Once again, I find myself a little underwhelmed by CO’s choices of figures for the current series of Who and that’s why you aren’t likely to see all the figures in the recent waves featured here on FigureFan. I know, it’s a crazy concept that I’m cherry picking Doctor Who figures, but I really don’t need an 11th Doctor in Stetson, or the 11th Doctor in Straight Jacket, of Young Amelia Pond. Seriously CO? No Black Spot Pirates? No Kovarian? And still no Rory? Jeez. Nonetheless, there are some worthy and good looking figures in the mix and I was pretty excited to pick up one of super creepy Silents in their new action figure form.
The figure comes packaged in the same style as the Series 5 figures. I still really dig these cards. They look great and their much easier to get into than the clamshells used prior to the Series 5 package changes. The back panel shows just how weak this wave of figures is. The five figures include: Two Silents, Young Amelia who isn’t even from Series 6 [Ok, fair enough, she turned up in the most recent episode. -FF], 11th Doctor in his Stetson and Nephew the Ood. I’m only planning to pick up Nephew and a couple more Silents. Luckily the next wave looks a little better.
So, the one thing I was iffy about when I first saw the pics of The Silent figure was the proportions. The Silents just didn’t look this tall and oddly proportioned on the screen, but now that I have the figure in hand, I really don’t care if it isn’t accurate because the elongated proportions of the figure looks so damn creepy and unsettling that I’m completely won over. The sculpt is simple enough, as the body is just a wrinkled black suit, but the bublous head is just awesome and I’m very happy with the open mouth variant. The skin tone looks more like the color of silly puddy, whereas I remember the screen versions being more grey, but accurate or not, it looks fine.
The Silent’s articulation includes the new ball jointed shoulders that I first saw used with River Song and Leela. In addition to the ball jointed shoulders, the arms feature swivel cuts in the biceps and wrists and hinges in the elbows. The legs feature universal movement in the hips, swivel cuts in the thighs, and hinges in the knees. The neck has a swivel cut, but the head really barely turns at all.
After a huge buildup (“Silence will fall!”) I can’t say The Silents have turned out to be the best Who villains introduced in the new series, but then we haven’t seen the last of them yet, so I’ll reserve final judgement for a little while longer. They were, however, definitely creepy and the figure conveys every bit of that creepiness. Are they screen accurate? Not entirely, but I’m still so very happy with this figure, that I will definitely be buying the other variant, as well as a couple more.
FigureFan Zero 