I like that reaction, "Starbuck's a guy???!!" Because those of us that watched this show in 1978 as kids, had the reaction to the reboot in the 2000s, "Starbuck's a girl???!!!"
The Daggit Muffit did not have a human being playing in the suit, but a chimpanzee trained to do the stunts. The whole purpose of that character in the little boy was to keep it family-friendly for the 1970s.
I still remember visiting Universal Studios (The original) Tour, & seeing a Daggit (Spelling?) live, on stage, in their, “Animal Actors Show”. It was kinda cool, when they removed the head, to reveal a chimpanzee, in the costume! Hmm…? 🤔 (Wondering if there’s any video of it, on TH-cam?🤔) 😁
Liked the original, no god damn bullets, no doctor pepper cylons (I'm a pepper your a pepper, wouldn't you like to be a pepper too) and not depressing after every episode.
@@samsonau8205 And... my post is gone. Apparently, TH-cam hates all forms of conversation except "KEWL, DOOD!!!!" They're still in "algorithm deletion mide," post election. Cassie was a "sociolator" in the show. In other words, a pr0$titute. This was spelled out quite clearly. And there was nothing wrong with having such a character on the show as one of the survivors. It's just reaaaaly ironic that 1978 TV standards and practices was more tolerant of discussing that sort of thing than 2024 TH-cam is. 🤔
@@TründiMolisher Funny, how TH-cam keeps deleting my (totally in compliance eith their "community standards") posts. I did say that in an earlier post. I really can't wait for the day TH-cam's "moderator staff" gets purged of the ultra woke types and returns to sanity. As I've said several times, in several posts, 1978 network "standards and practices" rules were far more rational than today's Google-run version. Vack then, the oeople enfircing them, rughtly ir wrongly, belueved that they were "protecting the innocent." Tiday's version believe that they are "waging war on our hated enemies."
The helmets were designed to resemble ancient Egyptian head wear, but that was meant to imply that our civilization in earth includes remnants of the civilization we see here.
For YEARS, you could only see Star Wars in the theaters. Battlestar Galactica filled our Star Wars needs on TV in the interim. Every kid I knew watched this series. It was the hottest thing on TV. The network panicked after 1 year, because it was the most expensive TV series up until that time, and they decided they could do "sci fi" on the cheap with Mork & Mindy. People threw a fit and the ill-fated Galactica 1980 was introduced as a result.
@@zzygyy Brings me to tears every time, "I judge this mortal and find him good, so VERY good!". Thankfully he was able to use the Cylon ship to escape and make it to Earth in the late 60s, taking on the identity of orphan Templeton Peck whom he conveniently resembled and was killed in the Vietnam War.
Dirk Benedict (Starbuck) also played Templeton 'Faceman' Peck in the original The A-Team series from the 1980's. During the intro to the series there is a very short clip of someone walking by dressed in a full Cylon costume, and Face does a double-take as if to say, 'don't I know you from somewhere?' A nod and a wink to his character in the original Battlestar Galactica.
@@shallendorthey could not make up their minds on which way to go. Time travel or kids. Would have been good if they could travel back and save the colonies.
@@rodentnolastname6612 Unfortunately, it looks like JMS may be going down the wrong path these days. He's actually the one behind the attempt to reboot Babylon 5. And to change its core fundamental principles. The original show was magic and a lot of that came from him but a lot of it also came from the actors and the other creators. Just for one example there is no way anyone else could ever play G'kar. It would inevitably be a different character with the same name. It could never be the same character. I really wish creators would just leave stuff that's already been created alone and create new things instead.
Lol, I never made the connection! I was sitting here thinking Steve Antin was in BSG? Speaking of which… surely there’s a reaction to Last American Virgin… I’ll go check. (For any reaction show, it’s highly recommended. Obviously I can’t say why.)
When this came out on TV, the executives commissioned Larson to make Star Wars on TV. However, Larson took that and made something that stood on its own. Its important to know that, at the time this came out, there were calls for the US to unilaterally disarm in the hopes that the USSR would see that we weren't a threat and do the same. Larson showed in BSG just what would likely have happened, and it's still amazing to me it got past the executives.
You guys have the benefit of over 46 years of SciFi movies and shows. There was no internet, no mobile phones, no AI, no virtual networks so the reboot premise would never have existed back then. Just great model ships, great story lines and great characters. The story works for the time it was released. Star Wars was thee movies back in those days and Battlestar Galactica was the show on TV, nothing else came close. Star Trek was full of mean scary aliens to a 6 year old me. I owned most of the BSG toys. Broadcast TV back in those days had to pass the network sensors and had no choice to be adult oriented and had to be kid friendly back in the day per FCC broadcast regulations in the 70s.
@christophercaragan3861 Correction: Star Wars was One film when this came out until The Empire Strikes Back knocked our socks off in 1980 after this was cancelled.
The actor who plays Commander Adama, Lorne Green, starred in the first television series to be filmed completely in color from start to finish. The show is called Bonanza and it ran from 1959 until the mid 70's. He also had two hit singles. One is called Ringo, a #1 hit on the country and pop charts, and Ghost Riders In The Sky, hitting #2 on the pop chart. He was a very popular actor and made many guest appearances after this series ended.😮😊
I saw this on a Sunday Night in September of 1978 when I was 8 years old and LOVED IT! This was a classic!! It broke our hearts when ABC cancelled this show in 1979 only to bring back a Half-Budget bastardized version of this show called "Galactica 1980". There were some GREAT Episodes of this too like: The Gun on Ice Planet Zero, The Living Legend, War of the Gods. and Greetings from Earth.
I saw this in the theaters as a kid. This movie is the pilot for the TV show. The version of the pilot shown on television rather than in theaters includes a different fate for Baltar. Now, watch the series.
A bit of trivia: the F-16 fighter entered service in 1978, the same year that *Battlestar Galactica* came out. Pilots of the F-16 gave it the nickname "Viper," inspired by the Colonial Viper fighters from BSG. *Battlestar Galactica* was originally planned as a series of made-for-television movies. The idea was to show 3 or 4 of them over the course of a year, which would give them time to come up with good scripts and to build up a suitable special effects library. After that, the plan was to go to a weekly television series format. Unfortunately, ABC was so impressed with the pilot movie that they *insisted* the show go straight to series, and the producers of the show just weren't ready for that. So they were scrambling to come up with scripts [resulting in them taking several movie scripts and re-writing them], and the special-effects makers couldn't create new effects fast-enough to keep up with the weekly format, which is why the show notoriously re-used special-effects shots. *Battlestar Galactica* would have been *so* much better if the show-makers had been allowed to make the show the way they'd wanted to!
He also comes back later in the series to play the mysterious Count Iblis, a very high-end evil alien lifeform. All implications in the episode were that he was what we would term "the devil." Even the name, "iblis," is the word for Lucifer/Satan in Islam.
Fall 1978 my late wife & I moved to So. Colorado so I could attend college and we had zero cash. I had been waiting for BSG for a while and was really disappointed that all we had was a b&w tv. The debut day cones and suddenly a color tv rental got dropped off. One of the best gifts she gave me. 😊
7:20, John Colicos, to trekkies Kor the Klingon Dahar Master. So captivating he featured TOS, TNG and DS9. His Baltar is so polar to the reboot's whiny selfsearching version.
When this premiered on television, it was seen by more people than any other series premier in television history up to that time, breaking all other previous viewing records😮😊
I watched both the movie and the television series when first aired. The Vipers were just as cool as an X-Wing in my book, and the Cylons were far more imposing than Stormtroopers ever could be.
32:19 Mark! Actor Patrick McNee! He's not just "The Narrator" he is also "The Imperious Leader"! (He was also the male star of the British spy series "Avengers"!) He returns later as a different character, by the way! 😊
In the original Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons were not creations of man. It was an alien race which had taken to cybernetic alteration. The lower casts were almost entirely mechanical, while the upper castes retained much of their original, reptilian form. How they came to be "upgraded" is not 100% clear, but it"s heavily implied that a character called Count Iblis found the Cylons and taught them how to "enhance" themselves. In the original Galactica canon, Iblis is, essentially, Satan. The leader of every Cylon ship is known as the "Imperious Leader." This is a cylon in its original organic body, but with three brains networked together. Regular Cylon warriors... referred to (inaccurately to the true meaning of the word) as "Cylon Centurians," have a single brain, heavily altered and computerized. They have only enough organic systems to keep that brain matter alive, and are otherwise entirely robotic. There is a "higher ranking" Centurion type, gold instead of steel in appearance but otherwise identical. I believe they are known as "command centurians." There are also Cylon Advisors. Lower ranking, apparently, than Imperious Leaders, they seem to be even more intelligent. We only ever really meet one of them, though we see several. The one we meet is called "Lucifer." Realize, the creator of the original series was a devout Mormon, and he introduced a lot of aspects of Mormon religion into the series, sometimes subtly, sometimes very overtly. But, we only see four types of cylons in the series. Silver and Gold Centurians, Imperious Leaders, and Advisors. There could be countless other types, but not serving in the Cylon space navy, it seems. But these Cylons are not entirely mechanical... more like the Borg. And they were absolutely not creations of humankind. These cylon are reptilian in nature... Just very bright crocodiles. They are willing to coexist with "lesser species" ehich ptovide dome brnefit to them and who totally submit to them, but destroy everyone and everything that either resists them or is of no use to them.
Actually in the original novelization the cylons were experts in biological engineering. There was the basic brain the worker class had but when one was found suitable to be a warrior they got an upgrade to specialized warrior brain. Exceptional warrior would get an officer brain added so they would have 2 brains, The Imperious Leader had the third brain. Each additional brain added some specialized functions they were designed for
The decision was made to make the Cylons a race of robots when it was put to a tv series to try to downplay that humans were wiping out a sentient alien species as well in every episode, so they downplay the Cylon Imperious leader after that
I loved this show and Buck Rogers after watching them back to back in reruns in the 80's. Still entertaining even if it's really dated. I would still love to see a continuation of this version of BSG someday in live action.
Richard Hatch was trying to get his continuation of BSG off the ground by using his own money to fund a trailer for his project BSG: The Second Coming. It’s on YT.
Rick Springfield was the most popular soap opera actor to also have a successful recording career at the same time😮😊selling many millions of records, albums and 45's!
For the TV series, the movie was re-edited, and the ending changed, so Baltar is spared after convincing the new leader to let him hunt for the fleet and bring them in. He figured him being human would give him a tactical advantage over the machines. He was given command of his own baseship and sent to seek and destroy the remaining humans.
Have you thought about doing the mini series "V The Original Miniseries" ? The first mini series started in May 1983, then there was another one, about a year later in 84. There was a shortlived tv series in 84, then a reboot around 2008, 2009. It is a must see series for any syfy fan.
This was meant to be a movie but the studio made it a 2 part tv movie at the last minute. Jane Seymour did it as a movie and when the studio wanted a running series, she didnt want to be a tv actress, so they killed her off which was very sad to me because she was so beautiful and i cried. Then she did "Somewhere in time" and was even more beautiful in that.
Specifically, during production of the movie the studio told them to go to series at the last minute, prompting the studio to then air the movie as a 3-hour tv premiere (not a 2-part episode premiere), to launch the series.
@@DularrNo, what happened is on the success of the initial movie in theatres they later took the contents of two 2-part tv episodes, “The Living Legend” and “Fire in Space” and edited it into a second movie called “Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack” which was released overseas theatrically.
@@RKnights Richard Hatch was very critical of an attempt to remake the series, most people wanted a continuation with the original cast and saw him as an advocate. He spoke to the producers and got a sense of what the new show would be like, and he became critical to winning the old fan-base over to the new series.
@@RKnights The movie ended kind of abruptly, this outro should help you guys with where the 1978 series was going, keep up the good work. th-cam.com/video/wQVgGOgYthg/w-d-xo.html
@@ianwestc ... And a lot of people don't/didn't realize it, but the 2003 reimagined series would have never happened & existed if it weren't for Richard Hatch. He inadvertently began the ball rolling for the 2003 version when he had been campaigning back in the 1990's for the original show to either continue. I remember going to the Galactica fan websites back then to check his blog updates to see his progress. Even the crescent-shaped Raiders in the 2003 series were inspired from his 1999 "Second Coming" BSG trailer. And of course the human Cylons in the 2003 version actually began in Galactica 1980. To Richard's chagrin, the 2003 version was not what he wanted. Ron Moore, as a peace offering, asked Richard to make a cameo in the 2003 version, of which he did & then became a semi-regular. After that, Richard said the 2003 version also became a godsend for his career, when at first he was disappointed & also talked of its high quality as a show. After Richard died, many of the actors from the 2003 version loved Richard for his hard work & for keeping the peace between the two BSG fandoms. Richard made lemonade out of lemons. RIP Richard. The others from the original cast do still prefer their own version of course & the reimagined cast prefer their own. It's just bias based on experience, but they all understand. There was supposed to be a 3rd rendition of BSG coming, headed by Sam Esmail, but apparently the project got shelved recently. But even if this latest one got shelved, I would not be surprised if more versions of BSG will eventually be made in the unknown future. It will probably depend a lot on trends. I would have hoped that all these UFO hearings in recent times could have helped get it started, heh. 11/20/24
I saw the original back in the 70s. In comparison the reboot is super-dark, far more morally grey, and advocating pragmatism over principle. The reboot was truly a different beast than the original. Think of the original as more of a Bible story with clear good versus evil and Mormon-religion references. It's light and fun entertainment. It is worth watching the original show.
This was the movie. When they went to do the series, they turned the movie into the first two episodes and chaged the ending so that Baltar lived. Have you thought about watching Buck Rogers in the 25th Century?
@@RKnights To add to that question on reruns Battlestar and Buck Rodgers often alternated in a shared time slot and some props and models were reused, both by Glen Larson and Universal.
I remember going to see this at the theater as a kid. We were all excited to see it. The music, the sounds, and seeing that huge ass Battlestar was an experience I can never forget.
Universal did have a Battlestar Galactica ride for decades. It even showed up in several Universal TV shows. One of the best was the A-Team which starred Dirk Benedict (Starbuck)
LOVED this show as a kid, still have my toy Vipers, you can take them apart, front and back, and mix-match them back together in various ways. Still have my Cylon Raider as well, both of them shoot little “torpedo” lasers that I can’t believe they let released. Such a small child choking hazard but hey, 70’s baby, we just dealt with it. The box said it wasn’t for 5 or under, why’d ya give it to them. 1978 saw the very first of the home “personal computers”, the Commodore PET, the Apple ][ and the Tandy TRS-80. Cost ranged, inflation adjusted, from around $1000 to as much as $14,000 for a loaded Apple ][. Even though they were available most people simply could not afford one. 1979 brought the Atari 600, 1980 the Commodore Vic-20 then a stream of new editions of those, including the Atari 800XL and Commodore 64 brought cost down. It wasn’t until 1984 or so that they were truly “affordable for anyone”. Home video game consoles, like the Atari 2600, were FAR more common, some of them even attempted to be a computer, though not well.
BSG was a great show, but sadly after the pilot series it was hit with a limited budget and lawsuits from George Lucas. This caused the later episodes to drop in quality, and they had to recycle special effects shots. Eventually they had to end the series and the guys who made it went in to make Buck Rogers, which was designed to survive on the budget they could afford.
This WAS a ride at Universal Studios Park In CA. If I recall, it was one of the first attractions built after opening. And the Robot dog isn't a human. Its a chimpanzee!
Whas that the park where the one episode from the A-Team was filmed, with the moment when a cylon walk in front off Face aka Dirk Benedict aka Starbuck?
The film you watched is the movie put together for overseas theatre release. It was designed to be self contained. The pilot version of this story had additional scenes to set up the continual story. The first few episodes act as a serial continuous plot line before settling down to becoming episodic.
In the novelized version that came out after the movie left the theaters but before going on TV, I got to read it and loved it. As for the space mines, they were designed to disable and eventually destroy capital ships. It's why the Viper Starfighters could fly close enough to them to shoot em up, as the small size didn't fit the combat computer's requirements to close in and detonate. The explosion was a combination EMP and nuclear cluster bombs that would decimate a capital ship so Carrilon, a 'bug alien' based planet, wouldn't be easily invaded by the humans, who they disliked. However, humans were also a good food source for their young, and so set up the trap to ensnare whomever they could. The novelization was epic and I loved it, and when the series hit the TV, I loved it as much as I did Star Wars. Do NOT let the critics of those days get away with calling BSG a Star Wars type movie to reap Sci Fi profits. BSG was written and in development three years before Lucas had Skywalker as a twinkle in his eyeball. Lucas had trouble getting money to make Star Wars, in case you didn't know, and the same corporate ass-hats gave Glen Larson an equally hard time with the wallet. Once they witnessed the money Star Wars made, they fully funded BSG quickly, and Larson of course grumbled that they could have had BSG produced three years before Star Wars ever came out. I remember these events as they unfolded in the early 80's, which shows my old fartness. Today, they can only speculate as all of those old interviews and news articles are long gone.
Yes, and once ABC decided to kill it. It moved a different night and time slot every week. I remember getting the new TV guide every week when I was 12 and chasing down where the show was this week.
Yes, this movie was done to ride the Star Wars wave. Along with it was a Star Trek movie in 1979, Buck Rogers, and several others. As far as I know, almost all of the original filming miniatures still exist in various private collections. They used to have a Battlestar Galactica ride in the Universal for many years but was eventually dismantled as people lost interest in it. Not sure where the 'bad reviews' came from, the movie was successful that a TV series was quickly produced. Muffet was a trained chimp in a costume. The amazing soundtrack was done by Stu Phillips who did several TV shows during the 80's including Buck Rogers and Knight Rider to name a few.
Oh how I have waited for this! I was a kid when this came out and even before I saw it, I knew I loved it. We were at Kmart and I saw the toys and begged my mom for them. She asked how did I know I would like the show -- I said of course I will!
30:56 Mark! Because they were very consistent about their controls, some friends and I felt confident that we could be "Colonial Viper" pilots! 😊 Not so much with Buck Rogers, though. They didn't focus on more than the trigger and joy stick functions. 😕
I loved the original. Boxey and Muffet was used to appeal to us kids. Don't know if you recognize him but the actor who played Boxey (Noah Hathaway) played Atreyu in The NeverEnding Story. The show started off really strong but the episodes got more campy at the end. We do not talk about Galactica 1980. I would have preferred they used a real dog for Muffet instead of a chimp in a costume (but it was an improvement over K9).
I grew up watching this series. Lorn Greene was the father in the massive TV show " BONANZA !" With his casting the show gained massive respect from the TV critics. This show was a massive hit, I even went to show at Universal Studios Theme Park. It was soo cool at 14. I had the action figures everything. In fact, I own the digital version and just got done watching it again a few months ago. . Thanks so much for the reaction.
41:24 Mark! Oh yeah! Which was first, the series "Designated Survivor" or the rebooted "Battlestar Galactica"? 🤔 By the way, there's a Japanese spin-off titled "Designated Survivor: 60 Days" or something like that. 🤔 "Designated Survivor" felt at times like an alternate reality version of "24" since Keiffer Sutherland starred in both. 🤔 Oh, the point is that Kiefer's character was also the Secretary of Education who became POTUS because of an attack! 😮
29:24 Mark! I'm back after a brief hiatus! 😊 Hey! I wouldn't want to leave without my pet either! 😮 I know what that experience is like! 😢 I made me resentful of the elders who caused it! 🤬
The pilot movie was cool, but after a couple episodes of the TV series you realise they never shot any more FX shots, and every space battle was just the one from the movie, re-edited again and again and again. Not that Star Trek never re-used shots, but with one big ship you notice less, just flip it around or play it backwards or slow it down or change the colour of the planet, there's only so many ways you can look at a big ship or move it past the camera. But a fighter battle, after about the third time you realise you're watching the same strafing run, the same Cylon blow up, the same turret firing over and over and over...
"Mankind has been pushed to the brink of extinction! Our loved ones have died and our way of life is over. Let's party!" I am glad that they took that plot point out in the reboot. Baltar didn't die. There was a Counsel of Twelve in the reboot. One of the conditions for Edward James Olmos to do the reboot was NO ALIENS.
Ever wonder why the creator of B5 Never had any cute animals on his show ?...And remember what he did to the very few cute kids that Did appear ...i have a feeling that was because of Battlestar Galacltica....
Theres a funny clip of Dirk Benedict, when he was on the A-Team, encountering one of those Cylons at something like Universal Studios. One of those funny little moments.
The pilot was released in theatres in Canada and a few other countries. It featured a Sensurround sountrack (the same subwoofer system used to shake theatres for the movies like Earthquake, Midway(1976) and Rollercoaster). In the USA it premiered only on television as far as I know.
Battlestar Galactica (1978) is almost 50 years old and still looks good (so does Star Wars & Alien). Now will the reboot of 2004 still hold up and look good after 50 years? The CGI of the Cylons does not look good at all IMO
Much of the ILM crew that created effects for Star Wars followed John Dykstra to work on this show. For a Gen X kid, it was like being able enjoy a snack size Star Wars each week.
The movie was later split up into a pilot Mini series for the tv show, with probably the most notable difference being that Baltar was Killed at the end of the movie version, but was spared by the Cylons cause the Producers wanted to Keep him around as somewhat of a reoccuring villain in the Tv show
You cut one of my favourite bits Imperious Leader: Recall all Raiders to defend base ship Cylon: Our Raiders are all destroyed Imperious Leader: All destroyed...? How...? We had them by surprise Cylon: Apparently it was not as big a surprise as we had hoped for
Commander Adama was one of the most well-known faces on this show. He had been on Bonanza for years. Everyone knew him. Jane Seymour. The Newscaster, the babe. Became Dr Quinn on the show Dr Quinn , Medicine woman. And these days recently filmed a British tv series where she is a detective. That show is Harry Wild. Starbuck was biig later in The A-Team TV show. Patrick Macnee does the narration. He's also the voice of the Imperious leader of the Cylons. I think the original broadcast was on the ABC Network. Double the budget of any series at the time.
The reason that the Cylons are seen so seldom in the Reboot was because of the lack of threat in the original series because the Cylons got beat every week. They wisely dumped Muffit in the Reboot and lost Boxy as well.
The "Big Baddie" as you called him, was the commander of that one Cylon base ship. The series was mainly them on the run, having encounters with the Cylons and struggling to find resources as they search for earth.
The opening narration is partly based off a book that came out back then called Chariot of the God's. An interesting book but the author himself admitted to making most of it up. Still a fun read.
I remember waiting for 2 weeks to see the premiere,(I was 11 years old), all set in and ready to watch. Then it was interrupted! Jimmy Carter had some stuff to say. Lol! Bummer night!
31:03 Mark! Not "channel" as it wasn't cablevision. It was a free broadcast antenna television network! It was on "ABC" because there wasn't a merger yet of "NBC" and "Universal"! By the way, then then anchor of, "Good Morning, America" David Hartman, father of Lisa Hartman Black, hosted a special prime time editon of the show to help promote the network's expensive new UFO fad inspired Science-Fiction series. Back then, with television quality being what it was, the film clips looked as good as "NASA" videos! Or for average people, "Star Wars"! But David was more impressed than those average people and compared it to the real thing! Back then, the set for the show looked more like an actual living room and breakfast nook area that included a fireplace! It was active at certain times.
One thing I found amusing about the reboot is they tried to bring back Boxey as a character. He obviously didn't land well in the pilot and he disappears into the crowds of refugees, never to be seen again.
It was originally aired on ABC . Universal studios didn’t own NBC then the same was for Disney didn’t own ABC . It was in the nineties that the networks were bought by the studios.
This was in theaters in '78 as well, premiered before the series proper. It was the debut of Universal's Sensurround sound system, that added a lot of bass. It shook the walls!
Noah Hathaway, who played the little boy Boxey, later played Atrayu in The Never Ending Story (1984). in the original 1978 show, the Galactica was just a large space-borne aircraft carrier with defensive guns. the re-boot show had the Galactica as more of a battleship/carrier with much bigger offensive guns along with the defensive AA guns.
Glen Larson productions did Battlestar Galactica '78. Due to cost, (and possibly ratings), it only lasted one season. Glen Larson productions also went on to do "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" in 1979, which lasted for two seasons. To lower costs, there's a lot of prop and stock scene reuse between the two shows. Glen Larson also went on to make a number of shows in the 80's. Many of us Gen Xers grew up with Glen Larson shows.. The Fall Guy, Magnum P.I., and Knight Rider were among his shows.
I always thought that instead of Galactica 1980, they could have had the Galactica find Earth in Buck Rogers time. They already had the props from that show
I know! I know! Watch the CONNECTIONS series with James Burke You guys will end up with an hour discussion after each episode , you can't help it! The picture is full of Twist, also they're only 12 episodes.
I was 14 in 78 growing up in Canada when Battlestar Galactica was released in the theatre Aug/78. I sat through it twice. Went crazy for the tv show when it started in the fall. If you liked Star Wars you liked BG. The show was number one with every Sci-Fi fan at the time. It was cancelled because it was too expensive to make. The tech was not there yet so it also hard for them to make each episodes on time. I had a huge crush on Maren Jensen(Athena). I had and build model kits of all the Spaceships. Viper/Raider/Galactica/BaseStar.
"I don't know if this was a movie or a TV show" Technically, this was both. It had been filmed as a TV show for ABC, but the pilot turned out to be so expensive that they put in theaters to recoup their costs. Then it came out in the fall of 1978 as a weekly TV show, using the movie as a three-part intro called "Saga of Star World"
10:20, Apollo’s last words to Zac always gets me in the feels. Zac is his younger brother and wasn’t supposed to be there. But he wanted to fly at least one mission with his big brother Apollo before the peace treaty. Now Apollo has to leave his brother behind to warn the fleet of a Cylon sneak attack. Who among us wouldn’t be messed up having to do that?
One of the main differences was that in the old show, they were running into humans living on other worlds all the time. While in the reboot, once they left the colonies, they never saw another human until they got to Earth.
You guys were talking about how annoying Boxey was, who was played by kid actor Noah Hathaway, of who Noah also became famous 7 years later in the movie "The Never Ending Story" in 1984. Noah then grew up & then became even more annoying in real life as a teen & adult. I think Hollywood messed him up, just like it has done to some other kid actors. He actually got hurt on the set of "Never Ending Story". Since then in the 2000's, Noah has gone to some Comic-cons for BSG & a lot of times when he is on the panel, he had certainly been annoying there too, heh. I think you should watch & maybe also make reaction videos of the convention panels for original BSG. There was actually one convention in 2009 where some of the actors from both the original & reimagined shows were on the panel together. Keep in mind that in 2009, the reimagined version had just finished up a year earlier. I love both versions of BSG, although I love the classic/original a little bit more. I grew up watching that. I even have a plastic scale model of the Colonial Viper that I glued together in 1979 & I still have it to this day. There was actually a big rumor that a 3rd rendition of BSG was coming, headed by Sam Esmail, but apparently the project got shelved recently, or maybe it's still happening, no one really knows at this point. By the way, just one piece of trivia, but the reimagined 2003 version would have never happened if it wasn't for Richard Hatch, who was the original Apollo actor, who then also played Tom Zarek in the 2003 version. RIP Richard. 11/20/24
Yeah shows did rush relationships back then. They did it that way because they wanted to get to the action and story right away. They did take their time a little bit with Apollo and Sheba
For the record, the character of Boxey was in the 2004 reboot movie/pilot. From what I read the kid that played Boxey grew very tall by the time they stared shooting the series so producers decided not to bring back the character of Boxey
I like that reaction, "Starbuck's a guy???!!" Because those of us that watched this show in 1978 as kids, had the reaction to the reboot in the 2000s, "Starbuck's a girl???!!!"
Dirk Benedict will always be Starbuck in my books.
I was 9 when this show was on , I never missed an episode
They also made Boomer a woman and Asian.
My thoughts exactly. It gave me a laugh big time
It was a stupid decision.
The Daggit Muffit did not have a human being playing in the suit, but a chimpanzee trained to do the stunts. The whole purpose of that character in the little boy was to keep it family-friendly for the 1970s.
I still remember visiting Universal Studios (The original) Tour, & seeing a Daggit (Spelling?) live, on stage, in their, “Animal Actors Show”. It was kinda cool, when they removed the head, to reveal a chimpanzee, in the costume!
Hmm…? 🤔
(Wondering if there’s any video of it, on TH-cam?🤔)
😁
Shoutout to everyone who thinks this is the best BSG!
I enjoyed this as a kid, but still think that the reboot is better.
Me! I hated the reboot-it was immoral
Me to hate the reboot wish they had gone with Richard hatchs version instead
Liked the original, no god damn bullets, no doctor pepper cylons (I'm a pepper your a pepper, wouldn't you like to be a pepper too) and not depressing after every episode.
Oh and no Baltar humping in private.
What? No one talking about Athena/Cassie? Our weekly dose of childhood crushes until Sheba shows up.
@@samsonau8205 To this day, it amazes me that they actually allowed a prostitute to be a major character on a " kid-friendly" TV show.
@carybrown851 That's why she retrained to be a med-tech as the show continued.
@@samsonau8205 And... my post is gone. Apparently, TH-cam hates all forms of conversation except "KEWL, DOOD!!!!" They're still in "algorithm deletion mide," post election.
Cassie was a "sociolator" in the show. In other words, a pr0$titute. This was spelled out quite clearly. And there was nothing wrong with having such a character on the show as one of the survivors.
It's just reaaaaly ironic that 1978 TV standards and practices was more tolerant of discussing that sort of thing than 2024 TH-cam is.
🤔
@@carybrown851Excuse you, she was a "socialator" 😂
@@TründiMolisher Funny, how TH-cam keeps deleting my (totally in compliance eith their "community standards") posts.
I did say that in an earlier post. I really can't wait for the day TH-cam's "moderator staff" gets purged of the ultra woke types and returns to sanity.
As I've said several times, in several posts, 1978 network "standards and practices" rules were far more rational than today's Google-run version. Vack then, the oeople enfircing them, rughtly ir wrongly, belueved that they were "protecting the innocent." Tiday's version believe that they are "waging war on our hated enemies."
The helmets were designed to resemble ancient Egyptian head wear, but that was meant to imply that our civilization in earth includes remnants of the civilization we see here.
For YEARS, you could only see Star Wars in the theaters. Battlestar Galactica filled our Star Wars needs on TV in the interim. Every kid I knew watched this series. It was the hottest thing on TV. The network panicked after 1 year, because it was the most expensive TV series up until that time, and they decided they could do "sci fi" on the cheap with Mork & Mindy. People threw a fit and the ill-fated Galactica 1980 was introduced as a result.
Worth it for The Return of Starbuck.
@@MrLorenzovanmatterho epic episode I still remember watching as a kid
@@zzygyy Brings me to tears every time, "I judge this mortal and find him good, so VERY good!". Thankfully he was able to use the Cylon ship to escape and make it to Earth in the late 60s, taking on the identity of orphan Templeton Peck whom he conveniently resembled and was killed in the Vietnam War.
@@MrLorenzovanmatterho That episode is worth watching and consider it the last episode of the OG Galactica Series.
@@reesebn38 I did like it that we saw the fleet finally reach Earth
Dirk Benedict (Starbuck) also played Templeton 'Faceman' Peck in the original The A-Team series from the 1980's. During the intro to the series there is a very short clip of someone walking by dressed in a full Cylon costume, and Face does a double-take as if to say, 'don't I know you from somewhere?' A nod and a wink to his character in the original Battlestar Galactica.
In the only good episode in Galactica 1980, Starbuck rebuilds a Cylon to be his friend and helper!
@@shallendorthey could not make up their minds on which way to go. Time travel or kids. Would have been good if they could travel back and save the colonies.
This was the reason JMS had a plaque in his B5 office "No cute kids, no cute robots, ever!" 😯🤣🤣
JMS doesn't look good things sometimes. 😂
@@rodentnolastname6612 Unfortunately, it looks like JMS may be going down the wrong path these days. He's actually the one behind the attempt to reboot Babylon 5. And to change its core fundamental principles. The original show was magic and a lot of that came from him but a lot of it also came from the actors and the other creators. Just for one example there is no way anyone else could ever play G'kar. It would inevitably be a different character with the same name. It could never be the same character.
I really wish creators would just leave stuff that's already been created alone and create new things instead.
Apollo's little brother Wishes he had Jesse's Girl.
Is that who that is?
@@RKnightsYup, Rick Springfield
Lol, I never made the connection! I was sitting here thinking Steve Antin was in BSG?
Speaking of which… surely there’s a reaction to Last American Virgin… I’ll go check.
(For any reaction show, it’s highly recommended. Obviously I can’t say why.)
Nice one. Most people don't get it today.😊
Ha!
When this came out on TV, the executives commissioned Larson to make Star Wars on TV. However, Larson took that and made something that stood on its own. Its important to know that, at the time this came out, there were calls for the US to unilaterally disarm in the hopes that the USSR would see that we weren't a threat and do the same. Larson showed in BSG just what would likely have happened, and it's still amazing to me it got past the executives.
You guys have the benefit of over 46 years of SciFi movies and shows. There was no internet, no mobile phones, no AI, no virtual networks so the reboot premise would never have existed back then. Just great model ships, great story lines and great characters. The story works for the time it was released. Star Wars was thee movies back in those days and Battlestar Galactica was the show on TV, nothing else came close. Star Trek was full of mean scary aliens to a 6 year old me. I owned most of the BSG toys. Broadcast TV back in those days had to pass the network sensors and had no choice to be adult oriented and had to be kid friendly back in the day per FCC broadcast regulations in the 70s.
@christophercaragan3861 Correction: Star Wars was One film when this came out until The Empire Strikes Back knocked our socks off in 1980 after this was cancelled.
The actor who plays Commander Adama, Lorne Green, starred in the first television series to be filmed completely in color from start to finish. The show is called Bonanza and it ran from 1959 until the mid 70's. He also had two hit singles. One is called Ringo, a #1 hit on the country and pop charts, and Ghost Riders In The Sky, hitting #2 on the pop chart. He was a very popular actor and made many guest appearances after this series ended.😮😊
He also starred in a fire fighting series I forget the name of.
He also narrated the New Wilderness. 👍
Lorne Green was known as the voice of Canada on the radio during in WW2
I saw this on a Sunday Night in September of 1978 when I was 8 years old and LOVED IT! This was a classic!! It broke our hearts when ABC cancelled this show in 1979 only to bring back a Half-Budget bastardized version of this show called "Galactica 1980". There were some GREAT Episodes of this too like: The Gun on Ice Planet Zero, The Living Legend, War of the Gods. and Greetings from Earth.
Me too! The final act was interrupted for about 45 minutes for the signing of the Egypt/Israel Peace treaty by Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat.
In 1979 we got Buck Roger's in the 25th century. Another great scifi show my Dad would watch with me. Lots of hotties.
I did a book report in grade school about Ice Planet Zero. The book was great and I've always loved the original Battlestar Galactica!
I saw this in the theaters as a kid. This movie is the pilot for the TV show. The version of the pilot shown on television rather than in theaters includes a different fate for Baltar. Now, watch the series.
The TV version also had about 30 minutes of extra footage that was not in the movie, it initially aired as a 3 hour tv movie.
It ran on ABC network
A bit of trivia: the F-16 fighter entered service in 1978, the same year that *Battlestar Galactica* came out. Pilots of the F-16 gave it the nickname "Viper," inspired by the Colonial Viper fighters from BSG.
*Battlestar Galactica* was originally planned as a series of made-for-television movies. The idea was to show 3 or 4 of them over the course of a year, which would give them time to come up with good scripts and to build up a suitable special effects library. After that, the plan was to go to a weekly television series format.
Unfortunately, ABC was so impressed with the pilot movie that they *insisted* the show go straight to series, and the producers of the show just weren't ready for that. So they were scrambling to come up with scripts [resulting in them taking several movie scripts and re-writing them], and the special-effects makers couldn't create new effects fast-enough to keep up with the weekly format, which is why the show notoriously re-used special-effects shots. *Battlestar Galactica* would have been *so* much better if the show-makers had been allowed to make the show the way they'd wanted to!
Imperious Leader was voiced by Patrick McNee - who was Steed in the 1960s British TV series, The Avengers.
Listen carefully, you'll recognize his voice narrating the opening.
Indeed
He also comes back later in the series to play the mysterious Count Iblis, a very high-end evil alien lifeform. All implications in the episode were that he was what we would term "the devil." Even the name, "iblis," is the word for Lucifer/Satan in Islam.
Fall 1978 my late wife & I moved to So. Colorado so I could attend college and we had zero cash. I had been waiting for BSG for a while and was really disappointed that all we had was a b&w tv. The debut day cones and suddenly a color tv rental got dropped off. One of the best gifts she gave me. 😊
7:20, John Colicos, to trekkies Kor the Klingon Dahar Master. So captivating he featured TOS, TNG and DS9. His Baltar is so polar to the reboot's whiny selfsearching version.
Apollo's wife: Jane Seymour, Famous Bond Girl....
1970s bombshell
When this premiered on television, it was seen by more people than any other series premier in television history up to that time, breaking all other previous viewing records😮😊
I remember that Sunday Night in San Francisco's mission district with Fog thick as Pea Soup that night. 😊
Galactica premiered Sunday September 17th on ABC.😊
I watched both the movie and the television series when first aired. The Vipers were just as cool as an X-Wing in my book, and the Cylons were far more imposing than Stormtroopers ever could be.
32:19 Mark! Actor Patrick McNee! He's not just "The Narrator" he is also "The Imperious Leader"! (He was also the male star of the British spy series "Avengers"!) He returns later as a different character, by the way! 😊
Was also Count Iblis later on in the series.
In the original Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons were not creations of man. It was an alien race which had taken to cybernetic alteration. The lower casts were almost entirely mechanical, while the upper castes retained much of their original, reptilian form.
How they came to be "upgraded" is not 100% clear, but it"s heavily implied that a character called Count Iblis found the Cylons and taught them how to "enhance" themselves.
In the original Galactica canon, Iblis is, essentially, Satan.
The leader of every Cylon ship is known as the "Imperious Leader." This is a cylon in its original organic body, but with three brains networked together.
Regular Cylon warriors... referred to (inaccurately to the true meaning of the word) as "Cylon Centurians," have a single brain, heavily altered and computerized. They have only enough organic systems to keep that brain matter alive, and are otherwise entirely robotic.
There is a "higher ranking" Centurion type, gold instead of steel in appearance but otherwise identical. I believe they are known as "command centurians."
There are also Cylon Advisors. Lower ranking, apparently, than Imperious Leaders, they seem to be even more intelligent. We only ever really meet one of them, though we see several. The one we meet is called "Lucifer."
Realize, the creator of the original series was a devout Mormon, and he introduced a lot of aspects of Mormon religion into the series, sometimes subtly, sometimes very overtly.
But, we only see four types of cylons in the series. Silver and Gold Centurians, Imperious Leaders, and Advisors. There could be countless other types, but not serving in the Cylon space navy, it seems.
But these Cylons are not entirely mechanical... more like the Borg. And they were absolutely not creations of humankind.
These cylon are reptilian in nature... Just very bright crocodiles. They are willing to coexist with "lesser species" ehich ptovide dome brnefit to them and who totally submit to them, but destroy everyone and everything that either resists them or is of no use to them.
One item of lore that you left out is that the IL Series, i.e. the Cylon Advisors, had two linked brains.
@@pauld6967 Ah, yes, you're correct. I thought I said that, but forgot to type it in! 👍
@carybrown851 Glad to help someone who respects the lore. 🙂
Actually in the original novelization the cylons were experts in biological engineering. There was the basic brain the worker class had but when one was found suitable to be a warrior they got an upgrade to specialized warrior brain. Exceptional warrior would get an officer brain added so they would have 2 brains, The Imperious Leader had the third brain. Each additional brain added some specialized functions they were designed for
The decision was made to make the Cylons a race of robots when it was put to a tv series to try to downplay that humans were wiping out a sentient alien species as well in every episode, so they downplay the Cylon Imperious leader after that
I loved this show and Buck Rogers after watching them back to back in reruns in the 80's. Still entertaining even if it's really dated. I would still love to see a continuation of this version of BSG someday in live action.
These shows were awesome filler while we waited for empire strikes back.
Richard Hatch was trying to get his continuation of BSG off the ground by using his own money to fund a trailer for his project BSG: The Second Coming. It’s on YT.
Richard Hatch (Apollo) is also in the Reboot (Tom Zarek ) R.I.P Apollo (2017, 71 Years old)
Rick Springfield was the most popular soap opera actor to also have a successful recording career at the same time😮😊selling many millions of records, albums and 45's!
He also had a Saturday morning animated tv series in 1973 called Mission:Magic!
For the TV series, the movie was re-edited, and the ending changed, so Baltar is spared after convincing the new leader to let him hunt for the fleet and bring them in. He figured him being human would give him a tactical advantage over the machines. He was given command of his own baseship and sent to seek and destroy the remaining humans.
It was because of this show that the F-16 was not officially named Viper. Pilots still call it that, but the official name is Fighting Falcon.
Have you thought about doing the mini series "V The Original Miniseries" ? The first mini series started in May 1983, then there was another one, about a year later in 84. There was a shortlived tv series in 84, then a reboot around 2008, 2009. It is a must see series for any syfy fan.
This was meant to be a movie but the studio made it a 2 part tv movie at the last minute.
Jane Seymour did it as a movie and when the studio wanted a running series, she didnt want to be a tv actress, so they killed her off which was very sad to me because she was so beautiful and i cried.
Then she did "Somewhere in time" and was even more beautiful in that.
They filmed two movies. Then changed format to a weekly series.
Specifically, during production of the movie the studio told them to go to series at the last minute, prompting the studio to then air the movie as a 3-hour tv premiere (not a 2-part episode premiere), to launch the series.
@@DularrNo, what happened is on the success of the initial movie in theatres they later took the contents of two 2-part tv episodes, “The Living Legend” and “Fire in Space” and edited it into a second movie called “Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack” which was released overseas theatrically.
Fun Fact: Richard Hatch (Apollo)was the only actor from the original series that also was in the reboot (Tom Zarek).
What!? That's crazy
@@RKnights Richard Hatch was very critical of an attempt to remake the series, most people wanted a continuation with the original cast and saw him as an advocate. He spoke to the producers and got a sense of what the new show would be like, and he became critical to winning the old fan-base over to the new series.
@@RKnights The movie ended kind of abruptly, this outro should help you guys with where the 1978 series was going, keep up the good work. th-cam.com/video/wQVgGOgYthg/w-d-xo.html
@@ianwestc ... And a lot of people don't/didn't realize it, but the 2003 reimagined series would have never happened & existed if it weren't for Richard Hatch. He inadvertently began the ball rolling for the 2003 version when he had been campaigning back in the 1990's for the original show to either continue. I remember going to the Galactica fan websites back then to check his blog updates to see his progress. Even the crescent-shaped Raiders in the 2003 series were inspired from his 1999 "Second Coming" BSG trailer. And of course the human Cylons in the 2003 version actually began in Galactica 1980. To Richard's chagrin, the 2003 version was not what he wanted. Ron Moore, as a peace offering, asked Richard to make a cameo in the 2003 version, of which he did & then became a semi-regular. After that, Richard said the 2003 version also became a godsend for his career, when at first he was disappointed & also talked of its high quality as a show. After Richard died, many of the actors from the 2003 version loved Richard for his hard work & for keeping the peace between the two BSG fandoms. Richard made lemonade out of lemons. RIP Richard. The others from the original cast do still prefer their own version of course & the reimagined cast prefer their own. It's just bias based on experience, but they all understand. There was supposed to be a 3rd rendition of BSG coming, headed by Sam Esmail, but apparently the project got shelved recently. But even if this latest one got shelved, I would not be surprised if more versions of BSG will eventually be made in the unknown future. It will probably depend a lot on trends. I would have hoped that all these UFO hearings in recent times could have helped get it started, heh.
11/20/24
They almost got Dirk Benedict to guest star as well.
Awesome. Loved this as a kid and still has a fond place in my heart.
By your command! - Cylon soldier.
I saw the original back in the 70s. In comparison the reboot is super-dark, far more morally grey, and advocating pragmatism over principle. The reboot was truly a different beast than the original.
Think of the original as more of a Bible story with clear good versus evil and Mormon-religion references. It's light and fun entertainment. It is worth watching the original show.
This was the movie. When they went to do the series, they turned the movie into the first two episodes and chaged the ending so that Baltar lived.
Have you thought about watching Buck Rogers in the 25th Century?
Thinking about it
@@RKnights To add to that question on reruns Battlestar and Buck Rodgers often alternated in a shared time slot and some props and models were reused, both by Glen Larson and Universal.
@@RKnights I'm just going to say Erin Gray as Colonel Wilma Deering. 🤤
'Nuff said.
Twiki basically is your pnis sidekick on 70's primetime television and they got a way with it.
At very least the movie!
I remember going to see this at the theater as a kid. We were all excited to see it. The music, the sounds, and seeing that huge ass Battlestar was an experience I can never forget.
Universal did have a Battlestar Galactica ride for decades. It even showed up in several Universal TV shows. One of the best was the A-Team which starred Dirk Benedict (Starbuck)
Serena was a Bond Girl five years earler.
Baltar Is Kor From Star Trek And Star Buck is faseman From A-team
29:38 Mark! Headline: "ROBOT DOG BITES ROBOT MAN! FILM AT ELEVEN!" 😂😅 🤖
LOVED this show as a kid, still have my toy Vipers, you can take them apart, front and back, and mix-match them back together in various ways. Still have my Cylon Raider as well, both of them shoot little “torpedo” lasers that I can’t believe they let released. Such a small child choking hazard but hey, 70’s baby, we just dealt with it. The box said it wasn’t for 5 or under, why’d ya give it to them.
1978 saw the very first of the home “personal computers”, the Commodore PET, the Apple ][ and the Tandy TRS-80. Cost ranged, inflation adjusted, from around $1000 to as much as $14,000 for a loaded Apple ][. Even though they were available most people simply could not afford one. 1979 brought the Atari 600, 1980 the Commodore Vic-20 then a stream of new editions of those, including the Atari 800XL and Commodore 64 brought cost down. It wasn’t until 1984 or so that they were truly “affordable for anyone”. Home video game consoles, like the Atari 2600, were FAR more common, some of them even attempted to be a computer, though not well.
BSG was a great show, but sadly after the pilot series it was hit with a limited budget and lawsuits from George Lucas. This caused the later episodes to drop in quality, and they had to recycle special effects shots.
Eventually they had to end the series and the guys who made it went in to make Buck Rogers, which was designed to survive on the budget they could afford.
I can see how this could have been great
It never had any quality to lose.
This WAS a ride at Universal Studios Park In CA. If I recall, it was one of the first attractions built after opening. And the Robot dog isn't a human. Its a chimpanzee!
That had to be cool
I loved the Universal Studios Battlestar Galactica ride as a child.
Whas that the park where the one episode from the A-Team was filmed, with the moment when a cylon walk in front off Face aka Dirk Benedict aka Starbuck?
@@QualityFrogBSit had a live actor playing a colonial warrior fighting off the cylons while the guests escaped.
@@MakotoAtava YES.
The film you watched is the movie put together for overseas theatre release. It was designed to be self contained. The pilot version of this story had additional scenes to set up the continual story.
The first few episodes act as a serial continuous plot line before settling down to becoming episodic.
This series was TV's answer to the popularity of Star Wars. Just as Airwolf was the answer to Blue Thunder.
31:41 Mark! We couldn't be friends if you disliked dogs, even robot dogs! 😮
In the novelized version that came out after the movie left the theaters but before going on TV, I got to read it and loved it. As for the space mines, they were designed to disable and eventually destroy capital ships. It's why the Viper Starfighters could fly close enough to them to shoot em up, as the small size didn't fit the combat computer's requirements to close in and detonate. The explosion was a combination EMP and nuclear cluster bombs that would decimate a capital ship so Carrilon, a 'bug alien' based planet, wouldn't be easily invaded by the humans, who they disliked. However, humans were also a good food source for their young, and so set up the trap to ensnare whomever they could. The novelization was epic and I loved it, and when the series hit the TV, I loved it as much as I did Star Wars. Do NOT let the critics of those days get away with calling BSG a Star Wars type movie to reap Sci Fi profits. BSG was written and in development three years before Lucas had Skywalker as a twinkle in his eyeball. Lucas had trouble getting money to make Star Wars, in case you didn't know, and the same corporate ass-hats gave Glen Larson an equally hard time with the wallet. Once they witnessed the money Star Wars made, they fully funded BSG quickly, and Larson of course grumbled that they could have had BSG produced three years before Star Wars ever came out. I remember these events as they unfolded in the early 80's, which shows my old fartness. Today, they can only speculate as all of those old interviews and news articles are long gone.
Sunday nights is when this aired 8pm I believe. We would all come in from playing football to watch.
Yes, and once ABC decided to kill it. It moved a different night and time slot every week. I remember getting the new TV guide every week when I was 12 and chasing down where the show was this week.
We were so nuts over BSG when I was a kid we took to making our own Vipers out of those plastic popsicle sticks....the ones you could interlock.
Yes, this movie was done to ride the Star Wars wave. Along with it was a Star Trek movie in 1979, Buck Rogers, and several others.
As far as I know, almost all of the original filming miniatures still exist in various private collections. They used to have a Battlestar Galactica ride in the Universal for many years but was eventually dismantled as people lost interest in it. Not sure where the 'bad reviews' came from, the movie was successful that a TV series was quickly produced. Muffet was a trained chimp in a costume. The amazing soundtrack was done by Stu Phillips who did several TV shows during the 80's including Buck Rogers and Knight Rider to name a few.
Oh how I have waited for this! I was a kid when this came out and even before I saw it, I knew I loved it. We were at Kmart and I saw the toys and begged my mom for them. She asked how did I know I would like the show -- I said of course I will!
It was very good
I was in Jr. high and I knew I'd love it. I wanted the helmet and jacket.
30:56 Mark! Because they were very consistent about their controls, some friends and I felt confident that we could be "Colonial Viper" pilots! 😊 Not so much with Buck Rogers, though. They didn't focus on more than the trigger and joy stick functions. 😕
After all the years of watching this series. I never would have imagined that in later years I would end up fancying the ass off Starbuck 🤣🤣
I loved the original. Boxey and Muffet was used to appeal to us kids. Don't know if you recognize him but the actor who played Boxey (Noah Hathaway) played Atreyu in The NeverEnding Story. The show started off really strong but the episodes got more campy at the end. We do not talk about Galactica 1980. I would have preferred they used a real dog for Muffet instead of a chimp in a costume (but it was an improvement over K9).
This WAS a ride! It had a story where you were captured by Cylons. I remember it back in the 80s
Glen A. Larson, the guru of 70s and 80s TV.
Zac made it to Earth. I saw him on General Hospital.
One of my favorite shows. Two other shows you should react to is Knight Rider (1982) and Airwolf (1984).
I grew up watching this series. Lorn Greene was the father in the massive TV show " BONANZA !" With his casting the show gained massive respect from the TV critics.
This show was a massive hit, I even went to show at Universal Studios Theme Park. It was soo cool at 14. I had the action figures everything.
In fact, I own the digital version and just got done watching it again a few months ago. .
Thanks so much for the reaction.
41:24 Mark! Oh yeah! Which was first, the series "Designated Survivor" or the rebooted "Battlestar Galactica"? 🤔 By the way, there's a Japanese spin-off titled "Designated Survivor: 60 Days" or something like that. 🤔
"Designated Survivor" felt at times like an alternate reality version of "24" since Keiffer Sutherland starred in both. 🤔
Oh, the point is that Kiefer's character was also the Secretary of Education who became POTUS because of an attack! 😮
29:24 Mark! I'm back after a brief hiatus! 😊 Hey! I wouldn't want to leave without my pet either! 😮 I know what that experience is like! 😢 I made me resentful of the elders who caused it! 🤬
The pilot movie was cool, but after a couple episodes of the TV series you realise they never shot any more FX shots, and every space battle was just the one from the movie, re-edited again and again and again.
Not that Star Trek never re-used shots, but with one big ship you notice less, just flip it around or play it backwards or slow it down or change the colour of the planet, there's only so many ways you can look at a big ship or move it past the camera. But a fighter battle, after about the third time you realise you're watching the same strafing run, the same Cylon blow up, the same turret firing over and over and over...
"Mankind has been pushed to the brink of extinction! Our loved ones have died and our way of life is over. Let's party!" I am glad that they took that plot point out in the reboot.
Baltar didn't die.
There was a Counsel of Twelve in the reboot.
One of the conditions for Edward James Olmos to do the reboot was NO ALIENS.
Ever wonder why the creator of B5 Never had any cute animals on his show ?...And remember what he did to the very few cute kids that Did appear ...i have a feeling that was because of Battlestar Galacltica....
JMS was known to be a huge fan of the original Galactica and was influenced by it in his creation of Babylon 5.
I still have my Battlestar Galactica toys including Muffet, lol.
i'd buy that for a dollar
Theres a funny clip of Dirk Benedict, when he was on the A-Team, encountering one of those Cylons at something like Universal Studios. One of those funny little moments.
The pilot was released in theatres in Canada and a few other countries. It featured a Sensurround sountrack (the same subwoofer system used to shake theatres for the movies like Earthquake, Midway(1976) and Rollercoaster). In the USA it premiered only on television as far as I know.
Battlestar Galactica (1978) is almost 50 years old and still looks good (so does Star Wars & Alien). Now will the reboot of 2004 still hold up and look good after 50 years? The CGI of the Cylons does not look good at all IMO
Much of the ILM crew that created effects for Star Wars followed John Dykstra to work on this show. For a Gen X kid, it was like being able enjoy a snack size Star Wars each week.
The movie was later split up into a pilot Mini series for the tv show, with probably the most notable difference being that Baltar was Killed at the end of the movie version, but was spared by the Cylons cause the Producers wanted to Keep him around as somewhat of a reoccuring villain in the Tv show
You cut one of my favourite bits
Imperious Leader: Recall all Raiders to defend base ship
Cylon: Our Raiders are all destroyed
Imperious Leader: All destroyed...? How...? We had them by surprise
Cylon: Apparently it was not as big a surprise as we had hoped for
Commander Adama was one of the most well-known faces on this show. He had been on Bonanza for years. Everyone knew him.
Jane Seymour. The Newscaster, the babe. Became Dr Quinn on the show Dr Quinn , Medicine woman. And these days recently filmed a British tv series where she is a detective. That show is Harry Wild.
Starbuck was biig later in The A-Team TV show.
Patrick Macnee does the narration. He's also the voice of the Imperious leader of the Cylons.
I think the original broadcast was on the ABC Network.
Double the budget of any series at the time.
The reason that the Cylons are seen so seldom in the Reboot was because of the lack of threat in the original series because the Cylons got beat every week. They wisely dumped Muffit in the Reboot and lost Boxy as well.
I think this was like buck Roger's there was a movie then spin off TV show
The "Big Baddie" as you called him, was the commander of that one Cylon base ship. The series was mainly them on the run, having encounters with the Cylons and struggling to find resources as they search for earth.
The opening narration is partly based off a book that came out back then called Chariot of the God's. An interesting book but the author himself admitted to making most of it up. Still a fun read.
I remember waiting for 2 weeks to see the premiere,(I was 11 years old), all set in and ready to watch. Then it was interrupted! Jimmy Carter had some stuff to say. Lol! Bummer night!
I understand that feeling. Hated having my shows interrupted for adult stuff
31:03 Mark! Not "channel" as it wasn't cablevision. It was a free broadcast antenna television network! It was on "ABC" because there wasn't a merger yet of "NBC" and "Universal"!
By the way, then then anchor of, "Good Morning, America" David Hartman, father of Lisa Hartman Black, hosted a special prime time editon of the show to help promote the network's expensive new UFO fad inspired Science-Fiction series.
Back then, with television quality being what it was, the film clips looked as good as "NASA" videos! Or for average people, "Star Wars"! But David was more impressed than those average people and compared it to the real thing!
Back then, the set for the show looked more like an actual living room and breakfast nook area that included a fireplace! It was active at certain times.
One thing I found amusing about the reboot is they tried to bring back Boxey as a character. He obviously didn't land well in the pilot and he disappears into the crowds of refugees, never to be seen again.
It was originally aired on ABC . Universal studios didn’t own NBC then the same was for Disney didn’t own ABC . It was in the nineties that the networks were bought by the studios.
This was in theaters in '78 as well, premiered before the series proper. It was the debut of Universal's Sensurround sound system, that added a lot of bass. It shook the walls!
Noah Hathaway, who played the little boy Boxey, later played Atrayu in The Never Ending Story (1984).
in the original 1978 show, the Galactica was just a large space-borne aircraft carrier with defensive guns. the re-boot show had the Galactica as more of a battleship/carrier with much bigger offensive guns along with the defensive AA guns.
When the original BSG came out in the seventies I was blown away by the visuals.
How can someone be GenX and only seeing BSG for the first time in 2024?!
They weren't a Nerd like us. Haha
You guys were good guessers on the Carillon puzzle.
You guys would probably enjoy the old series.
Glen Larson productions did Battlestar Galactica '78. Due to cost, (and possibly ratings), it only lasted one season. Glen Larson productions also went on to do "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" in 1979, which lasted for two seasons. To lower costs, there's a lot of prop and stock scene reuse between the two shows. Glen Larson also went on to make a number of shows in the 80's. Many of us Gen Xers grew up with Glen Larson shows.. The Fall Guy, Magnum P.I., and Knight Rider were among his shows.
I always thought that instead of Galactica 1980, they could have had the Galactica find Earth in Buck Rogers time. They already had the props from that show
I know! I know! Watch the CONNECTIONS series with James Burke
You guys will end up with an hour discussion after each episode , you can't help it!
The picture is full of Twist, also they're only 12 episodes.
37:10 Mark! That's so cynical! 😮 Without Boxy and Muffett, you'd be asking if any children and pets survived! Granted, the organic one did die! 😮
I was 14 in 78 growing up in Canada when Battlestar Galactica was released in the theatre Aug/78. I sat through it twice. Went crazy for the tv show when it started in the fall. If you liked Star Wars you liked BG. The show was number one with every Sci-Fi fan at the time. It was cancelled because it was too expensive to make. The tech was not there yet so it also hard for them to make each episodes on time. I had a huge crush on Maren Jensen(Athena). I had and build model kits of all the Spaceships. Viper/Raider/Galactica/BaseStar.
That guy said he didn't know there was no color back then. It's 1978 not 1938, where there was no color.
I don't know which episode it is, but there is one where the Galactica gets major damage and it always stood out as my favorite episode.
It's called Fire in Space
That hot little mom Apollo was with was Jane Seymour. Also, Richard Hatch (Apollo) was a guest star in in the reboot.
"I don't know if this was a movie or a TV show"
Technically, this was both. It had been filmed as a TV show for ABC, but the pilot turned out to be so expensive that they put in theaters to recoup their costs. Then it came out in the fall of 1978 as a weekly TV show, using the movie as a three-part intro called "Saga of Star World"
10:20, Apollo’s last words to Zac always gets me in the feels. Zac is his younger brother and wasn’t supposed to be there. But he wanted to fly at least one mission with his big brother Apollo before the peace treaty.
Now Apollo has to leave his brother behind to warn the fleet of a Cylon sneak attack. Who among us wouldn’t be messed up having to do that?
One of the main differences was that in the old show, they were running into humans living on other worlds all the time. While in the reboot, once they left the colonies, they never saw another human until they got to Earth.
You guys were talking about how annoying Boxey was, who was played by kid actor Noah Hathaway, of who Noah also became famous 7 years later in the movie "The Never Ending Story" in 1984. Noah then grew up & then became even more annoying in real life as a teen & adult. I think Hollywood messed him up, just like it has done to some other kid actors. He actually got hurt on the set of "Never Ending Story". Since then in the 2000's, Noah has gone to some Comic-cons for BSG & a lot of times when he is on the panel, he had certainly been annoying there too, heh. I think you should watch & maybe also make reaction videos of the convention panels for original BSG. There was actually one convention in 2009 where some of the actors from both the original & reimagined shows were on the panel together. Keep in mind that in 2009, the reimagined version had just finished up a year earlier. I love both versions of BSG, although I love the classic/original a little bit more. I grew up watching that. I even have a plastic scale model of the Colonial Viper that I glued together in 1979 & I still have it to this day. There was actually a big rumor that a 3rd rendition of BSG was coming, headed by Sam Esmail, but apparently the project got shelved recently, or maybe it's still happening, no one really knows at this point. By the way, just one piece of trivia, but the reimagined 2003 version would have never happened if it wasn't for Richard Hatch, who was the original Apollo actor, who then also played Tom Zarek in the 2003 version. RIP Richard.
11/20/24
Yeah shows did rush relationships back then. They did it that way because they wanted to get to the action and story right away. They did take their time a little bit with Apollo and Sheba
Aaaay! I remember recommending this during one of your livestreams :)
Thanks for the idea!
That robot dog actually had a chimpanzee inside it
For the record, the character of Boxey was in the 2004 reboot movie/pilot. From what I read the kid that played Boxey grew very tall by the time they stared shooting the series so producers decided not to bring back the character of Boxey