I had to choose which props I wanted, the new series or the original. They didn’t have to finish the sentence, I’m like “I want the classic Galactica.” And sure enough, that’s what we got. To me it all came full circle, to be able to get to direct this episode, this second-to-last one, and to have the Galactica in there and just wrap it up. I have the Galactica from the show and Rainn Wilson signed it to me. It says, “Galactica loves you, Rainn Wilson—Dwight.” And it’s hanging up now in my apartment.
DAVID LARSON
I’m sure the cancellation was extremely upsetting. He was always, always writing, always taking meetings, always selling. Until the late eighties, early nineties he was just constantly selling, constantly working, and then you get to a certain point where the calls stop coming in, and they’re not buying pilots anymore. That was really hard for him. Every once in a while he would get something like One West Waikiki, P.S.I. Luv U, Night Man, that seemed to come out of nowhere, right at the right time.
I’m sure he was affected by things, but I’ve never asked him what he thought about what Harlan Ellison said about the show. I’m not sure that he would have cared. I think he knew what he wanted to make. He was very proud of the things that he did. He did not let other people’s opinions sway him. I had a very contentious relationship with him at times. We would argue. He would throw things across the restaurant. I was very strong-headed, and so was he. He did not like to lose an argument. He believed what he believed, and so I don’t think critics affected him. I think he wanted the respect of his peers, but if somebody called him out on something, he was just doing what he was doing, and that’s who he was. My father could have done a lot with CGI back in the day. He would have gone crazy with it, but they had such a small budget, you kept seeing the same spaceships exploding. Watching it now, that’s one of the things that sticks out in your head, didn’t I just see that shot five seconds earlier? What he could have done now would have been unbelievable.
TERRENCE MCDONNELL
There were so many stories to tell and so much more we could give them.
DAVID ROGERS
Seinfeld was a situation where they did the pilot and got picked up for four episodes after that and then the network said let’s do thirteen and the next thing you know it runs for seven years and is a hit. The Office, same thing. We did six episodes season one, we got picked up for another six, it went to thirteen. Something caught on and then the show runs for nine seasons. Everything about Galactica—the writing, the directing, the chemistry between the actors, their skill, their talent, the realism, and how much they believed and put into it—was so amazing. The only people who were shortsighted were the network executives, because this show should have run five, six, seven seasons. Today that’s what would happen, with merchandising, with toys you figure out how to subsidize, with Netflix and everything. I wish we were talking about season five of Galactica.
DAVID LARSON
I was very proud of it, because I watched his shows. It was kind of cool that my dad’s shows were some of my favorite shows. I loved Battlestar, even though I watched it being made and was only five years old. I think walking through those sets started my love of science fiction, seeing it all come together.
GLEN OLIVER
(pop-culture commentator)
Another part of its legacy is a bit more circuitous, but also more tangible. Without the original Battlestar, Ron Moore and David Eick’s Galactica would have never have been conceived of. That series laid the groundwork for bolder, tougher, grittier, more mature narrative shifts throughout the genre … and on TV in general … that we’re still enjoying today in shows like Game of Thrones and Westworld. If you can accept that the remade Galactica series resonated in this way, and I think there are strong arguments to support this notion, then one could legitimately view the original series as the Sarah Connor of modern genre television.
JAMIE BAMBER
It was escapism, it was fun, and it was heroes fighting against bad guys in space. For me, it was part of Star Wars; part of my early experience of viewing adventure. So it was purely that. Obviously, I left that in my childhood, and the surprise I felt when I heard there would be a new version was more like, “Why would you make that now when television and tastes and things have moved on?” But obviously I didn’t realize what Ron Moore intended to do.
AARON DOUGLAS
(actor, “Chief Tyrol,” Battlestar Galactica [2004])
I was seven or eight and I thought the original Battlestar Galactica was great. It was like Star Wars on TV every week. Spaceships and Cylons whose voices are cool and all of that. It was just so campy, but at that age you don’t realize just how campy and goofy it is. You look back on it now, and you have those nostalgic little things, but other than that, you go, “Man, this is really bad.” Having said that, you couldn’t do our Battlestar Galactica in 1995, let alone 1978. No way. It wasn’t until The Sopranos or The Wire came along that you could get away with some of the things that Ron Moore and David Eick ended up doing in the show.
GLEN OLIVER
There’s an argument to be made that the functional “legacy” of the original Battlestar Galactica series is relatively negligible. Many people make fun of the show, many people dismiss it or deride it entirely. In my personal experience, they’re often doing so without having actually seen much of—or any of—the series. They’re attacking based on preconceptions—without understanding what it actually was, and how it worked on the whole. Even its own remake eschewed many of the tenets which vividly defined the original series.
So, on the one hand, the original series, which does have a loyal fan base, by the way, brings with it a cloud of preconception which, in the eyes of many, relegates it to the status of being a kitschy, and often bludgeoned, footnote from the Star Wars era.
On the other hand, the series has endured. It is still known—still in demand.
Fans are spending immense quantities of time and resources fabricating gargantuan and extremely impressive ship replicas. Costumes are available. Soundtracks are being issued. Vintage Galactica props still cycle through auctions and online sales. A rather nice Blu-ray set was issued. Despite the stink brought upon the franchise by Galactica 1980, and despite the retrospective drubbing the show often receives, Galactica has comfortably evaded obscurity. And, sometimes, this in itself is a triumph.
This was the case even before Moore and Eick brought it back in 2004. Considering how many other shows have emerged, and been consigned to the ether, to be completely forgotten and never again resurrected or spoken of? That we’re still talking about Battlestar today is a miracle of considerable proportions.
GLEN A. LARSON
In some ways I still think of Galactica as a success even though it didn’t enjoy years on the air. We managed to accomplish a great deal; it was just unfortunate they wouldn’t let us do more. It’s like the Jack Kennedy of television shows—we didn’t know what would have happened if we had been allowed to live.
9.
I HATE THE EIGHTIES
“You must have us confused with somebody else. My name’s not Turkey, and neither is his.”
With a respectable theatrical take at the box office for the 1979 release of the pilot telefilm and interest in Battlestar Galactica merchandising continuing unabated, it’s not a surprise that ABC reconsidered their rash decision to sideline the series. What was a surprise was the decision to instead bring it back with a new cast, a new premise, and a diminished budget in one of the most ill-advised spin-offs in television history. Premiering on January 27, 1980, Galactica 1980 told the story of the battlestar Galactica’s arrival at Earth, retooled for a younger audience and utilizing a myriad of recycled props from the original series, extensive stock footage for space battles, and an almost entirely new cast of characters while telling a considerably earthbound fish-out-of-water story (which was handled far more adeptly by Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home several years later) with slapstick comedy, heavy-handed indictments o
f prejudice and pollution, and, in one case, a sci-fi-infused version of The Bad News Bears.
STEVEN SIMAK
(journalist, Battlestar Galactica historian)
After a series is canceled, it’s standard practice for producers to shop the property around to other networks—usually with little success. In the case of Battlestar Galactica, Glen Larson decided on a course of action he had never taken before. In a letter to all three networks, Larson called for a television movie continuing the saga of the Colonial fleet.
GLEN A. LARSON
(creator/executive producer, Galactica 1980)
I had written a letter right after the cancellation. I said for all the effort and for all the people and the manpower and the accomplishments and the accolades around the world, this was a shabby way to end something this magnificent. It was a letter that my boss at the studio said he’d wanted to write all his life. I got an immediate response from everybody at ABC, especially at the top end. They said, “You are absolutely right, this was not the way to do it,” and they wanted to do a two-hour special. Of course, as soon as we put it together, it validated everything we wanted to do. I wish I had quit there and we hadn’t done the rest of them.
RICHARD HATCH
(actor, “Captain Apollo”)
I could never believe that with the phenomenal potential and such incredible publicity and signature name value that they threw it away. Then they came back a year later, when they realized they did make a mistake, but decided to make Galactica 1980 and ruined the whole story that everybody loved; which tells me that networks don’t get it—they don’t understand what fans love about a show.
DAVID L. SNYDER
(swing art director, Galactica 1980)
I was there when Battlestar Galactica was canceled and the permanent sets struck and demolished then dumped in the Barham Boulevard landfill on the backlot. Ooops. Then it was alleged that ABC had changed its mind and called Glen Larson to renew and pick up the series. When it was discovered that some key sets had been destroyed, Glen came up with the brilliant idea to have the next season of the series set in the present, 1980, and time-jump, back and forth.
HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.
(actor, “Colonel Boomer”)
By the time we got to Galactica 1980, most of the sets had been cut up, and if you look really closely at Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, you’ll see a lot of their sets are Galactica sets that had been repainted.
GLEN A. LARSON
The revival of Galactica 1980 gave us a small measure of satisfaction. It was the network somewhat admitting they were wrong. Unfortunately, it was a very small reward, but it was something. There was quite a feeling of disappointment and failure when the show was canceled. Afterward, I tried to take time with those that were involved to think about it a little bit. I realized that you tend to say, “Okay if we’re off then we did fail,” without looking at the numbers and without really realizing that we did accomplish much of what we wanted to accomplish. We just didn’t make the cut. Ordinarily, on any other network I think we would have. You don’t like to blame yourself but you do wonder what you might have done differently.
RONALD D. MOORE
(cocreator/executive producer, Battlestar Galactica [2004])
I was bummed. There was no science fiction left on TV anymore. Space: 1999 had come and gone at that point, so there was really nothing else out there. I watched Galactica 1980 and remember just hating it. I was going, “Oh my God, this is so completely misconceived.” I knew right away it was a failure. Terrible.
With the exception of Lorne Greene and an occasional appearance by Herbert Jefferson, Jr., as newly promoted Colonel Boomer, none of the original cast returned. Apollo and Starbuck were replaced by new fighter pilots Troy (Adam-12’s Kent McCord) and Dillon (Barry Van Dyke). The real stars of the show, however, were the Super Scouts—the superpowered children of the Galactica—who were featured prominently in several episodes.
Promoted heavily by ABC with misleading footage of Cylon Raiders attacking Los Angeles, Galactica 1980 appeared to be a continuation of the original in which a contemporary Earth finds itself on the front lines in a war with the Cylons. In reality, the series was designed to appeal strictly to children.
HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.
I kept hoping that Galactica 1980 would get better as we went along, but it didn’t.
MICHAEL SLOAN
(producer, Battlestar Galactica)
It was a valiant attempt, but it wasn’t the same show and, to be fair to Glen, ABC didn’t want it to be the same show. They wanted it to be different and they pushed it in a direction which I didn’t feel was a direction the show should go.
MARC GUGGENHEIM
(cocreator/executive producer, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow)
When you’re nine years old, time moves slower than it does now. In the version in my memory, Galactica was canceled, there wasn’t going be any more Galactica, and suddenly there’s this commercial. Not only is there going to be more Battlestar Galactica—but they’re going to find Earth. This is amazing. It’s going to be incredible. In the commercial the Cylons attack Earth and it looked like it was going to be the greatest thing ever.
SCOTT MANTZ
(film critic, Access Hollywood)
Before it premiered, they aired these commercials for Galactica 1980, which showed Cylons attacking downtown Los Angeles and a Cylon fighter firing on the Cinerama Dome. Turns out that was just a what-if scenario. Right from the first episode, I was crushed. This show was nothing like the Galactica that I loved. I was old enough to know that it felt like a kiddie show, which is what it was.
MARC GUGGENHEIM
Even at ten years old, I came to the slow realization this is not what I was expecting. By the time we get to the Super Scouts playing baseball, I just surrendered. It didn’t match anything that was in my head when I first saw that commercial where I imagined all these great things I was going to get to see—and didn’t.
DAVID STIPES
(visual effects artist, Galactica 1980)
There were some things that we just couldn’t do, because we didn’t have enough time to do them and we didn’t have enough resources to make them happen. But sometimes there was something really spectacular that we got to do. That attack on Earth, the Cylons firing on Hollywood Boulevard, was one of those little things. That was pretty cool.
RONALD D. MOORE
It just felt cheap and it felt half-baked. I remember specifically when they were promoting Galactica 1980 they showed you the Cylons attacking Los Angeles and flying down Hollywood Boulevard and blowing up buildings and cars and the Cylons attacking Earth. That was the promotion and you’re like, “Whoa.” So then you watch it and that whole sequence turns out to be a computer simulation of what would happen if the Cylons ever attacked Earth. That is so lame and such a fucking lie. It just pissed you off. It was such a bait and switch.
DAVID STIPES
My favorite thing about the Cylon Hollywood attack is that they had a bunch of extras … I guess they told the extras to show up in street clothes, and there was one lady who, I think, had a really big yellow hat on. She was running across the street as the Cylons are supposedly strafing the street and everybody is yelling, running back and forth. They’d run them across the street and then the assistant director would turn them around and run them back. So you see this lady run back and forth. That was really funny. I guess they didn’t bother to tell the extras where the spark squibs were on the street because you’ll see these people running and just as they’re running, they’re leaping, taking a big long step in their run, because these squibs were going off right under them. We’re all just going like, “Oh my goodness,” because we’re filming this and are watching these people getting shocked and are thinking they should have known where the squibs were. They’re all just screaming and all of a sudden these long strips of spark hits go off and are running down the street, right under this crowd.
DAVID LARS
ON
(son of Glen Larson)
Finding Earth was the worst thing that they could have done. It’s like Lost if you figured out they were all dead at the end of the first season. I refused to watch that show for years.
Among those new to Galactica behind the camera was series producer Jeff Freilich, who, along with Frank Lupo (Hunter, Walker, Texas Ranger), oversaw script development. Freilich, like many a Galactica alum, was a veteran of NBC’s Quincy and CBS’s The Incredible Hulk, both popular Universal Television series. Freilich has had a long and successful career in television since and remains active in producing TV today as an executive producer on AMC’s Lodge 49, following on the heels of producing the eighties-set Halt and Catch Fire for the network.
JEFF FREILICH
(producer, Galactica 1980)
I was under contract at Universal and had worked on Quincy, Mrs. Columbo, Baretta, and The Incredible Hulk. In those days, it was a lot closer to what we knew as the studio system for actors, where they would simply transplant you from one project to another at their whim and it didn’t matter if it was something you were interested in doing or not. In my case, they never asked me to do something that I wasn’t interested in doing. I got to go from police procedurals to science fiction, fantasy shows, and medical procedurals, which I liked because I’d gone through medical school at USC years before.
I was told that Glen Larson was really interested in me for a new show called Galactica 1980. I had never actually watched Battlestar Galactica, but I knew that it was loosely borrowed from Star Wars. I was a big fan of that and I liked sci-fi and Glen Larson to me was the godfather of television. He had put more shows on the air than anybody that I’d ever heard of. There were various stories about him as a person. I never choose to believe anything I hear from anybody until I experience it.
So Say We All Page 23