I always liked Dr. Crusher more than Deanna Troi. I know Troi was meant to be the gorgeous, sensual one (at least, so far as TNG was willing to go, which wasn't far), but she barely ever did anything. I mean, her job was ship's counselor, and how often did anyone on TNG actually have any kind of psychological problem? The whole point of the show (until DS9 livened things up) was that humans had surmounted their problems and were now all peaceful and harmonious - so what's a counselor supposed to do? Pout a lot, and put her empathic talents to work deducing that the Romulan commander is 'hiding something' (thanks Einstein). Whereas Beverly had her pick of bizarre alien diseases and freaky mutagenic contagions to show off by curing in 40 minutes - no contest. Okay, she produced Wesley, but no-one's perfect - and it's fair to assume he took after his father, seeing as he must have been a bit of a useless pillock too, considering how Bev was already making eyes at Picard way back then. This is from the Diamond Select/Art Asylum Star Trek line, which has been chugging along happily for a while now with modest success. They smartly went for the collector's market, rather than trying to market to a younger audience - Trek's heyday is past now, and unless the new movie really takes off, we won't see a return to the days when every character ever to appear was made into a figure, Star Wars style. DS/AA generally release waves of two characters at a time, with each character coming in two (or more) variants - at that rate, they can steadily milk the completist collectors who'll buy all the variants without risking them getting burned out. Of course, it only works so long as the product is good - which is it. The Original Series has had a fair bit of attention, and lately it's been The Next Generation's turn. This wave features the Crusher family, Beverly and Wesley, and since Wesley is obviously going to be in limited demand (okay, he was a main cast member, and it'd be an omission not to have a figure of him at some point, but let's be honest, most of us couldn't stand him), rather than a second version of him in the main line, a figure of Q is included in the wave instead. Beverly has two versions, the standard one (season seven), and Captain Beverly Picard from the possible future seen in 'All Good Things'. These are obviously intended for display by collectors, not to be played with. All the focus is on duplicating the look of the character, with articulation a secondary consideration. The sculpt captures Beverly well - she looks particularly serious compared to the 'softer' cast photo, but it's a good representation of her, and there's no mistaking who she is just based on the face alone. Her hair is sleeker and darker than the 'typical' look, but that's accurate to season seven - in previous seasons, Gates McFadden wore a wig to bulk out her hair, as the producers were worried her own hair didn't look as good on screen (it did). Her Starfleet uniform is reproduced faithfully, with some subtle folding to indicate that it's soft fabric, but mostly quite tight to her body as the one-piece uniforms were. The bottoms of her trousers are the proper design - a vee-shaped opening, with the sides and backs of the legs almost reaching floor level - her communicator is the right size and in the right position, and she has the proper three gold pips on her collar. Her hands and feet are separate to the edges of her sleeves and trouser legs, which is a nice touch, and hides the articulation too. She's got a ball jointed neck (the hair is soft, allowing a decent range of motion), ball joint shoulders, swivel biceps (which can actually be turned without looking awful), peg elbows, swivel wrists, a swivel waist, peg hips and knees, and pegs in her ankles for forward/backward tilting of her feet, to keep them flat on the ground if her legs are moved - handy to keep her standing, though she won't be taking any action poses. If there's one flaw with her physically - and this extends to a lot of the DS/AA Star Trek figures - it's the way the scale hasn't been constant. They're all slightly larger than the average Marvel Legends or (slightly taller) DC Direct figure, but the relation of one character to another tends to vary more than it should - the other Trek figure I have, Uhura, only comes up to Bev's shoulder, which is way out no matter how tall Bev is meant to be. I haven't had the opportunity to compare her to any other TNG figures, but it's disappointing that they're not true to scale regardless of which TV show they come from - it's a no-brainer that collectors may want to display them all together. Still, in my collection, with the huge crowd of figures at all sorts of scales (and Uhura half a shelf away), it's not really an issue, and that she's about a head taller than a lot of the figures around her is kind of striking, which I like. The paint is quite good, with one glaring exception - the torso side of her shoulder ball joints are blue all over, which shows through on the top of her shoulder, where it should be black. That can be fixed with a very simple paint application, but it should have been done at the factory. Otherwise all is well - the colours and finishes on her uniform are accurate to the show, and crisp at the edges, her hair has a subtle highlight, and there's some very good paint work on her face to give her a healthy glow, and expressive eyes and lips. Bev comes with a handful of accessories, which are at once pleasing and slightly frustrating. She has a tricorder, a large PADD displaying some kind of schematic (I don't recognise it, but it could well be some kind of sickbay gizmo), a desktop terminal showing the 'incoming transmission' screen, and a hypospray. All suitable accessories for her - the PADD and terminal are a bit generic, but it's certainly not inappropriate for her to have them, and the hypospray and tricorder, which has the extra medical scanner module fitted to it, are ideal for the good doctor. The frustrating part is that her hands, while sculpted in a relaxed holding-something pose, don't actually hold any of her accessories securely - I had to use little dabs of blu-tack to get anything to stay in her hands. And as for the desktop terminal, unless you've got a TNG-style desk from somewhere, I can't imagine how you'd display it. Still, points for effort, and for getting the medical accessories right - these days, it's a bonus to have any accessories at all a lot of the time.