UCS-scale LEGO replica of a colonial Viper Mk II from Battlestar Galactica

I’m sure most of you have seen or at least heard of Battlestar Galactica, the series created in the late seventies and re-imagined in the early 2000s as a three episode mini-series followed by a six-year stint on television. David Duperron is clearly a huge fan, creating a UCS scale LEGO version of the Colonial Viper MkII, the famous fighting vehicle that made short work of the Cylons during the Cylon War.

LEGO Colonial Viper MkII

David’s LEGO version of the iconic Colonial Viper MkII from the early 2000s Battlestar Galactica reboot series features a cockpit that opens and full interior.

LEGO Colonial Viper MkII

The Viper is armed with multiple kinetic energy weapons. Both known models have weapon hard points for mounting missiles under the wings. The ship features two forward-firing 30mm mass accelerator cannons mounted in the wing roots and one forward-firing Lightning Javelin missile launcher in the belly and up to two missiles (nuclear or conventional).

IMG_2352

Like all Capital ships and fighter craft, the Viper MK II is equipped with three basic types of propulsion systems – “Ion” engines, “Inertialess” gravity engines for traversing real space, and Jump Corridors for faster than light travel between the stars. David has replicated the engines perfectly using light trans-blue, fanned dark-gray grill plates and angled large caterpillar tracks.

LEGO Colonial Viper MkII

LEGO Colonial Viper MkII

LEGO Colonial Viper MkII

LEGO Colonial Viper MkII

LEGO Colonial Viper MkII

8 comments on “UCS-scale LEGO replica of a colonial Viper Mk II from Battlestar Galactica

  1. Purple Dave

    Lessee…there’s the pilot miniseries, a 5-season TV series that got reduced to four by the end, a handful of made-for-TV movies, and a short-lived spinoff prequel series, all of which combined sprawled out over about a decade. Which parts are being combined to come up with six years?

    Anyways, I’m much more familiar with the original series’ Viper, so I’m not sure how accurate this is to the source. I’ve watched both series in their entirety, plus all the TV movies and the miniseries, and I found the reboot series to be a muddled mess right up until the point that hardcore fans typically claim it went off the rails. I also thought the prequel showed more promise than the reboot series, if you leave out the messy ending they crammed through when they found out they’d been cancelled.

  2. The Anonymous Hutt

    @Purple Dave

    The article states “the series created in the late seventies and re-imagined in the early 2000s as a three episode mini-series followed by a six-year stint on television.”

    The article only says post 2000 was six years. It sounds like the author was referencing the newest show and the tv movies that followed it.

  3. @amwilburn

    Actually, even thought it was only 4 seasons, they split up the last 2 seasons… Season 3’s first 10 episodes aired 1 year, then the last 10 many months later. Same for season 4. Plus the series itself didn’t start until a year after miniseries. Miniseries aired in 2003; final episode of season 4 aired 2009

  4. Purple Dave

    Mad Men split their final season up between two different broadcast seasons (and I’m sure it had everything to do with budget crunching once AMC had focused much of their available cash towards The Walking Dead). Futurama’s broadcast seasons were so much shorter than their production seasons that by the time S4 wrapped, Fox told them they had enough backlogged episodes that they could air a fifth season without technically renewing the series for production. And I once joked with a coworker about how the last season of Game of Thrones would end up being a single episode that’s spread out over seven seasons, with the last episode being nothing but a giant spoilery trailer for the theatrical film that would wrap up the series.

    It still didn’t make sense to me, so I headed to the most trusted site on the internet…Wikipedia. No, but seriously, it’s actually quite useful for stuff like original airdates. Traditionally, a season would begin in early fall and end in late spring. On the business side of things, the summer series are probably tacked onto the end of the regular season, but on the awards side of things you have to have a certain number of episodes aired by a specific point in the regular TV season, so summer series would actually lead off the year rather than ending it, and that seems to be the way that Wikipedia’s season breakdown is arranged. So, here’s what I found:

    03-04 season
    Miniseries aired in December.

    04-05 season
    S1 begins in October and concludes in January, clocking in at a mere 13 episodes (traditionally, if a series was not slated as a mid-season replacement, getting contracted for the “back 9” would be the first step towards getting renewed for a second season, but cable TV has skewed more towards shorter seasons).

    05-06 season
    S2 came out super early, starting in July, and going on hiatus in September. It picked up again in January and wrapped up in March.

    06-07 season
    The only normal season, running from October to March with just an industry-standard month-long gap during the holiday season.

    07-08 season
    *crickets*
    Actually, they did air Razor in November, though I’m not sure how this fits into production seasons since it’s the only thing that actually aired for just over a year. I mean, how does that even happen? “OMG, we were so caught up with filming this made-for-TV movie that we totally forgot to do an entire season of TV!”

    08-09 season
    Started even earlier than S2 in April before going on hiatus in June. Again picks up in January, before the series ended in March.

    09-10 season
    The Plan aired in January.

    So, the series proper was four seasons, but they skipped an entire year between S3 and S4. S2 and S4 (not 3 and 4) were both split into half-seasons with a long hiatus, but they both had early starts and ended with the regular TV season. That means the series proper aired over five years, and you could pick up the sixth year by counting either the pilot miniseries or The Plan, but counting both would bump it to seven. Or if you ignore Hollywood’s definition of “a year”, The Plan aired six years, one month, and two days after the first half of the pilot miniseries, so rounded down it would be six years. Did I miss anything? Does that make sense?

    Again, not super familiar with this version of the Viper. Looks like a lot of work went into it, though I do still see a few tweaks I would have tried to make (like closing up those gaps on the engine intakes, and filling in the gap they create on the inside edge of the wings, both of which I _think_ could be pulled off without screwing up the aesthetics).

Comments are closed.