Today I’m winding down my look at the variant 3 ¾” Doctor Who figures that washed up on our US shores a few weeks ago. This time, it’s Red Dress Clara. The original Clara figure was pretty terrible; mainly thanks to her bloated and bug-eyed head. Why would I throw more money at a repaint? Because this one has a brand new head sculpt. Does it fix the problems that made this figure so bad on the first try? Let’s find out!

There’s the packaging. I don’t have a lot more to say about it. It’s fairly attractive and serviceable and just the kind of package that’s made to be torn apart to get at the figure. Clara comes with her purse at her side, which is the exact same accessory as last time, and the same “DWARTIS” logo figure stand that we’ve seen with most of the figures in this collection. There’s nothing on the card or insert to distinguish this figure from the first Clara release, other than some of the new Time Zone playsets pictured on the back.

From the neck down the only major difference you’ll see here is that her dress is now painted red instead of blue, so depending on your own personal color preferences this may be an improvement or not. I’m pretty sure this is the outfit she wore in Day of the Doctor, but I could be wrong. I’m not watching that again until I get the Blu-Ray next week. Another minor difference is the set of bracelets painted on her right arm. The paintwork here is pretty solid, particularly the pattern on her dress, which looks like it would be something tough to pull off in this scale.

It’s the new head sculpt that represents the really significant change here and it is indeed much improved. The mad eyes are gone, the face is structured more like Ms. Coleman’s and the hair is a little flatter and more sensible. The original figure’s likeness was pretty bad, but you can’t really appreciate how bad it was until you stand these two side by side and see it done better. I’d actually go so far as to say that this new portrait is pretty good for a figure in this scale. On the downside, stand her next to The Doctor and it makes his portrait look all the worse.

Articulation is the same as the original figure. The arms rotate at the shoulders, swivel at the biceps, and are hinged at the elbows. The legs have a T-crotch at the hips, swivel at the thighs, and are hinged at the knees. Her head can rotate, although the hair restricts the movement a bit.

Once again, this is a tough and expensive figure to get in the UK, but I was able to pick up Clara for $10. I wouldn’t have bothered if the color of the dress was the only difference, but when early reports came in that there was a new and improved head sculpt, I decided to take a chance and I’m rather glad I did. As poor as the first effort was, I think this Clara is actually pretty good and I’m hoping that we may see at least one more 11^th Doctor release with a better portrait to accompany her. But even if that doesn’t happen it’s nice to know that CO is working on improving these things, so when they do get around to releasing The Capaldi Doctor that figure could benefit from some of these improvements. That’s all I’ve got for the variant figures. There was one more released, a phasing Weeping Angel, but I didn’t bother picking that one up. I did, however, pick up a regular Screaming Angel, so I’ll try to get around to looking at that one sometime next week.