Hell in a Handbasket

As you can see, it is a large and heavy handgun that curiously has two barrels. Both barrels are in a pretty hefty caliber, but the one below has a slightly larger diameter than the upper.

Let us take a look at those barrels in close up.

The reasons for this rather odd configuration are made clear as the gun is used during the first season. The upper barrel fires anti-personnel rounds, which are nothing more exotic than armor piercing bullets. The lower barrel, however, fires a high explosive rocket.

The screen grabs below show the effect of one of these rockets on an unprotected human. Notice the extremely thick smoke trail that points out the position of the user to any enemy who might want to shoot back.

Gee, that blowed him up real good! Not surprising when one considers that the guns are supposed to provide protection from armored battle robots. Shoot one of those bad boys into nothing more substantial than meat and it would get messy.

So that was the explosive rocket. What about the armor piercing rounds?

They are used most often, but we rarely get to see what they do to the battle robots. This is either because a handgun, armor piercing ammo or not, has very little effect on big armored robots, or else it is just too expensive to do the special effects all the time.

There was one scene, though, where a robot was torn up in an explosion but is still moving around. The character of Helo, played by Tahmoh Penikett, has to shoot it multiple times in the head to put it down for the count.

In the next screen shot, make note of the way the top of the robot's head is being gnawed away by the rounds. The little fiery flash of light on the robot is supposed to be a spark struck by the impacting round.

So the non-explosive stuff works, it just takes awhile. No wonder the characters don't bother with them except when they seem to run out of the rockets.

To be frank, I have no idea how they hit anything with those guns. The sights are pretty much non-existent. You can see in the next picture that there seems to be some sort of rail on top of the gun, perfect for mounting a telescopic or red dot sight of some kind. The only problem is that no one ever does. If guns like these actually existed in the real world, then you would just have to sight down the smooth top and hope for the best.

Most television shows, even science fiction shows set in a technologically advanced future, will use existing firearms that have been modified in some way to make them look more exotic. This allows the actors to fire blank ammunition, something that will create noise and a muzzle flash in order to reinforce the impression that the props are actual working weapons. Are the Colonial sidearms real guns that have been so modified?

Anything is possible, but I think the majority of them are simply non-functioning replicas that the prop department whipped up. In the picture below, we can see some finer details of the handgun.

That is, rather obviously, not the outside of a functional firearm. The trigger and trigger guard look okay, but the selector switch visible on the left side of the gun is clearly just a bas relief detail that was never actually supposed to move.

The grip of a sidearm is sometimes very distinctive, but it is difficult to get a good look at any of them. One exception was an episode where the character of Starbuck, played by Katee Sackhoff, has to draw her own gun.

Those are probably Hogue grips for a medium frame S&W round conversion butt revolver. They look to be made out of coco bolo, a Brazilian hardwood that is prized for it's red-to-orange color. The impression that the gun is a revolver with some sort of metal shroud clipped over it to change the appearance is reinforced when one looks at the way the gun swells above the trigger guard, which is what it would have to do if there is a cylinder under there somewhere.

My take on this is that they took a common .357 Magnum revolver, either a S&W or Taurus model, and just made a hollow shell to slip over the actual gun. The .357 cartridge is pretty big, so there would be plenty of room for flash powder or oil to increase the muzzle flash and make everything look all dramatic on the TV screen.

To close, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind going back and taking a look at the last two pictures. Notice how the actors are carefully holding their props with their fingers off the trigger? That is some pretty correct gun handling skills, which is astonishing when one considers that we are dealing with actors who probably hate and fear firearms.

I have seen the same level of care exhibited time and again throughout the series, a detail that would be lost on the general public but which reinforces the impression that the characters are genuine military to the gun enthusiasts. Since the credits don't list any sort of firearms consultant, I suppose it is the work of stunt coordinator Mike Mitchell.

Good for him! And I wish we would see a similar level of professionalism more often when we watch television.