Tuesday, October 2, 2007

1980-Galactica 1980


Battlestar Galactica was over, canceled, gone. For nine months there had been no new episodes.
So you can imagine the freak-out that Sunday morning of January 27, 1980 when I opened the TV listings and saw "Battlestar Galactica Finds Earth" listed for that night!
If only it had lived up to expectations. Oh, at first it was ok. Lorne Greene and Herb Jefferson, Jr were the only remaining stars from the original. Ok, understandable since a generation had passed since the adventures of Apollo and Starbuck and the battles with the Cylons. The fleet had finally found Earth! 1980 earth, for that matter, and in no position to defend itself against the Cylons if they showed up.
Footage from the movie Earthquake is shown on a viewscreen to Adama to demonstrate what would happen if the Cylons attacked LA.
Adama seemed to take orders from some kid named Dr. Zee who was weirdly played by two different actors (?!) The decision is made to send two Coloniel Warriors as scouts to earth to check things out. This led to typical fish out of water scenes as the two had to interact with people of modern day earth.
There was some time travel involved as they went to the past to stop the renegade Commander Xavier, and episodes quickly degenerated into early evening kiddie fare as a dozen or so kids from the fleet come to earth posing as a scout troop. I'm not kidding.
It seems many working on the show hated it and were hoping for it's cancellation and Universal was reportedly having Galactica 1980 absorb costs for other productions since they knew it wouldn't last long. The long sordid tale of the production of Galactica 1980 can be read at Battlestar Wiki.
After 10 episodes, it was canceled in May. Astoundingly, it was recently announced that it's being released to DVD on December 26.

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