So Say We All

by Mark A. Altman

  But I knew that the guy had to have an incredible imagination. I had already worked on a show he had created, which was Quincy. I watched other shows of his. They were always clever and entertaining and smart. Sometimes they were very transparently lifted from other material. I knew he had a nickname of “Glen Larceny.” On the other hand, I went and met him and he said, “You worked for Kenny Johnson [on The Incredible Hulk].” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, now I want you to come and work with me.” And we became very quick friends.

  The story editors for the show were the writing team of Allan Cole and Chris Bunch, who had vociferously demanded not to be hired on the show. Despite their misgivings, the writers, who were a staple of Universal Television shows of the era, were brought aboard by Freilich and Frank Lupo on Galactica 1980, as they were under contract to the studio and had little say in the matter when the studio’s chief of production, Peter Thompson, insisted they take the gig if they wanted to continue to find employment at the studio.

  JEFF FREILICH

  Bunch and Cole were anomalies in the television business. Chris Bunch had been the highest-decorated noncommissioned officer in the army during the Vietnam War. He was a sergeant, who grew increasingly more antiwar the longer he served. He came back and was put on The Joe Pyne Show, who was a right-wing talk-show host on television, and began to tear the war apart, to Joe Pyne’s complete embarrassment. Chris had been a Hells Angel and went on to be an editor of a biker magazine.

  Allan Cole was the child of a CIA intelligence operative who did a lot of traveling as a child. He wound up becoming the editor of the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. The two of them met in high school and wrote some science fiction books together and also wrote a pretty good book from both sides, the Vietnamese side and the American side, about the war in Vietnam.

  ALLAN COLE

  (story editor, Galactica 1980)

  Chris [Bunch] and I broke into the business at an ideal time. In late summer of 1979 we sold our first TV script for Quincy, and our first novel—book one of the eight-volume Sten series. We quit our jobs and dived right in and never looked back. It was a time when there were only three networks and most prime-time shows had orders for twenty-two episodes per season. Almost all of them were written by freelancers, perfect for two guys who wanted to carve out careers as novelists—not TV writers. Most of our fellow writers were after studio contracts—the typical term was for seven years—to work on staff. They’d try to negotiate deals for two scripts per season and a weekly salary. That meant there was lots and lots of work for hungry young freelancers, and in a short period of time we had written so many scripts for so many shows that we were old-timers even though we were just a few years into the business. Chris and I decided early on that we’d only take staff jobs when it was absolutely necessary. For example, because of our science fiction expertise we were greenmailed by the head of production at Universal into signing on as story editors at Galactica 1980. We thought the show was awful and wanted nothing to do with it. But it was either take the job, or get cut off from the Universal Studios episodic teat.

  JEFF FREILICH

  Alan Godfrey, who was the executive producer of Quincy, had brought them in for that show. He said, “I want to bring in these two crazy guys. You’ll love them.” And in they came; they were nuts. Allan was much more grounded than Chris. I liked them both. They were really off-the-wall guys who had unique ideas. And what I like the most about them was that they had a dedication to detail and reality, and had an incredibly vast bank of knowledge to draw from. They delighted in the research process, which is why [Chris] Trumbo and I both liked them. We immediately clicked with them and I think we hired them to do a couple of Quincys.

  When I arrived at Galactica 1980, we needed writers. There were a couple of writers Glen had suggested, but he basically said, “Bring in who you want who you can work with and who you think can do a good job.” So I introduced Frank Lupo to Bunch and Cole, who I knew had a love of science fiction and fantasy, and this amazing knowledge bank.

  ALLAN COLE

  Glen was shameless about ripping things off and making—mostly—successful TV series out of them. Galactica was a Star Wars rip-off. B.J. and the Bear, the Eastwood orangutan buddy movies, Every Which Way but Loose and its sequel, and a whole host of others. As for Galactica 1980, we were told that Glen didn’t want to do the show after the cancellation of Battlestar. But ABC kept throwing money at him and eventually he relented. Unfortunately, they put him next to 60 Minutes on Sunday night, which made it a kids’ show. If there was ever any chance of the show succeeding, that move alone doomed it. Making things worse was that Glen insisted on writing most of the episodes himself. And he was a terrible writer. He’d start a script and when he hit sixty pages he’d type “to be continued” and then write part two—all without outlines or notes.

  Also, Galactica 1980 existed in many ways for him to pay back favors to people. Friends were made producers, who didn’t even have to show up at work. ABC gave him a lot of money and he spent like a sailor. He even got a condo in Hawaii, where he’d run off to rest with a bevy of beauties. Then it’d be back to Malibu, with those same lovelies—and more. At least, that’s certainly how it looked to us and everybody else. Each week more producers’ names were added to the roster. Chris and I joked that entries kept getting pushed down and down and down by this big producer pile-on and that the writers’ names were now below the janitorial staff.

  JEFF FREILICH

  The problem that Chris and Allan had was similar to the problems that all of us had. Every time we thought we knew what the show was, either ABC or the studio was redefining it. Universal, in its fear of losing a show, would try to redirect it, and so Chris and Allan pitched to us stories that they thought were perfectly great, which in my mind were just too hard-core for that audience and that time slot, and they found themselves frustrated with it. They stayed on after I left, and it was good practice for them, because they had never really learned what it was like to rewrite other people’s stuff.

  Galactica 1980 abandoned the epic adventure of its predecessor in favor of cheap (or at least cheaper) gimmicks and simplistic action fare with an almost entirely new cast. And repeating the mistake made with the original series, ABC put “Galactica Discovers Earth” into production as a movie of the week only to decide midway through production to green-light a weekly series, which would leave virtually no time for script development, with the episodes being rushed into production and airing weeks after the three-part telefilm had debuted.

  In “Galactica Discovers Earth,” the Colonial fleet finds Earth in 1980 and learns that its technology is not at a sufficient state to protect them from the Cylons. As a result, Adama, in consultation with resident child genius (and genetic mutation) Dr. Zee, decides their best hope is to quickly advance the technology of Earth by working with the planet’s scientific community, led by Dr. Mortinson, played by The Brady Bunch’s Robert Reed. Matters are complicated when a rogue member of the Council of Twelve, Xaviar (originally written as Baltar in early script drafts), played by seventies überbaddie Richard Lynch, hijacks an experimental Viper and travels back in time to share their advanced technology with the Nazis. Why, of course, if the Galacticans can now go back in time thanks to Dr. Zee they didn’t return to Caprica and stop the Cylon sneak attack against humanity from happening in the first place is never broached.

  RICHARD HATCH

  They asked me if I wanted to do it and I read the script. I don’t know if they made a mistake, but the character names had already been changed to Dillon and Troy. I thought that if they are offering me this part, why are they already changing my name and Starbuck’s name? I thought that on some level, they had already moved on.

  DIRK BENEDICT

  (actor, “Lieutenant Starbuck”)

  I read the script. I didn’t want to do it and I couldn’t do it. If it had been Battlestar Galactica and they wanted to do that show again, of course, I would have done
it. But it was very cheap.

  GLEN A. LARSON

  It didn’t look like we were going to be able get Dirk. We might have been able to get Richard [Hatch] back. My impression was that we probably could have gotten a lot of the cast but maybe not all of it so, at that point, what we really should have done was change the entire cast and we were going to. The truth is that I got a call from Lorne Greene that broke my heart because it meant a lot to him to go back on the air. So I bit the bullet and put Lorne back on without the rest of them and that was a bad judgment call. I should have gone with a whole new group.

  JEFF FREILICH

  The first day I walked onto the set as the new writing producer of Galactica 1980, I met Lorne Greene. No one told me Lorne was hard of hearing. So I introduced myself. And he said, “Well, Fred, welcome.” And I said, “No, it’s Jeff.” He said, “Fred, let me talk to you about the show.” He called me Fred all day. Everything I said he misinterpreted. He couldn’t hear. A couple of weeks later, Glen Larson called me up and it was opening day at Dodgers Stadium. Glen had first-row seats behind the Dodger dugout. He knew that I liked baseball and said, “Do you want to come to the game with me and Lorne and Dirk Benedict?,” who was not on Galactica 1980, but who had remained friendly with Glen and was a big baseball fan.

  So the four of us go to the game. Lorne did not know baseball at all, was not a baseball fan. He thought [Dodgers manager] Tommy Lasorda was a player. Didn’t know what a ball versus a strike was. But the best part was somewhere in the middle of the game, a gaggle of children surrounded Lorne with their scorecards and asked for his autograph. And he was flattered and as he was signing these scorecards he says, “Bonanza?” And they went, “No.” And he said, “Galactica?” And they said, “No.” And he said, “What then?” They said, “Alpo.” The Alpo dog food commercial made Lorne Greene more famous than anything else he did.

  ROBBIE RIST

  (actor, “Dr. Zee”)

  It’s been my experience that the people that have been doing it the longest and have the least amount to prove largely tend to be the coolest people. Aside from being super pro and always nailing his shit, Lorne was super sweet and super nice, not just to me, but to everyone. It was the second time I worked with Robert Reed since The Brady Bunch and he was also a very sweet, wonderful man. It seems the people that I run into who are jerks are the ones who are on their first ride up or their first ride down.

  ROBYN DOUGLASS

  (actress, “Jamie Hamilton”)

  Lorne was a pro. Sometimes they had cue cards for him to read. No big deal. He’s entitled. He’s Hollywood royalty. But he and I clicked because he asked me some questions about my background. I’d lived in Chicago and done a lot of work with the Humane Society rescuing horses and he went on my board at the Humane Society. He was just A-plus in my book. He would never be grumpy. Always rock solid like you would expect from a professional like him.

  ALLAN COLE

  One day Lorne dropped by our office for a visit. We mixed him a drink, chatted awhile, and then he got directly to the point of his visit. Lorne said, “Boys, what the fuck are we going to do about this show?” He let this sink in and then went on: “The scripts are awful. The directing is awful. The acting is as good as it can be, under the circumstances. But we’re getting stinker lines that Lord Lawrence himself couldn’t rescue from the lavatory.” I flashed on our mentor, Al Godfrey, who’d once told us, “A good actor can make a shitty script better. But it’ll still smell like shit.”

  HERBERT JEFFERSON, JR.

  Of course every actor loves to work, I was happy to be pulling in a paycheck, but at the same time I missed my team. I missed that quality of work in front of and behind the camera. It was a true family.

  BARRY VAN DYKE

  (actor, “Dillon”)

  Kent [McCord] and I both tested for the original Galactica. Universal wanted one combination and ABC wanted a different combination. Kent and I lost out, they took Richard and Dirk. It was right on the tail of Star Wars being a huge hit and I said, “I don’t get it, I don’t want to do something like that.” But they sent me the script and it was so good and then I met with Glen Larson and saw the sets and it was just mind-boggling. It was like a huge feature, not a TV show. I was like “Oh man, do I wanna do this!” So when they hired Dirk and Richard I was quite disappointed.

  They called me back in for Galactica 1980 and made an offer and they cast another actor I had read with as Troy and said, “Okay, we want you guys for wardrobe.” This was only a few days before it was going to start. I came back from wardrobe and the other actor was gone. I said, “Well, what’s going on?” They said, “It’s not going to work.” I guess they saw us together and someone didn’t like it and they called Kent [McCord] right away. Kent got the offer on a Saturday and we went to work on a Monday. I remember Kent called me Sunday night and introduced himself on the phone and I really liked him right away and we started work Monday.

  Playing the role of the enigmatic Dr. Zee, a brilliant child prodigy in the pilot (albeit dubbed), was The Brady Bunch’s Cousin Oliver, Robbie Rist, who today is a successful musician. Rist was replaced in subsequent episodes by another child actor, James Patrick Stuart, who continues to work today as an actor on General Hospital as well as the voice of intergalactic bounty hunter Dengar on Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures for Disney XD.

  ALLAN COLE

  Zee was a Larson creation to satisfy the FCC’s children’s hour dictates. The character was supposed to be a child in body and age, but very wise, very adult, but with really, really long sideburns. A disco-era hairstyle on steroids. Zee was played by a twelve-year-old named James Patrick Stuart. He was a nice kid. His father was Chad Stuart, of the sixties pop group Chad and Jeremy. His mother, Jill Gibson, collaborated on most of the group’s albums. We all assumed the kid had the part because his dad was a friend of Glen Larson from his days in the music business. The kid’s voice was starting to change, so it cracked at every other syllable. When he said “Adama,” for example, it came out “ah-Dam!-ah.” Low at the start, cracking high in the middle, back to low at the end. Making things worse, he was plainly terrified.

  Another addition to the new cast was Robyn Douglass, a veteran of director Peter Yates’s critically acclaimed film Breaking Away, playing Jamie Hamilton, a nosy reporter who inadvertently learns about the existence of the Galactica in orbit and becomes an important ally to the Colonials as they navigate the strange, mystifying world of twentieth-century Earth.

  ROBYN DOUGLASS

  I was really a novice, so this is all wide-eyed and I was naïve. It’s my first television series. I had only done the pilot of Tenspeed and Brownshoe and The Clone Master, which is probably why they saw me in the venue of the whole sci-fi thing. Frankly, I was thrilled to get the show, but I lived in Chicago, where I had bought a house, so I thought I would just commute. That’s how naïve I was.

  MARC GUGGENHEIM

  I love Jamie Hamilton. I really loved that character. She had a nobility to her and an idealism and she was really funny.

  ROBBIE RIST

  I had a crush on her. She was cute and I was sixteen, but there was no way I’d be like “So Robyn Douglass, ever want to have sex with Paul Williams? Got any weird John Denver fantasies?”

  ROBYN DOUGLASS

  Barry [Van Dyke] and Kent [McCord] were delightful on the initial show. So, that didn’t give me any alarm. But later, it turned out sort of to be the agony and the ecstasy of doing the show. Barry was real sweet and terribly funny because he does these pratfalls, just like his dad [Dick Van Dyke]. He’s got no phoniness. Very genuine. Very generous actor. I considered him Hollywood royalty on account of his dad. He was wonderful all throughout the show. Then, after the series got green-lit, Kent McCord was different. He would hide my props before a scene and I would mess up my take and he would criticize me for not paying attention to my key light.

  BARRY VAN DYKE

  Kent was the consummate professional a
nd a super nice guy, but very set in his ways. He had his ideas of how to work, and Robyn was more like a method actor. She really thought about the characters, what her motivation was. Kent kind of thought that was bullshit. She would get mad because she would really, really rehearse and lock in to what she was going to do and sometimes when you get on the stage, it’s different. He didn’t have a lot of patience for people like that. I remember them butting heads. There was just friction from the beginning. They were just different types that approached their work differently. I get along with everyone, so I didn’t care.

  If everyone says their lines and it looks good, all right, it was time to move on. As an actor she felt, “I can do better, I can always do better. I need another one.” If it was a scene with Kent, he was done. “You can have another take, but you’ll have to do it by yourself.”

  ROBYN DOUGLASS

  Kent’s jokes on the set caused pain with me. I just thought, “If this goes on for year after year after year, I’ll be in therapy just on account of this relationship.” I tried to stay away from Kent. I just didn’t understand where he was coming from. I think he thought, “We don’t need the girl. We’ve got the two guys, we’ve got the ship, we’ve got the adventure with just us—what do we need this girl for? Jamie Hamilton, the Earth reporter that bails us out,” right?

  Happens all the time, with big movie stars in big scenes. But anyway, it was good to get a huge taste of reality up front, because in some ways, it toughened me up for the rest of the road.

  ALLAN COLE

  (story editor, Galactica 1980)

  She was treated horribly on the show. Larson never could figure out what to do with her character. We used her in our “Earthquake” script, but it was never shot. We had a second script guarantee and that would have offered her some meat. But nobody ever even saw the outline. They just paid us for both shows and that was that. We resented it, of course. But our recourse was to work on our first Sten novel.