Planetary Outpost

The release of LEGO Idea’s 21312 Women of NASA is again sparking debate about gender inequality. This happened with the release of 21110 Research Institute, and I would argue that these sets and the news surrounding them merely highlight the problem, because if there wasn’t an issue, there would be no need for them.

LEGO is supposed to be gender neutral, which any child - or adult - can play with. I remember recently seeing a photo of a letter from 1974 from LEGO to parents which is sadly still relevant today - and maybe even more so:

“To Parents
   The urge to create is equally strong in all children. Boys and girls.
   It’s the imagination that counts. Not skill. You build whatever comes into your head, the way you want it. A bed or a truck. A dolls house or a spaceship.
   A lot of boys like dolls houses. They’re more human than spaceships. A lot of girls prefer spaceships. They’re more exciting than dolls houses.
   The most important thing is to put the right material in their hands and let them create whatever appeals to them”

It’s always news when we see women on TV in what are traditionally perceived to be “male” roles, like Denise Crosby in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Roxann Dawson in Voyager, or Jewel Staite in Firefly.

Heck not too long ago i saw LEGO sets in a shop which had been separated by gender: City was in the “for the boys” section, and Friends, “for the girls”. Although to be fair to that retailer and in direct contrast to the above 40-year old letter, the Friends line is clearly marketed at girls.

This is 2017. Shouldn’t we really have moved on by now and no longer be constrained by archaic gender stereotypes? Sadly, it seems we have a long long way to go.

And what has this got to do with Planetary Outpost?

It actually comes down to a desire not to be limited by what any LEGO set offers: usually the photos and instructions make it clear how to assemble the minifigs and which roles they have. LEGO is supposed to be all about flexibility and customisation, but how many customers actually just stick with what the instructions tell them?

When designing Planetary Outpost, I actually took cues from the way my own kids played with other LEGO sets, and how they mixed and matched the minifigs with amazing frequency; I wanted to encourage that flexibility in my creation.

Which is why I came up with the idea of offering multiple hair pieces so those playing with my set are free to choose their crew. Also, even though it’s a crew of three, I’ve included two generic male heads and two generic female heads. This way they can also choose the gender distribution of their team without being bogged down by potential photographic, instructional, or even cultural limitations.

The Women in NASA set also highlights STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Proper science-fiction should be all about that, and I feel Planetary Outpost does focus on the wonders of science and the ability to use technology to further our species, from the Biospheric Reclamation Environmental Aeration Temperature & Humidity Ecosystem [BREATHE], to the Hightech Enhanced Anatomical Life Support [HEALS], to the Formulated Optimised Organic Dispenser [FOOD], and of course, to the Artificial Intelligence 5 Operating Robonaut Task Support, the outpost’s robot, affectionately nicknamed “All Sorts”

And as for women in science, this proposed set allows them to be doctors, researchers, tinkerers, miners, explorers, commanders, etc. Whichever profession you need them to have, they can be with the flexible options of Planetary Outpost’s crew.

I don’t know of any other set that is designed like this from the outset, but I strongly feel it’s an asset to my proposal. And I hope you do too.

Until the next time,

Captain out. 

The first milestone has been reached: Planetary Outpost has got 100 votes! It took two weeks and a lot of hard work to get there - I’m gonna need to think of other methods to get the other 9,900 supporters, as my current method is neither sustainable, nor sufficient!

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought it would be fitting to focus the subject of this post on those skeleton heads that are part of my project.

The original Lego Space sets of the 70s had no conflict built-in. All the minifigs were meant to work together for a common purpose of scientific research and exploration. As a child playing with those sets I actually respected that decision, but had to find conflict from elsewhere, and I invented all kinds of weird and wonderful problems they had to deal with. My favourite was a contagion of some kind, and I thought I’d include that as an option for this project.

But which heads would suit this best? A plain skull wasn’t good enough, and I wasn’t keen on creating my own, fearing that LEGO might in fact reject such a notion should my project ever reach 10,000 supporters. LEGO have created a lot of scary-looking minifigs in the past (as you can see from the main photo - none of those monsters are obviously included in my proposal - they’re just there because they wanted to join in the celebrations). But it’s clear there’s a fine line between scary fun, and really scary.

And then I came across Monster 4 (set 3837). This game is filled with scary looking minifig heads and its skulls with glowing red eyes was so perfect for my needs, I knew my search was over. Plus, if LEGO was ok with marketing this as a game suitable for children aged seven or above (as it says on the box), I trust they’ll agree it’ll be good enough for Planetary Outpost.

Two are included with the set, sparing one crewmember, just to give the Outpost a fighting chance to overcome this very Halloween-appropriate crisis.

Until the next time, stay spooky,

Captain out.

My project is off to a leisurely start: it’s been on Lego Ideas for just over a week and has amassed 79 supporters.

I’ve received many positive comments both on Lego Ideas and on Twitter - thanks so much for all of them - although I hope you’ll understand why this is my favourite comment: Matthew Ashton, yes, THE Matthew Ashton, Design VP of Lego himself told me on Twitter, “I'm not allowed to vote... having said that it's a pretty nifty set, and I love a bit of Classic Space! Good luck!” 

I’m focussing this post on the crew’s uniform. As Planetary Outpost is designed to be a homage to Classic Space, I initially considered using the exact same suits as those from the original 70s, with the same air tanks and helmets... but I never really liked having to pull the crew’s heads off to remove the tanks, and Lego created a much better suit with built-in tanks which they’ve used as space suits in the past, so why not update the gear?... and since I was then going in that direction, why not update the uniforms while I was at it?

And so I did. “Excelsior UK” saw similarities between them and the Star Trek uniforms, but the inspiration was actually much closer to home: Lego City has had a red jacket with the Classic Space logo on it for years. I simply removed the zippers and a few buttons, changed the shirt’s colour from white to grey and applied the whole design to three different colours: white, red and blue.

Why these three? Red and white was easy: they were the first colours used by Lego themselves in its first space sets. I needed a third colour since I wanted a crew of three, and out of the available ones, my favourite was blue.

I also wanted a logo on the uniform’s right shoulder (like the astronaut from series 15), and since I chose black trousers, I wanted a coloured line on the outside of the left leg.

And hey presto, an original uniform, inspired by various existing Lego designs and a desire to revamp the basic (by today’s standard) Classic Space suits.

The wonderful chap at Bricksanity did all the printing for me, including the bricks bearing the Classic Space logo. And as for the spacesuits, Lego don’t yet produce them in red and blue, so I had to get handy at spray painting, but I hope you’ll agree the results were very satisfying :)

Until the next time,

Captain out. 

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