Galactica Patches

As those following our eBay auctions are now aware, there are three different versions of Galactica patches used during the course of the series. As with all the battlestar patches in the series, these were all 3.5. The first version is a lighter patch made during the Miniseries, when the show’s backdoor pilot was shot in standard definition film. When Battlestar Galactica went to series, the costume department created better patches made out of a better material with a golden color, thus version two. The third version of the patch was created roughly around and after 2005, the patches were made with a newer, darker brown material as the previous material became unavailable. This third and final style of patch also includes a smaller 2.5″ patch that was used exclusively on the gray sweatpants seen in the series.

Below are photographs of the three patches available, which are presently listed on our eBay auction site.

 

Costume Design Sketches

My first introduction to the world of costume design sketches was in 2007 at the Christie’s Entertainment Memorabilia Auction where Christie’s auctioned off the famous Little Black Dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.  It went for around $ 1 million.  What was equally impressive was that the concept design sketch for that dress brought $ 100,000. 

Fortunately, we were able to acquire all of Glenne Campbell’s costume design sketches for Battlestar Galactica for this auction.  There are some wonderful pieces, including costumes for Starbuck, Baltar, his acolytes and the New Caprica Police.  There is even a sketch used for the Final Five Cylon robes as seen in Season Three’s “Rapture”.  (Of course, there are no hints to who the Final Cylon is!  Some of these sketches, notably Baltar’s and the ones for young Helena and Lucy Cain, even have fabric swatches attached.  These are all original watercolors and will look amazing framed on someone’s wall.

I think there will be some bargain’s here, especially the Baltar’s Acolyte ones.  They aren’t major characters and so won’t draw the big bidders, but still, they are great pieces with tremendous eye appeal.  The Starbuck piece and the Baltar piece will draw the highest bids of this group because they are main characters.  When you buy a piece like this, it needs to resonate with you, and costume sketches are so cool because they combine the art of costume design, with painting.

Now you may wonder,  “where are the costume sketches for the main costumes and uniforms we see?”  Unfortunately, those were done by the costume designer for the mini-series, who did not stay on, and so we weren’t able to get her sketches.  So you better get one of these as there aren’t many more!

Six’s First Miniseries Costume

The first costume that Number Six is seen wearing in the series is a two-piece, custom made red velvet jacket and skirt with orange iridescence.

This costume is first seen at the beginning of the Miniseries as worn by the Six who boards the Armistice Station, much to the Armistice Officer’s astonishment. It is in this costume that the Six asks him if he is alive and then proceeds to kiss him as a Cylon basestar above the station launches missiles at it.

It is worn later by Sixes that board Ragnar Anchorage to retrieve Aaron Doral, who Gaius Baltar—by mere chance—outed as a Cylon.

Tom Zarek’s Prison Jumpsuit

In Season 1’s “Bastille Day” we learn that an infamous Sagittaron terrorist—or, as Billy Keikeya portends, a freedom fighter—survives the attack on the Colonies aboard Astral Queen. This character, portrayed by Richard Hatch (Captain Apollo from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica), is introduced in this episode as a so-called prisoner of conscience who the Fleet has to contend with in that episode and in future episodes as a recurring character.

In his first apperance, Zarek is seen in a red prison jumpsuit with his assigned prisoner identification number, “893893″, which is the only time that Zarek wears this costume.

This costume is a simple two piece costume, consisting of a black t-shirt that’s worn underneath and a red one-piece jumpsuit, and will be auctioned off in our first auction.

Mathias’s spacewalk equipment

In the Season 4 episode, “The Road Less Traveled“, Sergeant Erin Mathias performs a spacewalk of a damaged Heavy Raider from a Cylon rebel faction. As she does so, we see her scaling the hull of the ship with magnetic hand holds, attached by a tether line that hooks into a buckle on her spacesuit’s belt.

Now the actual prop itself is made from rubber and metal materials, with small magnets on the “bottom” of the prop that aid in the illusion of magnetism. The magnets themselves are obviously not strong enough to attach to anything and bear the weight of a person in tandem, so for those people who buy this prop… don’t hang off the side of a truck and try that Hollywood stuff. You’ll just end up injured. Or dead, like Mathias.

Blue Duty Uniform from “Razor Flashbacks”

During the “Razor Flashbacks” depicting the events of the Cylon War over 40 years before, you will see—for brief instances in the background—of uniformed crew members who are wearing blue uniforms that look quite similar to something you’d see from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica. Of course, despite the fact that “Razor” is on DVD, there have not been very good shots of this BDU.

Until now.

This BDU is basically a sleeveless shirt thrown over your regular uniform jacket. The silver stripe design around the neck and cuffs, as well as the general look of the vest are nods to Jean-Pierre Dorléac’s design for the blue command uniforms from the 1978 series. The 1978 blue uniforms were worn by characters like Commander Adama (Lorne Greene) and Colonel Tigh (Terry Carter).

The Adama from the 1978 series wearing the blue uniform.

The uniform’s tunic. The vest is an overlay from the standard BDU jacket used in the “contemporary” events of the series.

The collar embroidery used in the 1978 series. Picture above is of Colonel Tigh from the old BSG. Note the lack of inebriation, the presence of hair, and the lack of an eyepatch.

The neck of the sleeveless shirt.

The general cuff design from the 1978 series blue uniform.

The cuff design.

William Adama’s Cylon War Viper helmet

If you’re a long time reader of the site, you will have likely seen a sneak peek of this helmet already. However, given the popularity of interest in this costume, we’ve decided to dedicate the rest of the week to showing you items from this costume.

So today’s entry will focus on the helmet. As you’d note, it’s the same as the Viper helmets you’ve seen in the first two seasons of the new show (before they changed them around a bit), but with markings that are a nod to the Original Series helmet.

For reference, here’s the helmet used in the old Battlestar Galactica, worn here by Zac.

And here’s the helmet with the markings that are a nod to the old series, which young William Adama and other Galactica pilots wore during the Cylon War.

Cylon War-era Flight Suit

As seen in “Razor“, the First Cylon War-era flight suit is the predecessor to the flight suits in use during the “present” events of the show. Taking visual cues from the Original Series uniforms, namely with the necklines and segmented pattern, this suit has noteworthy visual differences between its “successor”.

Alec was able to snap a few shots of this flight suit today. Here are those photos.

Raptor flight suit watch

Raptor pilots typically wear a watch around their wrist when donning a flight suit. Up until now, this small item was never captured correctly by the camera, as you can see in this fuzzy-screen cap here. (The watch here is worn by Kara Thrace in “Razor”, and presumably a non-functional version.) The versions I discovered last week are functional.

As you can see below, the functional version of the Raptor watch is connected via a remote control, which also helps to power the watch. The absurdly long modified telephone cord allows the on-set people to control the output of the watch when the watch is active, particularly during live-action scenes when it is necessary to control the output of the device. It has both a countdown function and a regular time feature. A neat addition to any flight suit!

Athena’s flight suit

On Thursday, Alec took a few minutes to run to the costume department. There, he spoke to Katherine, one of the super stars of the costuming department, who took the time to pull out Sharon “Athena” Agathon’s flight suit so that he could photograph it. He posted pics of it for reference at the awesome Colonial Fleet website, which I am reposting here as well.

Here are some of those pictures.

Next Page »