Ben Robinson of Master Replicas joins us for the unveiling of a piece of Stargate merchandise fans from two galaxies have been wanting: an authentic Zero Point Module replica!

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome everyone to Episode 425 of Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project, my name is David Read. A day I have been looking forward to for a very long time has finally arrived. Ben Robinson, Master Replicas, welcome back, sir. How are you doing?

Ben Robinson:
I am good, it’s a pleasure to be here.

David Read:
You’re going to solve our whole energy crisis in one podcast. I’m really looking forward to this; vacuum energy has arrived from the Pegasus Galaxy. This has been something that fans have been wanting since 2003 with the airing of “Lost City.” There is a jewel-looking battery that is powerful enough to defend the entire planet in “Lost City” from a smarmy Goa’uld by the name of Anubis and it’s attached to this weapons platform in Antarctica. When you guys got the license for Stargate, at that point for you was it just a foregone conclusion, it’s just a question of when we’re gonna do this one? Or was it, “I don’t know if this will be in our wheelhouse. We’re gonna do the ships and the gates.” What was your thought process?

Ben Robinson:
I think it’s exactly what you said; we were gonna do the ships, that was the main thought, and then obviously the gates. What do you think of Stargate? You think of gates. We’ve done all the gates and we’ve done most of the ships. Everything’s had a really nice response; people have been very kind, very enthusiastic about what we’ve done. You start thinking, “Well, what else is there that really ought to be done?” The ZPM, or Zed PM, depending on which character you are or which country you’re from, most Canadians, it’s a good thing to be, or Scots. It seemed like something that we could do a good job with and it seemed like something that people would want, which it seems from the response in the last 48 hours, whatever it is, is true.

David Read:
Can I ask an inside baseball question?

Ben Robinson:
You can ask. Hope I can answer.

David Read:
Is a props license separate from the license that you have for the ships?

Ben Robinson:
It is. I don’t think Eaglemoss had props for their license, but when Master Replicas took it over, we added props in. I guess that’s the point at which we started thinking, “Yeah, we should do a ZPM.” That would’ve been why we added props, that would be the main thing.

David Read:
Can I ask to see it?

Ben Robinson:
You can. Now, this is only a prototype. It doesn’t light up, but you can see how big it is, which I think is the main thing. I think the problem with photography is people might think that this was a little diddy, little eight-inch thing, but it’s not. It’s full size.

David Read:
Can you hold it horizontal in front of your face?

Ben Robinson:
Like this?

David Read:
There we go. Wow.

Ben Robinson:
I can hold it the right way up, but then, unfortunately, I don’t know how anyone’s gonna make that stand up. There, you can see, and this probably won’t be white, but there’s a USB port there so you can see the LED light.

David Read:
So, that’s what that is. OK. It’s only on one side.

Ben Robinson:
Yes, you only need one USB cable to make it light up.

David Read:
Man, oh man. Look at that. How long have you guys been developing this?

Ben Robinson:
How long have we been developing it? Probably about eight months, something like that. We did a lot of research, obviously. We looked at as many ZPMs on the show as we could and ones that had been sold at auction and that kind of thing. Unfortunately, we didn’t actually have one to physically scan and copy, but sometimes it’s better not to do that because you’re trying to replicate the way it looks on the show. One of the big challenges we had is it looks one way when it’s not lit up and another way when it’s powered. Trying to find the balance in the colors to be like, “OK, that’s right. That’s OK, it’s fine.”

David Read:
There is a whole process that goes into this thing because we’ve had that conversation before, specifically about the puddle jumper. It’s one thing when it’s off and in your hands, it’s another thing when it’s lit by stage lighting. This has a completely separate hurdle because it’s gonna be lit from inside. It has to have a certain amber color to it for people to be like, “OK, that makes sense” and it doesn’t necessarily translate when you hold it. I can speak from personal experience that it does when you hold it in your hand. It’s like, “OK, that glow is correct,” because sometimes the movie magic throws it all off. You have to be like, “OK, if I’m gonna have this thing physically and it was enhanced on the screen, how do we strike the balance when people hold it in their hand?” There’s a whole bunch of hurdles that you have to jump over to arrive at the proper balance for a prop that can turn itself into an item that you can purchase for a reasonable price and you guys have begun to do that.

Ben Robinson:
That’s the plan, definitely. When you see it in the episodes when it’s not on, it’s got that kind of translucent quality to it. Obviously, with stage lights, they’re very bright. They’re much brighter than you realize at the time. Let me, if I can, put a bit of light on. You see, look, when you put it, I’ve got it all, but the light makes it look quite different. That translucency and all of that balance definitely took a lot of thought. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t light up, as I say, but you can see from the photographs on the site it does come up really nice and bright. It’s quite yellow when it’s powered up and quite orange when it’s not.

David Read:
That’s the balance with this one.

Ben Robinson:
That’s the kind of thing I think I like worrying about.

David Read:
“Is it too yellow or is it… No, it’s too much orange.”

Ben Robinson:
Exactly.

David Read:
Do we need more yellow? We need more yellow. Yep.

Ben Robinson:
“Is it more yellow in this episode or is it more orange in this episode? Hang on a minute. O’Neill’s holding it in this one? That’s what it should look like?”

David Read:
Apparently, at one point some of them were stolen and they had to be recreated. On top of that, which one are you dealing with?

Ben Robinson:
Exactly.

David Read:
There’s a whole process that you have to go through to find, again, like with the jumper, where are we going to land? You have to pick a spot.

Ben Robinson:
You do.

David Read:
Then you move forward. Wow, that’s awesome. I am sure excited. Are they on sale to the general public at this point?

Ben Robinson:
They are. We just had a 24-hour first window for people who belong to our members club. After that, everyone can buy them. It’s on pre-order now, it’s due to ship the beginning of the fall, so in September. It’s selling really fast actually. I think the initial order is in danger of selling out. I’m saying that, I haven’t checked things today.

David Read:
Really? I’m gonna go ahead and pre-order mine right now. I will go ahead and take care of that. Everyone else go ahead and wait. OK.

Ben Robinson:
I might send you one for an unboxing. We’ll just do it then.

David Read:
Stop the show, David’s gotta buy one, beat all of you schlubs. No, I’m not surprised at all. Is it gonna be a limited run?

Ben Robinson:
It won’t be a limited run, but what will happen is it will be out of stock for a while. What happens is you do one production run and then, if it sells well enough, you have to do a minimum quantity. It has to sell. You have to be confident that you’re gonna sell a certain amount and that takes a bit of time. If it goes that way, it could be out of stock for three or four months after the initial release.

David Read:
So, if you want it for Christmas this year, you better get it now?

Ben Robinson:
Yeah, pretty much, if you wanna be 100% certain of getting it for Christmas. If you haven’t signed up to the site, you sign up, you get 10% off your first order. So, if you haven’t, I would do that.

David Read:
149 US, that’s very fair for that.

Ben Robinson:
That’s the goal. We always try to be fair. I think people get used to our pricing on the ships ’cause nobody else really makes die-cast science fiction ships. I think they’re also a very good price for what you get. We try very hard not to be too expensive. We’d rather people have the chance to buy lots of stuff than make one really desirable thing that bankrupts people.

David Read:
That’s it; you have to strike a balance. I have said this before and I’ll say it again, with Master Replicas, it’s one of the very first companies that I, as a teenager, bought from with a great deal of confidence because my lightsabers sit in my foyer downstairs right now.

Ben Robinson:
They’re very desirable, those things.

David Read:
They are beautiful collector’s items and the caliber of product… these are museum pieces that you’re essentially making. It’s up to the buyer to display them in a museum quality or not.

Ben Robinson:
All you need is your own museum, then you’ll be fine. I can see you do have your own museum, so easy sell.

David Read:
Look, it belongs in a museum. I got the Gorilla Diary in the other room. There is so much room for some cool stuff to be created out of the Stargate property that are scale props. This is a success. What next do you think? In terms of a one-to-one prop, what would you like to see next?

Ben Robinson:
I think there’s a question about whether it needs to be one-to-one, ’cause some things would be really big. We’re looking at maybe half-scale, third-scale Jaffa helmets from the different Goa’uld lords, System Lords. I think some of the weaponry, again, the Goa’uld weaponry, so the Zat’nik’tel. Potentially the staff, we’re still looking. I’m looking at your shelves. Basically, I’m running off the things that are on your shelves. Most of those are things that I think we should make. A Kino ball, I think.

David Read:
The Kinos, they’re very vogue this year. They’re really in.

Ben Robinson:
Atlantis itself is a thing we keep thinking about.

David Read:
That’s gonna be tricky.

Ben Robinson:
We did that massive pyramid and the idea of doing Atlantis is definitely intriguing. It’s definitely on the list, but it is quite a challenge technically.

David Read:
Is the Pyramid ship out?

Ben Robinson:
Yeah, the Pyramid’s out.

David Read:
I haven’t gotten mine yet, Ben. I really wanna review it. It’s a beautiful piece.

Ben Robinson:
I will send you one for review. It’s big and it’s heavy.

David Read:
Absolutely gorgeous. That’s fine, that’s how I like ’em. That was a shining example of what it is that Master Replicas can do if it goes balls to the wall with spaceships. The movie obviously has its audience so I’m really thrilled that it’s out there. There’s just so much you can mine.

Ben Robinson:
With every model we have spent a lot of time studying all the hieroglyphs. They’re not just random hieroglyphs, they’re carefully replicated. The Destiny’s out and I think we’re about to try and get some more in stock. That’s one of the things that sold out, which is really interesting because you never know with a show, unless it’s a short-lived show, like Universe. You don’t know whether that means people are just desperate to get something from it and they’ve been deprived, or whether it’s, “Yeah, it wasn’t really my thing. I’m an SG=1 guy.” That’s been very gratifying. I think pretty much everything else is in stock and out. We’re working on a couple of Goa’uld ships now.

David Read:
Really?

Ben Robinson:
And Asgard ships.

David Read:
The O’Neill?

Ben Robinson:
It might be the O’Neill. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?

David Read:
You said the Biliskner sold fairly well.

Ben Robinson:
Yeah, the Biliskner’s done very well. The O’Neill is obviously similar but different. There’s the technical thing about transferring the detail from the model a different way, it’s too complicated.

David Read:
It’s got almost like a mirrored surface. You have to figure out, “OK, how are we gonna… Are we gonna give this a chrome finish? Is it gonna look like a toaster?”

Ben Robinson:
You can do it. There are various metallic paints that you can use and find, so that should be OK. It’s more about the way the detail is put into the model technically. I think you just talked to Mark Savela, he supplied us with the original models from the show. Fortunately, he was working with the same vendor by the time that we were looking to get them, but there are different ways you can add that detail. You can add the detail in the geometry or you can put it in the texture maps; the texture maps are basically putting clothes on top. If the detail is in the texture maps, we have to do a bit of work transferring it over to the geometry because obviously, the ship doesn’t wear clothes, as it were.

David Read:
Not strictly speaking.

Ben Robinson:
Not strictly speaking, no. We’ve been doing that, they are in progress and they’ll be announced later this year. Then, I think we will have done, perhaps not every single ship, but we’ll have done pretty much every ship that appeared on the show by the end of this year, I think. Certainly, done a good dozen.

David Read:
You’ve got a lot of one-off episodes, like the ship from “Grace” or Martin Lloyd’s ship in “Wormhole X-Treme,” little things like that. To be perfectly honest, a handful of people would be very interested in it, but then on top of that, you add the completist fan in there too. I’m sure there’s a few of them who just would go nuts over that.

Ben Robinson:
We need a petition. That’s what we need, someone needs to start a petition. The problem is you put something up for pre-order, you basically already committed to doing it because we make one from the tooling from the shots. It is the real thing when we’re offering something. If it’s something like that, what you need is people to give you some kind of commitment what they would like before you go invest all this money in making it. If you wanna start petitions, get a couple of thousand names of people who say they want something, then that will encourage us to do it, for sure.

David Read:
I will do that.

Ben Robinson:
All the big capital ships will get done, for sure.

David Read:
I’ll be thinking in terms of some of the one-offs, individual episodes and we’ll do a poll on Dial the Gate through YouTube and see if there’s any interest. There may not be, but there may be as well. You never know. With Stargate fandom, you can never tell the things that people are gonna be interested in. I never expected the Asgard ship to perform better than the Puddle Jumper did. There you go.

Ben Robinson:
You see how it goes over time. It’s a particularly beautiful model and particularly beautiful photographs of it, where it’s really detailed. I think that sense of detail often makes people think, “Oh, that’s a must-have.” It’s fascinating the way people respond to things. Sometimes they’re responding to the quality of our model, but sometimes they’re responding to whether they like the design or not. Look, the Puddle Jumpers are a minivan. They’re very practical and very sensible in the show. They make a lot of sense, but people don’t wake up and dream of flying a minivan around, necessarily.

David Read:
The original concepts were much more of a single-man fighter. That’s the thing; your square one that you’re starting with really is what something’s interest was on a show and how it was utilized and what it looked like. I suspect it’s the very rare buyer who’s gonna be like, “I’ve never seen that show, but I like that model because that’s interesting. I’ll go ahead and buy one.” If you’re at shows and things like that, I suspect there is the occasional customer who will be like, “That looks interesting, I’ll pick that up.”

Ben Robinson:
I think so. There are people who look at things and think, “Wow, that looks really detailed.” I think the same thing’s true of the Destiny. People look at it and go, “Oh, that looks really detailed.” It looks really detailed because it is really detailed. In the show, it’s really detailed. With the Puddle Jumper, I don’t wanna do the Puddle Jumper down, the Puddle Jumper is a cool little thing. As you say, for someone who doesn’t have the same emotional connection to the show perhaps, it doesn’t have quite the same kind of “Oh, wow, that looks like a really detailed model. I’ve really gotta have that.”

David Read:
That’s fair. It’s designed to go through the Stargate so a certain bit of it is gonna give an indication of streamline. Even though there’s no collision when it goes through the gate, it just goes; that’s just the nature of it. I haven’t talked with you, at least not really in person or as much as we are right now, about the new series. Thoughts? New projects, Ben, new projects.

Ben Robinson:
I saw. I don’t know if you know this, but Nathan Crowley was also an essential part of designing Deep Space Nine on Star Trek.

David Read:
Nathan had to do with the build of DS9?

Ben Robinson:
Yeah. Nathan and Joe Hodges, who were the set designers working to Herman Zimmerman, came up with the real design of Deep Space Nine.

David Read:
Didn’t know he worked under Herman Zimmerman.

Ben Robinson:
They were on it at the beginning; they’d just come off helping him draft that.

David Read:
I’ll be damned.

Ben Robinson:
There’s actually a fascinating story about how they took elements that had been done for Dracula and they used those on Deep Space Nine. Deep Space Nine has quite a Stargate look to it in a lot of ways, actually. It’s got Egyptian influences in it.

David Read:
Cardassian is very Egyptian-influenced. Look at the Galor class. That’s exactly what that is.

Ben Robinson:
Exactly. It’s an Ankh.

David Read:
It looks like a hieroglyph.

Ben Robinson:
It’s an ankh. They did some very clever stuff. They created these molds that could be used. You could use half of it, or all of it, or a quarter of it and you could create all these different shapes with them. Nathan and Joe were essential to that; that was their idea. That was their thing.

David Read:
Wow. Joseph A. Hodges and Alan Kaye. Man, there we go. I didn’t know it.

Ben Robinson:
There you go. There’s a piece of the equation you might not have known.

David Read:
I’m looking forward to talking with them about that. I appreciate that. You see Christopher Nolan in the Tumblr and it’s just deer in headlights. It’s like, oh my God, you got all of these amazing movies coming at you, but that’s a terrific pedigree. I’m really excited about him. I’m really excited about ILM being involved with Mo and Leo; there’s so much stuff to celebrate with that. A lot of fans, not everybody, are hoping for the original Gate to return. From Master Replicas’ point of view, are you hoping for a new one?

Ben Robinson:
I’ve just been doing a lot of stuff about other shows that have been around for a long time. We do a lot of Star Trek stuff, obviously. What you’ve gotta realize is that when this show comes back, it’s gonna be in HD. I watched it first time around on, what, maybe a 24-inch TV? I’m now gonna watch it on a 50-inch TV and my TV’s not even a big TV. You’re gonna see these things at a level of detail and up close that you have never seen before. I know the Gate obviously was used in the movie and repurposed and all of that. But all the same, technically, the demands placed on these things are gonna be extreme.

David Read:
Makes sense.

Ben Robinson:
I think it’s gonna have to have a bit of an upgrade, a bit of a redesign. I’m sure it will look similar. You don’t want it to not look like the Stargate, but I’m expecting some kind of upgrade. Tweaks for sure, a new level of detail.

David Read:
That’s an interesting approach. I do know that, if anything, they’ve set that on the shelf for the time being. There’s a whole ton of new stuff to create, the new world that they’re building around it. There’s a lot to pull off and that’s quite the balancing act to go in and to even consider touching the thing. I’m just really glad that Martin’s involved. “Let’s make the Chevrons purple.”

Ben Robinson:
You know the people doing it have a respect and a love for it and I think that’s true even when there are new people coming in who didn’t work on the show the first time around. There will still be people who really respect what it was and who will want to keep that to it. At the same time, like I said, it’s gonna be a bigger budget. It’s gonna be in HD. You’re gonna want to see something that is bigger and better and more detailed than you’ve ever seen before. That’s what I’m expecting. I’m looking forward to it enormously, I can’t wait to find out more. As yet, I am not in a privileged position of knowing any more than other people. We’re in the middle of negotiating to add it to the license, which I’d like to think won’t be a problem. It’s a new property so it’s not automatically part of our grant of rights. We’d like to get stuff out with the show if we can, so that’s all in hand. Obviously, we know what will happen is that there will be CG assets, so what we do is we work from the CG assets created for the show. That opens a whole can of worms sometimes, about, “Oh, well, there was a practical model and then there was a CG model and then there was an upgraded CG model. Which one are you doing, and why are they different?” All those questions come. This time around, I think we know that there will be amazing assets available.

David Read:
With ILM and all these other folks involved, it’s gonna be an extraordinary process to watch unfold, for sure. This is a great time to be a Stargate fan.

Ben Robinson:
It is, just have to be a bit patient.

David Read:
That’s the thing. Folks, we’re talking with Ben Robinson of Master Replicas. He’s just introduced the Zero Point Module that they’re gonna be showing off. Can you pull it up again? There we go. Look at that thing.

Ben Robinson:
I’ll try to do that. It looks a little dark in that shot. I tried to put it so that there’s a bit of light behind it.

David Read:
There we go.

Ben Robinson:
You’ll see the mess that’s in my room and you’ll see the background.

David Read:
Vertical book stacking, Ben. Vertical book stacking. No human being would ever stack books like this.

Ben Robinson:
It’s not just a shelf. It’s not just to stack a book. That gives you a pretty good idea. You can see how big it is. That’s always the big challenge for us, is people understanding how big…

David Read:
Scale things. If you have a question for Ben with Master Replicas, put a question mark in front of your post in the YouTube feed and we will get it over to him. I got a couple of questions for you, if you’re good with that.

Ben Robinson:
Yeah.

David Read:
Chazgreene66, “Does it need to be plugged in to light or will it hold a charge? How much of a charge are you planning on?”

Ben Robinson:
No, you need to plug it in; it stays plugged in. It’s got a USB cable that comes out the back, it’s pretty discreet. We do these light-up panels for Star Trek; we’re looking at doing something similar for Star Trek. In those, ’cause they hang on the wall, I didn’t want a cable that was dangling. Frankly, you’re gonna put this on a table. The fact that there’s a discreet cable coming out of the back, I don’t think is gonna be a problem. Also, you wouldn’t believe the tariffs if you tried to put a battery in something. It makes life difficult.

David Read:
No. There’s a lot to that process. I’m not even gonna get into it; it’s a pain in the ass.

Ben Robinson:
I was surprised. Apparently, it really makes life difficult if you put a battery in it.

David Read:
If anyone gets this and they wanna have a portable one, I have literally a string of lights that I recommend that you can buy from Amazon. They ship all over the world. You can put them inside of them and there’s three double A batteries in it and you can make that one portable if you want. If not, you can plug this thing in.

Ben Robinson:
It’s designed to be plugged in. If you really, really wanted to not plug it in, someone with some skills could probably move the port on the inside and unscrew it and put a battery pack in. It’s designed to be plugged in. To be this way up. That’s the other thing, we did sit there and think, “there’s no way of making it balance on that stuff.” Unless you build a sort of receptacle thing for it to go into, most of us will be putting it like this on the table.

David Read:
I do have some friends, though, who are already thinking of designs that people can download and create to put their Master Replicas ZPM in.

Ben Robinson:
I’m sure. For that reason, we made sure the base was detailed.

David Read:
MrNBridger, I wonder if it’s Nathan Bridger. “Can you tell us a bit about the conversion process that you use to turn the CGI model for filming from the show into a format or software suitable for mold-making?” That’s a process.

Ben Robinson:
It’s a process that the factory do, really. The basic thing is that we try to get the original CG in order to make sure that we’re accurate, because otherwise, you’re recreating something based on reference. As we said, the problem is sometimes there are both practical props and CG models and they’re not always identical. Sometimes that little switch between the two, people could be looking at something going, “Oh, but there’s that detail and you’ve got it wrong.” It’s like, “Yeah, but if you look at this shot, it’s different.” Honestly, it’s something that the factory does. There are certain shapes that are very difficult to cast. With this, obviously, the real thing was cast, so that’s not really such a problem. Sometimes with ships, with the CG ship, you can make a shape that no one could actually make or that wouldn’t survive the shipping process. You could make something that was very fragile. We had to judge the level of detail; there are certain amounts of detail that won’t show if it’s not beyond a certain depth. There was all sorts of very, very technical little bits and pieces, but we do think about it.

David Read:
I had a friend who built me a set of Replicators from Stargate. Neither of them showed up without having been broken. I had to glue one or two of the legs back on each time they arrived. They didn’t create this thing with the intent of it actually sitting on a shelf. They created it to move across the scene and chase actors.

Ben Robinson:
Or surviving being put in a box and transported from China. These things are designed to look cool on show rather than to survive packaging. There are some things that are impossible because of that and sometimes you have to make some compromises, but you try to make them as small as possible so no one can tell.

David Read:
You have to make a trade-off somewhere in order to pull some of this stuff off. I know the Enterprise D, and to a degree, especially Tomy has come out with the Constitution-class as well, the saucers are very top-heavy. If you’re going to go fully accurate on a piece like that, you have to support the top with something because, unless you’re going to tilt it, the darn thing’s gonna fall over.

Ben Robinson:
Yes. I can bore for England about the shooting maps on the Star Trek models. The other thing is they’re designed to have various bits that are removed in order for you to put these great, great big metal rods inside them. It was a different era of technology. Whereas motion control, these things were generally kept static, but there were different mounts depending on which way up it was. Quite often they filmed the Enterprise D upside down. There’s lots of things like that nobody thinks about.

David Read:
They just pull it off however they have to. Would you guys ever consider creating something like the Replicators if there was an interest for it? One of the designs or two of the designs?

Ben Robinson:
As you were talking about it I was thinking, we did talk about doing some Replicators and we ought to do some. It’s just a case of making them interesting. You’d want them to be in a shape, so I guess you’d want them to be in their kind of spider form thing rather than, I don’t know, what is it? A single replicator.

David Read:
A series of blocks?

Ben Robinson:
Yes.

David Read:
We can get you some blocks, if you want.

Ben Robinson:
Yes, Lego.

David Read:
They snap magnetically together. Be careful, you don’t want them eating your planet.

Ben Robinson:
Everyone starts saying, “That would be really cool” and then you start realizing how rapidly that becomes very expensive.

David Read:
It would be an interesting design challenge to see just how… Is it possible to pull this one off and make it for a reasonable price and make it so that the legs, you can snap them on to the main body when it arrives at its destination from China?

Ben Robinson:
Yeah, exactly. Replicators should definitely be on the list. That’s one of those ones where you’d have to try and get hold of the original assets because on a standard-definition TV, how much detail can you see and there are all sorts of challenges.

David Read:
I know the guy, his name is Craig Van Den Biggelaar.

Ben Robinson:
Worth pursuing.

David Read:
He’s done them all. The Atlantis PDAs, do I have one out right now? Momentito. I don’t. Bye.

Ben Robinson:
There you go. See, this is what happens.

David Read:
I don’t.

Ben Robinson:
Same thing happens. We have a lot of stuff, but it’s in boxes.

David Read:
No, I put them away. I trade them out and they’re gone. I really hope that you guys are just getting started.

Ben Robinson:
Yeah, me too.

David Read:
The ZPM speaks volumes in terms of the interest that this has, especially now that the fourth series is underway. People are rediscovering the show as well as discovering it for the first time. It’s gonna take them a little while to get to Atlantis and Universe, but there’s a good shot that we’ve got a few more customers heading your way for sure.

Ben Robinson:
I’d like to think so. As much as anything I like to think that the franchise is healthy and doing well. It’s such a rich universe and you think, “What a great idea and it deserves to be there and to be thriving,” so very happy to see that.

David Read:
What other properties are you poking around at? Are there others that you guys are considering right now? Can you give us an update on that?

Ben Robinson:
One we are working on, it’s not out till next year again, but Blade Runner 2099. We have some stuff coming. We did the spinner cards. It’s actually the spinner card from the first movie, but technically it appears in 2049. That, I’m very, very proud of. Obviously, the whole world just watched the Dune trailer and we did the Ornithopter from Dune which turned out great as well.

David Read:
Wow, you did the ‘thopter?

Ben Robinson:
Yeah. That looks really nice as well.

David Read:
Fantastic.

Ben Robinson:
Got little Star Trek ships coming, I’m really pleased to be doing those. Because of the way Dale works with those, those have little books with them and they’re really detailed; lots and lots of information in those. I’ve just been working on one of those this weekend. Dr. Who stuff, we continue to do. Trying to think what else.

David Read:
150 bucks for the ‘thopter and for the spinner. These are very reasonable rates. Wow, look at that. That is so gorgeous, Ben. Looking at the ornithopter right now, it’s nuts.

Ben Robinson:
I’ve got a spinner here. Hang on. I’ll get the spinner.

David Read:
You do? OK.

Ben Robinson:
See if it’s the final form.

David Read:
Spin it up.

Ben Robinson:
For me, this is “the” Sci-Fi prop. I’ll try and get it in the light. Light’s all wrong. Hang on. The light’s all wrong. Go and look on the site, there are much better pictures of it on the site.

David Read:
Wow, look at that.

Ben Robinson:
I’m all lit up in a way that’s unhelpful ’cause I was trying to do something. But that, I’m really proud of.

David Read:
Wow.

Ben Robinson:
I was lucky enough to meet Syd Mead. I went to his house, ’cause he worked on Star Trek: Motion Picture as well, which is why I went to see him. He was a lovely guy, and Bill George who built a lot of Star Trek models, built the original model of the spinner. That’s all coming. We’ve got a lot of Star Trek stuff.

David Read:
Foundation?

Ben Robinson:
Foundation, yeah. We did the faster-than-light ships, that’s kind of the knife ships that go through space and the great big battle stations with the different levels of a gyroscope thing.

David Read:
Invictus. Looks like an astrolabe.

Ben Robinson:
Go and have a look at the site. People should have a look. Even if you don’t wanna buy anything, there are some very pretty pictures on the site.

David Read:
Let me turn them on for you, ’cause I’m showing them right now. There we go. You should be able to see them.

Ben Robinson:
There you go.

David Read:
I haven’t seen the show yet, beyond the first episode, so I’m really looking forward to this.

Ben Robinson:
Beautiful show. It’s wonderful.

David Read:
The visuals are nuts.

Ben Robinson:
Really beautiful show.

David Read:
Gerry Anderson.

Ben Robinson:
Gerry Anderson stuff we’ve got, we’ve still pushed for the other ships and stuff, we’ve got Eagles coming by Gerry Anderson. What else was I gonna say? We’re always busy; we’ve always got stuff going. Star Trek action figures coming.

David Read:
The Eaglemoss effect.

Ben Robinson:
Galactica, that’s all Eaglemoss stuff I did back at Eaglemoss. That’s coming back into stock, a lot of that. Really great ships coming.

David Read:
“Scar.” Gary Hutzel was brilliant and a lot of that was also Ken Rabehl, who Richard Hudolin brought over from Stargate before he went to Battlestar.

Ben Robinson:
Add a few others.

David Read:
It’s amazing, the same people that keep on coming back because they design amazing stuff. It’s perfect. This is great. I really appreciate you taking the time to go through this with us and share. DangerousDac, “Any word on other franchises like The Expanse ships or Mass Effect?” Those seem to have stopped?

Ben Robinson:
No, not stopped. The Expanse is tricky. The Expanse is technically demanding. There are things with The Expanse ships that make them very difficult to make at an affordable price. It’s basically the way that they are designed on the show that makes them very expensive for us to make replicas of. I’ve been reluctant to make things that would have to be more expensive. With Mass Effect, that was a case of we wanted to do the Normandy first and to see what the response was like. Obviously, the response to that’s been great, so there’s more Mass Effect stuff in the works now. I would like to think that we end up doing a lot of Mass Effect stuff, but it’s a little early days yet. There’s more on the way for sure.

David Read:
OK. That’s awesome. Kellperim, “As someone who has something like 400 event ships across multiple franchises and companies…”

Ben Robinson:
I’m sorry. I feel guilty about that.

David Read:
“…How do you balance how many items you make from each franchise and in what order?” Or is it just what people are interested in, like, “Well, that’s done well, let’s do another one of those?”

Ben Robinson:
Yeah, I think what you want to do is offer people things in a way that is affordable; You don’t wanna dump 400 ships on people in week one. You could, but you don’t want to. Star Trek ships, I’ve been doing 15 years now. Star Trek’s extraordinary in how many ships there are, there is no other franchise that has 400 ships. Star Wars doesn’t even come close. There’s nothing else that has that kind of number of ships. In fact, 400 isn’t all of them.

David Read:
You’ve got shuttles, you’ve got work bees, you’ve got all kinds of support craft.

Ben Robinson:
You have a ship a week. A thing that happened in Star Trek starting with Voyager, once they shifted over to CG, every week would have a new ship. … the Hirogen or whoever, they would have a ship, and the Species 8472 would have a ship, and so on and so on and so on.

David Read:
The Bioships.

Ben Robinson:
Star Trek just has a ton of ships. I don’t think I ever imagined. I see amazing pictures of people’s display; people have these museums. I don’t have all the ships out on display; I don’t have a big enough house. It’s amazing and very flattering when you see some of the displays people have where they have not just dozens but hundreds of these ships. I do feel some need to apologize but obviously people wouldn’t have bought them if they didn’t want them. Ideally, if I had my druthers and I knew that people would buy them, ’cause obviously I answer to people who don’t wanna make things that don’t make money for some reason, can’t imagine why not, we would do everything from everything. That’s part of what I think is appealing, is special about what we do. OK, some stuff gets too obscure, but we’re not one of those companies that does the big, famous ship that everybody else does. I don’t think anybody else had ever done a model of the Destiny or of the Puddle Jumper. You’re gonna tell me they have now.

David Read:
Uh-uh. I don’t believe so.

Ben Robinson:
That’s our goal in life; to do things that you can’t get somewhere else and to do them well. That’s the other part of the goal; to make them good and make them accurate. In my ideal world, when you pick up a Master Replicas product, you can see it in more detail than you could see it on the show. If you turn it over and look at the back or look at the bit that you never really got to see, it will be accurate. That’s absolutely what we want to do; we want to be an expansion of the show. We’re not sticking a logo on something or sort of going, “Oh well, we don’t know what that looks like. We’ll just make it up.” That’s not our thing at all. That’s the goal. Take Galactica, it’s a really good example of that. You have to draw the line somewhere because much as some people sit there saying that they want the whole ragtag fleet, the reality is there aren’t enough people who want the whole ragtag fleet. I would be trying to persuade my bosses to lose money which is, for some reason as I say, they don’t wanna do.

David Read:
Look, they’ve gotta make it work and you have to strike a balance like anything else. Too much of anything is destructive; you have to figure out what your space is. Francoisrevol, “What about Galaxy Quest?”

Ben Robinson:
Yes. We were gonna do the Protector and then COVID struck. This is hanging in the lobby of ILM. “Oh, we can get perfect reference of it once COVID’s over.” Everyone was like, “Oh, we can’t get back into the office. We can’t go and take pictures.” I was talking to John Goodson and Bill George and Alex Jaeger about it and they were like, “We know where it is. We can get you the perfect reference,” then Eaglemoss went down. It actually just came up the other day in conversation as something that we should have another look at.

David Read:
It’s a beautiful ship.

Ben Robinson:
Look, I’m trying to arrange my head to be in your little square.

David Read:
I can move you.

Ben Robinson:
I like the cinematic framing so very much.

David Read:
There we go. That’s funny.

Ben Robinson:
Don’t go there. It’s terrifying seeing all the great big head.

David Read:
That’s funny.

Ben Robinson:
Galaxy Quest is on the list for sure and I’d like to have that back.

David Read:
Striker5665, “So Destiny will be restocked?”

Ben Robinson:
Yes, it will. I say that, I’m pretty sure it will but not in the next couple of weeks. It might go back for pre-order relatively soon, but at this point, new stock is gonna be four or five months away before it’s actually physically available again.

David Read:
All right. Darknessiscoming, I hope not, asks “Are there plans for any battle-damaged ships like Galactica after the Adama Maneuver or near the end of the series or NX-01 after the Xindi attacks?”

Ben Robinson:
The thing about battle-damaged ships, and I’m on record as having said this a lot, is that if you’re gonna do battle damage, I’m not a big fan of battle damage that looks like a cigarette burn. A lot of times people who have done battle damage, they’ve painted that damage onto the outside of the ship. For me, I think if you’re gonna do it, you want it to be radical. You want it to be really damaged and that means making new tooling and that means you have to sell a certain amount and it makes it difficult. It’s never say never, but at the same time, I have reservations about it. It’s very difficult on smaller ships. I think on a big ship where you wanna be able to see the decks, you wanna be able to see the twisted metal, you want it to be accurate, so that’s a bit challenging. Then you’re saying, “Do you wanna buy a battle-damaged version of a big, more expensive model?” Which is, again, a bit more of an ask. It always comes up and I always think about it, but I wanna make sure that we execute it in a really good way. I’ve never been completely satisfied with what I’ve seen which is why we haven’t it done yet.

David Read:
I don’t know if it was Playmates or if it was Diamond Select. I think it was Diamond Select who did the Star Trek III Constitution-class 1701 after the self-destruct goes off. It was one of the coolest models I’ve ever seen. That’s a very particular piece of sci-fi cinema history right there….

Ben Robinson:
This is me with my obsessions. It’s actually quite hard to get it really accurate because that was back in the days of physical models and when they blew up that… they had kind of half the saucer blown off model. I don’t know where that model is, actually. It’s quite interesting. I’ve got good reference pictures of the other models. I’ve got good pictures of them blowing the ship up. They did some really interesting stuff. They do this thing where they put wire wool on things and then they burn the wire wool and that’s how you often get that kind of disintegrating surface effect, back in the days of practical effects. I don’t think they did that for III. I’ve got a great picture of them literally blowing it up and I think that they must have dissolved some acetone on it.

David Read:
That’s exactly how they did that, on the saucer itself, for sure. What a great sequence! Kellperim, “I was a subscriber to the Trek ships from day one and met Ben on the run-up to the launch. Just wanted to say thank you, Ben, for the insane amount of work it has taken to fill my house.”

Ben Robinson:
Thank you. Thank you for filling your house. As I say, I’m never quite sure whether I should apologize, but I do really appreciate people caring.

David Read:
That’s funny. Happy customer!

Ben Robinson:
We put a lot into them. Because we always had the publishing element with things – we don’t with Stargate, which is a shame – but it means that we got to know people who were working on these models and we understood how things were made and why they were the way they were. I remember having a conversation with John Goodson at ILM about the Aztec patterns on Star Trek ships and how they would turn the specularity up or down for different shots. So, “how do you get it right when they change their minds.” It’s like, “Oh, it’s right for this shot and wrong for that shot.”

David Read:
“In this scene, it looks like this.” For years, I had one of, I think it was one of the DST models of the Constitution. I was like, “Why is the front of the secondary hull turquoise? Why?” Then I went and I looked closely and it’s like, “Oh. It’s ’cause it is.”

Ben Robinson:
That’s the other thing that’s really tricky. This is true with digital models as well as physical ones; what they look like in their kind of native raw state and what they look like on screen are not necessarily exactly the same. They’re in lighting conditions, so there’s external light being cast on them. Someone once pointed out to me that if you lit them realistically, you wouldn’t be able to see them at all.

David Read:
That’s the thing, there’s no ambient lighting, or minimal.

Ben Robinson:
There’s no ambient light in space. Any lights that were on the ship, you would have, but that would be it. I was talking to someone who’s working with me and saying, “No, you’ve gotta go back and watch every episode that the ship is in, do frame grabs and see what color it looks like on screen.” We can’t trust the digital, even though it’s the original digital asset that was used in the show, you still wanna check to see what color it came out on. On top of that, it’s not so true now, but back in the day, they told me that NTSC stood for “never the same color.”

David Read:
That’s great. That makes a lot of sense, man. DangerousDac wanted to know “we need to have the complete Goa’uld ship collection,” so that means the cargo ship and the Al’Kesh.

Ben Robinson:
They are being worked on. The Tel’Tak and the Al’Kesh are being worked on.

David Read:
Perfect, that’s awesome. Tel’Tak, that’s right.

Ben Robinson:
The complete Goa’uld ship includes a bunch of other pyramids as well.

David Read:
Apophis’, the one that got blown up. Then you’ve got Anubis’, so the flower that does this. There’s a lot there. Enricmartinezmoreno, it’s all one word, had to break it up. What about the Aurora, the Atlantean battle cruiser?

Ben Robinson:
That’s on the list. The Orion, the Aurora, these things. Some of it, as you and I have discussed, is trying to track down the original assets. We’re working our way through things and as long as people keep buying the last one, then we’ll do the next one.

David Read:
Absolutely, for sure.

Ben Robinson:
It does basically depend on that. It’s like if one loses money, then we’re like, “Well, then this is gonna be more popular than the next thing.”

David Read:
That’s it.

Ben Robinson:
You do have difficult things like the Ori, for example. They’re not as loved as the Goa’uld, but they are important. That goes to the sequencing. What you’re trying to do is not bore people; you don’t want to do six Goa’uld ships in a row. At the same time, you want to have some indicator that if this one doesn’t sell enough to be viable, would the next one be less popular, more popular? How do you judge that? You go in a descending order of popularity with it. It doesn’t always work out quite that way and it’s very difficult for you to judge whether a show is gonna be more popular than another one. If you were to think about it, you would go, “OK, it’s gonna be SG-1, then Atlantis and then Universe.” But actually, the Destiny seems to be really, really popular.

David Read:
Isn’t that wild? I love that. I love subverting people’s expectations. There’s just something delicious about that.

Ben Robinson:
It’s always good to be a bit subversive. Makes life better.

David Read:
Martin Taichl from Czech Republic; “Are there any plans to, or consideration to, include ships with moving parts?”

Ben Robinson:
Again, it’s really difficult. Unless you make something big, you struggle to make the hinges suitably delicate. The Invictus, because of the way it moves, that works, the different rings spin and that makes sense. This was a problem they had with their motion control models: they would tend not to build movement into the ships because you had to replicate that movement perfectly on each pass and that was really difficult. One of my great friends, Dan Curry, was telling me… He was the visual effects producer on Star Trek.

David Read:
Also a Tai Chi master.

Ben Robinson:
If you want to know how to kill someone, Dan is the man. Very, very good on weapons, invented the bat’leth.

David Read:
The Mek’leth.

Ben Robinson:
A master of a lot of martial arts. But anyway, the fact that Dan can kill you with a thumb is irrelevant. He was saying how difficult it was having the Voyager’s nacelles move. The stepper motor in those was really, really difficult to find; one that was that accurate and could replicate the movement perfectly every time for the different passes. Obviously, once you move to CG, that’s not such an issue.

David Read:
But those couple of seasons!

Ben Robinson:
You can do whatever you want. But back in the day, the technology was such. On the whole, things do move now. The Athena at Starfleet Academy has different positions. Or the Protostar from Prodigy, that moves around; that has different positions. I discovered that the model of the Protostar with the Protostar drive deployed, the nacelles are shorter, which was interesting.

David Read:
Really, they shrink? OK.

Ben Robinson:
I don’t think they’re meant to shrink. I think it’s just a different version of the model.

David Read:
Wow. OK. You’re looking at it under a microscope. There you go.

Ben Robinson:
You’re like, “Oh, we could reuse this one…” “Oh, no, we can’t. It’s slightly shorter.”

David Read:
Wow.

Ben Robinson:
Movement again is difficult. I think it’s a premium thing. It’s not a premium thing because the movement is premium, but because you need to make a big model in order to get the hinges to work without being really clunky. Way back when I did a lot of James Bond cars, you have to make a model a certain size to be able to open the door.

David Read:
That’s a fair point.

Ben Robinson:
Otherwise you’ve got a hinge and the hinge is visible. You don’t want the hinge to be visible.

David Read:
That’s a good point.

Ben Robinson:
People are looking for any inaccuracies anyway. You start adding things that you can’t scale properly, then it becomes an issue.

David Read:
Here we go. Last question. Ribbon device consideration? Darknessiscoming asks.

Ben Robinson:
Everything’s on the list. The ZPM is our first Stargate model. I think everybody can imagine where we’ll go from here. The zat gun, the helmets, those are the things. As we go, we’ll see what the response is like to those. Kino Ball – we’ll see what the response is like to those and if the response is good, then we’ll keep going. That’s kind of how it works. Like I said, you think, “Well, this is probably more popular than that. Let’s do this first.”

David Read:
You’d be surprised!

Ben Robinson:
Then you think, “Well, it’s probably still more popular than that thing we haven’t done yet, so let’s not do it.”

David Read:
I’m thrilled that you did Destiny because I know a number of people who would’ve been like, “We’re not even gonna bother with SGU.” I’m thrilled that the sales have risen to justify that.

Ben Robinson:
Yes. That’s always part of the pleasure of it; sometimes people are just so pleased that something’s been given its chance, been given its due. People are like, “Yeah, there should be stuff for SGU.” It’s a good show; it should have stuff. I’m sure it holds an important place in a lot of people’s hearts, as it should.

David Read:
Ben, this has been great. Thank you for coming back on and thank you for letting us see… I think we’re the first ones to see the Zero Point Module in person.

Ben Robinson:
You are. As I say, I wanted everyone to see how big it is. It looks a little dull in this, this is not my studio, this is my very messy office. If you have a look on the site, you get a much better idea of what it really looks like. What you can’t see is how big it is, I’ll try to… There you go, see how big my head is? I have quite a big head. That gives you an idea of how big it is. We’ll get you one when they’re actually here.

David Read:
I’m thrilled. You can go to masterreplicas.com. We’re gonna put the link in the description below for people to check it out. It’s a beautiful piece; I’m thrilled you guys have got it. I’m thrilled that it’s accurate and hopefully this is just the beginning.

Ben Robinson:
We always hope. We always hope. More than anything, I hope people like it and that it makes people happy. That’s what it’s all about.

David Read:
Thank you, Ben. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show on this side, but I really appreciate you taking the time.

Ben Robinson:
Thank you. It’s always a pleasure. Talk to you soon.

David Read:
Pleasure to see you, sir. You take care of yourself.

Ben Robinson:
Bye.

David Read:
That is Ben Robinson of Master Replicas, everyone. My name is David Read, you’re watching The Stargate Oral History Project. If you enjoy Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, do me a favor and click the Like button. It does help with the show, will continue to help us to grow our audience. If you wanna see more content like this as it debuts, click Subscribe. If you click the Bell icon, it will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes. Clips from this stream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on the Dial the Gate YouTube channel. We are gonna be taking a bit of a break, but within the next 55 minutes we’re gonna start up Arrival over on Wormhole X-Tremists. If you have a copy of the film, preferably Region 1 in NTSC… With movies, I guess it would play at the same speed, but definitely not TV. We’re gonna watch this film and if you’ve not seen it, I don’t know if you should watch it with us or not. It’s definitely, definitely a rewatch, but I don’t know. Evie’s gonna be watching it for the first time so we’re not gonna spoil you. This is a terrific film; it’s my favorite film from 2017. I highly recommend you join us over on the Wormhole X-Tremists YouTube channel to check that out. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I’ll see you in a couple weeks, taking some time off. I’ll see you on the other side, guys. Bye-bye.