Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series)

This article is about the original television series; for other versions, see the main Battlestar Galactica page or Battlestar Galactica (disambiguation).

Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica intro
Created by	Glen A. Larson
Starring	Richard Hatch Dirk Benedict Lorne Greene John Colicos Maren Jensen Noah Hathaway Jane Seymour Herb Jefferson, Jr. Tony Swartz Laurette Spang Terry Carter Ed Begley, Jr. Rick Springfield Anne Lockhart David Greenan Sarah Rush
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	24 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	45 minutes per episode
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	September 17, 1978 – April 29, 1979
Related
Re-imagined Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction television series, produced in 1978 by Glen A. Larson and starring Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict. It lasted one season in 1978–1979, but books were written continuing stories. After cancellation, its story was continued in 1980 as Galactica 1980 with Adama, Lieutenant Boomer (now a colonel in the Colonial Service) and Boxey (now called Troy) being the only continuing characters.

A remake series Battlestar Galactica premiered in 2004 on the Sci-Fi Channel after the 2003 miniseries had been shown. Universal announced a feature film based on this version of the story with structural changes. This film is not a continuation of this 1978 series, but another remake, and separate from the 2004 TV series. Director Bryan Singer is attached to direct with production input from the series creator, Larson.

Narrations and theme music

The show begins with a narration, spoken by Patrick Macnee:

There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens. (The theatrical version of the pilot ends with "far far away amongst the stars".)

The short version of the narration, also spoken by Macnee:

There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens.

During the narration, the viewer sees scenes of nebulae and other celestial phenomena. Macnee provides the character voice of the Cylons' Imperious Leader throughout the series, and appears as Count Iblis in "War of the Gods", a two-part episode which originally aired in January 1979.

This is followed by images of the Galactica, the colonial fleet, and other scenes. The Battlestar Galactica theme plays prominently, an orchestral piece with an emphasis on brass instruments. It was written by Stu Phillips.

The show closes with narration by Lorne Greene:

Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a rag-tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest -- a shining planet, known as Earth.

Plot summary

Further information: Destruction of the Twelve Colonies

Humanity lived on twelve colony worlds in a distant star system. They fought a thousand-year war with the Cylons, warrior robots created by a reptilian race which expired long ago, presumably destroyed by their own creations. Having never been commanded to cease fire, these warrior robots waged war against the colonials. Mankind was defeated in a sneak attack on their homeworlds conceived by the Cylons, carried out with the help of Count Baltar (John Colicos). Protected by the last surviving warship, a "battlestar" (the word, presumably coined by Glen Larson, is short for the phrase "line-of-battle starship") called Galactica, the survivors fled in available ships. The Commander of the Galactica, Adama (Lorne Greene), led this "rag-tag fugitive fleet" of 220 ships in search of a new home on a legendary planet called Earth. The episodes dealt with the fleet's struggle to survive the Cylon threat and to find Earth.

The era in which this exodus took place is never clearly stated in the series itself. The implication of the final aired episode, "The Hand of God", was that the original series took place after the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969, almost certainly centuries later, allowing for the time necessary for the propagation at light-speed of television images of the landing to be received by the Galactica. In "Saga of a Star World" the President of the 12 Tribes states "as we approach the seventh millennium of time". The later Galactica 1980 series is expressly set in the 1980s.

(Question? Why did the author assume this took place AFTER Apollo 11 - the astronault finds Adama's jornal meaning that it happened far sooner - in fact implying they either merged with or even seeded Earth).

Pilot

The pilot to this series, the biggest budgeted ($7 million) pilot to that time, was released theatrically in Sensurround in The United States. It was also released theatrically in Canada, Western Europe and Japan in July 1978 in an edited 125-minute version. (See Saga of a Star World for information on the pilot).

On September 17, 1978, the uncut 148-minute pilot premiered on ABC to good Nielsen ratings. Two-thirds of the way through the broadcast, ABC interrupted with a special report of the signing of the Camp David Accords at the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, witnessed by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. After the ceremony, ABC resumed the broadcast at the point where it was interrupted. This interruption did not occur on the West Coast.

Lawsuit

In 1978, 20th Century Fox sued Universal Studios (producers of Battlestar Galactica) for plagiarism, copyright infringement, unfair competition, and Lanham Act claims, claiming it had stolen 34 distinct ideas from Star Wars. Universal promptly countersued, claiming Star Wars had stolen ideas from their 1972 film Silent Running (notably the robot "drones") and the Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s. 20th Century Fox's copyright claims were initially dismissed by the trial court, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit remanded the case for trial in 1983.

Ratings

Battlestar Galactica initially was a ratings success. CBS counter-programed by moving its Sunday block of All in the Family and Alice an hour earlier, to compete with Galactica in the 8:00 timeslot. From October to March All in the Family averaged more than 40 percent of the 8:00 audience, against Galactica's 27 or 28 percent.

In mid-April 1979, ABC executives canceled the show. An AP article reported, "The decision to bump the expensive Battlestar Galactica was not surprising. The series ... had been broadcast irregularly in recent weeks, attracting slightly over a quarter of the audience in its Sunday night time slot." Larson has claimed that it was a failed attempt by ABC to position its number one program Mork & Mindy into a more lucrative timeslot. (The ratings for Mork & Mindy plummeted far below what they had been for Battlestar Galactica.) The cancellation led to viewer outrage, protests outside ABC studios, and even contributed to the suicide of Edward Seidel, a 15-year-old boy in Saint Paul, Minnesota who was obsessed with the program.

Language

While primarily English, the Colonial language was written to include several fictional words that differentiated its culture from those of Earth, most notably time units and expletives. The words were roughly equivalent to their English counterparts, and the minor technical differences in meaning were suggestive to the viewer.

Distance and time units Colonial times were incompletely explained, but appear to have been primarily in a decimal format. Time units are millicenton (approximately equivalent to one second), centon (minute), centar (hour), cycle (day), secton (week), quatron (unknown, perhaps 1/4 yahren), sectar (month), yahren (Colonial year), centuron (Colonial century). Distance units were metron (meter), micron (possibly a kilometer but also sometimes confused with a unit of time), and parsec.

Expletives — frack (interjection), felgercarb (noun), golmonging (adjective)

Misc — daggit (Dog), ducat (ticket), pyramid (card game), triad (a full-contact ball and goal game similar to basketball), lupus (Wolf)

Figures of speech — there were a number of these used in the series, such as "daggit dribble," a term used to condemn falsehood.

See also

• List of Battlestar Galactica characters
• List of Battlestar Galactica (1978, 1980) episodes
• Battlestar Galactica (ship)
• Galactica 1980
• Battlestar Galactica, the 2004 reimaging of the series

External links

• The Original Battlestar Galactica at Battlestar Wiki
• Battlestar Galactica at AllMovie
• Battlestar Galactica at IMDb
• Battlestar Galactica - The Complete Epic Series at Rotten Tomatoes
• Template:Tv.com