Chris Bunch

Chris Bunch
Role:	Story Editor; Writer, "The Day They Kidnapped Cleopatra"
BSG Universe:	Galactica 1980
Date of Birth:
Date of Death:	Missing required parameter 1=month! ,
Nationality:	USA
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IMDb profile

Christopher R. "Chris" Bunch (December 22, 1943—July 4, 2005) was an American science fiction and fantasy novelist and television screenwriter who served as one of two story editors on Galactica 1980 with fellow writing partner Allan Cole, and co-wrote its final episode in production, "The Day They Kidnapped Cleopatra." An active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at the time of his death, he wrote more than thirty novels across the science fiction and fantasy genres.

Career

Born in Fresno, California, Bunch attended Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, where he met Allan Cole, his future writing partner and eventual brother-in-law. He later studied at California State University, Los Angeles before serving in the United States Army during the Vietnam War as a patrol commander, completing two tours of duty that ended in 1966. A contemporary magazine profile additionally described him as having trained in explosives during his service. After returning from Vietnam, he worked as a correspondent for Stars and Stripes and contributed to Rolling Stone and other publications, including Popular Science.

Bunch and Cole began their television writing partnership in the late 1970s. By 1985, after roughly six years of television work, they had sold 67 scripts together, a figure that eventually exceeded 150 by the time their partnership ended. Their early credits under Glen A. Larson's executive production included Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (two episodes in 1980) and The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, for which they co-wrote the series pilot with Larson. Their broader television credits as a team included The Incredible Hulk, Quincy, M.E., Magnum, P.I., B.J. and the Bear, The Rockford Files, Hunter, The A-Team, The Smurfs, and Walker, Texas Ranger. The A-Team episode "Pure-Dee Poison" (season 2, January 31, 1984) was written by Bunch and Cole. The two also served as story editors on the television series Werewolf. As their television careers were winding down, the two also contributed to the 1985 NBC drama Hell Town, including its second episode, "The People vs. Willy the Goat."

Galactica 1980

Neither Bunch nor Cole had prior involvement with the original Battlestar Galactica series. Cole and Bunch's involvement with Galactica 1980 began when they sold a freelance script, "Earthquake," to producer Jeff Freilich shortly after the pilot was produced. A Universal Television executive subsequently pressured them into accepting positions as two of three story editors on the series, threatening to blacklist them from future Universal projects if they refused. Their agent negotiated an initial ten-week contract paying $3,000 per week, with studio options to extend the arrangement for a year and then for three years.

In practice, the role carried almost no creative authority. Series creator Glen Larson wrote nearly every produced episode himself from his homes in Hawaii and Malibu, the sole exception being Robert L. McCullough's "Harvest Home," later retitled "Space Croppers," was the only one Bunch and Cole were not asked to police for studio-mandated content. Their principal assigned task was inserting the mandatory "educational beats" that ABC's Broadcast Standards & Practices department, overseen by Susan Futterman, required for the Sunday 7 p.m. timeslot. Specific disputes with the censor included a line about an "internal combustion engine" she deemed insufficiently substantiated, a comic line using the word "meatball" that she suspected of being indecent, and a sequence in which child characters examined a security guard's holstered handgun, which she ordered cut on the stated grounds that a child fascinated by a firearm would grow up to use one. Despite working for Larson throughout the production, Bunch and Cole said they never met him in person. The studio's per-episode license fee from ABC was approximately $800,000, with Universal Television absorbing further costs as overruns.

Before being hired as story editors, Bunch and Cole had already written a first-draft script titled "Earthquake" built around the recurring villain Xavier using artificially triggered tectonic activity; the character was written out of the series before the draft was filmed, and the broadcast episode was substantially rewritten without him. Other material that went unproduced included "The Money Machine," a comedic script by Alan S. Godfrey. During production of "The Super Scouts, Part I," director Vince Edwards, best known for starring in Ben Casey, staged a fire-and-explosion sequence in which a falling I-beam narrowly missed him on camera after a stunt cue was delayed.

"The Day They Kidnapped Cleopatra" centered on Xavier abducting Cleopatra and bringing her to the present day. Bunch and Cole said they wrote around the resulting time-paradox problem, since Cleopatra's exposure to her own recorded fate was difficult to address within the family-hour format, and that the finished script was credited primarily to Anne Collins because a heavily revised draft had been built on top of her version. Lead actors Kent McCord and Barry Van Dyke had indicated they would refuse to report for the episode's filming after being told they were not needed for "The Return of Starbuck"; the dispute became moot that same afternoon when ABC cancelled the series during production of "Cleopatra," the eleventh episode, prompting an impromptu wrap gathering on the set.

Novels

Bunch and Cole co-authored eight novels in the military science fiction Sten series between 1982 and 1993, along with the Anteros fantasy series. Their 1987 Vietnam War novel A Reckoning for Kings, about the Tet Offensive of 1968, received a Pulitzer Prize nomination. By the mid-1980s the pair had already resolved to wind down their television careers in favor of novel-writing, citing the more direct creative control fiction afforded compared to working within a network's editorial structure. Their professional partnership ultimately ended in 1995, after which Bunch continued writing fiction as his primary occupation, following an approximately twenty-year television career. His solo fiction includes the Shadow Warrior space opera trilogy (1996–1997), the Seer King fantasy trilogy (1997–1999), the Last Legion military science fiction series (1999–2001), the Star Risk mercenary series (2002–2005), and the Dragonmaster trilogy (2002–2004).

Personal life

Bunch's sister Kathryn married Allan Cole, making the two men brothers-in-law throughout their working partnership. Around 1993, Bunch and Cole relocated to the Long Beach Peninsula on the Washington coast, with Bunch settling in Chinook.

In June 1996, Bunch was arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of Michael G. Mauch, 26, a neighbor at an RV park in Chinook where Bunch resided at the time. Bunch maintained throughout the proceedings that he fired in self-defense after Mauch threatened and charged him. A Pacific County coroner's inquest convened in August 1996 and returned a verdict of justifiable homicide, with no charges filed.

He subsequently settled in Ilwaco, Washington, where he died on July 4, 2005, following a prolonged lung ailment.

Writer credits for Galactica 1980

• "The Day They Kidnapped Cleopatra," with Mark Jones, Anne Collins and Alan Cole

References

External links

• Chris Bunch article at Buck Wiki, the Buck Rogers wiki.