Repulsive, Repugnant "Raptors"

Sordid Spaceship Simulacrums

CAUTION: Extreme sarcasm and comical criticism ahead. Read at your own risk!

I know I’m going to get a lot of flack for this, (I have to find SOME way to get you people to populate the comments section below… cuz not many of you are participating… dammit… Maybe controversy will work!) but I’m one of the few Sci Fi geeks who absolutely HATES the early 2000s remake of Battlestar Galactica (although I’m a HUGE fan of the 1978 original). I admit I have not watched much of the new version, and with good reason, but I did watch enough of it to notice that the premise is uninspiring, the settings completely unimaginative (could have been shot in any Vancouver office building, and was fully expecting to see the name “Nokia” emblazoned upon the obviously modern-at-the-time phones they used), the acting wooden and boring, the characters completely unlikeable and crass, the CGI visual effects terrible and the worst part is the horrible cinematography which is absolutely wretched and completely unwatchable. My eyes (well, eye really) got sore from trying to follow the constantly shaking imagery, no doubt shot by epileptic chimpanzees employed to handle the cameras, with the picture CONSTANTLY bouncing and waving around, whip panning and crash zooming and obviously deliberately focus hunting (for “style” I guess), making me dizzy, even during calm dialogue scenes. The space ship designs were an abortion of the models seen in the 1978 series. I don’t know why they even bothered to call it “Battlestar Galactica” except for the laziness of using the names of the characters and stealing the basic designs of some of the spacecraft, as nothing else came close to the ideas behind the original series. Heck, even the cringeworthy “President’s ship” JUST HAPPENS to be painted EXACTLY like our very earthbound Air Force One! What a stupid, exceptionally lazy cop-out and an example of really pathetic design sense! YUCK!

Nevertheless, when called upon to do so, I will build models of such abominations to the best of my ability, as even desperately dumpy looking models are still fun to make. Such was the case for the ugliest of all of them, the “Raptor” ships, obviously so called due to the popularity of the vicious dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park movies, (or the Toronto basketball team, also named due to the film’s popularity) since nobody had ever heard of the name before then! (Even Ford made a truck called the Raptor at some point… it just became a popular thing… because people are seemingly lazy at coming up with something original I guess nowadays.)

In fact I built TWO of these grotesque looking things for Moebius Models, released back in 2017, from test shots they supplied, and photographed them for the box art and publicity materials to be used in marketing and so on. One of the models is a kind of shuttle or whatever, and the second equipped with ridiculously sized weapons pods that make them over-the-top ersatz gunships of some sort that used lazily unimaginative weaponry that looks like anything Rambo would have slung over his shoulder in the 1980s.

All criticism of the design of the fictional craft aside, I must say that Moebius really did an excellent job with these kits. If you do like these damned things, the kits are NOT disappointing. They are excellent replicas, and as far as I can tell (I did have to carefully examine the original CGI and physical mock-up to determine paint work as I built them) the kit is extremely accurate to what was seen on screen.

The “stripped down” one has a door that can be opened to show the interior, revealing some sort of tactical station I suppose, but the gunship type has the heavy looking weapons pods over the door so I don’t know how the crew can supposedly get in and out of the stupid thing.

By the way, the two versions of the models were built months apart, which is why the lighting doesn’t match up between the two.

Anyhow, not much else to say about these models except despite their ungainliness (even when trying to hide that fact with dramatic lighting) and totally nonsensical appearance, they WERE very fun to build and I think match what was seen on screen fairly well. Wait. Scratch that. The models flying about on screen were just videogame images so actually these physical models look a hell of a lot better and much more realistic. Because they are real. You can touch them. At least… I could. When I had them here. And so could anyone else who actually has them. Can’t do that with a videogame image. Heh. ;-P

REMEMBER: You can click on the pictures for larger, more detailed versions!

Under destruc… I mean under construction…

The “basic” version showing how the door can be opened…

…revealing the interior. As decals had not yet been produced, I had to print the artwork onto some label paper using an inkjet printer and just stuck them on.

The cockpit with the very basic figures installed. They were obviously quickly designed in a computer by someone at the Chinese factory who only knew the basics of figure making, as the uniforms lack any kind of natural creases and folds and so on that really should be present to look realistic. Not to mention that both of them have the exact same pose. The figures are the worst part of the kit. But at least they included some, and they look OK when the canopy is put on.

Below is the “heavily armed” version. Just looks like a blob with junk all over it, doesn’t it? (You could put it into the set of Sanford and Son and nobody’d bat an eye!)

I had built two of these at once, months after I had built the “regular” one shown above. One was made with retracted landing gear, the other with extended. The extended LG version went to Moebius. The other one was reserved for someone else. (I was paid to build just one of them, so the second test shot was essentially mine to keep or do with as I pleased, but I did do extensive photography of both of them so that they could show the model in both configurations.) They are seen here mounted to the stands that Moebius supplies with the kits. Their stands are hold-overs from the ancient “Aurora” versions but are very unstable, and clear plastic is also rather brittle. The models tend to be a bit too heavy for them and they wobble about for a long time, making time exposure photography tedious (read almost impossible). I prefer the stands from Round 2 that are generic black domes with a metal support rod. Most of the pictures I shot of the models avoided using these wobbly stands of course.

That’s about it. Don’t forget to comment below and “give me what for” for daring to despise the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica show from about 20 years or so ago now. At least you’ll have left a comment. I’ll take what I can get. ;-)

But most of all, have fun!

Oh… and also as important… BUILD MODELS! Even if they are ugly! If you don’t like to build models yourself (I can’t imagine why!), maybe you would like me to build them for you! Contact me at “jim@smallartworks.ca”. Yes, it’s expensive as all custom made artwork is, but worth it if you like the work you see on my web page (www.smallartworks.ca) and this Substack page.

Anyway, please subscribe and comment below!