Yes, it’s a lump of bubbles with a single eye and a crab claw, but I don’t want to hate on him, because I think he’s cool. The Gel Guards were globs of anti-matter that Omega was able to conjure up and animate with his pure will. He used them as scouts to venture into our Universe and further his plot to escape his anti-matter exile. One of the things I always loved about Doctor Who was the show’s unwillingness to just glue some ridges on a person’s nose and call them an alien. Nope, aliens were truly alien looking, even if that meant an actor crawling around in a bin liner. The Gel Guard represents all that is awesome about Doctor Who’s truly alien aliens.

Sure, he’s rotocast, which makes him a bit like a glorified hollow chew toy, but I can’t deny he looks great and he actually does feature one whole point of articulation, which is rather impressive for the design of the monster. You can even pop a small mag light in him and he’ll light up! It’s only natural that this guy would take a back bench to the other highly demanded figures in this set, but that doesn’t make him an unwelcome addition to my collection. In fact, I’d rather like two more, so CO can feel free to repack him with a Mike Yates or Sgt. Benton and I’ll fork over the monies.

And then there’s the lovely Josephine Grant. I’ll confess Jo was never one of my favorite companions, probably because I resented her for replacing Liz Shaw, even though it wasn’t Jo’s fault. Nonetheless, I will gladly scarf up every companion figure CO releases (yes, even Adric and Turlough… and Mel… well, probably Mel… well, maybe Mel… on clearance.) and Jo was part of UNIT so she can’t be all bad. Early test shots of this figure have been floating around the Interwebs forever and even actress Katy Manning played fast and loose with her figure by twittering it all around. Based on early shots, I was concerned about the head sculpt but now that the figure is in hand, most of my fears have been dissuaded. The likeness is ok, albeit not perfect. I think the eyes are too small and if you’ve seen Katy recently, I think you’ll agree that the figure looks more like her older self. Still, all in all I’m happy with the portrait.

Jo features the outfit she wore in “The Three Doctors”: A lavender outfit with a furry coat and her trademark platform Go-Go boots. It’s a good recreation of the outfit, and CO even went the extra mile by allowing collectors to display her with her jacket off. Yes, she comes with an extra set of arms without the sculpted jacket sleeves. All you have to do is pop out the arms, take off the jacket, and pop the other arms on. I think I like the jacketed look better, but she has better articulation without the jacket. Either way, the ability to display her in two ways is really going above and beyond for CO, especially considering this set doesn’t rely on repacks or repaints. My only complaint with Jo is that her left leg pops off rather easy at the thigh swivel. It plugs right back in, but it’s worth noting nonetheless.

Jo’s articulation features ball joints in the neck and shoulders. Both sets of arms have swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinges in her elbows, but the elbow hinges on the coat arms are virtually useless. Her legs feature movement at the hips, which is mostly marred by her dress, swivels in the thighs, and hinges in the knees.

And then, there’s The Brig and he is one outstanding looking figure. The likeness to a young Nicholas Courtney is perfect, and he sports that wonderfully stoic look that only he can pull off when being faced with a weekly alien invasion. He has his peaked officer’s cap, which is not removable, but does appear to be sculpted separately, which means The Brig in a beret may not be far behind! Either way, I think this is one of CO’s best likenesses.

The Brig’s uniform is an amazing piece of work. Every little detail is sculpted on from the epaulettes, pockets and buttons, rank and medals, sidearm holster, gloves, belt and shoulder strap. Yes, even the UNIT patch on his arm is accounted for. It’s all here and he looks every bit the dashing hero! Aside from a small black mark on his left elbow, the paintwork on this figure is otherwise immaculate and there is quite a bit of fine paint detail, right down to the buttons and buckles. The Brig does come with his automatic sidearm, but sadly no swagger stick. I’ll also toss in that the holster is non-functional.

Alas, The Brigadier’s articulation conforms more to the older Who figures, meaning you don’t get ball joints in the shoulders. I’ll admit this is rather disappointing, since I was hoping to get some cool dynamic poses out of him. Let’s run down the articulation: The arms rotate at the shoulders, have swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinges in the elbows. The legs have universal movement at the hips (although the tunic hinders it quite a bit), swivels in the thighs, and hinges in the knees. The head rotates. Part of me wants to bitch about the lack of ball joints in the shoulders, but when I look at how awesome and unlikely this figure is, I’m content to shut the hell up and be thankful.

There have been a lot of outstanding Classic Who Collector Sets, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is probably the best of the bunch. The sculpts are all excellent and the paintwork (black elbow mark notwithstanding) is among the best quality that CO has ever done. These figures are gorgeous! Between the overall quality and the great extra touches, this set really gives me a renewed confidence that CO will continue to pour the love into the Classic Who line even after the NuWho figures have gone to their new scale. And beyond the quality and the workmanship, this set crosses two very important characters off my need list and tosses in a cool monster as well. CO, if you guys were to produce only three or four Classic Who sets of this quality over the course of 2013, I would be a very happy Whovian.

Before moving on to the goods, let me indulge myself with story time. It was the mid 80’s, and every Saturday night a teenaged Figurefan warmed up the old B&W TV (complete with faux wood grain cabinet) in his bedroom and tuned in to watch Doctor Who. It was usually the highlight of my week, and the best thing about it was PBS had finally started over and began showing the stuff from before Tom Baker and Peter Davison. It was brand new Who to me, and I was positively glued to the TV. I delighted in seeing the origins of the series with the 1^stDoctor and the little bits of the 2^nd Doctor that still survived. But then we hit The Pertwee Era, I became totally engrossed as The Doctor found himself marooned on Earth and made to forge an uneasy alliance with UNIT and The Brigadier

Over the course of the episodes that followed, the somewhat adversarial friendship that formed between the Time Lord and soldier was so gradual and natural that it really served to enrich both characters through their interactions. The Brig was the perfect Yin to The Doctor’s Yang. He was skeptical, parochial, a jingoistic patriot, a bureaucrat, and best of all, the poster child for “the military mind.” In a lot of ways he was the opposite of The Doctor and they played so well off of each other. And yet as much as The Doctor exasperated The Brig with his pacifism, scientific gobbledygook, and anti-military ways, in the end The Brig best summed up his feelings for his old Time Lord friend as a “wonderful chap… all of them.”

For the first time I found myself watching Doctor Who not just for The Doctor, but for another character as well. The Brigadier was just awesome. Naturally, the character owed some of his appeal to the writers, who weren’t content with just creating a two-dimensional tin soldier for The Doctor to butt heads with. No they created a rich character, which just had his own way of doing things. He gradually opened his mind to the possibilities that The Doctor represented, but he never compromised his core philosophy of strength through superior firepower. I’ll never forget his greatest lament: “Just once I’d like to meet an alien menace that isn’t immune to bullets!” Of course, what really made the character work so well was the great performance by the late Nicholas Courtney. He was the perfect choice to breathe life into the role and while companions have come and gone, The Brig has always remained my favorite. I wish he lived to see this action figure, but I know that he lived to understand how timeless his work had become. Ok, enough sentimental stuff… let’s take a look at the packaging…

And there it is: One of the coolest sets to come out of CO’s Classic Who collection. Sure, it’s been a crazy, mind blowing ride getting figures of all The Doctors and some of the Companions, but this is the friggin Briagadier and Jo Grant!! I know I’ve said this before with other Classic Who sets, but holy shit, I can’t believe these figures finally exist. I am so damn happy! Wait… where was I? Oh yeah, the packaging. The style and deco of the box is very similar to what we saw with “The Pyramids of Mars” set. As with all the Classic sets, this one uses printed inserts to recreate a display inside the box, and this one does it better than any so far. It’s a deep interior tray dressed up to look just like the set of Omega’s antimatter palace. The Brig and Jo Grant are to the left and the menacing Gel Guard is to the right, all held in place with string. I really hated to open this thing up because it displays so damn well just the way it is, but I had to get at my figures and saving boxes is just no longer possible for me because of lack of space. The back of the box has portraits of each character from the episode and a blurb about “The Three Doctors” story. Hey, look! The episode originally aired in 1972, the year I was born. Cool! All in all, this is an amazing piece of presentation.

Ok, obviously I got a little off track today, so I’m going to break now and come back tomorrow to actually take a look at the figures. And no, it has nothing to do with me trying to pad out the week because I finally replaced my Xbox and I’m anxious to get back to it and start killing things again.

This set comes in a nice window box with a printed backdrop inside. It uses the new classic-style box deco, although the “Doctor Who” logo looks different from the ones on the last classic sets I picked up. The window shows off the figures very well and the back panel of the box has a blurb about the story. Oddly enough, the set is called “’Pyramid of Mars,’ Mars Collectors Set.” At first, I thought it could be to distinguish it from some “Pyramid of Mars” figures that were released a while ago in the UK, but those were released in a “Fourth Doctor Adventure Set.” More likely, it’s part of the double-dipping shenanigans that I’ll touch on later. The set includes an unmasked Sutekh the Osiran and his two Guardian Mummies. Let’s bust them out and see what we’ve got!

Let’s start with Sutekh. If you aren’t familiar with the story, Sutekh is a very powerful and very evil alien being kept prisoner in a kind of stasis cell on Mars. He spends the bulk of the episode trapped in a throne with a mask on. It’s not until the end when he’s free that he reveals his “Jackal” face. [I should note here that he’s freed because a possessed Egyptologist and his force of robot mummies build an interplanetary missile and use it to destroy the power source of the prison on Mars. God, I love Doctor Who! –FF] Here’s where those shenanigans come in. It’s probably a safe bet that most collectors were hoping to get the more iconic version of this figure with the mask on. When the set was first revealed, the optimistic speculation was that he would have interchangeable heads. Alas, this is a case where CO is going to force us to double dip by undoubtedly releasing a masked Sutekh later on. And naturally they release the less desirable one first so collectors will buy it just in case it’s the only one released. If this were any other line of figures, this sort of thing would enrage me, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep the Classic Who line afloat. If that means I’m going to buy another masked version of Sutekh later on down the road, then so I shall!

As for Sutekh himself, he’s a relatively simple sculpt but he suits the character’s on screen appearance quite well. His sculpted robes are nearly all black with a little red piping and red gloves. His head looks a lot better than the prop that was used for the actual character in the show and the glowy paint used on his eyes is pretty effective. Seriously, when I first saw them I thought there was some light piping going on.

Sutekh looks like he has pretty good articulation in his legs, but it doesn’t really matter because his sculpted robes renders all articulation below the waist useless. The arms, on the other hand actually have ball jointed shoulders, hinged elbows, and swivels at the biceps and wrists. Sutekh can also swivel at the neck and waist. All in all, not bad. Sutekh doesn’t need to be able to do acrobatics.

And then you have the Guardian Mummy Robots! Hurray for Classic Who army builders, especially when you can get two in one box. The regular flavor Mummy Servo Robot was originally released as a single carded figure. The ones in this box are the special variety and identified as such by their snazzy gold wrappings. I was expecting these guys to be straight repaints of the original Mummy figures, but there’s actually some re-sculpting going on here. All of the gold bandages are newly sculpted onto the old body making them stand out pretty nicely, and they still have the control pyramids on their backs.

The Guardian Mummies feature the same articulation as the old one. The arms rotate at the shoulders; have hinged elbows, and swivels at the wrists. The legs rotate and have lateral movement at the hips, hinges at the knees, and swivels at the ankles and thighs. He can also swivel at the waist. For a lumbering mummy robot, the articulation is pretty good.

The “Pyramids of Mars” set retailed for $29.99 at WHONA, my favorite Doctor Who e-tailer. It’s not a bad price for three figures, but then this set may really divide collectors who are waiting for the masked Sutekh. More than anything else, I’m anxious to see what or who he will be released with, since CO rarely releases single carded Classic Who figures anymore. Personally, I’d be fine if they released him with two regular Servo Mummies, because having the Guardians outnumber the Servos in my collection, well that just seems wrong.