ALLAN COLE
“We’re having a little party at my office,” Freilich told us. “A wake, really. To say good-bye to the other people on the show. Come on over and drink a little champagne with us.” Chris got out the Metaxa and we had a couple of shots of that fiery Greek cognac, then headed for the wake. Lorne was there. I’m pretty sure Kent McCord and Robyn Douglass were as well. They’d been in the middle of filming an episode titled “The Day They Kidnapped Cleopatra” when word came down to not only cut, but to cut forever.
ROBYN DOUGLASS
I was doing a scene in that episode and I fumbled it like a dozen times. I couldn’t get the words right. Whatever it was, it was one of the worst days and I was really stressing and they had to do take after take after take. Right after another flub, someone said, “We’re stopping the show.” I burst into tears, thinking it was all my fault and that I will be immediately fired and they were stopping the show because I couldn’t get it right and it was all my fault. I was inconsolable. I went immediately to the makeup person because I could not stop crying. I didn’t want to do that with the whole cast and everybody seeing me. It could easily have been misinterpreted as “They’re canceling the show and Robyn’s very upset that they’re canceling the show.” They had no idea that, in my mind, I thought it was all because of me.
ALLAN COLE
Lorne greeted us with a wide smile. “We gave it our best, boys,” he said. “Pity we didn’t have more support from on high.” Someone else muttered, “It was that fucking Susan Futterman’s fault.” Well, maybe our network censor was a little at fault … but only a little. The show was simply a very bad idea, guided by a lousy producer/writer who insisted on writing all the episodes himself, believing all the while that his words were golden. As Mark Twain said, “Ignorance is like bad breath. You don’t know you have it.”
The party ended almost as soon as it began. When we took our leave, Lorne slapped our backs and said, “Cheer up, boys. Maybe we’ll get a chance to work together again.” We worked with him again a couple of years later on Irwin Allen’s fireman show, Code Red.
JEFF FREILICH
I think that the problem with Galactica 1980 was, in part, because of the restrictions of family hour. Some of the stories that people wanted to tell, like Bob McCullough or Bunch and Cole, all wanted to go darker, more action and emphasize the war between the Cylons and the Galacticans, and deemphasize the kids because nobody knew what to do with the kids when you got into a threatening situation in the story. You couldn’t put the kids in danger. You couldn’t have them fight. All you can have them do is clever things based on their knowledge of technology. It was like Home Alone on a weekly basis. Whereas what you really wanted to do was all the things that you could do in Star Wars, which is to get into a ship and blow other people out of the sky.
ROBYN DOUGLASS
Galactica 1980 had a little bit of momentum, but it never got all of its ducks in alignment. Like with a lot of sci-fi shows, it really tapped into the universal dreams of humans to be the hero and stop the evil person with nonlethal means, because of the nature of the audience we had. So, it was great. There’s no blood and guts on our show. How odd for today’s world. It wouldn’t fly.
But back then, how great that you could stop evil people without killing them. I think that’s in the dream of humans. To fly, obviously, is in all of our dreams, and to have those special abilities that the Galactica children had. And to travel back in time, to fix the past so that you could have a better outcome for the present. Who doesn’t have that dream while we have Trump? There are a lot of people in this country who would like to go back in time and fix this mess.
ROBBIE RIST
What I learned at seven years old was don’t be too attached. When the Battlestar Galactica job goes away after I was recast, there’s a moment of “Aw, it sucks,” but ultimately in entertainment, there’s always disappointment. Like my-girlfriend-has-had-sex-with-someone-else disappointment. I actually just did a low-budget movie with Barry Van Dyke last year, and now I’m wondering if I brought it up to him that we worked together before. I don’t think I did. I don’t think he remembered. He’s got a real career, why would he remember me?
GLEN OLIVER
Galactica 1980 is bad news. Like Ned-Beatty-meeting-the-hillbillies-in-Deliverance bad news. Having recently rewatched both series in quick succession, I can say that the contrast between them is shocking, bewildering, and more than a little depressing. 1980 is far more than a retooled series concept. It feels like a cheesy spin-off nobody really wanted, yet somehow it made it through a nearly impossible network gauntlet, only to be shitcanned unceremoniously several episodes in. Galactica 1980 was the Joanie Loves Chachi of science fiction television.
STU PHILLIPS
The thing about Battlestar Galactica originally was that it had no time period. It could have been the year 1000 or 3000. That allowed you so much latitude to do things, because you’re not locked into a particular period of time. Nobody knew when these people were in those ships looking for Earth. Now you take it and you call it Galactica 1980 and you’ve locked these people in a particular time period and I think that the mysticism and magic of everything that was going on suddenly got lost.
GLEN OLIVER
There’s so very much wrong with this series, not the least of which was it was barely recognizable as Galactica. The series’ reorchestrated, downgraded score was painful, accentuated by “hipper,” modern music, which today reads as stereotyped and kitschy compared to the original series’ score. Stories were utterly devoid of gravity, and were generally geriatric in their urgency. There was a timelessness to the approach of the original series—while 1980 was very much a product of its time, and came across as much less mythic. It felt this way from the outset. The death blow here was that show was just plain dull.
Other episodes developed but never made for the series include a bullfighting script by Chris Trumbo, former writing partner of Jeff Freilich and the son of Dalton Trumbo—screenwriter of Spartacus among other classics—who was blacklisted by HUAC in the 1950s. Another episode would have featured Troy and Dillon going back in time to the Trojan War to stop Xaviar from altering the past. In “The Money Machine,” Troy and Dillon would have used their ability to counterfeit money to help a precocious band of orphans. Cole and Bunch’s “Earthquake” script presaged fracking (the process of extricating oil and gas using high-pressure liquid, not the Galactican expletive) by two decades. And what would a 1980s TV series be without the requisite biker episode? In a script by Richard Christian Matheson and Tom Szolossi, Troy and Dillon would have mixed it up with a band of bad-guy bikers.
RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON
(story editor, Quincy, M.E.)
Tom and I were under a seven-year term deal at Universal, assigned as staff writers to different series, as needed. Those included Cliffhangers, The Incredible Hulk, Quincy, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, B.J. and the Bear, Simon & Simon, and Galactica 1980.
As to Galactica, we were assigned to write for the show. We knew about Glen Larson, who was a major TV producer on the Universal lot along with Stephen J. Cannell, Steven Bochco, and Levinson and Link. Tom and I were the head writers of Quincy right after Cliffhangers. I was twenty-one and Tom was twenty-three. It was very exciting and Quincy was a prestigious show; for a couple of punks like us to be the head writers was a big deal. Even then, we had never met Glen and were essentially hired by Donald Bellisario, who was the executive producer of Quincy at the time. He heard about us, around the lot, I suppose. Anyway, we met with Don and hit it off and he liked our writing and hired us. We met the great Stephen J. Cannell in our Quincy offices and he offered us an assignment on his show Stone—but we didn’t meet Glen until we were writing for Lobo, as I recall it.
ALLAN COLE
Trumbo was a good friend, who edited our first sale on television, Quincy. The late Chris Trumbo was the son of Dalton Trumbo, one of the most famous of the blacklisted write
rs. Famously, Kirk Douglas demanded that he get screen credit for Spartacus. Chris had a strange life on the lam with his father, who was being chased by the FBI, and then as the son of that guy in prison for being a dirty communist. Chris was a wonderful writer in his own right. He basically wrote the movie Papillon on location in the jungle while his father was going through alcoholic tremors.
They pitched a biker story. Now, [my partner] Chris [Bunch] was an expert on bikes and bikers. He once had a public-relations contract to represent the Hells Angels. It was a good story that did a good job dodging most of the many logic problems inherent in the series. But they had to sit there patiently taking copious notes while Chris nitpicked motorcycle and gang-behavior detail. We had great fun with Richard and Tom. First off, they were our very friendly rivals. When freelancing, we pitched—and sold—the same shows they did. Later, we were on the other side of the desk at The A-Team pitching them.
RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON
My best memories were meeting the amazing Frank Lupo, who’d just been hired as story editor and then producer [for Galactica 1980]. His gift for story was remarkable. I liked him right off and I remember the two of us, at the advanced ages of around twenty-one, walking around the Universal lot and talking about a million things together. We struck up a friendship that has lasted a lifetime, and I suspect it was Frank who really got us in as story editors when Steve [Cannell] started Stephen J. Cannell Productions, since we’d be working with Frank, up close, on The A-Team.
We loved Steve, and over the years he became one of my dearest friends. While on The A-Team, I do recall, while walking to the set, often being mistaken for Dirk [Benedict], since, at the time, we kind of resembled one another. I might have even signed his autograph, once or twice, for someone who thought I was him. Working with Dirk was a blast. He had a winning knack for light comedy.
GLEN OLIVER
The most interesting of the episodes involved the use of time travel to reengineer Earth’s history so that modern humanity would be better prepared to grapple with Cylons should they show up—a conceit which was originally to have driven 1980 if I understand correctly. But, by the end of 1980’s opening installment, even that concept felt muddy, sloppy, and inconsistent, and proceedings pretty much plummeted downhill from there.
JEFF FREILICH
The time-travel element was born out of an attempt to just extrapolate on the original Battlestar Galactica and also to make it different. Star Trek did it a lot. One of my favorite Star Treks was when Kirk and Spock go back in time to the thirties and make a decision about whether or not to kill Joan Collins. It was a great moral dilemma. How much do you want to change history without fucking everything up is basically what that story was about. Time travel was used in Star Trek very effectively. Glen just felt that when you launch a new incarnation of an old idea, which is what Galactica 1980 was, that you have the freedom to take it a step further. And what was the natural step further other than time travel because, for the most part, we were going to be stuck on Earth on that show. So we weren’t going to be able to fly through space that much. Space travel on that show was always a sidebar story, since it all took place on Earth. So I think the time travel was just a new toy.
ALLAN COLE
Glen just kept throwing shit at the wall to see what would stick. He sort-of-kind-of dropped the archvillain Xaviar, early on. Dropped the time-travel angle, only to revive it again for the last episode—“Cleopatra”—which was never finished.
Even with the series cancellation, Galactica continued to live on for another decade at Universal Studios with the two-minute-and-forty-five-second theme-park tour attraction, The Battle of Galactica, which opened on June 9, 1979, in which guests are attacked and taken aboard a Cylon basestar to be fed to the Ovions until a Colonial Warrior comes to the rescue and the tram escapes unscathed. The popular ride was featured briefly in the 1980 Get Smart movie, The Nude Bomb, for those who want to relive the, um, excitement. The attraction was closed permanently in 1992.
ROB KLEIN
Many of the original props for Battlestar Galactica were used for the Universal Studios tour tram attraction The Battle of Galactica. This impressive show featured a live actor portraying a Colonial Warrior. Initially the actors were able to use original Colonial wardrobe and Colonial pistols, but the original items eventually went missing as most of the wardrobe and props were taken home by employees.
Universal sold off their sci-fi wardrobe along with their Western costume collection in the early nineties to make room for rentable wardrobe. Among this sale was the wardrobe from the Back to the Future trilogy, The Wiz, Battlestar Galactica, Heartbeeps, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Reluctant Astronaut, Otherworld, Brave New World, and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island, to name a few. Sci-fi wardrobe does not usually rent too often, and Westerns were going out of favor, so Universal has little use for this type of wardrobe.
However, Universal’s wardrobe retained for some odd reason a few Warrior tunics and Warrior pants as well as most of all of the Earth Directorate dress jackets that Western Costumes made for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. The studio retained a six-foot rack of Warrior pants in the wardrobe department until 2005. According to one of the original founders of the Universal Archives Department, the studio eventually threw these pieces of Galactica history away, sending only one example of a Warrior tunic and a pair of Warrior pants to their archives. The studio didn’t even bother to go through the remaining wardrobe to save a star costume such as an Apollo or Starbuck. This oversight makes Warrior pants one of the rarest costume items to obtain today. What is someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure.
The model of the battlestar Galactica was sent to Universal Studios Florida in the late 1980s and was put into a storefront window for decoration. The sun and humidity caused severe damage to the model. The managers of Universal Florida had no idea of this miniature’s history or its value, and it was soon after conned out of the studio by a fast-talking opportunist. This fan restored the beloved battlestar and held on to it for many years. It was sold at auction with a few other miniatures made for Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in 2017 for one and a half million dollars.
As for the full-size Viper itself (which had been expanded for Galactica 1980 to accommodate a two-seat cockpit and a larger canopy, despite the fact that it didn’t match the copiously used stock footage from the original show), it also met a sad fate, back in the days when studios undervalued and quickly disposed of their iconic props following a series cancellation.
ROB KLEIN
Many rumors circulated for years after the show’s cancellation that the Viper still existed, but [former Battlestar Galactica grip] Mike Smith confirmed that the Viper was stripped and the metal frame was cut into pieces and scrapped. The rear engines of the Viper can be seen in the fourth-season Knight Rider episode “The Phantom of the Studio” on the back of a flatbed truck. No surprise, as Knight Rider was also a Glen Larson production.
Despite the revulsion many fans still feel over Galactica 1980, comic book writer and Arrow and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow cocreator and showrunner Marc Guggenheim wrote a revisionist version of the series for Dynamite Comics. In his version of events, Dr. Zee is a power-mad zealot intent on taking over Earth, Baltar craves immortality courtesy of the Cylons using cybernetic implants, and Adama lands the Galactica over the White House in an attempt to make first contact with President Jimmy Carter, who nukes the battlestar. To say things don’t go well would be an understatement.
MARC GUGGENHEIM
The Galactica 1980 comic book was basically just a brain dump of the stuff I thought I was going to get to see in the series with a slightly more adult, more mature point of view. Of course, if Galactica enters our solar system, the first thing they’re going to encounter is Voyager, which had just been launched two years before. It wouldn’t have even made it out of the solar system. You’re going to go, “Oh the people who made this are from the United
States of America. They’re the ones who have their shit together. We’re gonna go there.” Of course, if a massive ship were to show up over the White House, you’re not going to think aliens in 1980. You’re going to think it’s the Russians and you’re going to fight back.
A lot of my ideas come about from questions. I had a question, in the case of Galactica, which fueled the story, which is why does Baltar betray humanity? That’s kind of dumb unless there’s something in it for him. Well, what could possibly be in it for him? These are robots that don’t age, so I realized he wanted to be immortal. For me, it’s always about coming up with the answer to the question.
Also, I guess it’s the writer in me, but I always appreciated the biblical story of Moses not being able to enter the Promised Land. He’s the protagonist of the story, he leads the Jews to Israel, but isn’t allowed to enter it. That always struck a chord with me as a writer, and as a person. It made a lot of sense for me that Adama doesn’t get to the Promised Land. It’s part of the whole biblical inspiration that inspired Glen Larson, who worked a lot of religion into Galactica.
I thought I was not only being artsy-fartsy with it, but really was also writing in the style that quite frankly Glen Larson was writing in because there are these parallels between the situation with the Colonials and the people of Battlestar Galactica, their biblical forefathers. All these things sort of came together for me. That was a blast to write. Also, Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica had come out, and I wanted to use that approach to Galactica 1980. It was fun to be able to incorporate some little nods to Ron’s Battlestar, because it was so amazing. It also always bothered me as a ten-year-old that they were taking orders from Dr. Zee. I was ten years old when I watched it, and no one listened to me.
So Say We All Page 27