Type-II Hand Phaser
(c. 2378)

A further-redesigned version of the 2370's hand phaser.

When this first 'officially' appeared in Star Trek: Nemesis, I started calling this the 'Cobra Phaser' not realising that that is a nickname commonly applied to the weapon seen from the 3rd season of TNG onwards. This prop has instead come to be known as the 'Dolphin Phaser' for its curvy snout.

The prop is very similar in shape to the version seen from Star Trek: First Contact onwards (the 'Boomerang Phaser' or 'Phaserang') but is different in just about every detail. It's curvier, has a sharper muzzle and round buttons instead of square ones. The colour seems darker and more metallic, and the snout and buttons are a metallic silver, aluminium or even chrome. The snout has what could be proton spill ports above and below the beam emitter, and some fan-made versions have holographic blue highlights placed there.

Technically this isn't the first appearance of the design - it was one of a number of redressed props and appeared in a deleted scene from the Voyager finale "Endgame," suggesting that in the alternate future of the early 25th century it's still in use. This variant shows a return to a black muzzle (which from some angles appears to be not as sharp as that one the original), might have a lighter body colour, and coloured buttons (white for the beam intensity and width controls, red for the firing button) possibly with the surrounding area painted black. The question is, which came first? Was a concept model for the film borrowed for the appearance on the TV show, or vice versa?

Given the similarity, there's already some confusion between the two: replicas of the Nemesis variant can be found which have silver muzzles and control buttons, but a red firing button - I own one myself. This hybrid version has been seen at exhibitions labelled as a prop from Nemesis (note the black area around the buttons) - with the proper one also appearing, albeit unlabelled. But it's plain that in the film all props have the three silver buttons: this isn't a repeat of the unique red-firing-button phaserangs seen only in First Contact. To add to the confusion, some propmakers insist the "Endgame" was smaller than the Nemesis, and that the one making the rounds at exhibitions is a Nemesis repainted with a small green jewel added to the top of the snout!

One curious feature - a phaser's head pulled open to show a red power cell beneath; the opening and closing isn't seen, but a crewmember is holding down the power button and setting it to kill (the green power bar is fully-on, and the red bar cycles to full strength during the sequence). This despite the whole emitter assembly appearing to be one single flush unit on all the images I've seen. Why? As with the panel on the top of the rifles in Nemesis, it could be some sort of cocking-action, which would be idiotic (there is a clack-click sound!): the only reason for that would be to make it easy for non-fans to see that the weapon is being made ready for use! Director Stuart Baird explains in the DVD commentary: "When I saw the weapons that they had used in previous Star Trek movies, they didn't have what I felt was enough illustration of how they worked, so I got our prop man, Jerry Moss, to make a few of them that showed the energy, I don't know what sort of energy it is, but so they really looked like they were charged up and they were going to fire some laser that was going to do some damage. . . so that was one thing I was insisting on."