✨ Star Trek Talosian by Playmates ✨

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A few years ago, I posted about my Star Trek Barbie and Ken, if you want to, you can read that post by clicking the following link:  Barbie & Ken Star Trek Gift Set.

More than likely, in the post I mentioned my love of the Original Series of Star Trek and William Shatner as Captain Kirk, well a while back I got my hands on another Star Trek Figure, only this time it's a Talosian by Playmates Toys.

In 1998, Playmates Toys released a series of 9 inch, fully articulated Star Trek Figures to coincide with the 30th Anniversary called "Star Trek Serialized Warp Factor Series 5".

The 3 figures released in this series were Bele from Star Trek The Original Series Episode: Let that be your last battlefield, Elim Garak from Star Trek Deep Space 9 and Talosian From Star Trek The Original Series episode The Cage. 

As I've said before, The Original Series of Star Trek is my favourite and The Cage is my favourite episode, with the inhabitants of the planet Talos lV being my favourite race of "Life Forms" discovered by the crew of the Star Ship Enterprise on their journey through Outer Space.

This episode takes place 13 years before the events of the first episode to feature William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk - The Menagerie. 

The Cage is the Pilot Episode and the only one to feature Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike as Captain of The SS Enterprise, he does feature in the follow up episode The Menagerie", which was a continuation of the story, but only in footage reused from The Cage episode as at the time Jeffrey Hunter was unable to reprise his role as Captain Pike at that time, and sadly passed away 2 years later. 

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After responding to a distress call Captain Pike and his crew find themselves on the planet Talos lV, here he encounters a beautiful human woman named Vina, while distracted by her, Pike finds himself captured by the Talosians, who it transpires, lure him and his crew to their planet to use  them as breeding stock, along with Vina to produce a race of slaves.

Vina is the only survivor of the SS Columbia which crashed onto Talos lV some time before - The Keeper ordered her to be saved.  As they had never seen a Human before and had no idea how she should look, they fixed her broken bones but unintentionally disfigured her in the process. To counteract this mistake they used their telepathy to give her the illusion of beauty, and so use her as a lure to capture possible mates for her and their breeding programme.

 It is the distress call from the SS Columbia that the Talosian use to lure any Ships that come within range of their planet in the hopes of capturing it's crew for their menagerie and subsequent breeding programme.

The Magistrate, also known as The Keeper is the leader of the Talosians and wears a large pendant which denotes his rank.

He is known as The Keeper because he is charged with the upkeep of their menagerie and it's inhabitants, which they hope to use to repopulate their planet's dwindling population.

The Talosians are a race that communicate using telepathic powers, they use these powers to read the minds of other races and also to cast illusions to change reality and entrap their chosen victims. They also use them to discover as much as they can from other races they discover so that they can use mind trickery to scare or tempt them into becoming submissive to their will.

They have huge craniums to house their large brains, which are covered in veins and unfortunately look very much like bums from behind!

The figure comes with a gold Star Fleet Insignia shaped stand and is held in place on it by a peg on the stand which corresponds with a hole in the bottom of his left foot. 

He also comes with a large surface viewer which is shown in the episode as being a wall-mounted screen which the Talosians use while they decide if they will make good specimens for their zoo.

It has an image of Captain Pike on it which coincides which the scene where the Talosians first observe Captain Pike and determine him to be a good specimen before using Vina to lure him to their base entrance and stunning him so they can capture and cage him.

As well as a weapon shaped like a torch which they use like a stun gun to subdue any creatures they decide to keep for breeding and observation.

The keeper also has a small Menagerie Viewer which is sealed in plastic and attatched to the top left of his inner box, it also shows a picture of Captain Pike on it, this image depicts the scene where Pike wakes up and finds he is now in captivity, and tries to find a way out of his cage.

After removing The Keeper's outfit, I discovered he has a pretty good physic for such a stubby looking little guy!

He has 11 points of articulation, and a body, not unlike other vintage action figures, such as Mego figures from the 1970's.

Each figure in the Star Trek Serialized Warp Factor 5 Series comes with an individual Collector's Series Edition Number as they are a limited edition series.

Here's a couple of interesting things about the Talosian Keeper, in the Original Series of Star Trek...

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The keeper was played by an actress called Meg Wyllie, in heavy make up, but as the character is a male, he was voiced by actor Malachi Thorne, who also played one of my favourite Batman (1960's Series) villains - False Face!

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Malachi Thorne later played crew member Commodore José I. Méndez in the Original Series of Star Trek, episodes 11 and 12 - The Menagerie, which is the continuation of Captain Pike's story and are made up of scenes from The Cage and new scenes, filmed with the exception of Spock played by Leonard Nimroy, the new crew of the SS Enterprise.

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Another interesting thing about Malachi Thorne is, he went on to play a Romulan Senator in Star Trek : The New Generation two part episode, titled  Unification and also appeared in an episode of Star Trek: New Voyages - a fan made web- series which ran from 2004 to 2016.




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