John Day’s 2-Seat Viper

In 1979 ABC canceled Battlestar Galactica. In January of 1980 we were treated (or threatened, depending on your point of view) with the appearance of “Galactica: 1980”. It lasted for ten gruelingly awful episodes (except for the last: The Return of Starbuck, which actually had a script that was better than most of the original series).

The one thing that did catch my interest in Galactica:1980 was that they modified the single seat Vipers into 2 seaters (presumably because a major plot point in the first episode featured a scene where an Earth woman slipped into the back seat of one of the ships and forced them to take her with them back to the Galactica).

Almost all of the SFX with the Vipers was stock footage, so they only showed one scene in the entire series where you actually saw a 2 seat Viper in flight (and that was the full scale mockup against a blue screen). I modified the Monogram Viper kit with a scratch built cockpit, modified canopy, recessed rocket ports, and landing gear.

With the re-issue of the Viper kit, and the commercially available single seat cockpits and pilot figures, I am hoping someday to make a launch bay diorama with side by side Vipers….

John Day