Utopia Base TWOK Uniform: Ariadne Drake's Phaser

This photo collage showcases a major set of changes that I made to the very first TWOK Monster Maroon uniform I ever obtained in an attempt to finish improving and accurizing the outfit, once and for all.

Utopia Base, formerly known as Costume Base, is an online store based out of Singapore, Malaysia. Supposedly, they get their TWOK Monster Maroon uniforms "on consignment" and sell them off-the-rack as a full set, and that's how I had originally gotten mine, but it had started off being ill-fitting and badly inaccurate, and I've had to do a lot of work on the outfit since I first obtained it in February of 2011.

Besides test-driving the outfit in its newly revised form, I also took the chance to try it out with some of my newest props.  In this case, I'm carrying my copy of one of the rarest Phaser props in all of "Star Trek" history: Ariadne Drake's heavy Assault Phaser variant, a pistol seen only in the famous comic "The Ashes of Eden," published by DC Comics in the mid-1990s.  

We are given no explanation for where the variant came from, if it was a unique one-off weapon or just a standard issue model that never was glimpsed in ST:V or ST:VI, or even how it works and how it's supposed to differ from the standard Mark VIII Battle Phaser (the formal model name of what we generally call the Assault Phaser).  In the comic itself, this weapon was only used by one person: Ariadne Drake, an operative ostensibly working for Starfleet Intelligence and the daughter of the corrupt Admiral Androvar Drake, Captain Kirk's old Star Fleet Academy archrival.

I pride myself on my massive armory of TMP/TWOK-era Phasers, and when I learned about the existence of this variant, I quickly asked my friends at the Triple-Fiction Productions prop-making team to see if they could come up with a way to build the first-ever physical prop models of this unique weapon and within two months, they'd come up with three.  The one I have is the third, specially painted in my now-trademark "Copperhead" color scheme inspired by the color palette of a real-life handgun, the Sig Sauer P238 Copperhead in .380ACP and slightly redesigned to make it look more like the original Assault Phaser than the version seen in the comic book itself:

Ariadne Drake's Phaser Mk.3 by TFP

Surprisingly enough, I've discovered that like the Captain's Phaser and Type-IV Stealth Rifle from the April 2013 ST:2009 video game, Ariadne Drake's Phaser has proven to be a surprisingly good hand prop even though it had never actually been intended to be built in physical form.  Its handle is thin and sleek, allowing me to grip it fairly easily, and it looks nastier, more intimidating, more aggressive and much more "dynamic" than its little brother, the standard Assault Phaser.  I speculate that this is because the aesthetics of the props are completely different.  The Assault Phaser's handle is located midway along its body, while Ariadne Drake's Phaser has its handle located at the extreme rear end of the weapon.

This means that when I grip the regular Assault Phaser, not much of the prop extends out in front of my hand.  But when I grip this version, all of the prop extends past my hand, and all of that mass pointed forward conveys a sense of power and a very real "threat" to any opponent facing the business end of this Phaser.  I managed to try out several different poses and angles, some more realistic than others, in the course of this last round of costume testing and I've quickly learned to feel comfortable with the new prop.  I can't wait to actually put it into use when the time comes.