Tag Archives: Bishop (Aliens)

#3083: Bishop

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

BISHOP

ALIENS: REACTION (SUPER 7)

Wow, I took such a gap between Aliens reviews, didn’t I?  Who knows how long it could be before I review another one?  Well, I mean, I knows.  I knows very well.  The answer is “no time at all,” by the way, because I’m totally doing another Aliens review today.  Is it an ill-advised move to group them together, knowing that it’s probably not super likely that I’ll have anything else Aliens-related to review next April 26th?  Probably.  But, I’ll risk it, especially if it means I get to get all meta with this intro.  I do like my meta intros.  Anyway, I looked at Hicks yesterday.  Today, I’m gonna look at Bishop.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Bishop is another figure from Series 1 of Super 7’s Aliens ReAction line, the second of the six “human” figures, though I suppose “human” isn’t quite right for him.  He prefers the term “artificial person” himself.  The figure stands about 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  Bishop is another all-new sculpt, which isn’t a terrible shock.  It’s a pretty cool sculpt, which captures his general look pretty well.  He’s not the most thrilling character when it comes to design, of course, but that’s just Bishop.  They make the best they can with what they have.  Honestly, they make more than the best, because this figure’s pretty clever.  See, while on the surface he’s just a basic Bishop, he gets a fun action feature.  You can split him apart at the middle, recreating his post-Queen attack damage.  There’s even a peg shaped like his gross android entrails.  It works surprisingly well, and the split’s not as glaringly obvious as you might think.  Sure, it’s clearly there, but it doesn’t jump right out at you.  Honestly, if it sat just a little bit better at the back, it’d be pretty much perfect.  Bishop’s paint work is fairly basic, but it fits the style well, and it captures all the main elements needed.  The application is pretty clean, with no real slop or bleed over, which is nice.  Bishop has no accessories, but the gimmick is the real extra.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Hicks was my main want from this set, but Bishop here happened to be the other of the two ReAction figures that got traded into All Time, and I was hardly going to just leave this one on his own.  I gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised by this one.  Hicks was just kinda basic, but Bishop’s actually a quite clever figure.  He could have been very bland and boring, but he’s really fun instead.

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website.

#1067: Queen Alien (w/ Bishop & Warrior Alien)

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

QUEEN ALIEN (W/ WARRIOR ALIEN & BATTLE-DAMAGED BISHOP)

ALIENS MINIMATES

alienqueenmm1

For everything else it gave us (and believe me, there was a lot it gave us), easily the most definitive thing to come out of 1986’s Aliens was the Alien Queen (or is it the Queen Alien?  No one seems to agree on that…)  Heck, she even transcends the movie itself.  She’s one of the most definitive things in the franchise!  Is she the most original concept ever?  Well, maybe not.  Compared to some of what we see in the first film, she’s a surprisingly straight-forward answer to just where all those eggs came from.  But she is pretty cool, which makes it pretty easy to over look the straight-forwardness.  She’s finally made her way into Minimates form, alongside the android synthetic artificial person Bishop, and one of the Queen’s drone-y underlings.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

The Queen and her compatriots make up the other half of the first deluxe series of Aliens Minimates, and act as a natural counterpoint to the Ripley and Power Loader set.

QUEEN ALIEN

alienqueenmm9Where the Power Loader was sort of a glorified vehicle, the Queen is a more straight figure.  Well, at her core, at least.  The figure is about 3 1/2 inches tall when stood at full height and has 16 points of articulation, counting the tail.  The Queen is built on the standard Minimate body, albeit with a unique set of upper legs, as well as a torso extender, upper arm additions and add-ons for her head, torso/neck/tail, hands, and feet.  If I’m being totally honest, it took some time for me to be sold on the Queen being built on the basic body.  For compatibility’s sake, I can understand the desire by DST to use the same basic parts here that they use for everyone else, and there’s no denying that *a lot* of work went into making her work as well as possible.  The Queen as seen in the film was quite spindly and lanky, so I think that using at least some of standard parts is reasonable.  The trouble seems to mostly lie with the arms and legs, and the lengths DST has gone to to make them longer than they actually are.  Simply put, the elbows and knees are just too close to the main body, which results in the articulation being a lot less useful than it would be normally.  It’s not as big a deal for the arms, but the legs can make keeping the Queen standing quite a mean feat.  Since DST was already re-sculpting the upper legs, it would have been nice if the new pieces were a little bit lengthened.  Ultimately, the final product isn’t bad at all, but it certainly takes some getting used to.  The paintwork on the Queen is ultimately pretty simple, even compared to the basic Aliens from the line.  For the most part, she just relies on the sculpted details, with a little bit of painted detailing on the lower legs, pelvis, and arms.  Fortunately, the sculpted detail is pretty great on its own, so it’s not really an issue.  The Queen includes four alien eggs (two opened, two closed), a chestburster, and a clear display stand.  She also has an extra tail to swap out with her normal one, which allows her to “impale” the included Bishop ‘mate, just like in the movie.  It’s by far the coolest of the included extras.

WARRIOR ALIEN

Apone&Xeno3Nothing to see here, move along.

You’re still here?  Review’s over!  Go home!  …Okay, fine, I’ll discuss briefly.  So, this ‘mate is the same as the Warrior Alien included with Sgt. Apone in Series1, which was itself the same as the Alien Warrior from the singles.  It’s a perfectly fine ‘mate (and far more versatile than the Battle-Damaged one included with the Loader), and I certainly won’t say to another.

BATTLE-DAMAGED BISHOP

alienqueenmm2Finally!  Bishop!  It’s about time!  Seriously, Bishop was like one of the only major missing characters from the film, so it’s great to finally have him here—Battle-Damaged you say?  Ah.  So, I guess we’ll just have to keep waiting on the normal one.  Well, half a Bishop is better than no Bishop, right?  In his damaged state, Bishop is really just the upper half of a Minimate, with add-ons for his hair and watch, as well as a piece that plugs into the bottom of the torso to simulate his guts seen in the movie.  While the guts aren’t as detailed as, say, the NECA version of this design, they’re still pretty cool.  I’m actually a little surprised DST didn’t just re-use alienqueenmm13one of the guts pieces from their Walking Dead line, but I’m certainly happy to see a character-specific piece in use here!  The paintwork on Bishop is quite impressive.  He’s got a full set of normal details, which are all clean and sharp, and then a bunch of milky-white paint in various splatters, depicting his “blood.”  It’s a pretty cool, quite unique look, and it does a reasonable job of capturing his look from the end of the movie.  Bishop includes a set of legs as well, for those wanting to display him bi-pedal.  It’s not enough to make him into a normal Bishop, mind you, but it does allow him to interact with the Queen’s extra tail piece, and appear as though he’s in the midst of being torn in two.  He also includes a clear display stand, should you wish to have him just standing about with a big stain on his front.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Like yesterday’s Power Loader set, I got these guys as a birthday present from my parents.  The Queen’s alright overall.  I have my issues with her, but the final product is better than I was expecting.  The Warrior Alien is a ‘mate we’ve seen before; no surprises there.  Bishop is, surprisingly, the set’s real star.  He’s just very well done, and makes me yearn all the more for that basic Bishop ‘mate.  Not quite as strong a set as the Loader, but still very cool.

alienqueenmm12

#0686: Bishop – Queen Attack

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

BISHOP – QUEEN ATTACK

ALIENS (NECA)

BishopHalf1

If you thought we were done with the awesome coverage of toys from the greatest movie ever made, you were sadly mistaken. There’s always more Aliens stuff to cover. Always.

Back in Series 3 of NECA’s Aliens line, they released the always reliable Artificial Person assigned to the Sulaco, Bishop. When I reviewed that figure, I made mention of the tooling more than likely Being a one-off for that figure, and jokingly remarked that the only re-use I could see it getting would be if they did a “half-Bishop.” Well, umm, NECA seems to have done just that. Let’s look at the figure now!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

BishopHalf2Bishop is another figure from Series 5 of NECA’s Aliens line. For those of you less familiar with Aliens than I, the figure replicates Bishop from Ripley’s definitive final battle with the Alien Queen. The Queen makes her presence known on the Sulaco by impaling Bishop with her tail and tearing him in two. Fortunately for Bishop, he’s an artificial person, so this proves non-fatal, allowing to pull off a pretty sweet heroic rescue later in the fight. It’s a pretty darn important part for him, and it accents Series 5’s final battle Ripley pretty well. The figure is about 3 1/2 inches tall and has 12 points of articulation, which is actually really impressive for a guy who has no lower half. Bishop actually uses less of the first Bishop’s sculpt then you might think. He just uses the arms, with the head, torso, shirt, and robo-guts all being newly sculpted. The new parts are very nicely handled. The shirt was a ton of texture, and you can even make out the tear in the front where the Queen’s tail ripped through it. It’s actually sculpted flat on the back, which looks a little odd when viewed head on, but it makes it so that he can be laid down correctly, which is definitely a good thing. The guts are appropriately goopy, and I appreciate that they are somewhat articulated. The head features a pretty BishopHalf5decent resemblance to Lance Henriksen, and it’s definitely got Bishop’s alarmed look from the scene down. I had a few issues with the paint on the first Bishop figure, mostly with the head. This figure tends to do a bit better in that area. The first Bishop’s eyebrows looked sharpied in place, which really hurt the likeness, but this figure has a more appropriate set of details. The eyes on this figure still possess the outline present on the first Bishop, but the actual eyes are handled much better. The outline is actually okay by me, because it helps bridge the two figures a little bit, and it’s really not that noticeable here. The rest of the paint is quite well handled. He’s appropriately messy looking, but in a controlled way, so he looks like what we saw on screen. Now, this figure is literally only half the man that the last Bishop was, but the cost is still the same. In order to make up for that, NECA’s given him one of the best accessories we’ve seen in this line: a face hugger and egg*. Both pieces are based on their Aliens designs, which are slightly different from those in the preceding film. The face hugger is sculpted in a sprawled out pose, and features a posable tail, which really goes a long way. Both the face hugger and the egg are tremendously well-sculpted and painted, and they look pretty much spot-on to the props from the movie.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Bishop was another piece of the set of Series 5 figures I got from my parents for my birthday. He’s more than a little over-shadowed by the Ripley from this same series, due to really being an accent piece instead of his own figure. That said, he accents really well, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to actually have a half-Bishop figure. That wraps up my reviews of Series 5. It should be noted that series also contained single releases the two Xenomorphs from the Aliens: Genocide two-pack, which are essentially the same figures. If you’d like to read my review of that set, head here.

*As I was looking over my previous Bishop review, I noticed that, in addition to asking for a half-Bishop, I also suggested that the last Bishop should have included a face hugger accessory to make him a bit more worthwhile. Neither thing is really all that out there as an idea, but it is amusing that I brought both up before.

BishopHalf4

#0456: Bishop

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

BISHOP

ALIENS (NECA)

Alright, on to Christmas Review # 16 of 14 (try not to think about that too much).

NECA’s Aliens line is, as you can probably tell by the name, primarily based on the second movie in the Alien Franchise. That being said, NECA hasn’t been afraid to venture into some of the other movies here and there as well. For me, Aliens is the best, so while I don’t mind the occasional figure from another movie, I find myself most excited for the true Aliens-based stuff. So, of the three figures in Series Three of the line, it should be no surprise that the one I’m most excited to get is Bishop, the second film’s faithful artificial person.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Bishop was released in Series Three of NECA’s Aliens line and he’s the only figure in the series to be actually Aliens-branded. Bishop is based on the character’s basic jump-suited appearance, which is his look for 90% of his screen time. The figure is just shy of 7 inches tall (Lance Henriksen isn’t the tallest of guys) and he has 22 points of articulation. Bishop features an all new sculpt, and unlike the vast majority of human figures in this line, it seems doubtful that this one’ll see any re-use (unless NECA really wants to give us a half-Bishop. Please?) The sculpt is the same quality as just about every other NECA sculpt. It’s not perfect; the overlay for the torso looks somewhat like a diaper at the bottom. Also, the front of the knees make the figure stand with a slight crouch, which looks odd in certain poses. However, the majority of the sculpt is very good. The likeness on the headsculpt is a pretty good Henriksen, and all of the body’s proportions seem pretty spot on. From the neck down, the paint work is superb. Everything is nice and clean, there’s some pretty great detail work, and there’s practically no bleed over or slop. There’s a little bit of paint chipping on the elbow joints, but that’s not too obvious. The paint on the head is clean, but perhaps too clean. The eyes are rather cartoony and I don’t quite know what’s going on with the outline. The eyebrows also look as if they’ve been drawn on with a sharpie. Henriksen’s eyebrows are brown and a bit bigger, so this hurts the likeness a fair bit. Bishop is packed with a flashlight, a knife, and a spare hand to hold it (for the famous knife scene). These are all pretty decent accessories, although it would have been cool to get a facehugger for him to dissect, especially since we’ve yet to actually get a properly scaled facehugger from this line. Still, the flashlight is very well done and the knife is from one of the character’s most definitive scenes, so they were well chosen.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Bishop was part of a full set of Aliens Series Three that was given to me by my parents as a slightly delayed Christmas gift. Bishop’s the figure I was looking forward to the most from this series. Ultimately, the figure’s not perfect, but he’s pretty good. He’s well sculpted, decently accessorized, and he looks pretty great with the marines. Plus, he’s the only character in the line who actually had a scene with the Queen (though that half-Bishop would be more appropriate. Just saying…)