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I have never understood the appeal of books like Battlestar Galactica: Designing Spaceships.
Back in the day when I was buying every Star Trek book the minute it hit the store shelves I just couldn’t bring myself to buy the various collections of blueprints and schematics of the Enterprise and other spacecraft from the series, let alone the books of nothing but drawings and paintings of the various ships.
One has to admit, however, that the USS Enterprise, the Galileo Seven, and the Klingon Bird of Prey were as much the stars of Star Trek as William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley.
George Lucas certainly knew that and that’s why Star Wars opens with that still-cool opening shot of the giant spaceship slowly cruising up into the screen chasing the smaller ship. Star Wars ships were functional-looking and marketable, especially the Millennium Falcon, which, like the Enterprise before it, became a media star in its own right.
None of this was lost on the folks behind the original Battlestar Galactica. Although designed as a quick television cash-in on the Star Wars phenomenon, the 1978 series invested the money, hired the right people, and was blessed with arguably the best-designed spacecraft yet: The Vipers, the sleek Cylon ships, the “rag-tag fleet,” and, of course, the enormous Galactica itself, a combination outer space aircraft carrier and cruise ship.
This new book starts out with Star Wars design artist Ralph McQuarrie’s original artwork for all these ships from the original TV series. Nearly the first 50 pages, about a quarter of the book, cover these design sketches, illustrations, and paintings.
The rest of the book deals with the concept art for the tremendously popular rebooted Sci-Fi Channel version of Battlestar Galactica, which I must sheepishly admit I’ve never seen so much as a minute of to this point. Thought it was a bad idea going in and by the time it became clear to me that it was, in fact, something new after all, it was too far into its run for me to get started with it.
That said, the reboot, too, clearly had more than its share of astonishing vehicles, aided and abetted by the fact that CGI was now possible.
So, again—not my thing. But these books always seem to do well and if you WERE a fan of Battlestar Galactica in any or all of its incarnations, Battlestar Galactica Designing Spaceships has a lot of stuff that you would like. So, not for everyone, but for that person…
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