Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series)

This article is about the original television series; for other versions, see the main Battlestar Galactica page or Battlestar Galactica (disambiguation).

Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction television series, produced in 1978 by Glen Larson and starring Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict.

The premise of the series takes themes from Chariot of the Gods and Mormon theology.

The show lasted only one season in 1978-1979, but has since developed a huge cult following, and several books have been written continuing the sagas of the characters, many co-authored by Hatch. After its cancellation, its story was continued in 1980 as Galactica 1980 with Adama and Boomer being the only continuing characters. It was "reimagined" in 2003 by the Sci-Fi Channel. (See Battlestar Galactica (2003) for more information.)

Narration

The opening narration (spoken by Patrick Macnee) is as follows:

''There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. They may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens..."

When this narration was spoken, the viewer could see scenes of nebulae and other celestial phenomena.

Patrick Macnee played the voice of the Cylons' Imperious Leader throughout the series, and appeared as Count Iblis in "War of the Gods," a two-part episode which aired in January 1979.

Plot summary

Humanity lived on twelve colony worlds in a far distant star system. After fighting a thousand year war with the deadly robotic Cylons, Mankind was defeated in a sneak attack on their homeworlds. Protected by the last surviving warship, a Battlestar called Galactica, the survivors fled in any ship that could fly. The commander of the Galactica, Commander Adama (Lorne Greene), lead this "rag-tag fugitive fleet" in search of a new home on a legendary planet called Earth. The episodes dealt with the fleet's struggle to survive the Cylon threat and find Earth.

Though it is often stated that all this took place "thousands of years ago", this is a misstatement. The era in which this exodus took place is never clearly stated in the series itself; however various implications on-screen suggested the series was taking place concurrently with the broadcast of the episodes. That is, the Cylon War would have started somewhere around the year 978 AD (by our calendar), the destruction of the Colonies took place around 1978 AD, and most of the episodes of the series took place in the years 1978-79.

However, the later Galactica 1980 series (which was expressly set in 1980) to some extent contradicted this. The destruction of the Colonies had taken place around 30 years prior to the events depicted in this sequel (i.e. had seemingly occurred around 1950) - even though this was impossible, given the on-screen events in the final episode of the original series.

Pilot

The pilot to this series, the biggest budgeted (US$7 million) pilot ever up to that time, was originally released theatrically in Canada, Western Europe and Japan in July 1978 in an edited 125-minute version. (See Battlestar Galactica for information on the pilot).
On September 17, 1978, the uncut 148-minute pilot premiered on ABC to spectacular Nielsen Ratings (attracting 65 million viewers). Two-thirds of the way through the broadcast, ABC interrupted with a special report of the signing of the Camp David Accords at the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, witnessed by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. After the ceremony, ABC resumed the broadcast at the point where it was interrupted.
In 1978, 20th Century Fox sued Universal Studios (the producers of Battlestar Galactica) for plagiarism, claiming it had stolen 34 distinct ideas from Star Wars. Universal promptly countersued, claiming Star Wars had stolen ideas from their 1972 film Silent Running (notably the robot "drones") and the Buck Rogers serials of the 1940's. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed in 1980 as being "without merit".

Ratings

As the series progressed, the ratings began to decline, even though the show still consistently won its coveted Sunday evening timeslot. Although each episode had a budget of about $1 million, the show reused so many special effects shots due to budgetary constraints that many critics derided it as "overplayed into tedium."

In mid-April 1979, ABC executives cancelled the still strongly-rated show. Some sources indicate that the million-dollar-per-episode cost led to the show's demise. Others believe that it was a failed attempt by ABC to position its hit comedy Mork & Mindy into a more lucrative timeslot. (The ratings for Mork plummeted far below what they had been for Battlestar Galactica.) The cancellation led to viewer outrage, protests outside ABC studios, and even contributed to the suicide of Eddie Seidel, a 15-year-old boy in Saint Paul, Minnesota who had become obsessed with the program. [1] On May 18, 1979, the theatrical version of the pilot was released in U.S. theatres.

ABC executives have noted that the problem lay not in Galactica, but in the time slot. The four or five shows that filled that slot after the cancellation of Battlestar Galactica never reached the ratings achieved by the series.

External links

* Battlestar Galactica at EPisodeWorld.com
*Battlestar Galactica Fan Club Contains Episode Guide of the 1978-1980 Series
*Sheba's Galaxy Contains Episode Guides of the 1978-1980 and the 1980 Series, as well as their Novelizations, and the Comic Book Series
*Kobol.com FAQ, Interviews, Reviews

Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series): Encyclopedia BETA