While I was visiting home, I took the opportunity to look through some old copies of Starlog magazine from when I was a kid to find some paintings of the TOS-era Enterprise I remembered. It turned out I was looking for issue 195’s article on David Mattingly’s work, but while I was flipping through, I found one that hadn’t stuck in my mind, before. An article in the September ’92 issue, about a Sci-Fi TV series just entering production called Babylon 5. Judging by the article’s content and what I can figure of the production schedule based on the JMSNews archive, it looks like the article was put together in early summer at the latest; none of the actors are mentioned, some of the characters use their pitch-brochure names or titles (Jakarr, Vice-Commander Takashima), and most of the pictures are illustrations from the pitch document. However, there are three CGI test shots that look to be Foundation Imaging (or, at least, Ron Thornton) originals; a shot of the “Green Ship” transport, a ball-shaped ship that may have been inspired by the moon lander from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a shot of two space cruisers near a planet.

Now, if I remember my Lightwave-and-B5 lore correctly, that ship model came with the program (though I can’t remember if it was originally created by Thornton). It was used as the main element of the season 1-era Narn cruiser, where two of them were joined together in an “H” configuration, eventually called the “T’Loth-class.” Later, the never-completed Babylon 5 video game, “Into the Fire,” went with the idea that the T’Loth was two smaller ships that had been combined, and the base hull was called the “Th’nor.” While I don’t have the original generic sci-fi cruiser model (at least, I don’t think; I’ve never done a comprehensive survey of all the content that’s been included with Lightwave over the years I’ve been using it), I did have one of its descendants, you could say. I decided to do a quick-and-dirty updating of the magazine image for today’s render.