Building
Chris Giddens:
Pre-Classic Space Master!
Article by Joe Meno Photography by Chris Giddens and Joe Meno In the early 2000s, a fan theme was born from revisiting the Classic Space sets of the ’80s. The question was posed: What did spaceships look like before the Classic Space models? This became the foundation of Pre-Classic Space, first created by Chris Giddens. Chris, now a Minister to Children and Families at Kennesaw First Baptist Church in Kennesaw, Georgia, still builds. His building has slowed as his family and work commitments have grown, but in 2003, he launched an astounding array of spacecraft for the then-new Pre-Classic fleet. Chris started LEGO building in the late ’70s when he got the Universal Building set (#400) and the yellow Spirit of St. Louis (#456), followed by his first space set, the Mobile
Space Lab (#801). He continued building, focusing on building a space fleet inspired by Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. While building the fleet, he saw the LEGO space-oriented sets at the time, which included LEGO City Space sets (which included Space Shuttle-related sets), Star Wars, and the NASA Discover theme (which also had a space shuttle set). Chris didn’t like these sets that much, so he started thinking about a different direction: If LEGO’s Classic Space sets were the future, with spacecraft that could hop galaxies with one engine, what would the spaceships before that look like? Chris thought about it and came up with some design ideas to transition from the LEGO City Space themes to Classic Space: • City Space sets in the ’90s were primarily white in color, while Classic Space in the ’80s was blue and gray. PreClassic Space would have white and gray with a little blue to hint at the future. • Classic Space crafts had computer slope pieces. To Chris, this mean that the computers were incredibly sophisticated—if that slope could manage a jump anywhere in the galaxy, it was powerful! The same thought applied to the engine technology. Pre-Classic Space would bridge the technology by having larger computers and engines and also showing piping and construction details on the ships—they weren’t as smooth as the Classic 3 Space craft.
