Nostalgia of the cornball kind
Most people know I am a long time Science Fiction fan, few though know my "first" Science Fictions series was the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica. It was the series that along with the movie Star wars the year before, that started me along the path of Science Fiction geekdom.
I suppose most people today see the original Battlestar Galactica as pretty cheesy, and it was, especially with the cliché cute kid and annoying pet, but when you are six years old Sci-Fi fanboy in training, the show was nothing less then awesome. Sadly the program only lasted one full season before removal from ABC for being too expensive. After an extensive letter writing campaign to the network, the show was brought back in 1980, abet in a different form. Thus was born the epic failure known as Galactica 1980.
The idea of Galactica 1980 was that the Battlestar Galactica and it's fleet finally discovered Earth. Unfortunately it was the Earth of 1980 and thus unable to defend against the Cylons or be ready to openly accept some space faring race of humans into their mist. Alright, this new idea isn't bad, even if they changed the basic formula. After all it worked for Buck Rogers, right? Right?! Unfortunately like Buck Rogers, reformulating the story tends to be very susceptible to all the worst clichés of television Science Fiction of that era and well, you know where this is going.
The first painfully obvious clue the show was going nowhere when in the second part of the premiere story arc, they suddenly decided to play the time travel angle, which if not corny enough, had to use the tedious idea of having Nazis be the bad guys. Of course toss in all the usual hackneyed ideas: The near omniscient child genius (who even made Wesley Crusher look stupid by comparison), kids from the fleet *somehow* having magical super powers on Earth despite being, you know, human too (because super advanced technology just isn't enough), lame socialist morality tales of our heroes fighting evil corporations and capitalists, oh and time travel (worth mentioning again, because dammit, that was just so lame), all by episode five and you have the perfect storm of Sci-Fi fail. No surprise then that the show lasted 10 weeks before being pulled for terrible ratings.
Anyway to avoid the rest of you ever having to watch the actual cornball series I present Galatica 1980 in Three Minutes, which tells the entire tale for you but only requires a sacrifice of 3 minutes (and 15 seconds) of your life, oh and having to listen to disco:
I suppose most people today see the original Battlestar Galactica as pretty cheesy, and it was, especially with the cliché cute kid and annoying pet, but when you are six years old Sci-Fi fanboy in training, the show was nothing less then awesome. Sadly the program only lasted one full season before removal from ABC for being too expensive. After an extensive letter writing campaign to the network, the show was brought back in 1980, abet in a different form. Thus was born the epic failure known as Galactica 1980.
The idea of Galactica 1980 was that the Battlestar Galactica and it's fleet finally discovered Earth. Unfortunately it was the Earth of 1980 and thus unable to defend against the Cylons or be ready to openly accept some space faring race of humans into their mist. Alright, this new idea isn't bad, even if they changed the basic formula. After all it worked for Buck Rogers, right? Right?! Unfortunately like Buck Rogers, reformulating the story tends to be very susceptible to all the worst clichés of television Science Fiction of that era and well, you know where this is going.
The first painfully obvious clue the show was going nowhere when in the second part of the premiere story arc, they suddenly decided to play the time travel angle, which if not corny enough, had to use the tedious idea of having Nazis be the bad guys. Of course toss in all the usual hackneyed ideas: The near omniscient child genius (who even made Wesley Crusher look stupid by comparison), kids from the fleet *somehow* having magical super powers on Earth despite being, you know, human too (because super advanced technology just isn't enough), lame socialist morality tales of our heroes fighting evil corporations and capitalists, oh and time travel (worth mentioning again, because dammit, that was just so lame), all by episode five and you have the perfect storm of Sci-Fi fail. No surprise then that the show lasted 10 weeks before being pulled for terrible ratings.
Anyway to avoid the rest of you ever having to watch the actual cornball series I present Galatica 1980 in Three Minutes, which tells the entire tale for you but only requires a sacrifice of 3 minutes (and 15 seconds) of your life, oh and having to listen to disco:
Click to view