CHARLES TUCKER

ENTERPRISE (ART ASYLUM)

So, I believe I’ve mentioned my controversial opinion of Star Trek: Enterprise on the site before, but for those who didn’t know: yes, I am a fan of it. It’s actually my favorite series after The Original Series and Next Generation. Sure, it wasn’t the greatest show, and there are some downright horrible episodes, but I do kinda like it. I think part of what I liked may have been the show’s action figures, produced by then up-and-coming company Art Asylum.  They did two waves of figures, the first based on the show’s pilot episode, and the second based on some of the crew’s away team looks. Today, I’ll be doing a review of the show’s chief of engineering, Charles “Trip” Tucker.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Trip is from the second series of the line, and is presented here in his EV, or Environmental, suit. The figure stands about 7 inches tall and has 22 points of articulation. The sculpted work on the figure is really quite nice. There’s lots of great details on the figure, and he features separate helmet and torso pieces that can be removed, which adds some very nice depth to the EV suit. The head sculpt looks pretty much spot on to actor Connor Trinneer, who played Trip on the show.  The paint work is not quite as good as the sculpt, but it’s not terrible.  The worst of it seems to be on the head, which has some pretty bad bleed over from the skin into the hair. Said skin is also very yellow, which gives Trip an unhealthy look. The paint on the EV suit is a lot better, and actually has some pretty cool details, especially on the chest piece. Trip includes a removable helmet and chest piece, and one of the weird coins that Art Asylum was including with all their figures at the time. So, yeah…

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

So, there’s actually a story to how I got this one. I was in the dealer’s room at ShoreLeave, a local sci-fi convention, and I found this figure from the resident action figure dealer. This guy was at a lot of the conventions, and had seen me lots of times before, what with me buying lots and lots of action figures. I really wanted the figure, but I didn’t have any money with me. So, one of the guys working the table walked the figure down with me so I could find my dad. When we found him, the guy walked up to my dad, who was definitely in the middle of something else at the time, and told him he needed to buy the figure for me. They offered to knock several dollars off the price as a “frequent-buyer’s discount.” My dad actually bought the figure for me, in spite of what most normal, sane, and rational people would do. Because he’s just that cool.