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Sep. 25th, 2007 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariFor those of you enjoying your current batch of Battlestar Galactica episodes, or are die-hard fans of the 70s version...you might not remember that in 1980 there was...this:
Don't let the cool graphics fool you. Galactica 1980 was tripe. Pure unadulterated tripe.
Galactica was cancelled in 1979 not because of bad ratings, it had EXCELLENT ratings, but because it was much much much too expensive to produce (upwards of a million an episode, a budget that wouldn't be seen again till Star Trek TNG).
ABC, however, was willing to give Galactica another chance by retooling the series to be cheaper. How do you make it cheaper? You make them find Earth. You also hire all new actors who cost a lot less than the older actors (or at least the ones who wanted to come back).
Put the series on at the FCCs mandated News or Kiddie Show hour of 7PM on Sundays, and it's a recipe for disaster. The Galactica finds Earth with the help of the child prodigy Dr. Zee, Dillon (a grown up Boxey) and Troy (a flat Jerry van Dyke) go to earth to help enhance technology so the Earth isnt' destroyed by the Cylons they've dragged along, they learn time travel, have invisibility shields, and the worst abomination of them all, they drag around about 12 kids they call The Super Scouts. There is one bright shining hope in all the series, the last episode called "The Return of Starbuck." It's actually an unproduced episode of the proposed second season of Galactica, which explains why it's it's a bright shining diamond in the turd that is Galactica 1980.
So now it's out as a boxset. My god have mercy on Universal's soul. And mine. I love it. It's a trainwreck of a series, and I totally totally LOVE IT. ::clicks PRE-ORDER::
(We miss you Bernhard)
(Update the 2nd - I just spent my millionth word, talking about Galactica 1980....::shudder::)
Don't let the cool graphics fool you. Galactica 1980 was tripe. Pure unadulterated tripe.
Galactica was cancelled in 1979 not because of bad ratings, it had EXCELLENT ratings, but because it was much much much too expensive to produce (upwards of a million an episode, a budget that wouldn't be seen again till Star Trek TNG).
ABC, however, was willing to give Galactica another chance by retooling the series to be cheaper. How do you make it cheaper? You make them find Earth. You also hire all new actors who cost a lot less than the older actors (or at least the ones who wanted to come back).
Put the series on at the FCCs mandated News or Kiddie Show hour of 7PM on Sundays, and it's a recipe for disaster. The Galactica finds Earth with the help of the child prodigy Dr. Zee, Dillon (a grown up Boxey) and Troy (a flat Jerry van Dyke) go to earth to help enhance technology so the Earth isnt' destroyed by the Cylons they've dragged along, they learn time travel, have invisibility shields, and the worst abomination of them all, they drag around about 12 kids they call The Super Scouts. There is one bright shining hope in all the series, the last episode called "The Return of Starbuck." It's actually an unproduced episode of the proposed second season of Galactica, which explains why it's it's a bright shining diamond in the turd that is Galactica 1980.
So now it's out as a boxset. My god have mercy on Universal's soul. And mine. I love it. It's a trainwreck of a series, and I totally totally LOVE IT. ::clicks PRE-ORDER::
(We miss you Bernhard)
(Update the 2nd - I just spent my millionth word, talking about Galactica 1980....::shudder::)
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Date: 2007-09-25 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 05:54 pm (UTC)I just spent my millionth word talking about Galactic 1980. :D
(I also updated the entry)
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Date: 2007-09-25 06:13 pm (UTC)There were a few interesting things that I had forgotten about, though. Like the fact that there were human-form cylons o.O
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Date: 2007-09-25 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-09-27 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 07:50 pm (UTC)Literal D
PS - HA ha! Your millionth word was about cheesy sci-fi! And I'm not shocked! ;)
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Date: 2007-09-25 11:10 pm (UTC)Nyder
Date: 2007-10-03 09:55 am (UTC)Just wanted to correct a point in your writeup, though-- actually, G1980 wasn't done on the cheap, it was if anything more expensive than the original series. Kent McCord and Barry van Dyke were, at the time, comparable in status/cost to Hatch and Benedict when they were hired for the original-- and script drafts for the pilot indicate that Larson did plan on having Hatch and Benedict back in the series, so it's more likely that H and B were unavailable for filming rather than that the team were trying to cut costs.
This is all from an interview with the script editor, Allan Bunch, at this link: http://www.battlestargalactica.com/outside_docs/bg_outdoc0030.htm, in which he's pretty entertainingly scathing about the result.
Cheers,
Nyder