[MAD]

John Shourt who made this only worked on the Saga of a Star World pilot and The Gun on Ice Planet Zero (which were made almost simultaniously at one point), so that's when it was made. This was just one of the ships in the fleet. I have another one called "Moebius" which also wasn't used and I believe was done by either Joe Johnston or Marty Kline.

But even when it was passed on at that time it could very well have been picked up later. Nothing was really thrown away when it comes to art. One of the old viper designs from McQuarrie for BSG, later became the Starfighter on Buck Rogers. The flying motorcylces from Galactica 1980 were actually from a BSG TOS episode (could even be the Beta Pirates if I remember correctly) that was already very far into producing props and all when it still got cancelled/passed on.

I know I'm now really going on a lim here, but I recently interviewed concept artist and illustrator Ray Lai who's sent me some amazing images. He was a huge fan of TOS as a kid and when he heard Singer/DeSanto were doing their version in 2001 he practically begged to become a part of it. He worked on the new viper, but also on some symbolism like the colonial symbols. When it got cancelled he moved on, but when he found out Moore was doing his version he applied again and actually reused all of his old work from the DeSanto version on the Moore version (Studios USA had the rights to the art work for both series). That's why the viper in Ron Moore's version some what resembles the ones in Singer/DeSanto. The colonial symbols and the logo with the phoenix (which was based on TOS symbolism) were made by him for the DeSanto version but reused on the Moore version. He said the use of the phoenix and the TOS symbolism was used to symbolise the rebirth of the Battlestar Galactica series.

Just wanted to say a lot of this stuff does get reused later on other series or episodes, so who knows: this art could have been used on other episodes (plus that's why we have fan fiction, right? I bet someone will like it enough to make a new fantasy story about it... please feel free to use the image to illustrate, make 3D models of, use in fan art, etc.). I thought it looked awesome and couldn't believe they even passed on this design in the first place. I thought it looked way better than some of the ships in the fleet.