The "Defender" is an escort cruiser whose mission is to provide a "shield" for larger vessels, such as battlestars. Designed primarily for short-range missions, Defenders are prone to more rapid-than-normal crew rotations due to their high pressure environments.

 

There is one surviving "Defender" known to exist in the "Galactica's" so-called Rag-Tag Fleet -- although its operational status remains the subject of some debate.

 

The history of the "Defender" design is one of the most unusual and convoluted in sci-fi lore. The ship was created by BSG fan Todd Boyce in 2001 as part of a "Galactica"-themed table-top starship combat game based on "Babylon 5 Wars." As Boyce was a member of the "Colonial Fleets" on-line community, the site's webmaster, Darrell Lawrence then unilaterally produced a three-D model of Boyce's design. A friend of Lawrence's, a freelance effects artists for the Sci-Fi Channel's new "Battlestar Galactica" series, subsequently took Lawrence's on-line model and threw it in with a batch of other designs he had done for the show as an "in-joke" reference to the original series.

 

The "Defender" ultimately showed up in both the new BSG and as a "Reever" ship in the "Firefly" spin-off movie, "Serenity" (2006).

Requires assembly & painting.