The Master is a good news, bad news kind of figure. The good news is that the sculpting is superb. The bad news is that because he’s wearing a robe he has some seriously limited articulation. Fortunately, in this case the good outweighs the bad by a long shot. CO put a ridiculous amount of detail in The Master’s tattered black robes. There are patches where it looks charred and threadbare and you can see its all tattered at the edges. It really is an uncanny match for the costume used in the show. The head sculpt is equally impressive, showing off what is essentially a decaying zombie face, complete with The Masters two fried-egg eyes and the sickening glossy sheen. I don’t know why, but I find it unbelievably cool to get action figures based on retro sci-fi costumes and make up.

I mentioned the limited articulation, and in fairness to CO, this figure is actually articulated quite well, its just that the robes prevent you from using much of it. The arms rotate at the shoulders, have hinged elbows and swivel cuts in the wrists. The neck is immobilized by the hood and you can move his legs around as much as the cloak will allow, but there’s no point. So, basically this figure suffers from teepee syndrome. Technically, CO could have left the legs off completely and unless you picked up the figure and looked at him from the bottom, you’d never know it. In this case the articulation doesn’t bother me. The Master in this incarnation was a withered wreck of a man, so he doesn’t need to be busting out any dynamic action poses.

The Master comes with two accessories: A staser gun and the Sash of Rassilon. The Sash is a separate piece, although I’m not sure it can be easily removed so its probably more a part of his outfit than a bonafide accessory. It looks just like it did in the episodes “The Deadly Assassin” and “Invasion of Time” and its cool to own such an important artifact of Time Lord history in the 5″ scale. The staser is a pretty simple little black gun, which he can hold in either hand.

Next up is Morbius. If you never saw “The Brain of Morbius,” this guy is going to be a pretty wacky looking figure. As mentioned above, he’s supposed to be pieced together from a bunch of different alien bodies with his goldfish-bowl brain support system tacked on for a head. Yeah, he’s ridiculous, but he’s amazingly accurate to the monster from the show, and once again he scared the shit out of me the first time I saw the episode as a kid. This figure was also rumored for a while to be a BAF in this wave, but we got him complete and carded instead.

The head is really well done on this figure. Its a clear sphere displaying Morbius’ brain with all kinds of wires coming out of it and two eye stalks protruding from the front. The body is full of sculpted detail from fur to stapled and sutured scars and disgusting patches of exposed muscle. His left hand is the only thing humanoid about him, an appenge stolen from poor Condo. His right arm is a giant claw that features articulation, so you can use it to grab your Tom Baker figure by the throat. Early pictures of this figure really didn’t do it justice and I’m just beside myself with glee to actually own an action figure of the terrible Morbius!

So, that’s four down and two more to go. Next time we look at what are probably two of the most popular figures in this wave and both of them are “army builders.” Its an Ice Warrior and 80’s era Cyberman and both are figures that have been on my wish list ever since I was a small child… and no Dapol’s versions don’t count!