Welcome to the second Warp Speed Wednesday wherein I’ll be taking the opportunity to check out random Star Trek stuff in my collection. Today we’re headed deep out into the frontier to the Bajor System. It’s been a long road… getting from… oh, wait… wrong series. Ah, Deep Space Nine! Even as a Trekkie who cut his teeth on the original series, I still regard DS9 among the most consistent of all the Star Treks. I still adore Next Gen as a complete body of work, but it’s hard for me to revisit some of those episodes or even those first couple of seasons. With DS9, I was engaged from the very first episode, and I can spin the wheel, land on an episode and almost always watch it over again with glee. A lot of that has to do with the characters, and today, I’m checking out to of them Non-Starfleet types, one of which I got in a recent box of Trek figures from my fellow podcaster and the other I’ve had kicking around for a long time now. Odo and Kira are both fantastic characters in their own right, but their relationship was one of the more satisfying and then heartbreaking threads woven throughout the series. And since Diamond never did a Quark figure, these two seemed like a natural pair to feature together. I’ve got no packaged shots to show you, so let’s just go ahead and start with Odo.

Dang, I love this guy! He was like the Clint Eastwood and Mike Hammer of Star Trek all rolled into one. I also think he was one of the most interesting alien characters in any of the series. Diamond’s only release of Odo depicts him as he appeared throughout most of the series, in his two-tone beige Bajoran Security uniform. It’s not a complex sculpt, but then the uniform was a pretty simple design. Note the high collar, which if I recall signifies this is a later season version. Also, no belt. I never remembered Odo wearing a belt, but it was a point of interest with Kira on one episode, which always made me chuckle, because the belt was in fact just part of him. What is it with DST’s figures and the legs? I’ve got more than a few of these where it feels like the legs have to be bent at a slightly awkward angle for them to stand properly. Weird.

Diamond is generally pretty good with their portraits and likenesses and Odo here is certainly one of their better efforts. The simplified features of his best impression of a human face are recreated wonderfully here as well as his dour expression. The “hair” is nicely detailed and the paintwork on the eyes is good. I can practically hear him complaining about “Federation rules and regulations.”

Odo’s articulation consists of the usual, “so close and yet so far” aspect of DST’s figures. The arms are fine, with rotating hinges in the shoulders, hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the biceps and wrists, it’s pretty standard stuff. The biggest crippling points, however, are the hips, which consist of a simple T-crotch buried under the tight plastic of his tunic. The joints are in there, but there’s almost no allowances for movement. Below that you get hinges in the knees and ankles. Lastly there’s a ball joint in the neck and a swivel in the waist. There’s definitely some poseability to work with here, but Diamond’s figures often feel unnaturally stiff to me and that’s especially the case with Odo.

Odo originally came with four accessories, but mine only has two. Missing are his bucket and a Bajoran phaser rifle. Funny enough, the two accessories that I still have are the smallest and most easily lost, and also probably the hardest two to find with the figure, so I guess I can take pride in that. There’s a Bajoran tricorder and a Bajoran PADD. Both are simple, but nicely detailed and painted pieces. I love the fact that the PADD has a picture of Quark on it. While I’m never one to turn down an extra weapon, I don’t much mind missing the rifle. Odo never had much use for weapons so including it with him was an odd choice to begin with. Let’s move on to Colonel Kira…

I could fill volumes about the characters and versions of characters that DST never got to in this line, but near the top of my list would be Major Kira in her Bajoran uniform. Instead, we got Colonel Kira in her Starfleet Uniform. It’s not my first choice, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. The figure uses a pretty standard uniformed female body. The late versions of Starfleet’s uniforms aren’t the most exciting of designs, but I still dig them a lot, particularly the grey quilted shoulders. The uniform sculpt includes a Starfleet comm badge, some folds and wrinkles and the “V” cut cuffs that drop below her boots. I haven’t looked at enough of these to determine whether or not it’s a generic body, but I’ll get to that in coming weeks. Kira didn’t strike me as a particularly tall woman and the figure reflects that with the way she scales against Odo. The articulation is the same as you get with Odo only with the addition of swivel cuts at the biceps. The T-crotch also grants a lot more range of motion for Kira than it does for Odo. Whereas Odo looks rather stiff, Kira’s got a little more of a relaxed stance that looks like it was geared to project a more feminine demeanor. It may be an odd choice for the character, since Kira tended to carry herself more like a soldier, but I can’t say it doesn’t look good on the figure.

The portrait here is decent enough and the paintwork on Kira’s face is nice and clean, but it strikes me as if they were going for simple and cartoony rather than realism. In fact, at certain angles the head sculpt here reminds me of some of the early polygon builds for Lara Croft. Possibly not so flattering, but it’s not that bad. I also wish the ridges on her nose were a little more pronounced. Her hair is swept to the side to reveal her right ear and the sculpted Bajoran earring. Like I said, it’s not my favorite look for Kira, but at least DST finally gave her some loving.

Kira comes with five accessories and this time I actually have them all! First off, she comes with the exact same Bajoran tricorder and PADD as Odo. Yup, her PADD even has Quark’s picture on it too. But we’ve already seen those, so let’s get to the good stuff…

Holy Kai! Kira comes loaded for bear with no less than three different weapons. First off is this bitchin’ Starfleet-issue phaser rifle. I’m sure Kira handled one of these at some point during the show, but it’s not a weapon I really associate with her. In early promo pictures, this figure was often depicted holding the Bajoran rifle that came with Odo and I actually had it, I’d probably give it to her and pass this rifle along to one of the other figures. Still, she’s got the uniform so I guess she might as well have the hardware to go along with it.

And by that logic, she also comes with a Starfleet hand phaser. It’s another great accessory to have, but not one that I will likely keep with this figure. Her gun-toting hand isn’t really sculpted to hold it very well. I can make it work, but if I so much as breathe on the figure, it’ll fall out of her grip.

Lastly, we have the trusty Bajoran pistol. Yeeeah, now we’re talking. I’ve always loved the design of this thing and I even had the old Playmates roleplay version, which was a really cool little toy. This is the weapon I most associate with Kira and probably the one that I’ll let her keep. She holds it really well and it’s a wonderfully detailed little piece. These accessories are such welcome treats compared to the neon plastic crap that came with the Playmates figures.

I’m thrilled to be able to have these great characters on my shelf in something better than the Playmates versions, but like a lot of this line, they’re beginning to show their age, mostly in articulation. Also, with a somewhat oddball 7-inch scale, about the only other figures I own that they can interact with would be the Farscape line, which makes for some fun crossovers. With DST focusing now on ships and roleplay toys, and those weird statue-figures, I truly hope that we can see the Trek license pass to someone who can do something fresh with it. Obviously, Funko has access to some of the license and have already begun producing Classic Trek ReAction figures (oh, don’t worry, I’m going to get to those eventually), but I’d love to see what they can do with the property in their 6-inch Legacy line.