When NECA first showcased its Prometheus 7" figures in 2013 I was really excited for the human characters above any of the Aliens. I didn't warm to any of the Aliens in the film, but did like the space suit design. Unfortunately due to limited sales the line only realised one of these to retail, David, and Holloway, Dr Shaw and Zombie Fifell never made it into production.
As a collector of the Alien licence, I have always had one eye on adding Prometheus figures to the collection if and when the price is right and just recently I finally picked up David for a decent price on eBay.
David was one of two figures that made up Series 2 of the Prometheus releases and comes in the standard NECA clamshell pack. The pack used a black and blue theme, with panels on the lower front, both sides and rear. With the rear including some blurb about the character and details of other figures in the series.
Out the pack and you get the David 8 figure which comes packaged with the un-helmeted head already installed, and the helmeted head and glass helmet packed as accessories along with David's tablet.
The sculpt on David is awesome, with a great likeness on both heads for Michael Fassbender. The space suit comprises of an inner blue suit with various panels added on top. Around the back is a back pack and a number of sculpted tools and instruments on the belt - such great detail considering this is the back of the figure and won't be on show.
The helmet is almost a complete clear sphere and slots over the head into the sculpted neck piece and locks in place. A wire goes from the rear of the belt and up into the top of the helmet.
The Paint job is crisp with the body done out in a blue under-suit and then grey panels. The blue suit includes some darker blue trim and a wash to give it a grimy look, something NECA always does really well. The armour has a slight metallic sheen and again is washed to bring out the detail.
The head really stands out against the darker space suit, and the face is really well painted - although on mine the "helmet" version looks loads more detailed than the standard head. The helmet version has a brilliant bright yellow panel on the head with David emblazoned upon it and the decals are finished off with a Weyland Megacorp logo on the chest.
Articulation is much better than a lot of NECA figures I have reviewed recently, it even puts the newest Alien Ripley figure to shame.
The head is on a ball joint and rotates a full 360 degrees and can look up and down quite a considerable way. It is also swappable and has the easiest peg for swapping heads that I have come across to date on any figure from NECA, Diamond or Hasbro.
The arms are ball-jointed at the shoulder and can be pulled out to 90 degrees to the body. There is then an elbow joint and a wrist joint. The hands are sculpted so David can hold the Tablet accessory in either hand.
There is a chest joint, which is neatly hidden behind the space suit chest panel, this gives a little movement but really is unnecessary considering David does unusually have a waist joint to allow him to swivel at the waist. The only downside here is if you lean David back too far their is a visible waist joint.
The hips are on a peg and hinge mechanism which means if you really want to you can get David almost into the splits or a sitting position. There are double jointed knees and ball jointed ankles and all this allows you to really play around getting David into numerous action poses.
So what went wrong? As an Action Figure, David is a thing of beauty and as it stands is almost the best figure I have seen from NECA at the time of writing (June 2015) in fact if you use David as a benchmark on paint, articulation etc then NECA seem to have dropped back a bit when you line him up against the newer releases like Alien Series 4. To be fair this is a lot to do with cost and every company is scaling back articulation. The fact of the matter is that Prometheus as a film wasn't well received and the Deacon and Engineers were no "Alien"
I am very happy giving David 8 a 5 out of 5. There is very little to fault on the figure and he joins that very elite group of top scoring figures here in the Archives. It is just a pity that the other humans didn't make it to retail to allow a nice display of the main characters.
