| Battlestar Galactica | |
|---|---|
 Battlestar Galactica intro | |
| Created by | Glen A. Larson |
| Starring | |
| Composer | Stu Phillips |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 24(list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 45 minutes |
| Production companies | |
| Original release | |
| Network | ABC |
| Release | September 17, 1978 (1978-09-17) – April 29, 1979 (1979-04-29) |
| Related | |
| Galactica 1980 Battlestar Galactica (reimagined series) | |
Battlestar Galactica is an Americanscience fiction television series created byGlen A. Larson that aired on theABC network from September 17, 1978, to April 29, 1979. It stars an ensemble cast led byLorne Greene,Richard Hatch, andDirk Benedict. The series follows a group of humans fleeing the destruction of their homeworlds aboard thetitular spacecraft, searching for a new home while being pursued by theCylons, a fearsome society of robots intent on exterminating all humans.
Beginning production as a miniseries, ABC subsequently ordered a full season and the show was reworked as an episodic serial. However, high production costs and declining ratings led to the series' cancellation after 24 episodes. ABC attempted to revive the series as a lower-budget spinoff,Galactica 1980, but it performed poorly and was cancelled after airing ten episodes. Despite initially failing to find a wide audience,Battlestar Galactica developed a cult following. The show spawned amedia franchise which includescomics, theme park attractions, games, and are-imagined series in the early 2000s.
| Season | Episodes | Originally released | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | |||
| Battlestar Galactica | 24[a] | September 17, 1978 (1978-09-17)[1] | April 29, 1979 (1979-04-29)[1] | |
| Galactica 1980 | 10 | January 27, 1980 (1980-01-27)[2] | May 4, 1980 (1980-05-04)[2] | |
In a distant star system, the Twelve Colonies of Mankind were reaching the end of a thousand-year war with theCylons, warrior robots created by a reptilian race that expired long ago, presumably destroyed by their own creations. Humanity was ultimately defeated in a sneak attack on the colonies by the Cylons, carried out with the help of a human traitor,Baltar. Protected by the last survivingcapital warship, a battlestar namedGalactica, the survivors fled in available ships. The Commander of theGalactica,Adama, led this "rag-tag fugitive fleet" of 220 ships in search of a new home. They begin a quest to find the long lost thirteenth tribe of humanity that had settled on a legendary planet called Earth. The Cylons continue to pursue them relentlessly across the galaxy. Themain characters includeCaptain Apollo, a Colonial fighter pilot who is Adama's son. His best friend isLieutenant Starbuck, a highly regarded fighter pilot, and also a gambler and womanizer.
The era in which thisexodus took place is never clearly stated in the series itself. At the start of the series, it is mentioned as being "the seventh millennium of time", although it is unknown when this is in relation to Earth's history. The final aired episode, "The Hand of God", indicates that the original series took place after theApollo 11 Moon landing in 1969 as theGalactica receives a television transmission from Earth showing the landing. The laterGalactica 1980 series is expressly set in 1980, after a 30-year voyage to Earth.
A member ofthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Larson incorporated many themes fromMormon theology into the shows.[3][4]
The pilot, budgeted at $8 million (one of the most expensive at that time), was theatrically released inSensurround. An edited version was released on July 8, 1978, in several regions including Canada, Japan, and selectWestern European countries.[5]
On September 17, 1978, the full 148-minute pilot premiered onABC to highNielsen ratings. Two–thirds of the way through the broadcast, ABC interrupted with a special report of the signing of theCamp David Accords at theWhite House by Israeli Prime MinisterMenachem Begin and Egyptian PresidentAnwar Sadat, witnessed by U.S. PresidentJimmy Carter. Following the ceremony, ABC resumed the broadcast at the point where it was interrupted. This interruption did not occur on the West Coast. After the pilot aired, the 125-minute theatrical version received a nationwide theatrical release in May 1979.[5]
The pilot had originally been announced as the first of three television films. After broadcast of the second episode, "Lost Planet of the Gods", however, Larson announced the format change to a weekly series, catching his writing and production staff off guard. This resulted in several 'crash of the week' episodes until other scripts could resume. This also resulted in scripts being finished just minutes before filming started and actors having to read their lines off cue cards, which affected their performances. "Lost Planet" also introduced a costume change from the original, in that the warriors' dress uniform featured a gold-trimmed cape falling to upper thigh. Because of the costume change, a portion of the pilot was reshot; this refilmed version was released in cinemas in 1979. The original version of the warriors' dress uniform, a plain, mid-thigh-length cape, is documented inThe Official Battlestar Galactica Scrapbook by James Neyland, 1978.
In June 1978, prior to the release of the pilot,20th Century Fox (producers ofStar Wars) suedUniversal Studios (producers ofBattlestar Galactica) forplagiarism,copyright infringement,unfair competition, andLanham Act claims, allegingGalactica had stolen 34 distinct ideas fromStar Wars.[6][7] Universal promptly countersued, claimingStar Wars had stolen ideas from their 1972 filmSilent Running,[8] notably the robot "drones", and the 1930sBuck Rogers serials.[citation needed] Fox's copyright claims were dismissed by the trial court in 1980, but in 1983, a federalappeals court reversed that decision and remanded the case for trial.[9][6][10][11] It was later "resolved without trial".[12]
Star Wars directorGeorge Lucas additionally threatened legal action against Apogee, Inc., the visual effects studio formed byJohn Dykstra and several other former artists from Lucas'Industrial Light and Magic who decided to remain inVan Nuys rather than relocate toSan Rafael, California with the rest of the company. Lucas claimed that Apogee's work onGalactica was being done with equipment that he had left behind, for a project that would be in direct competition againstStar Wars. Eventually, Apogee agreed to surrender the equipment to ILM, and several members of Dykstra's team returned to ILM. Afterwards, Universal's newly formed visual effects division,Universal Hartland Visual Effects, took over the show's visual effects for the remainder of its run. Lucas also went afterGalactica merchandise, claiming that theCylon Raider and Colonial Viper toys could be confused with his ownStar Wars toys. His major contention was that theGalactica toys featured plastic pellets that could be fired to simulate lasers, and these constituted a choking hazard for children, and he did not want to be blamed for any such accidents, despite none of theStar Wars toys offered byKenner having anything similar.
Such an accident came to pass on Christmas Day 1978, when a four-year-old child accidentally shot a pellet from a Cylon Raider toy into his mouth, where it lodged in his larynx and caused his brain to be deprived of oxygen. He was declared dead six days later on New Year's Eve 1978. Within two weeks,Mattel issued an immediate recall of allGalactica toys with missiles,[13] and the boy's parents sued Mattel. A second incident involved the Colonial Viper toy which ended in emergency surgery to remove an inhaled pellet from a young boy's lungs. This incident was not fatal, but Mattel subsequently redesigned all of itsGalactica toys so that the pellets no longer left the toy when fired.[13][14]
Battlestar Galactica initially was a ratings success. CBS counter programmed by moving its Sunday block ofAll in the Family andAlice an hour earlier, to compete withGalactica in the 8:00 timeslot. From October 1978 to March 1979,All in the Family averaged more than 40 percent of the 8:00 audience, againstGalactica's 28 percent.[15]
In mid-April 1979, ABC executives canceled the show. An AP article reported "The decision to bump the expensiveBattlestar 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."[16] Larson claimed that it was a failed attempt by ABC to reposition its number one programMork & Mindy into a more lucrative timeslot.[17] The cancellation led to viewer outrage and protests outside ABC studios, and it even contributed to the suicide of Edward Seidel, a 15-year-old boy inSaint Paul, Minnesota who was obsessed with the program.[18][19][20]
For the 1978–79 season as a whole,Battlestar Galactica ranked 34th out of 114 shows airing that season, averaging a 19.6 rating and a 30 share.[21]
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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. Colonial distance and time units were incompletely explained and inconsistent in their usage, but appear to have been primarily in a decimal format.
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The show's original music was composed and conducted byStu Phillips, with the pilot score performed by theLos Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. It was recorded at 20th Century Fox, which later sued Universal over the series.MCA Records released a soundtrack album on LP and cassette with Phillips as the music producer; the album was later reissued on compact disc by Edel in 1993, andGeffen Records in 2003. For the series, Phillips used a studio orchestra at Universal, although the theme and end credits music as recorded by the LAPO were retained.[24]
In 2011–2012Intrada Records released four albums featuring Phillips's music for the series, representing the first commercial release of music other than that of the pilot. (Phillips previously produced a four-CD promotional set.) Except the first, all are two-disc sets.
"Fire in Space", "The Man with Nine Lives", "Greetings from Earth", "Baltar's Escape", and "Experiment in Terra" were entirely tracked with preexisting material.
Battlestar Galactica was criticized byMelor Sturua in theSoviet newspaperIzvestia. He saw an analogy between the fictional Colonial/Cylon negotiations and the US/SovietSALT talks and accused the series of being inspired byanti-Soviet hysteria.[25]
In 1999,Richard Hatch (who had played Apollo) released a trailer for a proposed sequel,Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming.[26]
The series was remade with a reimagined three-hourminiseries in 2003 and followed by aweekly series that ran from 2004 to 2009.
Caprica was aprequel series to the 2004 reimagined series that ran for 19 episodes in 2010. It is set 58 years before the main series on the Colonial capital world of Caprica, showing how humanity first created the Cylons, who would later turn against their human masters. One last installment,Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, a sequel set during the First Cylon War after the events ofCaprica, was released onMachinima, Inc. before being released to home video in 2012.
In 2009,Bryan Singer was tapped to direct a feature film remake with production input from original series creator Glen A. Larson.[27][28] Larson's death in 2014 caused a delay, but in 2016Lisa Joy was assigned to be the screenwriter and the studio was consideringFrancis Lawrence to replace Singer as director.[29] As of 2024, no film project has materialized.
ABattlestar Galactica project was announced in 2019 as a future addition toNBCUniversal'sPeacock streaming service.Mr. Robot creatorSam Esmail was to serve as the newGalactica's executive producer.[30] In July 2024,Variety reported that the project was no longer in development.[31]
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