Captain's Phaser Mk.2A (Stumpy) by TFP

In the April 2013 video game released as a sequel to the 2009 movie by J.J. Abrams, Captain Kirk was given a completely different model of Phaser pistol from what Commander Spock and the rest of the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701) crew carried.  Known as the Captain's Phaser, this enormous revolver-like weapon was described as a heavily upgraded, custom-built, one-of-a-kind weapon personally built by Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott to Captain Kirk's personal specifications.  Unlike the standard Enterprise Phaser, which had two barrels that flipped back and forth from "Stun" to "Kill," the Captain's Phaser would instead split almost in half and reconfigure itself to change between firing modes:

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Although it consumes more power, can't fit in a standard Phaser hoslter and is a bit barrel-heavy, the Captain's Phaser, among other things, has a longer range and significantly more firepower, more refined firing mechanisms allowing for a smoother trigger pull, better ergonomics, a bio-marker lock to prevent its use by anyone but James T. Kirk, and has even been outfitted with a revolver-like cylinder mechanism containing four individual power cells which revolve out of the way when spent to allow the weapon to last longer in a firefight without having to be taken out of the fight for power cells to be removed and replaced.

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Any of you who may know me better than most would know that I wasn't a big fan of the "Barrel-Flipper" Phaser pistols seen in the 2009 movie and "Into Darkness."  Although I don't mind them, and I understand the stylistic reasons for the design - a call-back to the revolving multi-barrel laser pistols from "The Cage," a throwback to "classic" science fiction and, most importantly, a way to make it clear to even the densest members of the audience when the weapon was set to "Stun" or "Kill" - there was simply no realism at all in the design.  On the other hand, while this was still a bit "Style-Over-Substance," I liked this design a whole lot more, and I also felt it complemented Kirk's "gung-ho" personality - as well as the old depiction of "Star Trek" as a "space Western" - by giving the Captain a Phaser that was essentially a 23rd century equivalent to Dirty Harry's Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum Revolver.

(Of course, in real life, the true purpose of the Captain's Phaser was to act as a plot device to allow Kirk to have a one-shot kill special ability!)

Last year, sometime in late spring or early summer, I had gotten in touch with the prop-building team at Triple-Fiction Productions, with whom I now work closely, and asked them to try to build the prop for the first time ever - focusing on its "kill" mode, the form actually seen in the game.  Although they said they'd look into it, I didn't expect them to actually go ahead and do it.  But the intrepid propmakers actually made the attempt, and by then, I had corralled one of my friends into a budding "Star Trek" cosplay group to be our ST:09 Jim Kirk and suddenly realized that the prototype Captain's Phaser, then the only one of its kind, would be the perfect weapon for him to carry.  So I bought the prop and gave it to him free-of-charge as a present.  My friend made "Star Trek" history by taking the Captain's Phaser into action at DragonCon 2013, and then used it as his primary prop sidearm through all three days of Anime Weekend Atlanta 2013:

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However historic and impressive the original TFP Captain's Phaser prop was, it was sadly still an imperfect replica.  It was unusually chubby, stocky, and wide, making it ergonomically flawed and very difficult to grip.  It was also inaccurately colored, out-of-proportion, and very, very heavy.  My friend and I began to discuss the possibility of creating an improved version shortly after AWA ended.  Although I wasn't sure that it was within my propmaker buddies' capabilities to improve the design as significantly as my friend had wanted, he felt sure it was doable, and Triple-Fiction Productions agreed to make the attempt as February 2014 ended, several months after my friend and I had first begun discussing a next-generation Captain's Phaser.

To our surprise and delight, the TFP prop-making team had gotten much, much better at building and painting their wooden "stunt"-grade prop replicas over the last five or six months, largely because of the sheer amount of pioneering work that my cosplay group and I had kept pushing on them.  Instead of merely revisiting the design of the Captain's Phaser prop they had built the year before, with the aid of a fortuitously-discovered new piece of CGI artwork of the final game model (which, in turn, allowed us to analyze the differences between the concept art for the Captain's Phaser and the actual in-game version of the weapon), they ditched the original design completely and started again from scratch, creating not one, but three new prototypes.

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The prop you see here, deemed Mark 2A or "Stumpy," is the first of the three, which I have come to refer to as "test types" or even "triplet brothers" (as the three prop Phasers were built and painted at the same time).  While the other two have gone to my friend, their originally intended recipient, to become his new primary prop sidearms, this one - deemed "imperfect" compared to the other two because of its abnormally short and inaccurately compacted rear end and truncated back spike (hence its "stumpy" nickname) - has gone to me.  And although I don't cosplay as Jim Kirk and don't intend to actually bring this prop out for use in cosplay, we had our reasons for leaving this one in my care.

First of all, the prop is a monument - a memento to an idea I had.  It was I who first conceived of the idea of ever possibly turning the Captain's Phaser, Kirk's unique weapon from the ST:09 Video Game, into a physical prop.  It was I who contacted Triple-Fiction Productions and asked them to create the original 2013 "Mark 1" Prototype.  It was I who realized that my friend had the potential to make a good ST:09 Jim Kirk, and that it would really make his cosplay stand out if he could also become the one and only Captain Kirk cosplayer in the entire "Star Trek" fandom (at least as of 2013) to carry Kirk's special Phaser, and I was I who made this possible by purchasing the prototype weapon and giving it to him.  This whole thing came about because I wanted it to happen, and therefore, my friend insisted that it was only fair that I receive some physical memento of my vision and personal efforts.

But the second reason was much more practical.  Because my friend and I are both students, because he goes to more conventions that I do at the moment, and because of the unique nature of this prop (only one group of people in the world know how to build it, each prop they hand-make is unique, and it takes time and a lot of money just to get one done, making the props extremely difficult to replace), we took inspiration from the practice of many hospitals to keep backups of critical data in "off-site locations."  If I held onto one of the three Mk.2 Captain's Phaser prototypes and acted as an "off-site storage location," then if my friend were ever to end up in a situation where he needed to cosplay as Captain Kirk and didn't have access to either the Mk.2B "Silverback" or the Mk.2C versions, but still needed a comfortable and accurate Captain's Phaser - or if, Q forbid, the Mk.2B and Mk.2C both break - I'd be able to furnish the Mk.2A "Stumpy" as a replacement prop.

With regard to the prop's own design, even the small, compact and flawed "Stumpy" Captain's Phaser is still a quantum leap above the quality and build concept of the original TFP Captain's Phaser, which was completed on August 8th, 2013.  Among other things, its entire shape has been redesigned and refined, largely following the ergonomics of the final in-game model, although elements of the concept art were also worked in.  The rear end was also reshaped to be more reminiscent of the backside of the "Barrel Flipper" actually seen in the two J.J. Abrams "Star Trek" movies.  However, as mentioned previously, "Stumpy" has a very short back end.  The elongated, swept-back, angled "spine" that sweeps over the wielder's hand is dramatically shortened on this model, and consequently, the "control module" featuring the thumb wheel and power meter is also unrealistically short.  The ultimate effect is that the Mk.2A looks more like a toy than its superior "triplet brothers," the Mk.2B "Silverback" and Mk.2C.

"Stumpy" has another flaw, as well; the "thumb wheel" is located right at the center of the topside of the "control module" located above the circular "joint" behind the (non-rotating) cylindrical power cells and the silver emitter shroud.  That's because at that time, the folks at Triple-Fiction Productions had not yet realized that the thumb wheel was actually supposed to be offset to the left side, allowing a bar-shaped power meter (actually a decal) to be installed on the right.  Furthermore, the top of the weapon is curved, not flat as it ought to be, and because of this, when viewed from the right, the power meter decal on the Mk.2A looks like it's sloping down the side of the weapon and about to slide off instead of firmly seated on top of the control module.  

The final detail that really makes the Mk.2A test type stand out from its brothers, the 2B and 2C, is its emitter shroud.  The emitter shrouds of the Mk.2B and Mk.2C Captain's Phasers angle sharply and aggressively downward toward the tips of the Phasers' barrels, a detail that is more closely based on the original concept art for the Captain's Phaser than the finalized in-game CGI model utilized in the game itself, which seems to have been significantly revised.  Therefore, in some sense, the Mk.2A, ironically, is actually more "game-accurate" in appearance than its two "triplet brothers."  That's why it has the colors it does.  Although its paint scheme is not identical to that of the Mk.2C, which has a somewhat modified paint job, it was meant to be fairly close to the shading used in the game itself.  Much of the prop is charcoal grey, with a lighter grey counter-shade to split up the darker color and make the details of the prop stand out.  Meanwhile, the emitter shroud is painted a bright, shiny silver.

It's taken close to one whole year to get the Captain's Phaser from just an idea on the drawing board, to a crude, but usable, early prototype to the more refined prop that you see now.  In that time, we've all learned a lot and made great leaps and bounds in our ability, as a team, to bring concepts to physical life.  Maybe someday, we'll be able to take this one step further and take on the much more challenging task of replicating the Captain's Phaser split apart into its "Stun" or "Taser" setting.