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The figures themselves are completely out of scale with their ships ... |
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—Slitheen Cruiser, which we see in season one's "Aliens of London" when mankind's first encounter with an alien spacecraft sees this ship collide with Big Ben's clock tower and crash into the Thames. The Slitheen Cruiser comes with a pig alien play piece.
—Captain Jack's Chula Ship, from season one's "The Empty Child," introducing the character of Captain Jack (later seen in Torchwood), a renegade Time Agent, and his stolen time ship. Comes with a Captain Jack play piece.
—The S.S. Madame de Pompadour, an unusual key-shaped spaceship named after a famous French lady in a superior second-season episode called "The Girl in the Fireplace," in which a ship's clockwork crew seem to be keeping an eye on an 18th-century French child. Comes with a Madame de Pompadour play piece.
—Sanctuary Base Rocket, from the season two episode "The Impossible Planet," which is situated on a planet in orbit around a black hole. Comes with the Doctor in a spacesuit.
—Judoon Patrol Ship, from season three's opening episode "Smith and Jones," in which rhinoceros-like Judoon police track a dangerous alien to Earth and deposit a London hospital on the moon in order to arrest her. This ship comes with a Judoon captain figure.
—The TARDIS, of course. This is a miniature version of the TARDIS, the Doctor's time capsule. This one comes with a Doctor play piece.
The ships are not to scale with the play figures, and are not used in gameplay. These packages will appeal to Doctor Who collectors, as well as to Micro-Universe game players, as each exclusive figure is not available in other game-piece packs. That's some clever marketing at work.
Each ship comes packaged in a colorful box with images from the particular episodes, and of the other toys in the line, as well as other game pieces that can be purchased. Included in each is a sheet of simple instructions and a brightly colored fan-fold sheet with the game's rules and a checklist of figures available for play.
Game on, Doctor!
For this review I chose three of the aforementioned ships.Captain Jack's Chula Ship is a sleek, angry-looking warship. Its daggerlike nose angles up to a sleek cockpit, and two wings sweep back and down in a shape very like a jet fighter. Underneath are two huge engines that indicate the kind of motive power this ship must have. This model is very sharply detailed and painted in dark grays, silvers and blood reds. Weapons are visible on various ship surfaces, including, inexplicably, six obvious 20th-century Sidewinder missiles. Hey, it is a time ship. The ship measures about 5 inches in length and has a 4-inch wingspan. The plastic is soft, allowing for some bending and warping, but also for sturdy play.
The ship comes with a clear post to allow the ship to hover above the well-detailed display base, which depicts the landing site of a Chula ambulance, around which the episode "The Empty Child" situates itself. Sticking out of the ground near a London railway track is a small capsule that renegade Jack tries to sell to the Doctor and Rose, thinking them to be Time Agents as well.
The Judoon Patrol Ship is a tall cylinder covered with plenty of detail. It depicts a quite huge Judoon ship that must be a hundred stories tall. This one is painted a brownish color and has four panel covers that detach to be replaced by landing legs. The effect is supposed to be that the legs splay out with hydraulic jacks, but with this model you swap out the closed legs with the open ones. The cylindrical ship comes apart in the middle to store the unused legs, which is very clever and very useful if you don't want to lose the spare parts.
This ship comes with a lunar surface display base. A short, clear plastic rod attaches to the base and fits into the Judoon ship, as if the ship is hovering for a landing. This ship measures just over 5 inches in height and just less than 1.5 inches in diameter. Nicely detailed, this ship is molded from a harder plastic than the Chula ship.
Last of the three reviewed here is the ubiquitous TARDIS, the Doctor's miraculous time capsule, here depicted as the somewhat fatter version from the new series, which is appropriate. This version of the TARDIS has doors that open inward to a printed view of the interior control room, wrapped around curved walls inside. Underneath the TARDIS is a hole to accommodate a small, bent, clear mounting post, which attaches to the display base to support the TARDIS as it hovers over the ground. This model is about 4.5 inches tall.
The TARDIS comes with a street-scene display base, including a signpost reading "No parking at any time," which is a bit of humor, as the TARDIS always seems to park itself at random points on the street.
The figures themselves are completely out of scale with their ships, as mentioned before. Each figure is nicely painted and well molded. The three here are posed with arms extended—the Doctor holding his sonic screwdriver, Jack with pistol pointed and the Judoon with a pointing finger.
Detail-wise, these ships are very nice, and fans who have wanted models of Doctor Who ships will not be disappointed.
These are nice ships. I find it hard, considering their scale, not to compare them to Galoob's (and, subsequently, Hasbro's) fine Action Fleet line. Those ships were from the Star Wars and Aliens licenses and were made of similar materials, modeled to similar sizes and came with small figures. Those ships, however, had opening cockpits, or interiors, and some play value. That is the one thing missing from these ships, though these are better detailed and have much nicer, painted display bases. —Sean
