, Gowron has played many different roles over his life. Apart from Gowron himself, he acquits himself quite well to being any generic non-Worf Klingon, including Captain Kargan of the IKS Pagh from “A Matter of Honor”, Captain Kol and Lieutenant Koleth (both from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Hearts and Minds). Unfortunately, this has also meant Gowron has sustained his share of injuries over the years, the most crippling of which has been the loss of his left arm. Like Wave 1 Deanna Troi, Gowron was also the test subject for some experimental surgery performed by my grandfather, however the methodology used on him, involving a golf tee and a hollowed-out arm socket, was noticeably less effective this time around. I'd say Gowron was due for a regeneration, except I'm not sure if Klingons would consider that dishonourable or not.

What's important to remember here is that objects hold the meaning we project onto them for us. When we write the symbol of our memories and emotions onto an effigy, we give it power and allow it to remind us of those things forever more. This is the power of the facsimile.