Revell Cylon Raider

 “By your command, Imperious Leader.”

 According to the original production notes and novelization, the Cylons were originally a race of intelligent lizards who developed robots to help them and were wiped out when the robots took over, assuming the name of Cylon.  These robots proved to be the Human 12 Colonies greatest enemy although one wonders why when the Cylon warriors had an eye that moved back and forth.  Thanks to a scene chewing traitor named Baltar, the Cylons wiped out the 12 Colonies leaving only “a rag-tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest for a shining planet known as Earth.”

 Battlestar Galactica started off with a bang (a SF retelling of the Mormon caravan to Utah), but suffered the problem that many SF TV shows suffered and that was poor writing (lack of any real SF knowledge/talent among the show’s writers) and a lack of imagination such as falling back on Westerns (!) for episode ideas.  It died a quick TV death when it was cancelled by ABC in 1979 after one season, but suffered an even more ignominious shame as the craptacular Galactica 80.

 Monogram produced four Battlestar Galactica Kits in the early and mid 80s, the Cylon Raider, the Colonial Viper, the Cylon Baseship and the Battlestar Galatica.  These were reworked (the Cylon Raider includes clear parts and stand) and reissued for the 30th (!) anniversary of Battlestar Galactica.

Revell/Monogram’s 1/64? scale Cylon Raider consists of a whopping 25 grey parts plus 2 clear inserts of the engines.  The parts are in pretty good shape for the age of the mold and has a trace of flash on many parts.  Several of the parts have ejection pin marks that need to be dealt with plus it has holes that need to be covered (the kit was originally designed to shoot missiles.)

The details for this kit are considered soft and not completely accurate when compared to the actual studio models, but it looks it will make a passable kit for anyone except the uber anal or super fans of the show.

 The instructions are straight forward and the decals look fine.

 The photo does not include all the parts.  Missing is the kit stand and the clear inserts. 

Should be a pretty straight forward kit and a fairly simple build with a lot of filling/sanding that is typical for SF kits of this era.

Dan Lee