Review of Battlestar Galactica (1978) by Aj V — 12 Nov 2010

This first episode of the original TV show Battlestar Galactica was a classic example of bad 1970's TV. I first saw it on the Sunday night when it was first shown in the TV room of Stout Hall at Oklahoma State University.

I got there late and missed the first 15 minutes and then in the middle of the show Jimmy Carter interrupted the show for an hour to show the signing of the Camp David Accords. I have an MCA Laser Disc of the version shown in movie theaters outside the U.

S. When you watch it you see how bad the acting was for most of the supporting cast. The whole thing was a big rip-off of previous movies. Obvious was the rip-off of Star Wars. George Lucas even sued them over it.

John Dykstra produced the show and did the special effects and had also done the special effects for Star Wars. They ripped off the book Chariot of the Gods. They ripped off The Ten Commandments. They ripped off Bonanza and Wagon Train.

They ripped off Star Trek. Those are the just the ones I saw. I heard they ripped off The Book of Morman. There was an obvious theme in the story that was critical of Jimmy Carter's policies of negotiating with the Soviet Union.

That's probably why he interrupted it. That and the fact that he knew there were going to be high ratings for the show. There are some good parts to the movie. Dirk Benedict's Starbuck character was fun and Laurette Spang was hot.

But I like to call the characters after their Bonanza inspiration. Pa Adama, Hossbuck, Little Apollo and Sheriff Teigh. There was actually only about 15 minutes of special effects and they kept using them over and over again.

They used Tektronix Vector Scopes for the displays used on the spacecraft. The Cylon voices were cool but they were clumsy copies of the Star Wars Storm Troopers. They were also a rip-off of the robot in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.

On the Laser Disc version I have the Cylons lop Baltar's head off. On the TV show they let him live so they can have a human bad guy. Since there was a lot of political pressure to clean up TV they used a lot of stupid fake curse words.

The new reinvention of the show shown on the Sci-Fi network is 1000 times better than the 1978 version. So if you see the old version on TV or rent a DVD prepare to laugh your ass off. It's really so bad it's good.