Rocketship

from Antonio Margheriti's "Gamma One" Quadrilogy (1966-1967)

Scale: 1:288
Initial Release: 2023
Medium: Resin
Kit Rarity: 2

About the Design

At the same time producer Gene Roddenberry was taking TV viewers where no man had gone before and director Stanley Kubrick was preparing to take movie audiences to Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite, Italian director Antonio Margheriti (Assignment: Outer Space) was pumping out a series of low-budget sci-fi extravaganzas now referred to as the "Gamma One Quadrilogy." The four films -- Wild, Wild Planet aka Criminals of the Galaxy (1966), War of the Planets aka The Diaphanoids Come from Mars (1966), War Between the Planets aka The Wandering Planet (1966), and Snow Devils aka Death Comes from the Planet Aytin (1967) all took place in the same far future "universe," sharing the same cast, characters, and miniatures. "Home" for the series was the space station Gamma One, a classic Von Braun-style "wheel" that gave the series its name.

Although the cash-strapped Margheriti made use of many then-available plastic model kits to populate his space fleet, the director did splurge on a few custom-built miniatures. Among these was a large twin-winged "rocketship" (unnamed) clearly based -- like the Gamma One itself --  on Werner Von Braun's designs from a decade-and-a-half earlier. Appearing in all four films, it and other 1950s-style spacecraft created something of a culture clash with the "groovy" 1960s Italian sensibilities of the dialogue and interior art direction.

About the Kit

No. 11 in Fantastic Plastic's 1:288 scale "Classic Rocketships Series," the Gamma 1 Rocketship was created exclusively for Fantastic Plastic Models by Millennium Models International (MMI). The simple all-resin kit had no decals, as the original movie miniature was itself unmarked.

This kit was Fantastic Plastic's first release of 2023.