45 years ago today, the hotly-anticipated three-hour debut of “Battlestar Galactica” was interrupted by an interminable news break as, after twelve days of secret negotiations, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords at the White House, overseen by President Carter. A big deal, to be sure, but what 12-year-old cared about peace in the Middle East? We wanted our “Battlestar Galactica!”
Tonight, on a special edition of “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner,” we’ll do what we can to bring harmony to the galaxy with an amicable conversation about human annihilation and studio lawsuits.
You have to hand it to creator Glen A. Larson. Every penny of this $8 million “Star Wars” cash-grab made it on screen, with special effects by “Star Wars” exile John Dykstra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic enlisted to perform Stu Phillips’ score, Lorne Greene lured from the Ponderosa, supporting parts for Oscar winners Ray Milland and Lew Ayres, and the voice of none other than Mr. Steed himself, Patrick Macnee.
It was 10:30 p.m. at the time of the news flash, and the Cylons were closing in! There were a lot of bleary-eyed children in homeroom the next day, I can assure you, as it would have been the rare parent indeed that could have coerced their child to bed with a half hour left of “Battlestar Galactica.”
So was it as good as “Star Wars?” No way! But it was a game attempt to meld the tropes of George Lucas’ space opera with the planet-of-the-week approach of “Star Trek.” Like “Star Wars,” the series is full of archetypal, religious, and mythological symbolism, but a lot of it never seems to gel. We have Moses. We have Iago. We have a primal fear of bugs. And the fighter pilots all wear Egyptian pharaoh helmets.
As Macnee states in the weekly show’s opening voice over, “There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans, who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians or the Toltecs or the Mayans.” So basically, he’s telling us it’s a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Also, remember, Erich von Däniken was a very big deal at the time, with “Chariots of the Gods” prominently displayed among the literary offerings of supermarkets everywhere. And the show is apparently loaded with LDS themes. (Larson was Mormon.)
Of course, whatever resonance “Galactica” was aiming for was undermined completely by a follow-up series, “Galactica 1980,” really a badly-compromised, bargain basement second season, in which representatives of the fleet have very lame and very cheap adventures on (then) present-day earth. But it’s best not to linger on that agony.
Roy and I will cut through the felgerarb, with a discussion of “Battlestar Galactica,” on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Bring your cubits to the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., THIS SUNDAY EVENING AT 7:00 EDT!
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Friday got away from me, so I was unable to promote Roy’s conversation with Dominic Stefano and Dave Rash to mark the 60th anniversary of “The Outer Limits” (1963). Dominic is the son of series creator Joseph Stefano. Stefano and Rash have collaborated on several “Outer Limits” projects. Friday’s show, which is prefaced by an update with Jeffrey Morris on his upcoming “Space: 1999” documentary, “The Eagle Has Landed,” has been archived here:
Lending to our unbearable excitement: Frank Frazetta artwork in TV Guide!