Galactica 1980 1.3: “Galactica Discovers Earth, Part 3”

Airdate: 2/10/80

Dillon destroys the V2 rocket on its test launch, effectively ending the program,and Xavier is taken away to be executed by a German patrol – actually Troy and Jamie in disguise. But before they return to 1980, God bless ‘em, they help a trainload of Jews from being transported to certain death at a concentration camp. Xavier, however, still won’t give up his fiendish agenda of exploiting time travel for power; he escapes from their clutches by using the invisibility potion. Back in the present day, Troy and Dillon bid a tearful adieu to their earthling compadre, but now they’ve got other troubles – like being on the lam for the mayem they caused earlier, and having their spaceship discovered an confiscated by the authorities. They find the little boy to disclose the location of their ships, and there they race not only to get them back and operational but to stop Xavier from doing the same, and then traveling to who knows where. They succeed at the former, not the latter, and back on the Galactica they are briefed by Adama that he has gone back to 1700s America to tamper with the Revolution. Jamie, with her photographic memory of history, is deputized to go along with Troy and Dillon to set history right again.

Conclusion of epic three-part pilot is certainly better than Battlestar Galactica’s, but not quite as good as parts 1 or 2. A few unanswered questions:

• Troy and Dillion are extra-careful not to kill or hurt anyone while in the 1940s lest they alter history by accident, but aren’t they already doing so with pretty much all their actions? I guess the butterfly effect is not at play here.

• No one, and I mean no one must know about or see the spaceships that Troy and Dillon make the little boy swear not to talk about – but what about the bus driver that picks him up, and can see the ships in prefect view? This one’s a sign of the times: Troy and Dillon drop by the boys school to get him to reveal the location of their ships. Yeah, right, maybe in 1980. Now, they couldn’t even get in, and if they did, they’d be arrested while the school gets locked down.

• And there’s really a lot of wasted time toward the end when Xavier goes to visit the professor and tries to convince him that Troy and Dillon are the bad ones, trying to go back in time to disrupt history (what Xavier himself wishes to do). Do we need these scenes, especially since the pro isn’t buying it? Ditto the boring subplot in which Jamie must convince her would-be boss that the Troy and Dillon are not the terrorists the media is painting them as.

But by and large it’s still good-natured, rollicking fun, despite Lorne Greene’s extremely reduced presence as Adama. It’s odd to see the opening credits still using scenes from the original Galactica; it feels like such a different series, and I think it’s time for this one to step out from that series’ shadow.