Actually both the TMP and the WOK phasers had a buttplate. See the pic of the WOK phaser in the Seattle museum. The TMP plate sticks out in back, the WOK plate is flush (and seems thicker).
You could add this easily to your phaser with styrene. Plus it would cover up the copyright information on the DST.
Had I the necessary skills, and the patience to go to all that trouble, yes, I could. But I don't, so I won't!
If the final is like that prototype photo, they included the holotape down the sizes as in the WOK version. That is incorrect and should be removed.
We've known that for awhile. Apparently, they put the holotape there to cover up the seam between the 2 halves of the body. Had they been a little more careful with designing it, there are ways they could have hidden the seam without needing the tape to cover it up. I'm guessing Art Asylum's toy designers, good as they are, still have a thing or 2 to learn.
Nice that they sunk the lights below the clear plastic on the control panel and removed the engraved rectangle below the trigger. They even got the "two dots" (rather than white equals sign) detail right.
But they STILL made a MAJOR mistake on the control panel. The lower-right "button" that they're using as the setting button is painted or molded in a gold color, just as on the
WOK version. The problem there? It's supposed to be CLEAR. On the original prop, it was a clear window that was meant to be a power level readout. At least Playmates got that part right, as aside from the inaccurate lights they used, the Playmates
TMP phaser has the control panel absolutely spot-on to the way it looked on the actual prop. :cool
If I knew what I was doing in that regard, I'd disassemble one of the AA/DST phasers, pull that button out, take a casting of it, make a mold, and then produce my own in clear resin/plastic, so I could increase the accuracy of the control panel on the
TMP version. But I lack the necessary skills to do that. :unsure
But if an RPF member wanted to make the clear buttons, and wanted to offer them up for us, I'd likely be interested in obtaining one.
But it looks like the "side rails" don't wrap all the way around the front of the phaser.
Again, not exactly a news flash. And I wish they had made new P1 body shells for the TMP version for just that reason. If they were going to the trouble to make a new trigger for it, they could have at least done the correct body shells, too, along with the clear button. But, you know, that would make sense. And they must be thinking that if it makes sense, it's not allowed. :rolleyes
And if that "plain dark gray" color is what they intend to make it, that will be disappointing.
Check out this picture of the TMP phaser in the packaging. The color looks better to me in this image:
No way to know for sure until we have them in our hands, but they just might have got them to more or less the right color. Hopefully it'll only be a couple more weeks before we know for sure.
But out of the box, the DST TMP looks to be more accurate to the movie prop, than the WOK vesrion is. The "two triggers" thing on the WOK version really bugs me (the big wraparound shield-shaped trigger should not be there, since the little cylinder part is the actual trigger; the prop does not even have the seam line).
k
Thing is, there seem to be a LOT of variations to the phasers seen in
Wrath of Khan. Just going by the screen shots posted here, some definitely look a lot like the ones from
TMP. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of the screen-used
WOK phasers were just repainted left-overs from
TMP.
Maybe now that the Seattle Science FIction Museum has relaxed its no-photo policy, we'll see some better documentation.
In the meantime I did a quick search on Flickr, and this was the best shot I found on the WOK phaser
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pratikdave/4024030200/
You can see that the WOK looks markedly more blue than the others. The Dustbuster phasers (if authentic) would be Dove Gray.
k
Okay, forget the phasers... I WANT THAT
TNG ROMULAN DISRUPTOR!!! :love
That's another one of my pet peeves... NONE of the licensees has EVER made that Romulan disruptor, at least not that I'm aware of. Not Galoob, not Playmates, not Master Replicas, not Art Asylum/Diamond Select Toys, not even Roddenberry.Com, as far as I know.
