Star Trek Galileo Shuttlecraft

       

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Original Kit:
Star Trek Galileo Shuttlecraft
Made By:
Polar Lights (kit #909)
Scale:
1/32*
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Galileo shuttlecraft from Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek Galileo shuttlecraft Star Trek Galileo shuttlecraft Star Trek Galileo shuttlecraft

 
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When this kit was announced, I was both excited and confused. Excited because Round 2 had announced the craft's overall length to be about 11 inches, but confused because they were also calling it 1/32. All the reference material I had said that an 11" craft would be closer to 1/25 scale. That was when I heard that Round 2 had scaled it to the theoretical size of the craft, based on commentary by Star Trek designer Matt Jeffries and citing the differences between the mock-up and the studio miniature meaning that the full-sized prop was supposedly just 3/4 scale.

The idea of scaled sets has always been part of the Hollywood landscape - James Cameron's Titanic set was supposedly built to 9/10 scale so that it was big enough to look "right" but not quite as expensive or unwieldy as a true size ship would have been. But I hadn't heard such a thing being the case for the Galileo, much less that it wasn't built to 90% but to 75%, a size that would be harder to fake with actors directly interacting with the craft. Kirk referring to it as a "24-foot shuttlecraft" in the episode "The Galileo Seven" further muddies the water, as that's pretty close to the set piece rather than the miniature. After reading through way more forums, arguments, and case studies than was strictly necessary, I decided to say the captain was right and this was close enough to be in scale with the rest of my pop culture collection.

Round 2 made a big deal out of the all-new tooling, and they had every right to brag about it. The parts were clean, fit was near enough perfect, and the decal sheet was more than thorough. By every metric this was an excellent kit, and the finished piece does an outstanding job capturing the subtle design cues of the original. This replaceds the old AMT "breadbox" kit, and the differences in size and shape couldn't be more apparent.

I built it straight out of the box, only adding a little filler to the wing roots. Since I wasn't going to be using any interior, I tinted the windows and painted the main exhaust with a combination of transparent blue and smoke to give it a de-energized appearance. The main hull colors were AS-16 Light Gray (USAF) for the top and AS-11 Medium Sea Gray (RAF) for the bottom. There has been much discussion about what the right colors should be, but in the end I liked the look of both and wanted something easy to replicate in case I needed to do any touch-ups later on...a point that came in handy when I realized I had painted the wrong side of the equipment hatch just before final assembly.

The decals were straight out of the kit, applied with the help of Micro Set and Micro Sol. The whole craft was then sprayed with Dullcote, and the remaining details were picked out with various metallic paints. Finally, the nacelle caps were painted on the inside with glow-in-the-dark paint from CraftSmart, my compromise between the plans and execution of the original prop. Plus, it gives them a slightly "weird" look: not quite white, not quite color, not quite opaque, not quite translucent. Perfect for a sci-fi application.

 

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