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Unlike the first four figures in this series, this review is being written after I've seen the new Star Trek movie. So I'll try not to be biased by the way that it's goddamn fantastic and everything associated with it is therefore awesome.
Born on Earth,
McCoy is a highly skilled physician and an astute judge of human nature. Crusty and outspoken, McCoy dislikes and distrusts much about space travel and technology. McCoy's highly passionate emotions and Spock's dependency on cold logic and intellect help to balance Kirk's gutsy command style.
I have to admit I wasn't really sure about Karl Urban's casting - I like the guy, from his days as Julius Caesar in Xena ("in Xena" in both senses, the lucky bastard [HEY-oh! --ed.]), and he was alright in Lord of the Rings and Doom, although between the Rock being comedically psychotic and Rosamund Pike forgetting to wear a bra in every other scene he got kind of overshadowed. But was he up to the task of stepping into the much-loved role of McCoy? Well either he's been hiding some freakish talent over the years, or he did a deal with some dark gods to possess himself with the late DeForest Kelley's soul, but damn if he didn't play McCoy like it'd been him all along. Heck, I just watched "Encounter at Farpoint," and Kelley himself didn't reprise the role as convincingly as Urban.
In action figure form he doesn't stand out quite so much, since - in cadet uniform -
he's got exactly the same body as Chekov, the plain burgundy jumpsuit with softly-sculpted detailing and no colour variation besides the shoes and the little Starfleet arrow on his collar. Not that it's inaccurate or anything, but presenting McCoy in cadet gear is a bit jarring - Chekov should've been wearing yellow, yes, but he's just Chekov. McCoy really looks weird without his blue shirt on.
His face is one of the better effort for this series.
Its main weakness, like several of the others, is the neutral expression, lacking McUrban's exasperated frown, but the technical details of the face are decent, giving a credible if unambitious likeness of the actor. All the paintwork is on target, including clean delineation of his slightly messy fringe, which helps quite a bit; sadly there's no effort at his slight five-o'clock shadow, though since that's a paint app that's thrown off far more detailed figures than this, perhaps that's for the best.
Sharing Chekov's body, McCoy shares his articulation too: swivel neck, swivel/pin shoulders and elbows, swivel wrists, swivel/kinda-useless-tilt sternum, peg hips and pin knees -
again no ankles, due to the trouser legs being sculpted right down over the tops of the shoes.
One area where this figure scores over the others, though - relatively speaking (i.e. Diamond Select/Art Asylum still kick the crap out of it) - is accessories. Besides the standard belt, phaser and communicator, McCoy also has the proto-PADD electronic clipboard thingy, and an entirely new accessory, a hypospray of some kind. It's too thin to fit tightly into the hand grips directly, but it can be positioned between the fingers and thumb of either hand, and looks decent there. As with the other cadet figures, his base is gold with no command star on it; the peg fits into his right foot.
Aside from the head and the hypospray, this figure is really just Chekov again, and could pretty much stand for the line as a whole: not bad, but could've been plenty better.
-- 05/10/09
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