JCC Review of the original Battlestar Galactica (1978-79) and Galactica: 1980 series - on Blu in 2015

This are edited posts that I made on other threads: Recently, for the first time I watched - in chronological order - the entire original Battlestar Galactica series (1978-1979). I have never seen the majority of these episodes, and the few that I had seen were as a kid on their original broadcast release, over 30+ years ago. Note there are SPOILERS below, if you've never seen this.

And, I was pleasantly surprised that the show was a lot better than I remember it being - at the time it was on, I remember thinking it was a Star Wars-rip off. However, on re-watching it many years later as an adult I definitely see the SW-like elements, but the series is actually much more nuanced than I previously gave it credit for.

The 2-hour premiere with the Cylons attacking the humans & forcing them off their home planet was quite gripping, especially the scenes with the Cylon raiders attacking the civilians/buildings. Also liked the "nightclub" where Starbuck, Apollo & co. find themselves with all of the aliens; the four-eyed, two-mouthed female singers were both grotesque & fascinating, and the Ovions (and what they were doing with the humans) were quite disturbing.

I also thought it was interesting that that these humans were possibly descendants of the Egyptians - this was mentioned in the opening sequence of some of the episodes & heavily implied by the design of the Colonial warriors' helmets...

Also liked the iconic theme music - this is one of the few things I remember about the show when watching it as a child...

The rest of the series was impressive as well; IMHO, there weren't any bad episodes, though some were obviously better than others. Some high-points included:

- "Lost Planet of the Gods, Part I & II": Great two-parter where the BG crew stopped on a desolate planet to get furthur clues about how to get to Earth; I thought the Egyptian-like pyramids were interesting...

- "The Lost Warrior" - this episode was an homage to old Westerns; Apollo was marooned on a frontier planet, and had to go up against "red eye", a Cylon who had been damaged in a crash & who was controlled by one of the corrupt officials on the planet.

-"Experiment in Terra" - great episode involving a totalitarian government in an almost "alternate reality" Earth; liked how the aliens from the War of the Gods episodes made an appearance here....was intrigued by the interesting artwork/designs in the blonde woman's apartment...

-"The Magnificent Warriors" - well-done episode involving the Colonial warriors battling a group of Boray aliens on a remote planet; liked the alien make-up re: the Borays here - these are some of the few actual aliens we see in the series...

-"The Hand of God" - excellent final episode, and one of the few where we get a good glimpse of the rarer gold-armored Cylon. Very cool ending where they inadvertendly picked up the Apollo-11 moon landing transmissions from Earth.

-"War of the Gods, Part I - II": I felt these were the strongest two episodes of the series; extremely creepy episode dealing with Count Iblis, an individual who may or may not have been the devil?! I remember seeing this episode as a kid & being extremely disturbed - especially by the scene when they found the crash site...Also very interesting was when Apollo, Starbuck, and Sheba found themselves in the "White Light" ship, and were all wearing those very cool white uniforms...
Several points about these two episodes:

I found it intriguing that Patrick M. played both Count Iblis & was also the voice of Imperious Leader, the Cylon leader/mastermind. This was also mentioned by Adama?! in one of these episodes. I'm sure this was not coincidental...it sounds like Count Iblis & Imperious Leader were supposed to be the same being...Also, Patrick M. did the voice-over for the intro to some of the episodes...

It was also interesting that you never got a full glimpse of Imperious Leader - his face was always in the shadows. However, the late 1970's action figure looked quite bizzare...

The only real complaint I had about the series was Baltar: I honestly thought that he was a pointless villain. The Cylons should have just eliminated the character off in the beginning, as they actually did in the original two-hour premiere & the Marvel comics; they re-did this scene for the series to show Baltar begging for his life, and he was then spared. However, this never made any sense to me - the Cylons, who considered themselves an advanced race, didn't trust Baltar since he had betrayed the other humans - but they spared him anyway, presumably because he convinced them that he could be of service to them - even though they considered themselves superior to all humans?! And, to top it off, they gave him his own Base-star to command?! Yeah, right....That all being said, it did seem that they tried to take him out by bombing the pyramids in the "Lost Planet of the Gods" two-parter...

And, the show is coming to Blu-ray in 2015 - here is the press release:

http://www.newswest9.com/story/2746...initive-collection-the-remastered-collections

A couple of side-notes:

In the past, I have compared this original series to the re-imagined 200x series - however, after seeing this original series in it's entirety, I won't be making these comparisons any longer. Both series are completely different, and a show from the late 1970's shouldn't be put up against a show from the 200x's...

The Cylon Raider/Colonial Viper space battles were obviously "inspired" by the Space battles at the very end of the original Star Wars film (1977); not a criticism, however, since J. Dysktra did the effects for both Star Wars & BG...

 

Here's my review of the 10-episode Galactica: 1980 series. I recently re-watched this on the DVD set. This was not a bad show by any means, though I know that it's typically either despised or ignored by BG fans. Note there are SPOILERS below, if you've never seen this.

-The series is never specifically called Galactica: 1980 in the opening credits, it's called Battlestar Galactica - IMHO, it was basically treated as S2 of BG - i.e., the opening theme song & scenes are overall from the regular BG series, not Galactica 1980.

- In the last episode of the regular BG series, the Galactica picked up a transmission from Earth re: the Moon Landing in 1969. If they were getting this transmission in "real-time", then it would mean Galactica 1980 is taking place 11 years later, after Apollo has died?! (as implied in EP1) and Starbuck has been lost (as seen in EP10). In any case, though I know a lot of fans didn't like that they "replaced" Apollo & Starbuck with Troy/Boxey & Dylan, at least there was a logical explanation for this in the story.

-The series was somewhat dis-jointed: I.e., the first three episodes dealt with the Galactica finding Earth & dealing with a renegade Colonial warrior named Xavier; in episodes 2-3 he went back in time to Germany during WW II to try to give them modern weapons so that in the future, Earth would be better equipped to deal with the Cylon threat. Troy & Dylan stopped him, and they eventually all went back to 1980 - but then Xavier escaped again, and at the very end of episode 3 they mentioned that he had gone back in time to the era of the Napoleonic wars. So, the strong implication at the end of E3 was that future episodes would deal with the two heroes (Troy & Dylan) & Jamie Hamilton (R. Douglas) going back in time to stop Xavier at various eras in history.

However, in E4-on, the time-travel storyline went on the back burner - and, though Xavier was mentioned again - the idea of the heroes chasing him through time was discarded. I'm guessing this was either partially or completely because it would have too expensive to have a network TV series set in a different historical era every week. And, I'm actually glad this happened since if they had continued with this storyline, we may not have seen the Cylons later in the series.

Also interesting here was that in these time travel episodes, when they went back in time their clothing & helmets turned completely white (the reason given was the disruption in time/space, or something like that). In any case, this brought to mind the episodes from the original BG series where Apollo, Starbuck, and Sheba went to the "angel" ship - in that sequence, their clothing turned white as well.

-In episodes 1-3 when the Troy/Dylan were in modern 1980 California (actually, the series was probably filmed in '79) they were wearing leather jackets/contemporary clothes & there were numerous times they were chasing someone/being chased on foot, and/or involved in a car chase. So, if I hadn't known better, during these scenes I would have thought I was watching an old episode of Starsky & Hutch

-The first three episodes got a lot of laughs since Troy & Dylan were clueless on how to use pay phones, money, etc.

-It was amusing to see Mr. Brady from The Brady Bunch (Robert Reed) play a scientist in the first several episodes, and even funnier was his large 'fro!

-The scene in E1 when Troy/Dylan communicated with this scientist by solving a complicated equation on his computer was almost certainly inspired by asimilar scene in the classic 1950's film The Day The Earth stood still; in that film, the alien (Michael Rennie) communicated with a scientist by solving an complex equation on his black board.

-The brilliant child scientist Dr. Zee changed actors between E3 & 4.

-Episodes 4-6 dealt with a group of children who were born in space on the Galactica - these children, due to the different gravity on Earth, were able to jump higher, run faster, etc. than regular people. At the time, I identified with these characters to some extent since I myself was in elementary school back in 1980, and was roughly the age of most of these kids.

- IMHO The Night the Cylons Landed, Parts I-II (Episodes 7-8) were two of the best episodes in the series. Cylons crash-landed on Earth, and one of them looked human - though he was a cyborg. This was the first time we saw human-looking Cylons in this series. And, I wonder if the re-imagined BG from the 200X's (with all of the humanoid Cylons) was inspired by this character?!....

-IIRC, Imperious Leader made at least one appearance in this 1980 series, though fortunately they didn't bring Baltar back...

-As I'm sure many agree, the very best episode in the series was E10: The Return of Starbuck. This was the story of how Starbuck had crash-landed on a planet years before, and gotten stranded there. Very poignant episode, especially the way he formed an actual friendship with a Cylon, "Cy", who ended up saving him at the end (at the cost of Cy's "life"). This was a fascinating episode on a lot of other levels as well. I.e., who was the mysterious woman whom Cy found, and where did he find her? Was she an alien or an angel? Who was the father of her child (Doctor Zee)? She somehow ended up back on the planet (on a cliff) after Starbuck had put her & her baby in the spaceship, which was also mysterious, though the baby in the ship made it's way to the Galactica (shades of Superman's origin!). Also, did Starbuck ever end up getting off the planet? You would have thought he could have used the Cylon craft that the 3 enemy Cylons landed in, since that was presumably still operational....

And, I have no way to prove this, but this episode seems like it was filmed along with the rest of the episodes in the regular series, and just hadn't aired before since the series was cancelled in '79.

 

The Imperious Leader's appearance actually matched the action figure. You're right you can't really see his features well in the movie but in stills and the trading card series they show him in close up and yeah…lizard man. This was actually to match the mythos of BG. If you watch the BTS in the DVD set(the one with the Cylon head) they explain they were created by a lizard or reptilian race and then replaced their creators….it appears except for one, the Imperious Leader. That's why he looks all lizard-like.

Good show. Watched the pilot back in theaters way back when when it first came out. I even owned some of the action figures. But not the spaceship because, well, you'd shoot your eye out kid!

 

Thanks for the response re: Imperious leader - someone else mentioned this on another thread. In any case, not being able to see him full-face added to the creepiness/mystery of the character - as I mentioned, it's fairly evident that Count Iblis & the IL were meant to be the same person, i.e. the devil?!

 

It is my understanding, though I could be mistaken, that they were planning a sequel episode to "Return of Starbuck", in which we would escape from the planet and we'd learn his ultimate fate. However, the show was cancelled before they could get to it.

And I agree with those who say that episode is the only one from "Galactica 1980" worth keeping.

 

That's a good possibility. Think of the name of the robot that roams the Basestar: Lucifer.

The War of the Gods episode had planned to make it more overt who Iblis was by showing the dead person in the ship as having hooved feet.

 

As a little kid back in the late '70's, when I first saw this BG episode on TV I could swear that the dead body in the ship did have hooved feet - however, when I saw the episode again recently (for the first time since the '70's), you didn't catch a glimpse at all of the alien in the ship - IIRC, Apollo told Sheba not to look, and that was it - the implication was that there was something horrible about the body.

That being said, it could be that I'm mis-remembering these hooved feet since it was so long ago...

I know that a lot of SW fans (including myself, to some extent) could swear that they recalled the Biggs/Luke Tattoine Anchorhead scene in the beginning of ANH - despite the fact that this was never in the film...though it was in the ANH novelization, storybook, and comic book adaptation...

 

Yeah you were likely thinking Iblis was the devil and so his people would have hooved feet. I think they mentioned in the BTS material they planned on shooting that but either cut it or didn't shoot it at all.

There was a time in the late 70's when BSG was second only to SW in what movie/tv universe I loved most. McQuarrie did some awesome concept art for the show too.

I really enjoyed the newer Ronald Moore BSG but it was a really different animal. I don't even compare them. They really tried to do and be two different things.