bottom and original nose
old head
ramp2
ramp
original side view
original top side view
surface close-up
original top side
aft doorless
aft nearly doorless
bottom showing paneling
original bottom
nude side detail
nude side top
scale (smaller guy)
basecoat top
bridge stage set
painted and weathered
The Scorpio is a human military armed transport vessel. It has a replaceable mission module beneath the engines that, in the depicted configuration, features room for several berths and cargo, accessed internally as well as via an aft-facing ramp. Its offensive array includes two small weapons turrets, a heavy weapons turret, and a fixed-mount missile battery.
In Wolftrap this vessel is comandeered by the Megros Station commander and set in pursuit of the Rakasha after it destroyed the station. It carries-on a mostly ineffectual running battle with the Rakasha, eventually being captured by the derelict spacestation right after the Rakasha is.
As there were no guidelines for the design of the ship other than the above description, gleaned from bits of the script, the producer and I elected to survey what half-built ships I had on hand and merely finish one out. Were the ship not going to be a shooting model, that would have been fine. As it was, the nose had to be flipped from cobra to porpoise inorder to match the contours of the live-action cockpit set. And I added a cargo container so that it could have a ramp big enough for a small wheeled vehicle. Much harder was incorporating a three-axis mounting system to accomodate a 3/8-inch threaded bolt. Which meant building-up (or, actually, down) the main fuselage, gluing-in and covering a block of wood into which a couple of T-bolts, were attached. That worked for teh aft and bottom mounting. Side mounting, though, was existing holes in an upper fuselage module into which the threaded bolt was to be placed, with a coathanger attached to the bolt with a couple of nuts and bent to stick under some other part of the ship because the bolt holes were not at the center, balance-wise, of the ship.
Painting was easy, trusting to the wash-out effect of movie lights to render shades of gray, brown, and green into shades of light-gray, ala just about every Trek ship. The final decoration, as with the Rakasha, was a sheet of doors printed on clear acetate. There were multiple copies of each of three types - Doors closed, doors open with a rudimentary view of the airlock interior, and doors open with the interior a greenscreen so that characters or accurate interiors can be digitally superimposed.
This ship was inspired by Jochen Ortmann's Trash, also pictured in Spacedays. I started it in 2000, abandoning it before attempting any of his wonderful piping. I did manage to finish it's sister ship, the Shark a copy of Trash's sistership ship, Defence.
