Review : Bishop (Queen Attack) NECA, Alien Series Wave/Series : Series 5 Released : August 2015
Price : £19.99
After making his début in NECA's Alien range in Series 3, it was inevitable that Bishop would find his way back round again for another release later in the run. His reappearance in Series 5 may be a little soon, but it fit in beautifully in terms of sitting alongside the Ripley from Aliens and coinciding with the release of the Power Loader.
It is debatable whether you could class this release as a true action figure. In reality it is only half a figure, but NECA make up for this by packing in a value adding accessory in terms of the Alien Egg and Facehugger.
Bishop arrives in the usual NECA clamshell pack we have seen right from the launch of the Alien series. The header card is presented with the 1986 Aliens logo and the side art around the blister is atmospherically shot using the figure and accessories themselves. Round the back of the card and you will find yet another brilliant shot of the figure in one of NECA's famous diorama's. Overlaid on this is a quick summary of the plot of Aliens which is the same as the Ripley card back. And at the bottom are three circular flashes showing head shots of all three figures in Series 5 - Bishop, Ripley and the Genocide Alien (two versions).
Out of the pack and Bishop is strapped in to the top half of the plastic insert, and beneath him is the open Alien Egg. To the right, as we look at it, is the Facehugger itself. There are no other accessories included.
We will look first at Bishop.
The sculpts on NECA at the moment are industry leading at the price point they sell their figures. Bishop is no exception, but it is surprising (or maybe not after what we have seen so far from NECA) that this is actually a new sculpt - or at least a revision of the series 3 version. The face is longer and drawn out into a shocked expression, if Android's can be shocked? The hair is also messier and drawn out to either side of the head. And rather than paint applications, the Android blood and vein's are actually sculpted onto the face and then painted. Painting is neat, but I find the eyes a little too cartoonish vs the original release and perhaps the wash to bring out the facial lines is a tad too heavy particularly where you look at the furrowed brow.
Down into the torso, and what is left of the uniform is sculpted to include more of the Android blood and is also ripped just under the collar. Under this collar you get the first sight of Bishop's innards, and of course these then spill out gruesomely from the chest cavity downwards. The various pipes and wires are all neatly sculpted and then painted in that milky brown with a lighter wash on top to bring out the details. If I have any criticism here is that I may have expected a glossier sheen on this detail to give it a wet look.
Both arms are likely a direct re-use from the S3 release, but that is fine. They are the only area where the damage and blood splatter is purely paint application and that is nicely concentrated around the palms of the hands - a nice touch from where Bishop has been trying to deal with the damage himself. The back of the figure has been sculpted deliberately flat so that it sits flat on a surface, yet NECA have resisted the desire to leave this plain and un-sculpted and the back has fabric folds coming in from the shoulders and a belt down near where the waist would have been. Rear paint applications of the blood are a bit messier here, mine almost looks like a thumbprint from the factory. But this detail means you can have Bishop gripped by your Alien Queen if you wish rather than lying prone on the floor.
Articulation was never going to be a deal breaker on Bishop as he wouldn't need much. The head used the usual joint and therefore can look up and down as well as side to side. Sadly, if you do lean the head back too much while Bishop is lying prone a gap opens up at the base of the neck. Arm joints start with shoulder ball joints and that means the arms can be spread-eagled either side to about 45 degrees to the body. The elbows then rotate and bend to a similar 45 degree level and the wrists can rotate. This means you can prop Bishop up slightly as he lies, and also spread flat with arms out to either side.
Before we move on to the 2nd half of this figure, the Egg & Facehugger, I must stop and pause. As you will read shortly, the Egg / Facehugger combination is pretty decent but isn't directly relevant to Bishops appearance in these final scenes and therefore there is a bit of me here that says that this figure could have been so much more as a diorama piece had NECA chucked in his dissected legs also - or even (and I know this is pie in the sky) with a Newt figure?
But it was the Egg we got, so let's have a look at that now.
The Egg is exactly same as the open version packed in the egg box 6-pack that was released a couple of months after Bishop. The egg is nicely sculpted with a flat bottom that means it also sit's fine on a flat surface display. The egg is textured with what I can best described as a dried riverbed cracked surface and this is then painted in varying shades of green and brown. The pink egg flaps are peeled back, and between each flap on the outside are strings of goo which are painted in a creamier colour. The inside of the egg is decorated in a "brain" texture which is painted pink with a cream wash.
Onto the Facehugger, and this is also sculpted really well and looks to be perfectly in scale with the 7" figures. From the 8 spider like legs, to the two air sacks, the Facehugger is then painted in a brown with a darker wash to bring out the details on the spinal tail. Articulation, as such it is, is delivered by a flexible tail which is achieved by the plastic being sculpted over a metal bendable armature. Sadly, and a problem I also encountered with the 6-pack, the tail is quite weak and can split and start to break if you bend it. This brittleness means getting them into a decent pose runs the risk of damaging them, so you may be as well leaving this one laid out flat as it comes in the pack and therefore having him shooting out of the egg or scuttling across the floor.
Queen Attack Bishop was never a release to set the world on fire, more so a supporting act to the big figure of the series - Aliens Ripley. Everything on Bishop is done well with just very minor gripes around the painting of the eyes, the neck joint and the detail of the paint in the chest cavity. The egg does a job of filling the space in the pack and will look great in any Alien diorama - in fact the problem you will have is that you only have one of them and will need to immediately go and find the 6-pack to flesh out your display.
Bishop gets a 3 out of 5 from me.
