So Say We All

by Mark A. Altman

  HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.

  At the time Battlestar Galactica was being cast I was doing a play, an award-winning play by David Rabe called Streamers. Terry Carter had been set to play Boomer on Galactica and he had a great relationship with Glen because of his involvement with McCloud playing Sergeant Broadhurst. He took a bad turn, fell down and broke his ankle, which immediately took the role away from him.

  TERRY CARTER

  Well, fortunately for me they were still writing, and writing, and rewriting, and planning, and postponing the start date of the show. And we were just hoping that maybe my leg would heal. So they finally did call me for the show and I had designed with my agent what he was going to say. They said, “We’re starting on Wednesday and we need Terry at seven o’clock Wednesday morning.” And he said, “You know what, I just found out that Terry broke his leg,” and they hit the roof! They said, “Why the hell didn’t you tell us?” and he said, “I didn’t know, I just found out myself.” So there I was without a job and I just saw that the boat was leaving without me. And Leslie Stevens and Glen Larson got the idea: “Hey, what about Terry for Colonel Tigh?”

  GLEN A. LARSON

  I’d always enjoyed working with him, he’s a very strong guy. Terry comes off without any ethnic baggage and I am not specifically talking black, I am talking anything that is regional, because we don’t have a South in space. One of the problems with Donny Johnson’s test is that he had quite an accent in it. It was very down-home and I had a little trouble with the idea that you’re going to have someone in the middle of the Galactica fleet from Caprica or someplace with a Southern accent. It just contaminated us, and that was a factor in Terry’s casting along with his strength. His accent is very neutral, because in radio you could never have an accent.

  With Carter now aboard as Colonel Tigh (and wearing a cast underneath his uniform throughout the duration of filming the three-hour premiere), it fell to veteran actor Herbert Jefferson, Jr., to assume the role of Lieutenant Boomer, for which he was cast after Terry Carter was sidelined by his injury.

  HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.

  I auditioned for my role in Century City at ABC’s old headquarters along with about ten, twelve, or maybe fifteen other people. They were in the middle of shooting the series already and they were casting it as they went along. And out of that ten or fifteen people, I must have fit the boots or something. I was still in the play, so in the beginning of shooting Galactica it was in my contract that I had to be released by six o’clock so that I could leave the set, go back to Westwood, and perform in Streamers. It’s an actor’s dream to be working two jobs! I loved it.

  The actor came to Galactica after ten years in theater, film, and television. He attended Rutgers University before going to study drama at the Actors Studio and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. An accomplished stage actor, Jefferson’s theater credits include Electra, Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope, No Place to Be Somebody, The Dream on Monkey Mountain, and Murderous Angels, the play about the deaths of Patrice Lumumba and Dag Hammarskjöld. His motion picture credits include Detroit 9000, Black Gunn, and The Slams. Jefferson’s many appearances on television include such programs as Rich Man, Poor Man, McCloud, Columbo, The Streets of San Francisco, and Mission: Impossible.

  HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.

  I was very fortunate that for the first week or two of shooting, the material I was given to do was for the most part action shots and filler, such as getting into the cockpit. So I had time to study Boomer and ask the writers how they perceived this character. They didn’t spring the deepest emotional scenes on me the very first days. I was pretty much given free rein—of course, within the limitations of what the writers, directors, and producers wanted.

  They did not even have the uniform cut at the time I was hired. They had the readings and the meetings and the decision was made. We all waited, and I was asked to step inside and spoke to casting executives and immediately was sent out to Universal wardrobe. At the time they only had the boots and the pants to fit me. So in the scene that we were shooting late that afternoon in the pilot, which was the pyramid game, I had no tunic.

  We filmed the scene and they were cutting my tunic, so I did the scene with a towel around my neck. It wasn’t because of style, it was because there wasn’t anything to fit me. As far as Sergeant Jolly, Tony [Swartz] was a big fellow. There were no pants or a tunic for him either, certainly not for a man of his size, so he did the first day of shooting with a towel wrapped around his waist.

  Boomer, like Terry Carter’s Tigh, was an African-American character in a position of authority aboard the battlestar Galactica, a rarity in late-seventies television.

  HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.

  That was another reason I was very, very happy and proud to be part of the project: because none of those characters were written as “black” characters. They were characters who were qualified and had a particular kind of expertise and attitude about their jobs as officers and happened to be black. I think it was progressive for its time. I was honored with a nomination as Best Actor by the NAACP Image Awards. I lost out to Michael Jackson, but I was proud to be nominated.

  Of all the characters in Battlestar Galactica, Laurette Spang’s Cassiopeia probably saw the greatest change as the series progressed. Originally introduced as a seventh-millennium prostitute, a “socialator,” Cassiopeia quickly metastasized into Florence Nightingale when it was decided to sign Spang on as a series regular after the three-hour premiere was shot.

  LAURETTE SPANG

  It was a guest-star part originally, and I was just like Jane Seymour. I was just going to be there for the pilot, and then they decided they wanted to keep me on. I had done Streets of San Francisco and I had played a young girl, the hooker who couldn’t do it, so I was sort of the one with the heart of gold. Most of my parts had been the sweet girl next door, so this seemed like it was fun, because we go into space and I always loved science fiction. When I was a kid, I used to read Ray Bradbury and anything I could get my hands on.

  The actress, who grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, first became interested in a career in acting after taking speech courses in high school. At seventeen, she traveled to New York and later studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduating and performing in summer stock, she decided to move to Los Angeles. Spang received a small role in Airport ’75 and started doing guest appearances on such programs as Charlie’s Angels, The Streets of San Francisco, The Six Million Dollar Man, Happy Days, and Lou Grant. Her other credits include Short Walk to Daylight and Sarah T.: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic. Spang had been under contract to Quinn Martin Productions when she was offered the opportunity to guest-star as Cassiopeia on the three-hour premiere.

  LAURETTE SPANG

  Universal offered me the part to guest-star in the pilot, and it was originally going to be for the movie, and finally I went to Quinn Martin and he let me go and said, “Sure, go ahead, have a ball.” By the time we were finished, they offered me a contract for the series.

  SCOTT MANTZ

  A socialator is a hooker. I didn’t know that as a kid, but when I got older, I certainly did.

  GLEN A. LARSON

  It was an attempt to try and be a little more sophisticated. Cassiopeia was something like a geisha, in that tradition. It wasn’t purely sexual. I don’t recall us having any real problems with that, because we never hit that very hard. That was never a centerpiece.

  LAURETTE SPANG

  The network was not happy about the socialator. Glen had to do some changes, and all of a sudden I went from being a socialator to being a med tech and being able to do heart surgery. We had to make it work, so I had my costumes go from being short with cleavage and all of a sudden my dresses were down to my feet with fur vests and everything up to my neck. It’s a little disconcerting, but I think everyone eventually accepted it. I was the nurse with a heart.

  DAVID LARSON

  I think I may have had a crush on C
assiopeia. I sort of remember Jane Seymour. We went to stay at her house in Bath, England, back when she lived there. Kurt Russell was there with Goldie Hawn, skeet shooting. You can’t forget memories like that. Goldie Hawn walking down the hall with a green mud mask on and a robe. That’s Private Benjamin walking by!

  SCOTT MANTZ

  Both of those characters were wasted. When they made Cassiopeia go from being a socialator to a nurse, it kind of took away her edge. It could have been more dynamic with both Athena and her in love with Starbuck, but it was never fully realized.

  LAURETTE SPANG

  What I wanted to bring to it was a sense of fun. I loved the relationship between Starbuck and Cassiopeia, because I think what came out was how intelligent she was. She knew very well that this was a guy that wanted to be free in one way and the only way she could catch him was to be as smart as he was.

  Athena was another vital member of the bridge crew, played by the stunning Maren Jensen. Shortly after appearing in the series, Jensen starred in Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing with a young Sharon Stone, and has largely disappeared from public view after reportedly developing Epstein–Barr syndrome, which prompted her retirement from acting. When hired for the series at twenty-one, the former model, who had been featured on the covers of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen, had the least amount of acting experience of anyone in the cast, having only appeared in college productions and a guest-starring role on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, another Glen Larson production on ABC.

  MAREN JENSEN

  (actress, “Athena”)

  I did absolutely nothing professional, not even the California equivalent of off-off-off-Broadway. No matter what you think you’ve learned in school, when you face a camera—a real camera—for the first time, it’s different. There’s no way to teach what I’ve absorbed simply playing scenes with people like Lorne Greene and Ray Milland.

  ALAN J. LEVI

  Maren was a very sweet young gal. She was a model and she had never acted before. She was always very receptive and always there. A very pretty gal. Her presence never became a central focus for anybody. It was a minor role to a certain degree, and she never did anything afterward that I know of.

  DIRK BENEDICT

  They realized that women didn’t want to see Starbuck attached to one woman. The intellectuals, the network, all the people who sat there saying, “Well, he’s a chauvinist,” they wanted him to be married and have a child, I guess, but that was Richard’s character.

  SARAH RUSH

  Maren Jensen was just precious, Anne Lockhart was a doll, and Laurette Spang I adore. I don’t think there was any kind of competition in there. It was just lovely and we all got along so great. Only with Jane Seymour there was definitely a little bit of an aloofness there.

  There once was a scene where we were all on set—I believe it was the wedding scene. The makeup artist put a little glycerin under her eyes or something. I was standing there and was supposed to do a little weeping or something. Jane said, “Oh, our little actress…” It made me feel really small, but it was okay because she’s wonderful. So she was a little bit more aloof, but the other girls were just great.

  When I was younger I was so very serious and committed. So I came in, I auditioned, and there was Glen Larson and all these people and I had to say something like, “Red alert! Red alert! One hundred microns and closing, ninety-nine microns and closing.” I sat in the middle on a chair with everybody around me and I used my fist as a microphone, said my lines and then looked at everybody. They all burst into laughter! I was so serious about it. We laughed and I got the job. It was wonderful and a blessing, even though my role was so small. I wished I could have been around more. I was just twenty-two years old and this show was so fantastic. I got to work with Terry Carter a lot and talked to him about acting. I don’t even know if he knows how important he was for me. He was so supportive. It was such a great cast and it was a blessing to be on the show.

  Also a significant member of the ensemble was Boxey, the son of Jane Seymour’s Serina, who becomes an important part of Apollo’s family after the death of his mother. The role was played by a six-year-old Noah Hathaway, who is best known for his starring role in 1984’s The Neverending Story as Atreyu.

  RICHARD HATCH

  They weren’t so sure they wanted to keep Apollo with a son. I asked if we could, because these shows tended to lean very heavily sometimes on the action and I wanted to be able to play more dramatic scenes that would allow for some sensitivity. I knew that having a child would allow me to play some meaningful dramatic scenes. Glen Larson was very insightful in keeping the child, because it allowed me to bring in a little more of the vulnerable side of my character. Captain Apollo had this stern, strict commanding presence, and I think that child really helped me to also show other dimensions to him.

  NOAH HATHAWAY

  (actor, “Boxey”)

  When I was three, I did a Pepsi commercial, which was my first job. I probably did ten to fifteen commercials up until I did Battlestar. I screen-tested for the part. It was just between me and one other kid.

  RICHARD HATCH

  We were a family in space and we didn’t make some kid the genius like they did in Galactica 1980, which fans hate. We let the kids be kids and they didn’t dominate the show.

  LAURETTE SPANG

  I babysat for Noah. I remember taking him to see Saturday Night Fever.

  Many years later, the actor visited his TV mom, Jane Seymour, on the set of her hit TV series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

  NOAH HATHAWAY

  I said, “I had the biggest crush on you; you were so beautiful!” She blushed.

  And, of course, equally memorable was Boxey’s companion, Muffit II, the daggit, a robotic dog created by Dr. Wilker at the behest of Apollo to replace Boxey’s beloved puppy, killed during the Cylon attack on Caprica.

  SCOTT MANTZ

  When I watch the original “Saga of a Star World,” and the Cylons are attacking Caprica, and Boxey is running and Muffit, his daggit, is killed by the building falling on top of him, that scene still upsets me to this day. It’s like, you can watch people get killed left and right on Caprica, but that stuff happens to the dog and it’s upsetting.

  For the mechanical daggit, John Dykstra recruited animal trainer Boone Narr to help bring Muffit to life, using a chimpanzee inside the suit married to the sound design of Peter Berkos.

  BOONE NARR

  (animal trainer, Battlestar Galactica)

  Originally they wanted a dog to put in that suit, but we felt that a dog wouldn’t have the flexibility to do the stuff we needed to do, and we wanted it to be as comfortable as possible. Besides, the chimp liked dressing up anyway, so it just worked out.

  SCOTT MANTZ

  This was just a year after they put a man in a little tin can to be R2-D2, but they really went to another level here, putting a monkey in a suit to be a mechanical daggit. I remember watching it for the first time when Dr. Wilker brings out Muffit II. It’s this mechanical dog, and the mechanical barking sound. Muffit was actually a really great character. In “Fire in Space,” he saved everybody.

  BOONE NARR

  The suit was lightweight and ventilated and made to look like metal but it wasn’t, and the mouth was remote-controlled, radio-operated so you could move the mouth up and down, and then the tail was on a spring, which gave it a little more movement when she walked. We taught her a lot of doglike behaviors.

  There were two we used, Doc and Evie. Doc was the male but she did the majority of it. Doc was her backup. He liked it and was pretty outgoing. In fact, he was much more outgoing than she was. She was pretty laid-back and he was full of piss and vinegar. He loved running and jumping and climbing in that suit. She loved just hanging out, so we alternated to do the different scenes we had to do.

  CHRISTIAN I. NYBY II

  (director, “Fire in Space”)

  It was a lot fun to film, because you were never sure how the chimp would react
. I did one where there was a big fire on the battlestar Galactica, and I remember we had the daggit in an elevator coming down with Boxey or something like that, so we started to smoke up and had the fire effects and closed up the elevator doors and cut the slate and everything, and the special effects man opened up the doors and the only thing that was there was the daggit’s head. He had taken off and was in the rafters of the stage.

  HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.

  When we were shooting “Fire in Space,” there was a scene where we have to send the daggit through the air-conditioning ducts to retrieve breathing gear for the impending explosion. I am supposed to take it away and cut the bag and pass out the breathing gear to the crew. But what you have to do to get the chimp accustomed to it is you have to let her play with it for a while so she’ll drag it; that way it becomes hers. So on action we now have the chimp pull the bags through the air duct and pull them out and I run over to get them. Well, have you ever tried to take a toy away from a two-year-old? “No, no, mine, mine.” The daggit went at me. It’s got this whole suit on now with the ears going round and round and the mouth which is being run remotely. But inside there is one ticked-off chimp. The thing is standing on two legs and swinging and trying to kick and take it away from me. Finally, we had to cut. So what we had to do was Boone came over and took off her helmet and put this fistful of grapes in her mouth to shut her up and pulled the helmet back on and then she’d go back to work.

  GLEN A. LARSON

  She never did learn her lines. For me to watch that and realize there is a little chimpanzee inside that suit and running around. That was great fun. I don’t think she got enough credit.

  BOONE NARR

  Evie liked Noah a lot. He used to come and spend the weekends with us out at our ranch. I remember when Noah first came out, our little star kid, I made him clean up behind the elephants one day. My son was out there and he was doing it and at the time my son was visiting from back East, so that was the first thing he said to his mom when I took him back on Monday to the show: “He made me shovel elephant poop.” They had a really good rapport and they really got along and that was why I made sure Noah spent a lot of time with the chimp, so they would have a good rapport.