by Marco Scheloske

“Tranquility Base here - the EAGLE has landed.”

Huh?

Wrong contest?

No! When the BSG contest was started I thought “which model could I build that, probably, no one else will do?”. I zapped through the classic episodes, searching for something outside the main subjects, and indeed I found an interesting one: The very last scene, even the very last screenframe in the very last episode of the old series (#24, “The Hand of God”) shows the lunar lander “Eagle” on a viewscreen of an old astronomical room on top of the Galactica!

That should be the one! I had an old 1:72 Airfix model of the Eagle in my stash for years, so I finally had a reason to build it... I built it mostly right out of Box, the only thing I altered is the use of the crumpled golden foil around the descent stage and the landing legs, as well as silver foil around the maneuvering thrusters (which was not part of the kit - I took it from chocolate wrapping). It was time consuming to wrap it around the latticework, but the result is worth every minute! It was later partially overpainted with black to simulate the “rubber”-protection surface in some specific areas of the lander.

The base was painted with “granite color”, a textured blue-grey color with real stone mixed into it. I used Tamiya weathering pastels for the area directly underneath the lander to show the slightly burned moon surface - although I must confess that I have no idea if there really were scorch marks from the main engine underneath it - but I thought it`ll look cool. Hey, this is a Science Fiction model!

Finally I made a small badge for the display, showing the classic BSG logo and the number and name of the final episode. As mentioned above the picture of the Eagle was the very, very, very last scene of the old series, so the complete display is nothing less than the “Farewell to Battlestar Galactica”!

By the way, I always thought that this was a good ending for the series. Really! I mean, it was optimistic somehow - with the receive of the NASA communication on the Gamma frequency it was shown that the fleet was on the right path - and leaves more than enough room for the fans of the show to speculate how the journey of the Rag Tag Fleet will continue and finally come to a good end. In my imagination the fleet was still several hundred lightyears away from earth when the signal came in, so the 13th tribe would be for sure technically advanced enough to be the help for the Colonials they hope them to be (with the signal traveling at lightspeed earths evolution would be hundreds of years ahead of nowadays).

That way the famous words of Commander Adama were true to the last letter: “Fleeing from the cylon tyranny the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a rag tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest - a shining planet, known as... EARTH!”

Image: Proof: screenshot 1

Image: Screenshot 2

Image: Side view

Image: Name plate

Image: Base