Thursday, December 22, 2016

The Building Chronicle: A Critical Consideration of LEGO's "Bionicle" Series - Building Through part 5.1 - 2005


Welcome Back!

It's time to get this show on the road again, and not solely because I'm tired of having the 2005 models on my shelves.

(Though I am dying to build some of the 2006 stuff)

We'll start off today looking at the Visorak. Though they're called spiders, these creatures don't really conform to our definition of arachnids. Even counting their pincers, they've only got 6 legs. However, we're not talking about creatures from our reality, but from that of Bionicle, so spiders they are.

The Visorak represent a nice change for the villains of the series in the six sets offered. Though ostensibly clones, there are subtle variances in the builds and in the pieces used that give each one a bit more character than their Vahki predecessors. Also, these sets reintroduce the original brighter colours of the first three years into the series, which brightens up what had become a very dark series of toys. Of course, the darkness of the colour scheme matches nicely the darkness of the story at this point - the Metru Nui series is a grim one.

What 2005 really provides for us is a remarkable amount of combiner models. Not only are there combiners included in the instruction booklets, but canonical models were also made available in the Lego magazine and on the website. While some of the combiners suffer a bit from that problem of the earlier ones, in that they look like they've been cobbled together from other sets, some actually look like they could have been marketed, official sets. Let's have a look at some of the Visorak combiners.


 
The Kahgarak is an elite Visorak, built from the blue and white sets commercially released. It plays a part in the novel series, and of all of the Visorak sets (with the exception of the Zivon), it's the only one that actually had eight legs, and can therefore be considered a spider in both Bionicle lore and our own natural science. The Gate Guardian, on the other hand, goes quite a different route, and though it incorporated elements from the Visorak sets, its look is decidedly un-spiderlike. If I'm to be honest, when I build this set, it reminds me of something from the Beatles' Yellow Submarine film. A little awkward, slightly ridiculous-looking, but ferocious with those pincers nonetheless.


The Chute Lurker and the Venom Flyer, though they share a number of characteristics with the Visorak, are actually considered separate species in the Bionicle lore. Both are affiliated with the Visorak, and are used for particular purposes by the horde, but are not Visorak proper. As these creatures were all created by members of the Brotherhood of Makuta, we could perhaps consider the similarities to be aesthetic choices made by a particular member. The creation of the Visorak is credited to Makuta Chirox (who we'll meet in 2008), so perhaps these other creatures were also created by him. I quite like the idea of an aesthetic that distinguishes particular branches of the Rahi, rather than an evolutionary path.


The last of the smaller Visorak combiners is the Parakrekks. Unlike the previous combiners, this one represents a creature that menaced a Toa team many years in the past, and though there are supposedly still surviving members of the species, it seems they have very little really to do with the Visorak and their concomitant creatures. As such, it's the combiner that bears the least resemblance to its constituent parts, and looks more like one of the titan sets, really.


Last, but certainly not least, we have the Zivon, a combiner of all six Visorak sets. It's a bit wobbly, hence my inclusion of a stand beneath the model. In-story, this is a creature that terrorizes the Visorak, and lives in a shadow-filled realm from which it is only seldom summoned. As with a couple of the aforementioned combiners, this set is not to scale with the Toa Hordika, Visorak, or titan sets from the same year, but is instead a smaller version of a monstrous creature. Perhaps one day I'll attempt a properly-scaled model of the Zivon, if I can determine what that scale might be.

Next time, we'll have a look at the Hordika and the Rahaga, the heroes of this particular part of the series. Though one of the Hordika acts in a less-than-heroic fashion, and the Rahaga are far more than they seem.