90s Star Trek figures

[general_radix]

I guess that's a thing I'll be collecting now?

So, it started many years ago (dunno exactly when, but it was within this decade) at a Goodwill when (IIRC) Mom spotted an old figure of Dr. Crusher (the first version of her Playmates made, in fact); I just kinda grabbed it in hopes of selling it later, but that never happened.

Dr. Crusher sat in my room for ages, unopened; after accepting that I would probably never get around to selling the figure, I decided that if I ever got another from that range, I'd open it. And today, I unexpectedly received Mom's Kirk figure from the 30th anniversary line; basically, I asked to take a closer look (it was on a very high shelf that I had little hope of reaching even with a grabby-thing), and after cleaning up some other stuff that fell in the process of taking it and a Kelvin Timeline Kirk down, she asked me if I wanted it, more or less.

Not the same Trek series, but it fit my criteria for opening Dr. Crusher. So now I've got those two and a Riker (battle-damaged version, apparently) I picked up from The Deep on my desk.

I think between then and now I've developed a bit more appreciation for Playmates's Star Trek lines and the sheer range of characters (and versions of characters) they seemed to cover. Apparently these were pretty common back in the day; the listings I saw in my rudimentary search hovered around $10, and Riker was dirt cheap. So, potentially easier to get than what figures I normally collect (much as I love Figmas/Nendos and the like...).

Kinda hoping to get the rest of the core TNG cast someday, and maybe some Voyager and DS9 peeps (particularly Janeway, Seven of Nine, and Sisko). Maybe the other comic con coming up in March will have some?


Bonus tangentially-related twaddle: Dad is not a fan of the Kelvin timeline in part because they skewed the main cast so young it broke his suspension of disbelief (Dad is a retired Air Force engineer and knows a lot about military stuff; for example, one is very unlikely to attain captaincy in their 20s). "Kindergarten in space", he called it. XD;

Comments

[bladespark]

The young age (and very specifically the going straight from cadet to captain) was one of the deeply immersion breaking things for me about the rebooted universe. Also Spock shouting. Even in the deeply emotional moments of the original series, he absolutely never raised his voice, and that was after years of coming to terms with feeling emotions, whereas a younger Spock should be even more in denial about having a human side.

Ahem. Don't mind me, I can rant about the reboots at the drop of a hat. I don't hate them entirely but I find them deeply flawed on multiple levels and they annoy me quite a lot sometimes.

[hokuton_punch]

Cool! Good luck finding more. ♥

[general_radix]

Thanks! ^^

[general_radix]

Ranting is fine. XD I heard that Beyond was a good film, but I'm not sure I want to slog through the first two to watch it...

(Discovery is set in the Kelvin timeline, right? I heard it did some things that would severely put me off watching it even if we had CBS All Access. To name one, the heroes committing a WAR CRIME in the first or second episode to, AFAIK, no consequence)

[juzo_kun]

Seems Nu-Trek took a page fron the Yamato manual regarding the chain of command... as there the young cadet became the second in command at the end of the first series (half of first season in the USA version, Star Blazers). But there's a reason for that: Matsumoto wanted to mantain the "space opera" feel but wanted to distance as much as he could from most military-based tropes, and focusing on Kodai's growth as a character.

Seeing this in Star Trek seems... unnatural, I agree.

[juzo_kun]

Discovery: a funny SF series, if one forget that's supposed to be part of Star Trek. As far as I know it should be in the TOS timeline, unless they retconned it. No, I don't really know what that is supposed to function! The visuals are really Kelvin-inspired.

Agreed on the whole war crime moment (I can go further in detail, here Discovery is available on Netflix translated and I used my free month to watch it) also considering they also cited Geneva Treat and such, that thing grated me the wrong way.

But I chalked that more to a rushed plotline and/or the fact that the first season of nearly every Star Trek after TOS was from lukewarm to embarrassing.

[general_radix]

That definitely sounds more plausible than however Kelvin!Trek justified Kirk shooting past several ranks. XD;

[general_radix]

I'm not sure how that works, either. XD;; (Looking things up, it's indeed supposed to be in the primary timeline...)

Further detail is welcome! When I told Mom about the detail, her response was basically "well I'm definitely not bothering with that show now" and how the Federation of the old series would never have allowed such a thing. (Dad was more "you do what you have to in war", but like--this is Trek. Our heroes shouldn't be utterly craven bastards)

Hopefully the next season of Discovery is/will be better? And they won't do things like "talk up how progressive their casting/writing choices are and then murder the relevant characters"...

[juzo_kun]

If I recall correctly, your Dad got the gist of the deal: heroes were in a really dire situation with the Klingon ship, which was the first ship to have the dissimulation technology (and also was crewed by the Klingon equivalent of a weird cult fanatics).

Heroes didn't want the other Klingon clans getting the technology, because that would have mean an existential threat for the Federation: losing the war with Klingons and being destroyed.

What they did? Heroes noticed the ritual of the weird cult ship of bringing on board all the dead crewmates of other destroyed ships floating in space, and they managed to slip a bomb among them. BOOM! Ship damaged beyond repair, existential danger momentarily averted.

Still a war crime, though.

(Then there are a lot of other pull-out-of-thin-air things, but don't trust my memory too much!)

[general_radix]

Sorta reminds me of the SPARTAN-IIs of Halo and all the ethical dubiousness that surrounds them, but Halo actually examined it after a point, AFAIK. Not sure if Discovery has gotten around to critically dissecting a Federation that apparently takes the "it's not a war crime if you win" mentality. XD;;

[juzo_kun]

I have to check the wiki to remember the details, but that decision in particular was taken by characters who were, to not spoil further, already compromised -- if I can say so.

Anyway, I know I'm not a good storyteller but in my opinion, that could have been included in the finale aside the "Feredation is the best, we're the best, yeah!" speech, at least acknowledging it with something like "we've made Really Bad Things but now we can and will do better!" kind of speech, that would have been a neat closure.

I hope in the second season...

[There's also another not-really-Federation-worth action taken further in the series, but that is more or less placed as a MAD kind of situation, basically came from characters for whom the Federation values mean less to nothing, and anyway, after all the mess of the second part that is among the less egregious plot twists...]

[bladespark]

I haven't watched Discovery. Between feeling like modern Trek has just lost its roots and vision, and having so little free time to consume media these days, it hasn't interested me enough to check it out.

[vulthuryol_majicue]

Sounds awesome! I always loved the TOS, STNG, and DS9! (Afraid I stopped watching during the first season of Voyager. V_V) I hope you managed to find all the figures. It would be awesome to have all the classics.

The Kelvin timeline is something you can't take seriously. They are basic popcorn & beer movies to enjoy and then forget. Still fun to watch, just don't take seriously. ^_^

[general_radix]

Hehe. ^^ (I'm actually waiting on Tasha YAr's figure as of this comment!) The other day I started watching TOS; hoping to watch at least one disc a day, since there's a lot to get through. XD