Background
Battlestar Galactica
originally aired in 1979, and with its million-dollar-an- episode price tag,
there was tremendous pressure to perform.
Fans (like myself!) couldn't keep the show
viable, and it was recast into a ridiculous Earth based series before being put
out of our misery. The new series on Sci-Fi seems to be loved or hated
exclusively; I love it. No compromises:
people die, and there is no joy in fleeing psychopathic machines. Either way you feel, interest is resurgng in the original.
Unlike Star Wars/Trek, BSG was very dark in
concept--humanity was chased into space and nearly exterminated by the robotic Cylons. The Cylons were in many ways identical to the
Terminator--unfeeling machines that would not stop until humanity was dead.
The Raider is a great design. Considering it came out in the same era as
Buck Rogers & Star Wars, it is still a classic bad guy. Primarily a "heavy fighter", it was
not nimble or zippy; as a dogfighter 1v1 with the Colonial Viper it was outclassed. But it has big guns--big enough in numbers to
take out a Battlestar without a fighter screen, or to
quickly blow away the civilian ships in the fleet. And in swarms, using 3-ship cells as the
tactical unit, the Raiders could give the Vipers trouble...
The Kit
The pictures here are of an original issue Monogram kit I
built in 1992 or so—not the 1997 Revell/Monogram
re-issue. At the time, BSG was in
reruns, and I was able to use tapes of the show for reference. This was built from the box with the
cheesy rubber band missile shooters built in.
I eventually covered over the missile ports with spare tank parts. The rubber bands are probably rotted by
now...
I'm most pleased with the weathering, which to my eye
captures the look of the raider.
The Pictures
All pictures were taken with natural lighting and no
flash. Though there are some shadows,
the color captured is closest to the kit’s natural appearance.
The original kit had the green pentagon marking inboard of
the black stripe. Since the kit stripes were
too short when moved to their proper location, I painted them on (both top and
bottom black stripes).
Like the studio original, the trenches on the left and
right side behind the cannons are not the same.
The 2005 Joyride replica of the Raider clearly uses this model as the
master for the toy.
This
picture is the one where the color is off from the model—it is too warm in
tone.
The little pegs sticking up are the “missile” releases; the
circular objects seen in the black area are the covers I put over the cheesy
missile shooter ports.
The
underside black stripes were not included, IIRC, in the kit at all.