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- Feb 28, 2002
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Battlestar Galactica was a groundbreaking show in 1978. I remember that to me, at five or six years old, it was immensely seductive -- science fiction involving a creepy-looking, creepy-sounding robot menace, sleek laser-shooting, vapor-spewing fighter craft, and "adult themes" that put it on at an hour that was well past my bedtime. I don't recall as I ever saw a full episode of the show when it ran in primetime; I must have caught it in reruns after the fact. It was literally forbidden, as I could not stay up late enough to watch it.
While Glen A. Larson's shows of the late seventies and early eighties are campy to us now, this was immensely powerful at the time. The original Battlestar was World War II in space -- carriers and their fighter craft dog-fighting it out amidst space fleets. The Cylons, as the implacable mechanized foe with their modulated voices, were sinister and evil -- yet not truly alive, and thus thoroughly fair game for shootings that would have had Battlestar decried as super-violent had that many people been gunned down. The idea of a wagon train of survivors pursued by villains and surrounded by danger is not terribly new, but it was more than ample foundation for a television series full of wonder for the child that was me at the time.
Visually the show was impressive (and holds up to this day). John Dykstra, who worked on Star Wars, brought much of the same technology to the series. Lucas even sued the producers of Battlestar, claiming they'd ripped off his ideas. I have no idea if anything came of that suit or not.
Richard Hatch (who, years later, would be supplanted in popular culture by the fatter and much less dashing Richard Hatch who won survivor), starred in the show as "Apollo," along with the womanizing, cigar-chewing, hard-gambling Dirk Benedict (who would go on to star in The A-Team as "Face") as "Starbuck." (Some don't know that a then-young Don Johnson was originally offered the role of Starbuck.) The late Lorne Greene, well known for Bonanza, was noteworthy as Commander Adama, the father figure of the Colonial refugee fleet and the head of its military forces.
The show was expensive to make and, as far as I know, was never a ratings blockbuster. A rather horrifying attempt to remake the show as "Battlestar Galactica 1980" involving Barry Van Dyke (yes, that Barry Van Dyke, who would go on to pick over the corpse of another failing series when he took over Jan Michael Vincent's position in the Canadian travesty that was the remodeld Airwolf, which he would do with Forever Knight's Geraint Wyn Davies and Alien Nation's Michele Scarabelli) and some other guy, as well as Lorne Greene.
In Galactica 1980, the Galactica's crew finally reaches Earth, and Barry Van Dyke flits about the landscape in a "Viper" style motorcycle that can turn invisible (with Other Guy as his Starbuck-like partner). This was an obvious (and vile) attempt to make the show cheaper by setting it largely in conventional environments. It was the death rattle for the show.
One "lost episode" of the show features Dirk Benedict's character marooned on a planetoid after his ship is damaged. He finds himself alone with the wreckage of a Cylon fighter and, bored and lonely, repairs one of the Cylons for company, rigging it to shut off if it tries to kill him. The Cylon, whom Benedict unimaginatively names "Cy," eventually comes to like him and sacrifices itself to save Starbuck's life when more Cylons respond to the Cylon craft's distress signal. Along the way, Cy discovers a human female, whom the two send off in a hybrid Viper-Raider craft. I'm not sure why.
For years I thought I was insane and had dreamed up this whole episode -- and then I found it on VHS as an episode of Galactica 1980. I was greatly relieved that the whole thing hadn't been a figment of my imagination. The episode brings to mind the much later (and much better) film Enemy Mine.
The new Battlestar Galactica is worlds away from the sensibilities and the effects of the late 1970s. This is a gritty, realistic, often bleak show that focuses on character drama set against the background of the Cylon's attempts to exterminate humanity. It reminds me very much of Space: Above and Beyond, a similarly dark show that (while it took shortcuts for the sake of plot mechanics) was nonetheless a very realistic look at the themes and horrors of war (even when it took liberties with the execution of war's logistics).
Fans at first were outraged that the character of Starbuck was to be played by a woman, that Boomer was an Asian woman (and a Cylon sleeper agent!), and that this was not to be an attempt simply to modernize the original Galactica. The result, however, was a much better show -- a drama about people, about suspicion and politics, about sacrifice and hard choices -- and about living with your mistakes. The visual effects are fantastic, of course, given the digital editing now available to us, but more important than this is the approach of the series.
The original Galactica's crew compliment seemed fairly cheerful despite the utter destruction of humanity as they knew it. This new series shows all the numbing atrocity that is the collapse of human society -- the endless pursuit of the Cylons, the exhausted crew who fight among themselves after days without sleep, the bickering and fighting and revolt among the civilian ships, the loss of thousands of people as a terrible marker-board ticker of the last humans alive anywhere is constantly revised aboard Colonial One (the civilian government ship)... this is what I would expect of such a "rag-tag, fugitive fleet."
In many ways the show is a sequel to the original Galactica (the original "chromed toaster" Cylons did exist and tried unsuccessfully to destroy humanity years before) and in many ways it is a reinvention of the show. This can be a little disorienting because it is not a sequel and not a strict remake. Once you're past these details, though, you're in for an incredible ride.
The most recent (as of this writing) episode contained nods to a couple of different elements from the original series, too. I mentioned the episode of Galactica 1980 in which Starbuck crash lands on a planetoid with only a Cylon for company. In this conclusion of a two-part episode, Ms. Thrace finds herself similarly stranded with a busted knee and no radio.
She finds the wreck -- or is it corpse? -- of the cyborg Cylon Raider who knocked her out of the sky. (Non-canonical: some Battlestar novelization material contends that the Cylons were reptilian creatures encased inside the Centurion armor, or reptilian cyborgs, or somet such thing; if Cylons are so human as to be difficult to discern from humans without complex testing, the idea that they are cyborgs does not seem terribly far-fetched to me.) The ship has a neat hole through its oversided head and seems to be... bleeding? When she makes here way into the craft, it is clearly a cyborg creation of some kind -- living tissue combined with mechanical parts. She removes some sort of metal conglomeration that was probably the glowing read eye component, then goes about finding her way around the controls of the ship.
There was an episode of the orignal series in which Starbuck and Apollo pilot a captured Cylon ship in order to infiltrate a Base Star and plant bombs to blow it up. They carry with them a transponder that will alert Viper pilots that the Cylon in their cross-hairs is the infiltrator, not an enemy. During the mission, the transponder is lost.
At some point during the episode and before this event, one of the two promises that they'll "waggle their wings" should anything go wrong. It is Boomer who then blurts out, as Starbuck and Apollo approach Galctica in their Raider, "They're waggling!"
I half expected that to be the case in this new episode as Starbuck and her Raider approach Galactica. Instead, it turns out she's written "Star Buck" on the wings of her ship. After Lee "Apollo" Adama realizes this, both ships waggle their wings at each other.
I thought those little inclusions of elements from the first series were a nice touch.
While Glen A. Larson's shows of the late seventies and early eighties are campy to us now, this was immensely powerful at the time. The original Battlestar was World War II in space -- carriers and their fighter craft dog-fighting it out amidst space fleets. The Cylons, as the implacable mechanized foe with their modulated voices, were sinister and evil -- yet not truly alive, and thus thoroughly fair game for shootings that would have had Battlestar decried as super-violent had that many people been gunned down. The idea of a wagon train of survivors pursued by villains and surrounded by danger is not terribly new, but it was more than ample foundation for a television series full of wonder for the child that was me at the time.
Visually the show was impressive (and holds up to this day). John Dykstra, who worked on Star Wars, brought much of the same technology to the series. Lucas even sued the producers of Battlestar, claiming they'd ripped off his ideas. I have no idea if anything came of that suit or not.
Richard Hatch (who, years later, would be supplanted in popular culture by the fatter and much less dashing Richard Hatch who won survivor), starred in the show as "Apollo," along with the womanizing, cigar-chewing, hard-gambling Dirk Benedict (who would go on to star in The A-Team as "Face") as "Starbuck." (Some don't know that a then-young Don Johnson was originally offered the role of Starbuck.) The late Lorne Greene, well known for Bonanza, was noteworthy as Commander Adama, the father figure of the Colonial refugee fleet and the head of its military forces.
The show was expensive to make and, as far as I know, was never a ratings blockbuster. A rather horrifying attempt to remake the show as "Battlestar Galactica 1980" involving Barry Van Dyke (yes, that Barry Van Dyke, who would go on to pick over the corpse of another failing series when he took over Jan Michael Vincent's position in the Canadian travesty that was the remodeld Airwolf, which he would do with Forever Knight's Geraint Wyn Davies and Alien Nation's Michele Scarabelli) and some other guy, as well as Lorne Greene.
In Galactica 1980, the Galactica's crew finally reaches Earth, and Barry Van Dyke flits about the landscape in a "Viper" style motorcycle that can turn invisible (with Other Guy as his Starbuck-like partner). This was an obvious (and vile) attempt to make the show cheaper by setting it largely in conventional environments. It was the death rattle for the show.
One "lost episode" of the show features Dirk Benedict's character marooned on a planetoid after his ship is damaged. He finds himself alone with the wreckage of a Cylon fighter and, bored and lonely, repairs one of the Cylons for company, rigging it to shut off if it tries to kill him. The Cylon, whom Benedict unimaginatively names "Cy," eventually comes to like him and sacrifices itself to save Starbuck's life when more Cylons respond to the Cylon craft's distress signal. Along the way, Cy discovers a human female, whom the two send off in a hybrid Viper-Raider craft. I'm not sure why.
For years I thought I was insane and had dreamed up this whole episode -- and then I found it on VHS as an episode of Galactica 1980. I was greatly relieved that the whole thing hadn't been a figment of my imagination. The episode brings to mind the much later (and much better) film Enemy Mine.
The new Battlestar Galactica is worlds away from the sensibilities and the effects of the late 1970s. This is a gritty, realistic, often bleak show that focuses on character drama set against the background of the Cylon's attempts to exterminate humanity. It reminds me very much of Space: Above and Beyond, a similarly dark show that (while it took shortcuts for the sake of plot mechanics) was nonetheless a very realistic look at the themes and horrors of war (even when it took liberties with the execution of war's logistics).
Fans at first were outraged that the character of Starbuck was to be played by a woman, that Boomer was an Asian woman (and a Cylon sleeper agent!), and that this was not to be an attempt simply to modernize the original Galactica. The result, however, was a much better show -- a drama about people, about suspicion and politics, about sacrifice and hard choices -- and about living with your mistakes. The visual effects are fantastic, of course, given the digital editing now available to us, but more important than this is the approach of the series.
The original Galactica's crew compliment seemed fairly cheerful despite the utter destruction of humanity as they knew it. This new series shows all the numbing atrocity that is the collapse of human society -- the endless pursuit of the Cylons, the exhausted crew who fight among themselves after days without sleep, the bickering and fighting and revolt among the civilian ships, the loss of thousands of people as a terrible marker-board ticker of the last humans alive anywhere is constantly revised aboard Colonial One (the civilian government ship)... this is what I would expect of such a "rag-tag, fugitive fleet."
In many ways the show is a sequel to the original Galactica (the original "chromed toaster" Cylons did exist and tried unsuccessfully to destroy humanity years before) and in many ways it is a reinvention of the show. This can be a little disorienting because it is not a sequel and not a strict remake. Once you're past these details, though, you're in for an incredible ride.
The most recent (as of this writing) episode contained nods to a couple of different elements from the original series, too. I mentioned the episode of Galactica 1980 in which Starbuck crash lands on a planetoid with only a Cylon for company. In this conclusion of a two-part episode, Ms. Thrace finds herself similarly stranded with a busted knee and no radio.
She finds the wreck -- or is it corpse? -- of the cyborg Cylon Raider who knocked her out of the sky. (Non-canonical: some Battlestar novelization material contends that the Cylons were reptilian creatures encased inside the Centurion armor, or reptilian cyborgs, or somet such thing; if Cylons are so human as to be difficult to discern from humans without complex testing, the idea that they are cyborgs does not seem terribly far-fetched to me.) The ship has a neat hole through its oversided head and seems to be... bleeding? When she makes here way into the craft, it is clearly a cyborg creation of some kind -- living tissue combined with mechanical parts. She removes some sort of metal conglomeration that was probably the glowing read eye component, then goes about finding her way around the controls of the ship.
There was an episode of the orignal series in which Starbuck and Apollo pilot a captured Cylon ship in order to infiltrate a Base Star and plant bombs to blow it up. They carry with them a transponder that will alert Viper pilots that the Cylon in their cross-hairs is the infiltrator, not an enemy. During the mission, the transponder is lost.
At some point during the episode and before this event, one of the two promises that they'll "waggle their wings" should anything go wrong. It is Boomer who then blurts out, as Starbuck and Apollo approach Galctica in their Raider, "They're waggling!"
I half expected that to be the case in this new episode as Starbuck and her Raider approach Galactica. Instead, it turns out she's written "Star Buck" on the wings of her ship. After Lee "Apollo" Adama realizes this, both ships waggle their wings at each other.
I thought those little inclusions of elements from the first series were a nice touch.
