SDCC ’25: ‘Sub Rosa’ Beverly Crusher among NACELLE’s STAR TREK ACTION FIGURE PANEL highlights

By Avery and Ollie Kaplan

On Thursday, July 24th 2025 at San Diego Comic-Con, The Nacelle Company announced two forthcoming waves of Star Trek action figures. At the Nacelle Star Trek Action Figure Panel, CEO Brian Volk-Weiss was joined by Director of Marketing and PR Bryan W. Adams and Director of Development Bailee Rackie. They shared plenty of exciting reveals for Franchise action figure collectors. 

These reveals included a figure of Beverly Crusher from the infamous Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7 episode “Sub Rosa.” And there were also some more expected characters announced, including the entire Star Trek: The Original Series command crew. Read on for more details about the newly revealed forthcoming Star Trek figures from Nacelle.

Cover image credit: Ollie Kaplan.

Nacelle Star Trek toy panel

The panel was attended by a very energetic and engaged audience, including Larry Nemecek and Trekkies cosplaying in uniforms from throughout the Franchise’s history. Volk-Weiss discussed how surreal it was that Nacelle, which launched its first toy lines after first producing the Netflix series The Toys That Made Us, had acquired the Star Trek license.

Volk-Weiss explained that the journey began during a meeting with the previous licensor for Star Trek action figures, Playmates. During the conversation, it was mentioned that Playmates would no longer be making Franchise figures. In a subsequent meeting with Paramount, The Nacelle Company pitched a 43-page presentation detailing what they would do if permitted to make Star Trek toys. Eventually, their license was approved.

In addition, Volk-Weiss shared Nacelle’s philosophical approach to which characters they choose to feature as figures. While previous licensors to make Star Trek action figures have frequently launched their lines with predictable characters like James T. Kirk, Spock and Jean-Luc Picard, Nacelle took a different approach. 

Nacelle elected to make figures of more obscure characters, or at least unusual versions of characters who were more often enshrined as action figures. In addition, Nacelle also accepts Trekkie action figure character requests through the email [email protected]. Volk-Weiss himself responds to these messages, which is all the more impressive when one considers that over 7,000 emails have been received at the address so far.

Waves One and Two

The Star Trek action figures produced by Nacelle feature impressively detailed recreations of characters from Franchise shows up through 2005 (or when Star Trek: Enterprise went off the air). Each of the figures comes with exciting and unique accessories, many of which will be especially appealing or amusing for devoted Trekkies. And each figure includes multiple heads and hands, allowing for varied posing and display.

Image credit: Nacelle.

The first wave of Star Trek action figures from Nacelle, which are currently available for preorder, included some deep cuts and some deeper cuts. While moderately devoted Trekkies will recognize characters like Captain Jellico, Captain Rachel Garrett and Weyoun, the first wave also features Valkris, the Klingon operative who briefly appears in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. The first wave of Nacelle’s Star Trek action figures will be released in about three months, in Q4 2025.

Also previously announced are the figures for Wave Two of Nacelle’s Star Trek action figures. While these feature some more popular characters, these figures are frequently specific incarnations of said characters. This includes Kirk from Star Trek: Generations (complete with horse and bottle of dill) and Kathryn Janeway from the Star Trek: Voyager Season 4 episode “Year of Hell.”

Image credit: Nacelle.

For more details about these previously announced waves, stay tuned to Comics Beat for our interview with Volk-Weiss, including pictures of the prototypes displayed at Nacelle’s SDCC ’25 booth. As to how many Star Trek figures you can eventually expect from Nacelle, Volk-Weiss states that he hopes to reach as many as 1,000 characters.

Wave Three

During the panel, Volk-Weiss revealed the characters who will be included in Nacelle’s forthcoming third and fourth waves of action figures. The previous two waves were “assortments,” which featured an assortment of characters from across the Franchise. By contrast, the third wave will be a “bridge crew,” which will be entirely composed of bridge crew characters from The Original Series. Moving forward, Nacelle hopes to alternate between assortments and bridge crews in duty uniforms. At least until the bridge crews are exhausted, at which point they’ll just do assortments.

Image credit: Nacelle.

Featured in the third wave will be Kirk, Spock, Leonard “Bones” McCoy, Nyota Uhura, Hikaru Sulu, Pavel Chekov, Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, Christine Chapel and Janice Rand. Wave Three will also feature a special two-character pack in celebration of the Franchise’s 60th anniversary in 2026. However, just who will be included in that two-character pack has yet to be revealed — and Volk-Weiss states that none of the guesses shouted by the Trekkie-filled audience were correct.

Wave Four

Also revealed during the panel were the characters who will be included in Wave Four, including six characters from the big screen. These are David Marcus from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Saavik from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Pavel Chekov from The Voyage Home, John Harriman from Generations and Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: First Contact.

Picard is the “Little Ships Edition,” and will come packaged with the titular wall of model ships as an accessory. Rounding out the movie characters is Data (Sailor Edition) from Generations. He will be part of an ongoing “mini-wave,” joining the Generations Sailor Editions of Worf and Geordi La Forge which will have been released as part of Wave Two.

Image credit: Nacelle.

Wave Four will also feature four small screen characters. These include Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which will come packaged with his baseball as an accessory. Tom Paris (Captain Proton Edition) will be a black and white figure depicting Voyager’s Paris portraying the role from the holo-novel The Adventures of Captain Proton. 

Also included will be Hoshi Sato (“In A Mirror, Darkly” Edition). This will be the second figure in a mini-wave that begins with Wave Two’s Jonathan Archer (“In A Mirror, Darkly” Edition), based on the Enterprise Season 4 episode. And of course, Wave Four will also include the figure that is sure to capture the attention of Trek social media spaces: Beverly Crusher (“Sub Rosa” Edition).

Beverly Crusher (“Sub Rosa” Edition)

The Crusher (“Sub Rosa” Edition) action figure was revealed via a prerecorded video from none other than Gates McFadden herself. In the video, which elicited quite the reaction from the audience, McFadden stated that the figure would depict Crusher in her nightgown from the episode. And of course, the figure will come with Ronan’s candle as an accessory.

After the video, Volk-Weiss explained the origins of the figure. Initially, he had wanted to release a Crusher figure that depicted her in her tactical gear from The Next Generation Season 6 episode “Chain of Command.” Volk-Weiss felt this would help counteract the “teeny bit” of sexism from Star Trek’s earlier incarnations by showing the character in an “empowered” context.

However, those plans changed thanks to a conversation with McFadden herself, who was visiting company headquarters in order to record voice over for one of Nacelle’s shows. Volk-Weiss told McFadden about his plans for a “Chain of Command” Edition of Crusher. 

But McFadden had other ideas. She immediately suggested the “Sub Rosa” Edition of Crusher instead. Volk-Weiss pointed out that putting the character in the see-through nightgown from the episode could cause controversy. But according to Volk-Weiss, McFadden replied “‘Trust me, if you want to sell toys and you want to have people online buy your toys and having me sign them, do “Sub Rosa.” It comes up every convention, over and over and over.'” McFadden subsequently agreed to make the announcement video in order to demonstrate her approval of the product.

Nacelle Star Trek Action Figure Panel

Which of the Nacelle Star Trek action figures are you most excited about? Be sure and let The Beat know, either here in the comment section or over on our Bluesky social media page.

Wave One of the Nacelle Star Trek action figures are currently available for preorder.

Keep up with all of The Beat’s Star Trek coverage here.

Stay tuned to The Beat for more coverage from SDCC ’25.