And we’re back with Day Two of Trek Week! The key to crafting any great screen rivalry is to create a villain worthy of the hero. In the case of Kirk, that wasn’t an easy task. But, thanks to a performance crafted by master thespian and scenery chewer, Ricardo Montalban, Khan not only held his own against Kirk on the big screen, but has become one of the quintessential villains in modern cinema. He’s so friggin formidable they made a whole movie just about his goddamn wrath. But we’re not here to talk about the movie, we’re here to talk about toys, so let’s take a look at Art Asylum’s take on Mr. Khan Noonian Singh.

It’s the exact same packaging that we saw yesterday with Admiral Kirk. The only difference is the bottom insert in the card is personalized with Khan’s name. Again, the presentation here is fantastic. I love the Starfleet insignia shaped bubble and the card art really takes me back to the 80’s movie poster stylings.

Yep, the back of the card is the same too! Lots of figures and many are now very expensive. One of these days I will have a full crew. I vow it… I will have the full crew!

Anyway… moving on to the figure…

Khan’s portrait fares much better than Kirk’s. The head sculpt is a pretty solid representation of Montalban from the film, right down to his outrageous 80’s David Bowie hair. It must have been a challenge to sculpt hair like that, but I think the guys at AA did a solid effort. I also appreciate that the long hair doesn’t impede Khan’s neck articulation.

The rest of the figure is ok, but I think it stumbles in a few areas and mostly the paintwork is at fault. His ragged Ceti Alpha 5 outfit is reproduced with nice detail. He has all sorts of patchwork bits on his tunic and the Starfleet pendant he wore around his neck is sculpted into the chest. He has his one gloved hand, because it was the 80’s and cool people wore only one glove. I also dig his wrist communicator with the sculpted wire running up his arm. His boots have sculpted fur lining and are surprisingly detailed, considering I don’t remember ever getting a good look at them in the film.

The paintwork, on the other hand, makes use of too much gloss, particularly on his tunic and his bare chest. It’s just not right and it’s at odds with the matte dirty finish on the bare arms and the matte paint on the face. It also makes him look more toyish than the Starfleet figures in the line, which make an effort to distinguish matte from gloss.

Khan features the same articulation as Admiral Kirk. You get a ball joint in the neck. The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, hinged at the elbows, and have swivels in the wrists and elbows. The hips feature a t-crotch, and the legs have hinges in the knees and ankles, and swivels in the thighs. Again, there’s no articulation in the torso at all.

Accessories! Khan comes with one extra opened glove hand to swap out his fist. You also get his Ceti Alpha eel, a bowl of baby eels, and a pair of forceps. The eel and bowl are about what you would expect. They’re ok for what they are. The forceps should have been sculpted into an extra left hand, because it’s really tough to get him to hold them in any convincing manner. Still, apart from bundling him with a Genesis torpedo, I can’t think of anything else they could have given him.

If it sounds like I’m picking on Khan, I don’t mean to. He’s actually a pretty cool figure. Khan has got a great head sculpt and an ok body, which makes him the opposite of the Kirk figure. And, hey, if you have any kind of customizing skills and some matte paint, you can probably fix most of the paint issues with this figure by getting rid of the inappropriate gloss. I picked up my Khan figure at a Toy Show from the same dealer I got Kirk and he was also $20. Not bad. If you aren’t willing to spend deeply on a bunch of WoK figures, but want some representations of the movie on your shelf, Khan and Kirk are a great way to go.

Folks, I’ve got Star Trek on the brain this week. What with the new movie opening this past weekend, I wanted to balance it out with some Classic Trek cinema, so I busted out my Wrath of Khan Blu-Ray and now I’m all ready to talk some Trek toys. So, what the hell, let’s call the rest of this week Star Trek Week! To kick things off, we’re going to Art Asylum and their line of figures based on the second and greatest Trek movie of all time. And who better to go with than the hero and the villain of the piece. I’ve had this pair for a little while now, and I decided the time was right to open them up and get them on display. Today we’re going to check out Admiral Kirk and tomorrow we’ll swing back with a looksee at his nemesis, Khaaaaaaaaaaaaan.

I really dig the packaging here. Kirk comes on a huge card with a bubble shaped like the familiar Starfleet insignia. To the left of the bubble is an illustration of The Enterprise and to the upper right corner is a nice piece of art depicting Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Khan. The artwork almost has a vintage feel to it, which really fits the flick incredibly well. It just reminds me of early 80’s movie poster art. The bubble has an insert with the 25^th Anniversary (holy shit, I’m so old!) Wrath of Khan logo and another insert with Kirk’s name on it.

The flipside of the card shows stills of the characters that are available in Series I and II. It also taunts you with the fact that four members of the bridge crew are SDCC Exclusives and so if you want them you’re screwed. Actually, you can still nab some of these figures for around $30 on Ebay from time to time, but others have crept closer to that three-digit mark. Suffice it to say if you’re looking for a full set, you better be ready to dig deep. Ok, let’s bust out Kirk and check him out…

Hot damn, I adore the Classic Trek movie uniforms: The burgundy tunic with that front flap, the shoulder strap with the rank insignia medal, the gold plated Starfleet insignia on the breast and matching belt buckle. These uniforms were clearly the pinnacle of Starfleet fashion design and I remember being so disappointed when The Next Generation premiered and dragged Starfleet kicking and screaming back to jumpsuits… although, I eventually succumbed to their old school charm. Anyway, this figure does the uniform justice in every way. The black piping is sculpted into the tunic, as is the seam running down the center of the chest. The insignia are painted onto the arm band and the sculpted Starfleet insignia on the left of the chest and on the belt buckle are both things of beauty. Overall, the paintwork is solid, and I like how they used matte black for the pants and high gloss for the boots.

You may recall a while back I looked at “Regula-1” Kirk from the same series and I was less than impressed with the head sculpt. Well, regular Kirk here uses the same head sculpt. It isn’t terrible, but there’s something definitely off about it. I think it looks like much older Shatner. His eyes seemed to get squintier the older he got, and that’s what I’m seeing here.

Kirk features decent enough articulation. You get a ball joint in the neck. The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, hinged at the elbows, and swivel at the biceps and wrists. His hips feature a standard t-crotch, his knees and ankles are hinged, and he has swivels in the lower thighs. I’m glad they didn’t go for any torso articulation, as it would have messed up the look of the tunic. Speaking of the tunic, because the lower part of it is made of rubbery plastic, Kirk can actually sit down. I am, however, somewhat hesitant to leave him in a sitting position, since it will likely crease the plastic. It’s not like there’s a proper movie captain’s chair for him to sit in anyway. Although, the Defiant chair that came with Playmate’s 5” Sisko will work in a pinch.

Kirk comes with an extra pair of hands and the basic Starfleet gear: A phaser and a communicator. The hands are nice, but I didn’t find them really necessary. I use the ones designed to hold his equipment and don’t bother with the others. Both pieces of gear are nice tiny representations of the props in the film. I’m pretty fond of this model phaser, and this one appears to be a repaint of the accessory used for the Admiral Kirk figure from The Motion Picture. The communicators in Wrath of Khan, on the other hand, were shit. In fact, they were probably the only bad thing about that entire movie. Seriously, how did Starfleet go from using wrist communicators in TMP to these ugly behemoths? They look like some kind of scratch built transistor radios.

And that’s Admiral James T Kirk. He’s a really nice figure. The portrait of the head sculpt could have been better, but it’s not a deal breaker. He’s also one of the WoK figures that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. I got mine at a Toy Show for $20, which is about right. And, if one Kirk isn’t enough for you, you can also track down Kirk with the bloody handprint on his tunic, put there by Scotty’s dying nephew. Hey, Scotty, the dude is dying… WTF did you bring him up to the bridge for? Take that shit to Sickbay and maybe he’d have a chance to live. Oh yeah, there’s also another variant with Kirk doing the Khan scream. Happy hunting! Tomorrow, I’ll be back with the most Noonien of Singhs… Khan himself.

I realize that I’m not being terribly original when I say that Wrath of Khan is my favorite Star Trek movie, but it’s also one of my favorite go-to films when I want to watch a good sci-fi flick. I love the story, the script, and most of all, I absolutely adore the costumes and props. Ok, the communicators are shit, but apart from that, this movie is represents the High Renaissance of the Star Trek Universe for me. It was the meeting of the gritty old stylings with newer flashier special effects, and it was glorious. The transporter and phaser effects are breathtaking, but the Starfleet uniforms! God damn, I love these uniforms. But we’ll talk about those another time. Today we’re looking at “Regula-1 Kirk”, and he’s all about that bad-ass Landing Party jacket. I picked up this figure at the Show loose. He was baggied with all his parts, but no packaging, so instead of packaging, we’re going to take a look at the movie poster, which is something else I picked up from this Dealer.

The poster I got is a repro, and it’s still rolled up in a tube, but that’s it pictured above. By, God, but that was the right way to do the poster for Star Trek II. It was Paramount’s way of saying, “We know the first movie bored you to the point where you wanted to commit suicide in your theater seats. But check this shit out!” It’s got explosions and phaser fire and some dude we don’t know yet who looks like he may have just stabbed the hell out of Kirk. There’s mysterious desert people and I’ll be damned if that ain’t Paul Winfield screaming his ass off in a space suit. I saw the poster at the theater when I was about 11 years old and it almost blew my little mind, because I wanted to see what was going on so bad. This poster just captured everything that it meant to be Star Trek and awesome at a time where Starship bridges weren’t carpeted and Earl Gray Tea was served at book clubs and not on Starships. God, I love this movie!

  

Art Asylum did a lot of versions of Kirk from Wrath of Khan, and eventually I hope to look at all of them. But, as you can see, this one is called “Regula-1” Kirk as it’s based off the scenes where he beamed onto the Regula-1 Space Station only to find out that Khan had tortured and murdered the shit out of everyone. The idea of having special gear for landing party duty wasn’t often explored in the original show, but it made sense to me, and that’s where this jacket comes in. The jacket is just bad ass and Kirk being Kirk needs to wear it with the collar up to make him look a little extra bad ass. The jacket is wonderfully recreated here, with all its little patches and pockets and stitching and some very nice paint detailing. Like so many of the designs for TWOK, this thing not only looks cool, but also totally functional. Ok, except maybe for that huge pouch over the ass. How would you get anything out of that? The large Starfleet shoulder patch is present as are the rank insignia on the sleeve, the distinctive diamond pattern on the back, and the Starfleet insignia on the chest. The legs are pretty much the same as the ones used on the regular Wrath of Khan Kirk, with the red piping down the sides and high gloss black paint used for the boots.

  

And then there’s the head sculpt. Yeah… there’s definitely some Shatner in there, but it isn’t one of Art Asylum’s best pieces of work. One of the running themes of TWOK was about Kirk getting old, and that’s kind of ironic in retrospect, since it wasn’t so much a theme more than 10 years later when he was still chasing around the galaxy. I mention it here, because at certain angles, this Kirk head looks a bit older than Kirk from Star Trek II. Everything else here is pretty good and the painted flesh tone is thankfully free of any dirt or smudging. Kirk even has his trademark 24^th Century (read early 80’s) pointed sideburns.

Alas, as good as the jacket looks; it really destroys a lot of the figure’s articulation. The head and arms are fine, as you get a ball jointed neck, ball jointed shoulders, swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinged elbows. The leg articulation is all still there, and includes swivels in the thighs and hinged knees, but with the jacket extending down to his legs, you really can’t do anything useful with it. It’s kind of ironic, since this is supposed to be the action-packed, “I’m gonna beam down and kick your ass!” Kirk, but given the way the figure is built, I guess it’s understandable.

“Regula-1” Kirk comes with lots of extra hands. You get two replacement sets, and as is often the case with extra hands, I don’t find a lot of need for them. One is sculpted with the comm bracelet that he takes off of Chekov and screams the infamous“KHAAAAAAAAN!” line into. It’s a cool bonus. The other set seems to be slightly better at holding the gear, but not enough to make me want to swap them out. As for the other accessories, you get a phaser and a communicator. The phaser seems to be the same one that came with my Motion Picture Kirk and Spock, which is fine because the prop was more or less the same. The communicator actually opens and closes, and it feels like it’s sized down a bit, which turned out great because the communicators in the movie were ridiculously large and clunky.    

                                                                           

I love this figure as much as I always knew I would, but I also knew that once I bought one Wrath of Khan figure, I would be committed to getting the whole set, and considering that a lot of them were SDCC Exclusives, these figures tend to be more expensive than your average Diamond Select Trek figure. I was able to get MOC Khan and regular Kirk from the same dealer, without getting beat up too badly (I won’t get to those this week, but soon), but those were regular releases and not exclusives. I’ll probably just try to hunt down one of these a month until I’m done.  

Tomorrow, we’ll wrap up the week by looking at a couple more of Playmates’ Classic Trek figures: Harry Mudd and The Mugatu!