And now, as teased far too long, I will start posting my custom Star Trek Figures.
While I attempted a few custom figures back in the mid - late 90's during the Playmates run, none of those early attempts were really successful enough for me to keep them in my collection. The real genesis of my current custom figure collection, and by extension the idea for this blog, started with the Blu Ray release of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 2012.
At the time I remember thinking that it was odd to see people get excited about the release given how universally disliked the first season of Next Generation is. And while I did not purchase the Blu Ray myself, it did cause me to go back and rewatch that first season on Netflix to see if it was a bad as I remembered. Make no mistake - I loved those early episodes when they first aired, but as I grew older and would catch them in reruns over the years it's pretty clear that for every great episode like "Encounter at Farpoint" there is a "Code of Honor".
That being said, the first and second seasons were not as bad overall as I remember them being. This got me thinking about how excited I was by The Next Generation in those early days and how much I enjoyed my small collection of Galoob figures. As I started thinking about picking up the season one and two uniform figures from the Playmates line that I had skipped over when initially released, an idea popped in to my head. I looked over my Playmates toys collection and thought about the childhood joy of those few Galoob figures, and I thought about how thrilled my six year old self would be to have so many figures at his disposal. At that moment I decided not just to pick up those few missing figures, but to also pick up enough custom fodder to make them in to versions of the figures that corrected many of the "mistakes" I saw from Playmates Toys.
And so, of course, I needed to start with Captain Jean Luc Picard.
The season one and two uniform Captain Picard figure features the same Picard head used on pretty much every Picard figure throughout the line. The torso is shared with the season one and two Lieutenant Commander Data, and is pretty much spot on. I had to look closely at a few different Picard figures to determine if it was a unique torso or the same as Data's because the fourth rank pip seems to be three-dimensional and not just painted on as is the case with many parts reuses. I still can't tell if it's a slight retool or just extremely well painted, but it looks good enough for me not to be bothered by it so that's what counts.
From the waist down the figure is a mess. While the high collar added to the uniforms in season three was the most obvious improvement to the costume, there are other key details that I wanted to get right.
Two of the biggest features of the season one and two uniforms are the fact that it is clearly a one piece jumpsuit, and the department color coded piping around the yokes on the hem of the pants. Unfortunately, the retail release of Captain Picard in his first and second season uniform does not have either of these features.
A main reason for the inaccuracy of the figure is that it reuses the waist and legs of the first series Picard figure. The "captain's jacket" Picard figure has the belt molded on to the waist, and the very obvious bell bottom trousers instead of the triangular yoke. So, in order to make myself an accurate season one and two Captain Picard it was time to boil and pop.
The waist and upper legs came from a Voyager figure - I couldn't tell you which one but it was the same "buck" shared between Tuvok, Tom Paris, The Doctor, and Lieutenant Carey. This waist piece removed the "belt" of the later Next Generation uniform, and added an extra point of articulation on the leg. The lower legs came from season one Geordi La Forge to add the proper red piping around the yoke of the pants.
One of my other complaints about the early Playmates' figures is the "action" poses that many figures are sculpted with. While some like Riker and Worf are much more extreme than others, the later Deep Space Nine and Voyager figures really captured a good neutral and static stance without making the figures too straight and rigid. I really didn't want to have to go through all the trouble of repainting the black Voyager uniform arms to match the command red of the Next Generation uniforms, especially if that meant painting articulated joints at the elbow that are notorious for causing paint rub. Instead, I discovered that I could flip around an additional left shoulder and put it on the right shoulder joint to create a more neutral "arms at the side" pose.
Here is the final comparison between my custom figure (left) and the production figure (right).
Of course one of the other things that I learned during my journey back in to Star Trek figure collecting and customizing is that one can acquire figures very cheaply online. My pretty standard guideline is that if I can't get a particular figure for less than $5 shipped, I'll wait until I can find it cheaper. Of course a lot of times I'll get a larger lot of figures where the price per figure ends up being $5 or less.
As a quick recap of how I made this figure:
- Season one and two Captain Picard
- Voyager male waist and upper legs
- Season one Geordi La Forge lower legs
- Additional Season one and two Captain Picard for left shoulder
Let me know what you think in the comments!
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