So Say We All
Page 5
RICHARD HATCH
(actor, “Captain Apollo”)
Television back then was still into clichés of good and bad. It was only later that we began to find a hero can have a dark side. Obviously, Battlestar was a merging of a lot of Mormonism and a smattering of other religions.
GLEN A. LARSON
It really just comes from personal belief. Religion has played an important part of just about every tribe on this planet in one form or another. There are some wonderful books out like Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods. Every one of the ancient civilizations, and we mentioned the Egyptians, the Toltecs, and the Mayans and the others, had an incredible knowledge of the galaxies and the constellations and of mathematics, and there is no evidence that any of those societies developed that information on their own.
For me, the personal joy of this particular series was that we could explore the fact that there are far greater powers in the universe than we know. There is a passage in the Bible about Ezekiel, who saw a wheel way up in the middle of the air. A NASA engineer did an analysis of it and said he saw a spaceship because based on his analysis that ship would fly today. So all of those various underpinnings worked through my mind and made it fun to explore some of those theories. Not necessarily coming close to accuracy—but, at least, leaving that one element open, because the greatest scientists who ever lived, including Wernher von Braun and Albert Einstein, all believed in a god or something much stronger and more powerful than any of us.
JEAN-PIERRE DORLEAC
(costume designer, Battlestar Galactica)
The concept for Battlestar Galactica was all on the page; there was no question about it. Glen had originally conceived of the thirteen lost colonies as being Earth people. Since our projections of the earliest people on Earth were the Phoenicians and the Egyptians, we decided to take elements a step in a different direction and use them in connection with all the [Colonial] costumes. All the yokes on the uniforms were cut to look like the Egyptian neckpieces worn by the pharaohs. The helmets were specifically designed to look like the pharaoh’s head covering. All of this was done very intentionally, but it was done in a stylized version of how the actual things looked.
ROB KLEIN
(Battlestar Galactica archivist)
I loved his work, but always thought the Colonial Warrior suit was literally pinched right out of a French comic book.
In original discussions, ABC programming executive Fred Silverman envisioned Battlestar Galactica being produced as a seven-hour miniseries encompassing the three-hour pilot followed by a string of two-hour episodes (“Lost Planet of the Gods” and “Gun on Ice Planet Zero”) to be broadcast as special-event programming during sweeps, given the huge success the network had experienced with miniseries event programming such as Rich Man, Poor Man and the massive ratings juggernaut Roots.
SCOTT MANTZ
Originally, the plan was for them to do a series of TV movies. Now, once they went into series, they were always catching up, and the writing of the show suffered. They were basically giving wet prints to the network, because they were editing and scoring up to the last minute.
GLEN A. LARSON
That was one of the things [ABC president] Fred Silverman wanted to do, and he may have been right, because then we could have taken a lot of time on each one and just hand-built each one to some extent. We almost tried that in the first few episodes, because we did a couple of two-hour variations and I think they were some of our best shows.
STEVEN SIMAK
Although seemingly cashing in on the Star Wars space-combat formula, the premise for the series owes as much to television classics such as Wagon Train and The Fugitive—fleeing the destruction of their civilization by the Cylons, the battlestar Galactica leads a ragtag fleet of civilian ships on a journey to find a new home: Earth.
SCOTT MANTZ
Battlestar Galactica was different from Star Wars, because Galactica was on every week, every Sunday on ABC, and that repeat, that constant exposure to Galactica, endeared me more to Galactica than to Star Wars, because I was getting new stories every week. I didn’t have to wait three years for a new episode of Battlestar Galactica.
RONALD D. MOORE
(cocreator/executive producer, Battlestar Galactica [2004])
[The 1978] Battlestar Galactica was the return of science fiction to prime-time television. I’d never witnessed that. To me, science fiction was something that only existed on those sort of five-day-a-week strip syndication shows like Lost in Space or Star Trek. There was nothing in the prime-time schedule that went there. So, when Galactica came around it was like, “Wow! This is a huge opportunity. This is a big deal. It’s science fiction on a major network.” I thought this would be sort of a new era of sci-fi making it into the mainstream because of the success of Star Wars.
2.
CAST OFF
“I’m designated a socialator. It’s an honorable profession; it’s had the blessings of the elders for four thousand yahrens.”
With effects and set construction already under way on the three-hour movie of the week, “Saga of a Star World,” Larson proceeded on the difficult task of casting the series. With an immense group of leads and supporting characters, it would be a long and arduous process that took many months, with casting continuing well into production on the premiere. The process was made even more challenging by the many parties involved in the decision making: Larson, of course, but also the executives at ABC as well as at the studio, Universal, whose head of casting, Mark Malis, was charged with assembling the interstellar ensemble.
In addition to the names most strongly associated with the series, Galactica is known, though less well, for the many now-familiar faces in its supporting roles, including a young Ed Begley, Jr., as Greenbean; Magnum, P.I.’s Larry Manetti as Giles; The Next Generation’s Q, John de Lancie, in a small role in “Experiment in Terra”; and the debut of Dennis Haysbert, who would later go on to play the president of the United States in 24, as a nameless Cylon Centurion (as well as the Imperious Leader in Galactica 1980). And, of course, “Jessie’s Girl” crooner, Rick Springfield, as Apollo’s ill-fated brother, Zac.
GLEN A. LARSON
(creator/executive producer, Battlestar Galactica)
The casting process was like any process. It was like pulling teeth. Casting is subjective, because no one likes your choices and you don’t like anyone else’s choices, so it was very difficult.
STEVEN SIMAK
(journalist, Battlestar Galactica historian)
In an attempt to humanize the series, Larson elected to define the core group of characters as a family. He hoped that such an approach would provide greater opportunity to explore dramatic interpersonal relationships, while at the same time broadening the appeal of the series to a mainstream audience. In the case of Adama, Lorne Greene was a choice on which both he and the network could readily agree. Famous for his performance as Ben Cartwright on Bonanza, Greene’s image as the classic patriarch seemed an ideal match.
GLEN A. LARSON
Lorne Greene was one of the easy ones. Having been a member of one of the biggest successes in the history of television, he was one everyone could agree on rather easily. In retrospect, he might not have been the best choice, because it makes people think immediately of Bonanza, but we did want a certain amount of warmth in there, so that was considered a good choice and it didn’t come up for a lot of argument. The toughest thing was to find our fresh young guys.
For legions of televisions fans, Lorne Greene’s fourteen-year portrayal of Ben Cartwright on Bonanza made him the archetypal father figure. Bitten by the acting bug at age sixteen, Canadian-born Greene studied at Queen’s University before moving to New York, where he received a fellowship to study with Sanford Meisner and Martha Graham at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Two years later he returned to Canada to accept a job as a newscaster with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After serving in World War II, Greene returned to Toronto, whe
re he continued his radio work and founded the Academy of Radio Arts. Many point to Greene’s years in radio as the foundation for his now-legendary speaking voice. Greene’s film credits include The Silver Chalice, Peyton Place, Autumn Leaves, The Gift of Love, and The Trap. The actor was sixty-three when he accepted the role of Adama, for which he was perfectly cast.
TERRENCE MCDONNELL
(story editor, Battlestar Galactica)
Edward R. Murrow was the voice of America in World War II. Lorne was the Edward R. Murrow of Canada. He did the war broadcast. He also invented the backward clock that everybody uses in radio because he needed to know when to end his broadcast.
GLEN A. LARSON
People have always made a big deal out of the fact that it was Lorne Greene and they asked if we were trying to do Bonanza. Well, not really, but there’s a show that even though it was a Western it really just dealt with human dilemmas from week to week. So one of the things we wanted to do was start pushing these people into situations where the people become important to us. Their existence becomes important and then the shows are playing on a human level or a heart level that transcends science fiction.
ALAN J. LEVI
I hadn’t been in Hollywood too long and my folks, who were at the very first filming that I ever did in my life, when I was fifteen in St. Louis, had never been out to Hollywood, so when I said to Glen [Larson] I can’t take over the pilot because my folks are due to come out here next week and I don’t want anything to interrupt their visit, he gave me his limo and a driver and hosted them for an entire week. So I did the show and when we were in the launch bay, there were all these guys ready to climb into their ships and this was the first day my folks arrived in Glen’s limo.
I was up on a crane and we had a crew of forty or fifty and another forty or fifty cast members. Everybody was getting in their fighters and I’m about to call “Action” when the door opens to our stage and in walked my mom and my dad. I called “Cut” and everybody takes ten. I got down and walked over and gave my mom and dad a hug and a kiss and Lorne Greene walked over, and he said, “I’ve got to meet the parents of the guy who just shut down an eighty-five-person crew for fifteen minutes to come say hello.” He and my dad became friends for the whole week and it was great. Every moment that he wasn’t on camera he spent sitting with my folks. He was that kind of gentleman.
TERRENCE MCDONNELL
My dad loved Bonanza, and he was in charge of the TV, so we watched it on Sunday nights. I remember with Lorne the first time we were introduced to him we were down on the “Fire in Space” set the day they were doing all the stunts and somebody said, “Have you met Lorne?” Jim [Carlson] and I said, “No.” So they walked us over to him and he was very nice and tall. So, he looks at us after we’re introduced and there was a lull onstage, they were resetting for something, and he says, “You don’t have to give me every line, but what I do has to be imporrrrrtant.” And it was this long dragged-out “imporrrrrtant.” Every time we’d go down to the set, which wasn’t that often, and we saw Lorne sort of coming our direction, we’d get out of there. Just because we didn’t want to get sucked into we’re not giving him important lines.
I think it was when we were doing “Murder on the Rising Star,” we were on a tight deadline, we’re crunched, all of a sudden we look up and Lorne is in our office. I don’t know what he was doing there. It was like two hours. He sat down and he started talking. And Lorne talked and talked and talked. If we had been at a cocktail party it would have been wonderful. And Jim is saying that’s fantastic, now we just have to get to this act. And Lorne was oblivious to it. He just kept talking and talking. It was like, “My God, how are we going to finish this?” But apparently the actors adored him.
RICHARD HATCH
(actor, “Captain Apollo”)
I was really thrown by his voice. It’s like going to see James Earl Jones until you realize that, yes he’s got this magnificent voice but he’s just a human being behind it and in this case he’s a very genuinely warm, loving, caring, down-to-earth human being who is actually very easy to talk to. I think that was the first thing that surprised me; after a few hours of kind of watching my manners, I realized that he was very much a very normal guy. He really was very personable.
He came to a Christmas party of mine and sat in the corner and I swear that everyone who came to my party, including most of my family, all spent time sitting in the seat next to him talking with him not just out of courtesy, but for hours. He would talk to everybody and anybody and that was the way he was. He was like a second father to me, and I felt genuine warmth and love for him. His death was very hard and very surprising. He looked like one of those men who would go on forever.
HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.
(actor, “Lieutenant Boomer”)
Lorne is still in my heart. He just did the perennial patriarch; that combination of strength and tenderness that he had as a human being always came through in his work. That is who Commander Adama was, and there will never be a replacement for him.
RICHARD HATCH
We always respond to family. The camaraderie, the bonding, the love, and also the infighting that goes on among family members. It always makes for an intriguing relationship, because that’s where we all come from and that’s what we all understand.
LORNE GREEN
(actor, “Commander Adama”)
This was the first science fiction story I’d ever done. When I read the script, my first reaction was, “Wild.” Then I thought, “But how in heaven’s name are they going to bring it off?”
ROD HOLCOMB
(director, “The Man with Nine Lives”)
He was like one of the very first real TV legends on Bonanza. Now, I’ve worked with a lot of Jack Klugman–type people, but they weren’t necessarily known as television monsters, but Lorne was. A little pompous, sometimes, but I think it was just his voice and his presence. If you didn’t recognize him for who he was, as that person, you would think he was trying to put on airs, but he was never doing that. He was always a good guy who knew he knew a lot more than you did—and he did.
TERRY CARTER
(actor, “Commander Tigh”)
One of the nicest people I have ever met. A really warm individual, very professional actor, full of humor, very funny man. Even when we were not on the set or even in between takes, he was a very relaxed fellow. I think everybody loved him. He had a paternal quality. And he exuded a warmth and professionalism and set a high mark for everybody. He was a wonderful man.
HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.
If you knew him, if you worked with him, he was very much like the man you grew to love in Bonanza. We all kind of gravitated to him. It was a chaotic work situation with fourteen-hour days, sometimes five, six, seven days a week. And we were all in orbit around Lorne, he kept us all chill. He was Poppa. I’m sure anyone who worked on the original show has a great admiration for Lorne Greene; he was sort of like an adopted uncle to you.
He was also a great chess player. We had an ongoing chess game on the set of Battlestar Galactica; we had a board and set it up on an apple box. I’d make one move, and maybe sometime during the day he’d come by and make his move. And the crew knew you were never to touch that board. We would leave the board sitting there all night and we’d come back and all the pieces were there.
SARAH RUSH
(actress, “Flight Officer Rigel”)
We once went to lunch in our space suits for my birthday. We went to what became the Universal CityWalk area. Nowadays it’s very big. It was smaller back then. I think there was only one restaurant. It was really special. I remember thinking, “This is a great birthday!” Lorne Greene paid for it.
LAURETTE SPANG
(actress, “Cassiopeia”)
In the beginning, I was very awed by him because he was Ben Cartwright and that’s all I could think of, but he was just so kind and his wife and daughter, Gillian, they just sort of took me under their wing. At one point, t
here was a People’s Choice Awards show and they had only invited Dirk and Richard and, I think, Maren [Jensen] to go and Lorne came up to me—and his wife couldn’t go—and he said, “Why don’t you come up to my house and go with me in my car and you can sit with me?” It was so sweet. He knew I felt bad and so I went with him and we shared a car on the way over there and he was just such a gentleman. He was funny, he told the best jokes, and his family had the cast over a few times. He was a special favorite.
ALEX HYDE-WHITE
(actor, “Cadet Bow”)
I remember Lorne had a nice big Christmas party for us at his house in Mandeville Canyon. That was fun.
HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.
Lorne and I became very good friends and we spent a lot of time up at his house and participating with him and his wife in strategic war games, since she was a strategic analyst. I have lots of interest in world politics, and it was quite a blow and a loss for me when we lost Lorne.
LAURETTE SPANG
Right after I did Galactica, Lorne and I did a show in Hawaii together for Aaron Spelling called Aloha Paradise, and he played my dad, and Jayne Meadows was my mom. We went over there and it was sort of The Love Boat in Hawaii: I had just gotten married to Grant Goodeve in the show, and my parents show up, they’ve been traveling abroad and they show up on my honeymoon and they’re just obnoxious and they want to play bridge, and Lorne and I had great fun because he was so funny. It was a whole different side of him.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see him the last couple of years, but I sent him a long letter when he was in the hospital and told him what he meant to me and how much at that time in my life he was a real grounding type of person. That he had this great family life and he was still in the business and I am very blessed with that now. I’ve got a wonderful family and not too long after Galactica I walked away from Hollywood.
With the casting of the paterfamilias of the Galactica family, on screen and off, an easy call and a triumph for the fledgling series, the casting of Adama’s son, Apollo (originally called Skylar, but changed owing to its similarities to Skywalker), would prove more challenging. However, it found the ideal Colonial Warrior in the guise of the late Richard Hatch.