I remember my parents letting me stay up late to watch the 3-hour premiere of Battlestar Galactica on TV in 1978. The news broke in toward the end for live coverage of the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. They pre-empted like the last half hour of the show.
My folks sent me to bed and I was so pissed that I was going to miss the end. I couldn’t go to bed. I just paced back and forth in my room. My dad actually came and got me when the news was over and I got to watch Apollo and Starbuck beat the Cylons and kick off the series. So for the record, 9-year-old me was much more concerned about intergalactic warfare than peace in the Middle East.
Such was life in a post-Star Wars world. In the late seventies, Star Wars ruled my life. The movies. The comic books. The bedsheets. It was all about that galaxy far, far away. But if you wanted to experience Star Wars on the screen, you had to go to the movies. Yes, Virginia, there was no Blu-Ray, no on-demand, no Disney+. The only way to see your favorite flick was in the theater. If it was no longer showing, you were out of luck. You’d have to wait a year or two for it to show up on network TV.
Life was tough, kids.
My love of Star Wars lead to an infatuation with Battlestar Galactica. Apollo, Starbuck, and Athena were proxies for Luke, Han, and Leia. They had spaceships, killer robots, laser guns and heroes with good hair. That was good enough to satisfy my Star Wars jones. Plus, it was on TV EVERY week. I was glued to the set Sunday nights to follow the Galactica as it led a ragtag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest for a shining planet known as Earth.
My childhood best friend and I were so enamored of the show, we’d spend hours playing Battlestar Galactica, fighting imaginary space battles with couch cushions fashioned into cockpits while we wore homemade helmets. In our minds, we were space warriors fighting for survival amongst the stars. In reality, we were two kids with diaper boxes on our heads. Fandom is a powerful thing.
The show ultimately only lasted one season. The effects made it expensive to produce so the show quickly became the “adventure of the week” with recycled space battles and thin storylines. It was completely retooled for a reboot series, jettisoning most of the original cast to tell a story set 20 years in their future. In this new show, Galactica makes it to Earth circa 1980. They spend a lot of time running around LA, which meant the show saved money on sets and costumes. We did get some cool flying motorcycles, but mostly it was lame.
I pretend this misfire doesn’t exist and I don’t pay much attention to the celebrated reboot that won fans and awards about 10 years ago. The new show was good and told some bold stories, using the sci-fi premise as a morality play and a metaphor for 9/11, but I didn’t really go for it. I just wanted to see folks in cool suede jackets, shooting laser guns. There’s talk of another series based on the reboot being readied for Peacock, NBC/Universal’s streaming channel. I’ll probably take a pass unless the cast has really good hair.
Battlestar Galactica is an entertaining Star Wars knockoff with a pinch of mythology and a heavy dollop of 70’s cheese. Watch the show again if you can find it. There was a DVD boxed set out awhile ago and all the episodes popped up on the Tubi streaming channel recently. Check it out and let me know what you think. It’s a little goofy, but a lot of the effects still hold up, the soundtrack is bombastically cool and the cast is game.
It’s a good ride.
NERDSPRESSO 
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