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Battlestar Pegasus - Moebius Models 1:4105


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Battlestar Pegasus
1:4105 Moebius Models


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The Battlestar Pegasus made its first appearance in the original 1970s Battlestar Galactica series, featuring prominently in the two part episode “Living Legend”. A sister-ship of the Galactica, Pegasus and the heroic but flawed Commander Cain were separated from the Colonial fleet in an earlier military misadventure, The Battle Of Molecay, thus escaping destruction in the Cylon invasion. Cain undertakes a hit and run campaign against the Cylons before eventually encountering the refugee fleet and joining forces with Commander Adama, his superior in the chain of command. Despite initial difficulties which find Adama relieving Cain of command for insubordination, they jointly decide to strike back at the Cylons at Gamoray. At the climax of the episode Pegasus appears to go down in a blaze of glory when Cain sacrifices himself to save Galactica and the refugee fleet, destroying a pair of Cylon Basestars in the process with a point-blank salvo of nukes. Starbuck subsequently hints that Cain might actually have survived the apparently suicidal charge by activating Pegasus’ FTL drive at the very last moment.

Pegasus is reincarnated as a mighty Mercury Class Battlestar in the third season of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, reappearing in the episode entitled “Pegasus” appropriately enough. As has generally been the case with the re-imagined series, the writers have given more than a tip of the hat to the original series, while adding a tasty twist of their own; Pegasus, commanded by the downright belligerent Admiral Helena Cain, has once again escaped destruction at Cylon hands, by blind-jumping out of the Scorpio Shipyard, where Pegasus had been undergoing a systems overhaul, at the very moment of the shipyards annihilation by Cylon nukes. Emerging from the jump Admiral Cain finds herself effectively deep behind Cylon lines allowing her time to restore order amongst the crew and bring the ships systems back online before rejoining the fight.

The Mercury Class Battlestars are a significantly larger and more sophisticated vessel than the much earlier Jupiter Class Battlestars such as Galactica, being approximately double the size, with over twice the complement of Vipers and a much heavier weapons array including a powerful fixed battery of ship killing kinetic energy weapons. Despite this increase in size and complexity advances in computer automation allow these vessels to be operated by only half the crew of earlier Battlestars, however this very reliance on automation simultaneously increases the vulnerability of these newer Battlestars to Gaius Baltar’s compromised command software. Many of the Pegasus’ command systems were offline during her overhaul at Scorpio Shipyards and in the process of restoring them to functionality the Cylon infiltration of the ship, both physical and electronic, is uncovered by the crew.

The Kit

The Battlestar Pegasus is the second in Moebius Models’ range of 1:4105 kits depicting vessels from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, the first being their rather nice kit of Galactica, which has since been re-released under the Revell label: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234930886-battlestar-galactica-14105-scale-revell/

For the purpose of comparison, I’ve included the main hull and flight bay parts from the Revell Galactica in the first four images below, in each instance the Pegasus part is above its equivalent from the Galactica kit:

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If there’s one thing you can generally guarantee with a Moebius Models kit, it’s a full box and their Battlestar Pegasus kit is certainly no exception to this rule. The substantial box with its stylish artwork and graphics is literally crammed with sprues of pale grey plastic, bagged individually or in pairs. So full is the box that should you get the parts out to ‘sniff the plastic’, it’s actually quite a challenge to get it all back in there again. Buried under the grey sprues we also find a single small clear sprue with just eight parts for the sublight drive pods, a very substantial metal rod for mounting the model on its base, a simple sheet of decals and a neat and easy to follow ten page instruction booklet.

The parts themselves are very nicely moulded with crisp raised detail and sharply incised panel lines, unsurprisingly some of the larger parts have quite substantial sprue gates so careful trimming and sanding will be in order, fortunately these have generally been located so as not to interfere with the detail. There is also some flash on quite few of the sprues, but very little of it extends onto the parts themselves, certainly nothing that will cause difficulties, so obtaining a neat finish with this model shouldn’t be a problem even for an inexperienced modeller. The finer parts too are nicely done with no evidence of broken or short shot parts present on the review example. This kit does not actually have all that many small parts, the thirty two rail-gun turrets (you get two spares) are the only parts with any truly fine moulding and even they are pretty chunky compared to the sort of detail parts one might find in a reasonably modern aircraft or military vehicle kit.

The instruction booklet guides you through the assembly process in Moebius' usual logical fashion using numbered sequences, the more complex of these being further broken down into steps which are identified by letter. Sequence 1 covers the assembly of the port flight pod and is broken down into four steps A-D. In step 1A we assemble and paint the upper port flight bay adding the flight bay decals that substitute for internal detail, step 1B repeats this process for the lower port flight bay, Step 1C has us join the upper and lower flight pod halves together and Step 1D comprises nothing more than adding the rail-gun turrets to the flight pod assembly. Sequence 2 is simply a repeat of sequence 1 but covers the starboard flight pod. The eight sublight engines are assembled in sequence 3 and the FTL drive in sequence 4. The latter sequence is the only area of construction that appears even remotely complex, with an array of conduits radiating out from the main FTL drive assembly that are to be fitted in step 4B, but again, with some dry fitting, this should not prove too challenging even for a novice modeller. Sequence 5 has us assemble the upper hull and ‘Alligator Head’ with sequence 6 repeating this process for the lower hull and adding the FTL assembly from sequence 4. In sequence 7 we add the sublight drive pods and we fit the flight pods to the main hull in step 8A and that’s it......We’ve built a Battlestar. Step 8B covers the stand and the most obvious weak point of the kit, the base provided is rather too small in my opinion, it measures approximately 110mm x 75mm and thus is rather dwarfed by the model it supports, possibly precariously.

Painting and decalling the model is the focus of the final two pages of the instruction booklet and this information is provided in the very simplest of forms, six basic renderings of the vessel, fore & aft, port & starboard, dorsal & ventral, with the most generic of colour information, ‘metallic grey’ and ‘dark red’ cover everything for those of us who don’t want to paint our thrusters ‘yellow’ if idling or ‘blue’ if they’re firing. Other than the flight bay decals only three other markings are provided for the model, a Colonial Fleet emblem for the dorsal surface and two copies of the name Pegasus plus the fleet registry number in white for the flight pod sides. This is a slightly perplexing addition as the name is already moulded on the relevant part in sufficient relief that it would be a doddle to paint, but there is no trace of the registry number. It might have been better to stick to one method or the other as it seems we are faced with using a rather clumsy compromise or a lot of decal softener.

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Conclusion

I have to admit from the outset that I’m a huge Battlestar fan, so I was naturally pre-inclined to like this kit, which I do, a lot. Sure it commands a fairly hefty price tag, but in return you get a fairly hefty box, absolutely brimming with bits, which when combined with a little skill and effort will build up into a very satisfactory and at over 40cm long, quite substantial, representation of the Battlestar Pegasus. Is it perfect? By no means, no kit ever is. Does it have its faults? This is a matter of perspective, the experienced modeller might argue that such a kit should have included more detailed flight bay interiors and perhaps some finer detail parts generally, however I think one would struggle find many other similarly priced licensed products of this type that do include such details. Aftermarket companies have already paid this model some attention and at least three etched sets, including flight bays, are available for this kit should you feel that extra detail is absolutely necessary. I felt the base was a let down, potentially literally if used unassisted and I was a little disappointed with the decal/moulding compromise for the flight pod sides, but again these are not insurmountable issues and they certainly don’t detract significantly from my overall good impression of this kit. From the perspective of the novice sci-fi modeller or ardent Battlestar Galactica fan who wants a model of ‘The Beast’ to decorate his mantelpiece, this is a great kit.....It’s simple to build, reasonably detailed without being at all complex and it should paint up very well using even the simplest techniques and a little imagination.

Review sample courtesy of

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UK distributors for


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