Battlestar Galactica (1978)

Well chaps, it's not a stream of consciousness as such but bear with me.

I first saw BSG when I was six or seven. Which would be 1996/97. So when you're that age you're none the wiser. The lasting memories of that viewing, as with TB and Connery limping to safety, is the Colonial flag burning, the Cylons laying waste to humanity.

Trouble is, after I grew up with BSG78, we got the reboot and anyone who was a fan of the original was seemingly dubbed a fool or some such. BSG78 was high camp and so on...

But as I say, bear with me.

By what I've read, BSG78 wasn't meant to be what it was. The opener was to be a movie/pilot but the rest was to be a sort of mini-series of six or so episodes. However, Universal felt the need to authorise it as a series. In the long run, this was to be the show's undoing. Early episodes were costly, then they became bottle shows, then the show was cancelled after being replaced by Mork & Mindy in the scheduling. THEN, after the show was lost, Universal responded to fan letters by commissioning BSG80 which was a bloody mess.

I watched the reboot in lockdown, I liked it but my first love is always this. Why? Well, maybe I'm an idiot (some nod). Maybe it's the apparent autism folk say I have but like OHMSS, I look at this and love it.

Tonight I sought it out on Amazon as I've left my collection in storage.

I love the mysticism. Here, Humanity started out there, here we look for the future on a fabled 13th Colony.

However, let's focus on the pilot/movie which as an episode is known as Saga of a Star World.

(Larson for years had intended on a show which sought humanity's origins. After Star Wars it changed. I personally always consider BSG78 separate).

For one we have Patrick Macnee's narration...

Criticism of this show included the fact they wound up at Carillon and had a bloody good time.

Yet, you see in the movie/pilot, efforts, personally, of taking the wiping out of mankind seriously. Beyond 220 ships, they never specified how many survived the holocaust. Yet, they had Apollo and co sweeping through the fleet checking for radian leaks ("How many did we leave behind!?" Apollo thunders). It might be cheesy to a modern audience but folk have designations and for dear Cassie, she's a Socialator. "An honourable profession!"
(It seems via budget or whatever, Cassie's socialator dress is reused later by which point she is vastly different)

(It should be noted that clearly at some point during production terminology changed. Years became yahren, minutes became centons and seconds became microns for instance).

It should also be noted that by the time BSG entered production properly, Cassie became a nurse without explanation. Apparently the network wanted it changed, i.e her job.

1978 was not 2003

As a child, this was my first proper intro to Jane Seymour. Yes I saw LALD but Serina was who I recall her as first.

Personally, comparing the two series doesn't work. 1978 and 2003 were different tv wise.

Yet, look at the production. What few of the reboot seem to twig is that the effects for BSG were the best for a tv show ever (or perhaps). They involved those who worked on Star Wars (who over some trouble or whatever worked FUCK YOU into the lights of Caprica as the Cylons attack).

Owing to the nature of it being rushed into production, the effects here became reused to exhaustion. After Saga, few shots of Vipers etc were original. However, I've seen fans work on 'new' SFX and it's fantastic.

The movie/pilot thrusts greed in the shape of Sire Uri by Ray Milland. Typical of shows of the time and later, we have actors of a bygone age in their twilight. Next to Milland we've had Lew Ayres and get Wilfred-Hyde White (who shortly does Buck Rogers in the C25).

Uri presents the greed and selfishness. He also becomes part of the so-called Quorum who ruled the Colonies and post-holocaust are reformed by survivors.

One trouble is that neither Milland nor H-White reappear in the series but we get some of the Quorum presented.

I love the uniforms, love the fighters and Galactica's design. I always liked the idea of Galactica being a sort of carrier.

We see the over-crowding on the Gemonese freighter, the lack of supplies for all...

...and yet we get the fake daggit (dog)...if Starbuck can find a supposed long lost love in the penultimate episode we can find another real-life daggit in 220 ships...

One thing this has above all is the beautiful Maren Jensen who seemingly has vanished. Over the series she got better as an actress but by then it was too late.

We have Adama talk of the survivors, of people who protested to him to survive....

The show tried.

There is though moments to laugh at such as when Athena catches Starbuck in the act.

I actually saw the 'theatrical' version of this (basically, the only difference I recall is that Baltar dies in it, beheaded by a centurion), enhanced modestly with Sensurround. I may be one of the rare people who saw all four of the Sensurround movies in the theater, but it only really worked in EARTHQUAKE, where it really REALLY worked ... on MIDWAY the effect seemed to be the same level whether a ship was exploding next door or 2miles away, and on ROLLERCOASTER, well ... well. Big waste of talent there, wish George Segal had made SILVER STREAK instead.  

Back on point ... my friends and I were late teen cynics and boy did we have fun trashing BSG ... but we did keep watching each week. I tried to say that it was just for the VFX, but honestly, it was more ... the theme music was terrific! Okay, I liked Starbuck too. But when they did that PLANET OF THE GODS or LOST PLANET OF THE GODS 2parter, that show really clicked, and showed some potential, but it squandered any and all goodwill with the show that had Ray Bolger as a robot.

Some side memories ... The FUCK YOU thing from the VFX guys is actually visible in the FOTONOVEL! (the vfx people on Robocop or Robocop 2 -- at least one of whom was on the original BSG and SW, actually put in a line of RoboVision computer code that said, "Avoid Orion meeting," but the studio caught it and made them take it out.)

It was hard to get BSG Cylon basestar kits in L.A. for awhile because the STAR TREK people bought them all up to use as a basis for the interior of V'ger.

Isaac Asimov was involved briefly with the show when they were figuring out how to bring it back, but that didn't go anywhere (obviously.)

There were a couple of different attempts to do BSG as a feature film around the turn of the century, with one group, headed by a producer of sorts named Todd Moyer (responsible for one of the most ridiculously overpriced movies of the decade, the 92mil VIRUS), who was making a BSG movie in which the ship gets blown up two-thirds of the way through and it becomes all about the PEGASUS. Moyer is the same guy who told me Ron Cobb couldn't come up with any good concept art for WING COMMANDER, which Moyer also produced. Ron Cobb could have been a quadriplegic and still come up with amazing concept art, and I think Moyer heard my eyebrows go up into my scalp when he told that whopper, I remember he started flexing like a tough bad guy in a John MacDonald novel at that point.

Bryan Singer's BSG went so far as to hire Nicholas Meyer to direct, right before it went belly up. Kinda thought Meyer and BSG were a good pairing for the military aspect, too bad they never approached him for Moore's series (most of which I adore, though I find the visual style -- seemingly half-overexposed and half-underexposed -- atrocious, and the main reason I've only rewatched the series twice.)

I picked up the BSG78 pilot on DVD for fifty cents a couple years back, and I find that I put it on every six months or so, thinking I'm just going to watch the space battles, but I usually wind up watching the whole thing. Not sure why, maybe it's like one of those, "I've grown accustomed to your face" things.

Just read that in addition to the Sam Esmail BSG series, that there is a feature film also in the works from another filmmaker who is trying to make it live in the same verse. Can't remember his name, but the story is probably in the trades or someplace like Collider or Indiewire.

One other random memory. I remember going to a couple of science fiction conventions in the early 80s, and was really excited about the idea of getting into the costume competation via a couple of other people and building a Galactica around us, while we lay under the carapace and paddled along with hand on skateboards. The idea never went anywhere, but I remember for years the running joke was, "What are you going as for Halloween?" "The Battlestar Galactica."

Was editing my bookmarks and came across this video on the making of original BSG's effects by one of the guys who worked on this and original STAR WARS. https://vimeo.com/5696809

Really points up the truly joyous and fun aspect of analog moviemaking, practically made me tear up thinking about my own zero-budget efforts from back then. There's a bunch of stuff with various crewmembers playing at being Superman late in the reel, and also some stuff of the Galactica shuttle crashing. This also made me look at my long-in-the-works script about the formation of ILM and realize that I was concentrating so much on the 'us vs them' part of things (ILM vs studio, ILM vs Lucas, ILM vs tech-limitations), that I had cheated myself and was missing this fun aspect in my most recent draft (which was the main thrust behind writing the damn thing.)

That is all something quite awesome. I wish I could've seen it in the cinema. I have the movie on blu ray and last year was the first time I got to see it. So seeing things like Baltar's execution and a bit more of the Ovions was good. Plus I noticed that there's less of Serina's tv broadcast and the five Battlestars compared to the version I grew up with, i.e the 'tv' pilot.

Didn't know the inside of V'ger partly consisted of Cylon Basestar.

Meyer and BSG would've been quite something.

I understand there's both a movie in the works seemingly based on BSG78 but also a new reboot. I'd just love to see the original ship itself in CGI finery. The models are great but to see her act fairly 'realistically' in terms of speed, manoeuvring etc would be quite something. The closest is the PS2 game I still have which they did as a prequel to BSG03 but I tend to think of it as more in line with the original series.

I'll have to look at that vid soon. I've seen behind the scenes footage of the shuttle crashing from Gun on Ice Planet Zero and when you consider the era, it's quite well done. One shame I find is not seeing the Pegasus and Galactica together in Living Legend.

There's some fan edit vids in the past I've seen that kept in line with the series but enhanced it quite well but they got taken down ages ago. Shots of the other colonies being pummelled by the Cylons not just Caprica, nuclear strikes etc.