The Building Chronicle: A Critical Consideration of LEGO's "Bionicle" Series - Building Through part 2.3 - 2002

Welcome to The Swarm! Above you see the majority of my Bohrok swarm, minus of course the 2003 Bohrok-Kal, and the Bahrag Spider, a combiner that wouldn't fit on the shelf, and that I'll show a little further down.

As I noted in my introduction to 2002, the cloning of the Bohrok in this wave led to a troubling trend in Bionicle. The two villain series of the next wave, the Bohrok-Kal and the Rahkshi, follow this trend, changing only colour and accessory, but keeping fundamental builds the same across the series. It's for this reason that I find myself gravitating, during this particular build-through, to the combiner models. They simply offer more interesting entertainment, and sometimes challenge, than the official, or mainstream, models, however we might want to refer to them. Having said this, I do like the Bohrok and the Bohrok Va. Unlike the Toa Nuva that they oppose, these models offer far more flexibility when it comes to posing, though not quite as much as the waves later in the decade. The Bohrok attack function is also pretty neat, and offers a nice combination of action figure and Technic parts. If only they'd been a bit more varied in their construction. The smaller Bohrok Va are also mostly cloned figures, though some of the leg and head assemblies vary enough to keep them interesting, despite their low piece count. Again, it's the combiners (or those that I have, at least) of these little figures that I find to be the more interesting parts of this wave.

But before I wax lyrical about the combiners, there's also the Bahrag Twins, Queens of the Swarm, to consider. Basically, they're Technic dragons. These figures, and the larger figures from the next wave, are ancestors of the Rahi from the first wave, built almost entirely of Technic parts, and not clad in any armour or accessories to disguise the fact. Whenever I build the Bahrag I have the same problem: once I've finished one, I'm less-inclined to build the next, since they are virtually the same model, part colour aside. They're also fairly lengthy builds, so once one is done, I usually take a break and build some of the other Swarm members before moving on to the next Queen.

These next two models are the combiners, the Bohrok Kaita, the instructions for which are in the backs of the Bohrok books. Though there are slight variations in the torso builds, these models are very similar to the Toa Kaita and Toa Kaita Nuva. This is not to say that they're uninteresting, and one of the most fascinating things about the various combiner models is the ability of the Lego designers to create a relative coherent model out of pieces that were never actually designed to create such things. The pieces in these models were explicitly designed to build the individual Bohrok models. Combining them into these giants is really pretty cool. Both retain the Bohrok head -thrusting action, and are relatively poseable, though the legs are a bit wobbly, due to the nature of the individual Bohrok leg pieces.

 The next combiner is a Japanese model, the construction video for which I posted in the introduction to this section. Like it's larger compatriots, it's a bit wobbly, but the fashioning of accessories out of the Bohrok body parts, and the aesthetic quality of the model make it something interesting. The instructions, much like those for the Kabaya Rahkshi combiners from the next wave, are worth mentioning as well. Unlike the step by step instructions commonly found in Lego manuals, these combiner instructions assume a familiarity with how the pieces work, and instead of going piece by piece, the instructions go section by section. It raises the level of the challenge, especially when one is working from low resolution scans.

These next two models are Bohrok Va combiners. Of the combination models that are officially recognized, those for the Bohrok Va are the ones I have the least of. There are two more variations of the model on the left, another Kaita style model using blue, white, and green pieces, as well as a number of small animals that could be constructed by combining the pieces of two models. They are also some of the most difficult and rare pieces to find, especially the feet, which were produced and included in these particular colours only in these sets. But if there was nothing left to hunt for, I'd probably have lost interest a long time ago.

The final combiner for this time is the Bahrag Spider. According to the BS01 wiki, this creature has no canonical significance, but that doesn't keep me from including it in the Swarm. Perhaps the Bahrag Queens were actually triplets, not twins, and the Spider is the forgotten and deformed third sibling. Actually, that's my headcanon now. It's a fun build, for sure, and does some interesting things with the Bahrag pieces. Beneath the picture, I've included a video demonstrating its biting mechanism.

That's it for today. Next time we'll finish up 2002 with the menagerie of combiner fauna and Master Builder Set, all presided over by the two version of the Exo-Toa. See you then.