“Battlestar Galactica “ – The Theatrical Release

U.S. Theatrical Release Date: 5/18/79

So after the spacedust settled following Gaactica’s tumultuous first and only season, executive producer Glenn Larson discovered that he was in hole for several million dollars. As preparatory publicity for the series’ premiere, in July of 1978 Universal had theatrically released the pilot movie in Canada, Europe and Australia, where it did some decent business. In March of 1979 Larson put the forthcoming Buck Rogers pilot movie, which he also produced, out in America – again, to healthy box office.

And so, on May 18^th, 1979, Larson put the Galactica pilot, “Saga of a Star World,” into American theaters to help recoup some of his financial losses. (This time – no interruptions by President Carter.) Simply titled, Battlestar Galactica, it was indeed profitable, since the main costs this time related to printing and distribution. I suppose thee was also the secret hope that it might reinvigorate interest in the show so that high summer rerun ratings might make ABC brass reconsider their cancellation. They didn’t, but perhaps it led, indirectly, to the green light for Galactica ‘80.

Since the theatrical release is basically the same as the pilot movie, I won’t repeat the plot summary (you can read it here). The only major difference is that Baltar is executed by the Cylons in the theatrical release, and it is retroactively revealed that he is spared in the TV version. But I will share a few observations based on my second viewing of the movie:

I still think that, after a dynamite first third, this overlong episode really gets tedious fast, and I can only imagine that young kids sitting in the theater for well over two hours must have been bored silly. After Adama and the crew avert destruction from the Cylon ruse, anything could’ve happended, but the teleplay pretty much grinds to a shuddering halt. We spend a huge chunk of the movie’s midsection with a lot of garbled dialogue dealing with food contamination aboard the ship. And just where did that other Council of 12 come from anyway? And what of “Sire Uri”? What are his motivations? It’s never clear if he is a Cylon pawn or if he just hates Adama and came up with a bad plan that the Cylons exploited. The other enemy here – the Ovions – are a race of human-feasting bug-like aliens, and they’re definitely creepy (even if their cocoons reminded me of the eerie encasements from the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie), but their belated arrival is too little, too late.

I saw this feature on an individual DVD edition (apart from the series), which, presumably, is the actual theatrical release. I definitely appreciated the widescreen format (not sure if they blew it up from the TV 1.33 ratio or if it was shot 1.85 in the first place). After watching the documentary on the series, however, I found it odd that they didn’t put back the footage the couldn’t use on TV after getting busted by the censors, like Starbuck with his shirt off after fooling around with Casseopia. The “bonus features” are all text, so there’s nothing special here – it’s just a decent stand-alone edition of the Galactica movie version, for better or worse.

So now, on to Galactica 1980 – the second wind for the series. But for network television in the early 80s, those were tumultuous waters indeed.

 Rating:  **  (same as original rating)

Battlestar Galactica 1.24: “The Hand of God”

Airdate: 4/29/79

At the Galactica’s highest point, the transmission tower, Apollo picks up somevery faint radio signals. He believes they could be from Earth, so he and a Viper patrol fly to the outer reaches of the solar system he believes they originated from. Suddenly, they discover a Cylon base star instead; Adama, after being told they were undiscovered by Cylons, uses the opportunity to plan a direct assault on his sworn enemy, forever wiping them out and never having to be on the run again. Apollo goes one better – if he can infiltrate and destroy the base star scanners, their missions will have a heightened chance of success. How will he know where they are? Adama negotiates a quid-pro-quo arrangement with Baltar: information in exchange for his freedom if they are successful. And yes, they are; after nearly being mistaken for Cylons (they used Baltar’s fighter), they return home to a hero’s welcome. But Apollo still doesn’t believe the claims that those radio transmissions were a lure from the Cylons. He’ll never know if he’s right, but we do; after he and Starbuck depart we hear the unmistakable sounds of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

And, so we bid adieu to Starbuck, Apollo and the rest, not due to Cylon treachery but rather…. Fred Silverman, head of ABC programming at ABC (it was one of his last acts before migrating to his disastrous tenure at NBC). The series would continue in a last ditch attempt at resurrection in Galactica 1980, but hey, c’mon – that was like the sci-fi equivalent of After MASH, and no Jamie Farr.

Well, it’s probably fitting that the show returns to the wretched excess that hampered the success of the first half of the season, if not completely satisfying. And plot-wise, we’re really looking at a rip-off of the second half of Star Wars (the heros infiltrate the “base star” (not Death Star) to deactivate some hardware, as a prelude to all-out assault on the base star itself, leading to its complete destruction (but not that of the Cylons completely).

But I must say that the writers do an admirable job of giving closure to the show while still leaving it open-ended. The twist-ending does just that, and offers hope that at least the weary Galactica is getting that much closer to its intended destination. In the month that elapsed since the previous episode, it was known that the series had been cancelled, but I wonder of the writers knew that when penning this episode. (They at least knew it was the season finale.)

Rating:  ***

(No series assessment yet; I’m also including the Galactica theatrical release (next) and the aforementioned Galactica 1980, so just hold your horses. You know what a completist I am.

PS: The box set I’m viewing features hours of extras, but they’re mainly deleted and alternate scenes. Who cares? There was a reason they were cut out in the first place. But there’s a few nifty mini-documentaries, the best of them, “Remembering Galactica” (featured on the last disc), is quite illuminating. We learn that the show started as a mini-series, then was immediately ordered as a regular series, putting everyone, especially the writers, under the gun to put out weekly material – fast! And Anne Lockhart (Sheba) shares a couple of great memories - she and Laurette Sprang giving spandex wedgies to Dirk and Richard, clad in those godawful Triad outfits – and having to keep a straight face as Patrick McNee utters to her the line, “You’ll always be safe as long as I’m inside of you.” Needless to say, Standards and Practices never let that one over the 70s airwaves. 

Battlestar Galactica 1.23: “Take the Celestra”

Airdate: 4/1/79

At an awards ceremony for Kronus, the commander of a fleet spacecraft called the Celestra, Starbuck recognizes an old flame – Aurora, a beautiful Celestea crew member who now appears to be part of a mutiny. It seems she and a few others are a bit resentful of Kronus’s overly authoritarian ways. Starbuck turns her and her cohorts in, escorting them on a shuttle along with Kronus (who needs to be there for their hearing), but now the empty ship is a prime target for another disgruntled crew member, Charka. This dude has far more treasonous motives in mind, and now Starbuck, Apollo and Kronus need to get aboard the hijacked ship and take out the garbage. With help from Aurora’s gang (in exchamge for a fair trial), they seize the ship and overcome its captors, but not before Kronus is mortally wounded – and now his awards ceremony is succeeded by his funeral.

Meh episode really phones everything in – even the Starbuck/Aurora plotline is awfully soapy (though she sure looks good). Kronus is a hard-nosed Phillip Baker-Hall type character that has the potential for furnishing of a Caine Mutiny updating, but that goes pretty much nowhere once the good mutineers are captured and the bad are on the Celestra most of the time. Overall pretty lifeliess, so much so that it’s hard to write any more.

Rating:  **

Battlestar Galactica 1.22: “Experiment In Terra”

Airdate: 3/18/79

Apollo gets abducted by the shiny bright spacecraft from the “War of the Gods”episode; his presence there is explained by a old man in white – he needs the young pilot to go to Terra under an assumed name (and body), where he can lend some invaluable assistance to a rebel faction fighting oppression by the Eastern Alliance. His ID: Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones fan on the writing staff?), a man whose checkered past includes a troubled relationship with a girl named Brenda. Of course Brenda shows up, and Apollo is understandably confused by her ire. But getting back to business, he discovers, after an imprisonment by Terra’s government, that the planet’s president is a corrupt bureaucrat trying to stifle the voices warning of an EE assault. With Starbuck’s assistance, he gets the Galactica to shoot down all the nuclear missiles fired by both warring sides, prompting the EE to consider negotiations.

Interesting, moderately successful drama is a hodgepodge of different ideas. Apollo’s story on Terra is a pretty direct copy of Heaven Ca Wait, a huge hit movie from the previous year – producer Donald Belisario would later use the different-body inhabitation concept for his 80s’ series Quantum Leap. And the notion of an unwinnable nuclear war was of course the salient conundrum of the Cold War, but give the show major props for forecasting the Reagan-era Star-Wars technology as the Galactica manages to (improbably) shoot down all the missiles fired between Terra and the EE. All in all it does hold one’s attention, and I give it an extra half-star for the performance of Melody (Flash Gordon) Anderson. Gotta love her.

Rating:  ***

Battlestar Galactica 1.21: “Baltar’s Escape”

Airdate: 3/11/79

The Council, overruling Adama’s admonitions, decides to offer the olive branch to the Eastern Alliance prisoners (from the previous episode), and propose a peace treaty. In fact, they strip Adama of his command by removing the state of emergency; not good when Baltar uses the opportunity to hijack the prison shuttle, taking the EE Commandants and the Nomen (from episode 1.17) with him, along with shuttle pilots Boomer and Sheba as hostages. It quickly turns into a game of strategy and brinksmanship, culminating in Apollo’s successful plan of thwarting Baltar’s escape using defective Cylons, and making sure all prisoners are back, or will be back, in the brig where they belong.

All the baddies from the series thus far are here except the Cylons (only two are featured, and they’re incapacitated). Guess what? I hardly missed them – just going to show that the producers are finally realizing, as I did from the very beginning, that a bunch of chrome plated robots doth not a villain make. Too bad – had they figured this out from the get go we might have had Season 2. In fact, the most frightening do-badders here are probably the Nomen: their brutish faces are perfectly matched by tough-as-nails demeanor. In some scenes, they hardly have any dialogue, making them all the more nefarious.

And there appear to be some hawkish sub-themes going on. The “council” blindly welcomes peace negotiations with enemies clearly thirsting for blood, with Adama and the Galactica crew the only ones realizing it. Of course, the council’s appeasement policy backfires, guns start blazing pretty soon. Hard to believe Vietnam-weary audiences were on board with this. Well, we were only a year away from Reagan.

Rating:  **1/2