I really appreciate the amount of work that goes into computer generated imagery. Having been in the computer business myself, I’ve seen it done. It takes hours of effort to produce a simple image, let alone one as complicated as a Colonial viper. All I ask is that the artists doing Battlestar Galactica imagery, especially of the viper, throw away their Monogram models and use the real thing as a basis for their work.
There are significant differences between the model viper created by Apogee to film the special effects scenes for BG and the model produced by Monogram. The Monogram model, in fact, appears to have been based not on the special effects vipers, but on plans from Universal for the full-sized viper mockup, a mockup that was dimensionally inaccurate from the start and that featured simplified detailing to make it easier and cheaper to construct.
To begin with, the sfx model is several scale feet longer than the Monogram viper, especially in the nose in front of the cockpit. The wings are also somewhat longer. The vertical tail looks fairly close. The Monogram viper wings also appear to have a few degrees less anhedral than the sfx viper. A very obvious difference in the wings is where they are mounted to the fuselage. Close examination of photographs shows that the wings on the sfx viper model were mounted about 1/3 of the way up the side engine pods, whereas the Monogram kit’s wings were mounted almost flush with the bottom of the pod. This makes a noticeable difference in the positioning of the laser cannon. The laser cannon on the sfx viper are almost mounted evenly between the top and bottom of the fuselage, almost centered in front of the side engine intakes, while the Monogram kit’s cannon are mounted much lower.
There are major shape and detail differences in the fuselage. As mentioned above, the Monogram viper is far too short in this area. The shape is also wrong; the sfx viper’s nose seems to have a very subtle curve leading into the nose intake where the Monogram kit’s is straight. The panel lines on the fuselage are completely different. The Monogram viper’s panel lines are very similar to the full size mockup, but the sfx viper features a different and more complicated pattern of lines. In particular the sfx viper has a detail that looks like an intake or an antenna of some kind on each side of the fuselage about midway between the nose and the cockpit (a detail that Monogram actually included on the decal sheet for their recent rerelease of the viper kit), and has raised details on the top of the nose just in front of the cockpit. CGI vipers inevitably have smooth fuselages that lack the detailing of the sfx model.
The cockpit canopies are close, and the upper intake is similar on both although the intake lip appears to be much sharper and thinner on the sfx model. The lower engine intakes are much larger on the sfx model and the cutback behind the cockpit to accommodate them appears to be correspondingly deeper. The backs of the intakes on the Monogram kit have a raised lip that is absent on the sfx model.
The afterburner nozzles on the sfx model are much more complex than the simple molding provided in the Monogram kit. There are many more ribs, there is a vertical separation line halfway between the front and back, and there are raised details on the side of the burner cans.
Strangely enough, the bottom of the Monogram kit (apart from the large hole provided for the stand, naturally) is one of the most accurate parts of the kit. It’s a fairly close replica of the real thing.
The markings also differ somewhat. Monogram made some cutouts in the wing stripes to avoid some of the raised detail, but more of a problem is that the stripes that run forward along the wing to the leading edge are much thicker than the vertical stripes. They should be just about the same size as the vertical stripes. Monogram also included some black striping for the engine intakes that’s not on the real viper, and omitted stripes for the bottom of the wings and fuselage. The stripes on the engine intakes have thin borders that connect the orange blocks that are absent on the real viper. The decal sheet was extensively reworked for the 1997 rerelease of the viper kit and in that version is much more accurate.
The Monogram viper is, by the way, a very nice kit, in spite of its inaccuracies. It builds up into an approximately 1/32^nd scale model, the fit is overall pretty good, and it’s simple enough for beginning modelers to build a good-looking viper. I’ve built several myself. Nowadays you can buy a resin aftermarket cockpit set, but back in the Good Old Days before resin parts were even heard of I found out that with some trimming the 1/32^nd scale Hasegawa F-16A cockpit fit the viper rather nicely!
I’ve seen some amazing BG CGI scenes. Now let’s see some real CGI vipers.

SEE AN IMAGE OF THE SFX VIPER WITH SOME OF THE DIFFERENCES MARKED

http://icarus.simplenet.com/Viper/ViperModel.htm This link leads directly to several excellent photographs of an actual studio miniature (in fact the one used as Starbuck’s damaged viper in Young Lords) and, more than any other photos I have seen, helps point up not only the similarities between the studio miniatures and the Monogram kit, but the differences. Check it out; it’s a great site!

�1999, 2000 Susan J. Paxton

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