Yes, Warp Speed Wednesday is a thing now, and it will continue to be until I run out of Star Trek stuff to look at. Actually, that would probably take forever, so I’ll just keep it going until I get burned out on the subject for a while. Let’s say another month or so. Last time I looked at the DST figures I gassed on a lot about my love for DS9 and today we’re checking out a pair of figures based on two more of the show’s great characters: Bashir and Dax. My Bashir figure has a lot less interesting stuff, so let’s do him first…

Bashir’s character was loads of fun. He started out as a great Doctor and a green Starfleet Officer and his character developed quite a bit over the series. He went from seemingly shallow womanizer, who’s favorite pasttime was chasing Dax, to working for secret Starfleet organizations after we got that huge reveal that he was an illegal genetic augment! In the largely vanilla universe of Trek, this was some serious shit! And in terms of screen friendships, I think the Bashir and O’Brien relationship is a tough one to beat. ItLike most of DST’s DS9 figures, Bashir comes in his late series, TNG movie-era uniform. While I liked the more classic look, this one works too. It’s an easy outfit to reproduce as it doesn’t invovlve a whole lot of paint or detail. Apart from the usual creases and wrinkles, most of the sculpting comes in the shoulders, which featues the gray quilted look with the department color coded blue collar peaking out. Of course, you also get the rank pips on the collar and the insignia communicator.

The likeness here is a pretty damn good one to Alexander Siddig. I haven’t seen him in a lot since Star Trek, but it was cool to see him in Game of Thrones this past season. The paint, on the other hand, is a little odd. It’s like they did a wash on his face to bring out the contours of the sculpt, but really all it does is make him look dirty. Paint rubbing was also a big problem with these figures and as a result mine looks like he’s observing Ash Wednesday.

The articulation here is passable. The arms feature rotating hinges in the shoulders, swivel cuts in the biceps, hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the wrists. Below the waist, things take a turn for the worst. He has a simple and restrictive t-crotch and hinges in the knees and ankles. Bashir can swivel at the waist and his neck is ball jointed. Like a lot of these figures, he’s got that weird thing going on with his legs where you have to bend them a little to get him to stand right.

With only four out of the original six accessories, my Bashir is incomplete. He does have two Starfleet PADDs, one large and one small. These are pretty standard pieces with stickers for the screens. He can hold them pretty well and while they aren’t terribly exciting, they are staples for any Starfleet Officer.

Slightly more fun is his raktajino mug and the coon skin cap that he wears when he goes into the Holosuite with Miles to play their Alamo program. I believe the missing accessories are a phaser and hypo. Moving on to Dax…

Dax was an interesting character because she didn’t fit the usual “I’m an outsider trying to be more/less human” Trek trope. She was indeed one of the more bizarre aliens we saw in the series, thanks to her conjoined nature, but her irreverent, fun-seeking personality made for a rather a-typical Starfleet Science Officer and I found that to be a nice departure for the series. It made for an even more interesting dynamic when she started to get involved with Worf. Once again, we get her in the late series Starfleet uniform. Dax always looked mighty fine in that uniform and the figure reflects that. Of course, apart from her curves, this is the same uniform we saw with Bashir and her articulation is identical. Dax does have a wider-cut and slightly less restrictive t-crotch and her ball jointed head is a lot looser. It’s also nice that they used the taller female buck so she looks pretty good standing next to the much shorter Kira.

As with Bashir, the likeness here is quite good. I might have preferred a more neutral expression as she looks a little two damn happy. I suppose the smile suits the character’s outgoing personality, but it looks rather out of place when you’re posing her with her weapons. The paint apps on the face are especially good, especially evidenced by her Trill spots.

Dax comes with six accessories, half are Starfleet and half are Klingon. On the Starfleet side she has a standard hand phaser, a phaser rifle, and a rather large PADD. Unfortunately, Dax’s hands are rather relaxed and not in any way suited to hold her weapons. I can get her to do some things with the rifle, but the hand phaser isn’t much use.

The Klingon accessories include a bottle of blood wine, a Bat’leth, and a dagger. She can hold the dagger and the bottle OK, and I can make a few things work with the sword, but this isn’t a figure made to be put into action poses and so while the accessories themselves are good, there’s only so much you can do with them.

When I looked at Kira and Odo, I made the comment that these figures feel dated in some respects, and that still applies here. The articulation sounds good on paper, but they still come off as stiff. Despite their limitations, however, I still dig these figure a lot. The paint and quality of sculpts are competent enough and the likenesses are certainly there. If only Diamond had endowed these figures with some lateral movement in the hips and some thigh swivels, I think they would have been heaps better. Maybe someone somewhere will pick up this license again, but for now I’m just happy to have the characters I love represented on my shelf.

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.