Originally conceived through Ralph McQuarrie’s imaginary drawings and paintings, the Cylon Basestar went through a number of changes before arriving at its final form.  As the Cylons themselves moved away from being 1950-ish flying saucer aliens, their warships, ironically enough, evolved closer to the flying saucers, with the final design being two saucers, one stacked atop the other.

The final design produced an orbiting killer capable of engaging and destroying the Galactica and her entire fleet.  Like the human Battlestar, the Cylon Basestar carried its own array of fighters and heavy lasers.  Usually seen in a force of three ships, the Basestar demonstrated the continuing threat from which the humans had to flee.

Ironically, the Monogram Basestar model is one of the easiest to obtain and least valued of all old television models.  Although the model is fairly close to the studio version in level of detail, and a better representation of the series than its Battlestar counterpart, the Basestar model hasn’t retained the value of the other models from the original series.

The last episode of the 1978 series, “The Hand of God”, gave the only glimpse of the interior of the Cylon hanger.  This model used several off the shelf Monogram raider models to populate the hanger’s interior.