With the 5-inch line of Doctor Who Classics grinding to a standstill by the end of this year I am going back and hunting down some of the figures that I had previously passed on. So the irony is that while the line is only producing a few new sets in the months ahead, you’ll likely see a lot more DW figures covered here as I scramble to complete my collection before they start disappearing from retailers. Today we’re looking at a two-pack from the 6th Doctor story “Attack of the Cybermen” from 1985. I dig this episode a lot and not only because I love the Cybermen. The story is also a sort of redemption tale for Commander Lytton from “Resurrection of the Daleks.” It also features the TARDIS returning to Totter’s Lane with a temporarily repaired chameleon circuit and, of course, it co-stars Peri’s boobs. All those things conspire for a cracking story that also happens to be full of some pretty dark shit, even for 80’s Doctor Who.
The figures come in a stylish and sealed blister pack. It’s the same packaging we saw for the “Caves of Androzani” set. The insert is a blue star field and features a Doctor Who logo that evokes the 70’s for me, although I believe it was the same style used for the 1996 TV Movie. Either way, I really love the presentation here, particularly the embossed lettering and diamond shaped bubble.
The back of the insert has a shot of the lovely doe-eyed Peri and a Rogue Cyberman and features a blurb about the story in general and Peri’s character in particular. Naturally this package is as unfriendly to a collector as you can get, unlike the old window boxes that CO used to use. I think I prefer this style as there’s no temptation for me to fool myself into thinking that I have the space to keep the package. You’ll need a razor blade or scissors to get this thing open and get at the figures. And I’m about to do just that!
Let’s start off with Peri. This is the third time we’ve seen her released in figure form, so I’m thinking someone over at CO must love Peri as much as I do. I mean you’d have to really love Peri to buy all three releases. Who would do that? If you guessed me, you’d be right and I especially like her here in “AotC.” The Doctor isn’t half insane and trying to kill her anymore and besides some residual bickering, I think they share some nice chemistry in this story.
If you notice I’m not saying a lot about the figure yet, it’s because we’ve seen it before… more or less. Her outfit is a direct repaint of the Peri from the “Vengeance on Varos” set. What was blue is now painted pink, but the sculpt from the neck down is almost identical, with only the addition of a bracelet on her right wrist to set it apart. From the neck up, this does appear to be a new, or at least tweaked head sculpt. Her bangs are different and she’s wearing a hair band. All in all Pink Peri is still a nice figure, but probably not essential if you already own her. Plus, I’ll go ahead and say that while the likeness here is still plenty good, I think the head sculpt on the “Caves of Androzani” Peri is the best of the bunch. Unfortunately, that figure also shows the least amount of cleavage out of the three, so you’ll want to have at least one of each sculpt.
Peri sports some pretty good articulation for this line. Her arms rotate at the shoulders, have hinged elbows, and swivels in the biceps and wrists. Her legs have universal movement at the hips, hinges in the knees, and swivels at the thighs. She can turn her head and also swivel at the waist.
But as much as I dig Peri, she’s not the reason I bought this set. Nope, I bought it for… Creepy Rogue Cyberman! For reasons I cannot currently remember, some of the Cybermen on Telos were waking up Rogue and wandering the halls like zombies. For the most part, they were just regular Cybermen with some cobwebs and green goo on them. There is one scene, however, where The Doctor removes the face plate on one of them to activate its distress beacon. You don’t actually see inside, so this figure is CO’s delightfully imaginative take on what it probably looked like in there.
Like Peri, the Rogue Cyberman is basically just a repaint with a tweaked head and the additional touch of completely re-sculpted boots. In this case, it’s a tweak of the “Earthshock” Cybie, which is my all-time favorite Cyberman design. The repaint consists of general weathering, which looks really nice, and some spattered green goo, which I always presumed were the spoiled organic contents starting to leak out. Ewww. The green is rather understated and all in all, this is very effective repaint if you want to display a Cyberman who has gone slightly off.
The new bits include the new head with removable face plate. The ‘borgified skull inside is fantastic with lots of gruesome detail, although the faceplate isn’t all that great a fit. I can get it more or less on, but it’s prone to falling off fairly easily. You also get a brand new gun, which is similar in design to the one used in Earthshock but tweaked to make it more accurate to the guns used in this episode. CO could have just as easily tossed in the old gun and boots, so the fact that they bothered to do re-sculpts on these points to make the figure as show accurate as possible is just plain class.
This set was originally released at $40! Oh yeah, now I remember why I passed on it. As thrilled as I am to be more versions of Peri and Cybermen, this is still a lot to pay for tweaked repaints, particularly at a time when CO was releasing a lot more figures and taxing my budget. I was always all for supporting this line as much as possible, but even I had my limits. Fortunately, I was able to pick up this set last week for the far more appealing sum of $25. I will, however, hand it to CO. On the surface this could have been a far more quick-and-dirty release than it actually was. They could have easily gotten away with just repainting both figures and leaving it at that, but instead they invested in some new tooling, which does indeed help to justify adding it to my collection. Good on you, guys!
FigureFan Zero 