Star Trek Original Series Communicator

I enjoyed the TV show Star Trek as a child. The show aired when I was very young, but thanks to frequent repeats I did catch it, and grew to love it, and mostly—I wanted those gadgets! The phaser, the tricorder, the communicator. In fact at one point I had the AMT "Exploration Set" model kit, which included a miniature (about half-scale) version of each, molded in black with chrome parts. Armed with these three items, small as they were, small enough to fit into my child-sized hands anyway, I was beaming down to alien planets all over my town, after I glued them together.

Replicas of these three signature items from one of the world's signature science fiction shows have been sought after ever since the show aired. And, while companies and individuals have produced replicas ever since ranging from excellent to awful, prices have normally varied proportionally, so a good one could set you back a bit, cash-wise.

A few years ago Art Asylum created a great version of the classic series Phaser II (which included a detachable Phaser I), which I glowed appropriately about here in these pages.

Now Diamond Select and Art Asylum bring us the second piece in this original series exploration set—the communicator. Probably the most recongized piece of science fiction technology ever to grace this planet, the communicator is fairly accurately molded from black plastic with a silver-painted rim around the middle, a gold-painted real metal grille, three working lights, digitized sound effects from the original show and a motorized speaker array.

The instruction sheet claims that this communicator has more than 20 sound effects. More on that later.

The communicator comes packaged in a black box with a diagonal window to display the communicator and several images of the original series on the front, and images of other Diamond Select Star Trek merchandise on the back, along with a nice image of the communicator that identifies all its functioning parts. A small blurb on the back says that the toy was modeled directly from original Star Trek props for maximum authenticity.

The communicator takes two AAA batteries.

A good version of a classic device

The bar was set low for me originally when I found the original AMT model kit, considering its lack of great detail and its diminutive scale. Still, it was rather enjoyable.

However, the bar has been raised by a version of this communicator I bought in 1998, made by IPI. It was a full-scale model with gold chrome metal grille, a real metal microphone grille, excellent sound effects and a plethora of features, including working lights, digital clock, LCD calculator and eight-second voice recorder. It cost $24.95 at the time. I considered this the ultimate in affordable, excellent replicas.

That toy shouldn't really affect my opinion of Diamond Select's version, but it does, and as their version is far superior to the 1996 Playmates version, they have a lot to be proud of. It's just that, like I said, the bar has been raised for me.

That said, there are some excellent features. The weight of the metal grille and the excellent sound effect it makes when opened are lovely. It's certainly recognizable as that stuttery, chirpy sound the original made whenever a member of the Enterprise crew opened one up.

Once you open it, a yellow and a blue light come on, and a small motor rotates two plastic overlays of the starburst pattern on the speaker array, causing a very nice (and highly authentic) moiré pattern to emerge. This motor will continue to rotate for three minutes while it remains open (shutting down after that time to save battery power).

The left button activates the hailing function and turns on the central red light, which begins to flash. If you then close the communication grille, the device waits five seconds, then plays the hailing sound, alerting you to an incoming communication. Open the grille at that point and you hear First Officer Spock say, "Captain, shall I beam down an armed party?"

The right button plays a series of sound clips from the original show, segments of speech by Capt. Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura and, supposedly, McCoy, while the blue light flashes in sync with the voice sample. A nice effect—but the voices themselves seem a little high-pitched, as if they are sped up just a small amount. Spock sounds more like Sulu.

If you hold down the right button for three seconds, it cycles through the sound clips as a diagnostic.

The thing is, I cannot detect any sound clip from McCoy, and in total, I could find only seven different phrases. Add to that the hail sound and the communicator activation sound, and that only adds up to nine sounds, not the 20 advertised in the instructions. And I've tried all variations of button presses to get more, but failed.

It comes down to bang-for-buck, and my guess is that in that department, this version will be hard to beat for some time to come.