Galactica 1980

Galactica 1980
Created by	Glen A. Larson
Starring	Kent McCord Barry Van Dyke Robyn Douglass Lorne Greene Herb Jefferson Jr. Patrick Stuart
Theme music by	Stu Phillips
Statistics
Production company	Universal Studios Glen Larson Productions
Number of seasons	1
Number of episodes	10 (list)
Debut channel	ABC
US first-run airdates	1980-01-27 — 1980-05-04
UK first-run airdates
DVD release	2007-12-26
Production staff
Executive producer(s)	Glen A. Larson
Producer(s)
Supervising producer(s)
Associate producer(s)	David G. Phinney Tim King
Co-producer(s)
Story editor(s)	Chris Bunch Allan Cole Robert W. Gilmer Robert L. McCullough
Series Chronology
Previous
The Original Series	Galactica 1980
Online Purchasing
Available at iTunes – [ Purchase]
Related Media
			@ BW Media

Galactica 1980 is a spin-off of the Original Series.

Galactica 1980 was first broadcast on the ABC Television Network in the United States from January 27, 1980, with its final episode first airing on May 4, 1980. Running for only 10 episodes, it was poorly received by both critics and viewers.

The series first aired in Sunday's 7:00 PM time slot, during what was known as the "family hour," targeting the show's audience primarily for children.

A four-issue comic book series from Dynamite Entertainment, written by Marc Guggenheim and released beginning September 2009, approached this series's concept in a re-imagined format.

Synopsis

Set a generation after the Original Series, battlestar Galactica and its Fleet of 220 civilian ships finally discover Earth but find that the planet is technologically backward in relation to Colonial technology. As a result, Earth couldn't defend itself against the Cylons as originally expected. Therefore, teams of Colonial Warriors are covertly sent to the planet to work incognito with various members of the scientific community, hoping to quickly advance Earth's technology.

The promotional material for Galactica 1980 sets the series at thirty years after the events of the Original Series.

Commander Adama and Colonel Boomer—now second-in-command in place of Colonel Tigh—send Captain "Boxey" Troy, the adopted son of Adama's own son Apollo, and Lt. Dillon to North America. The two become entangled with TV journalist Jamie Hamilton who aids them in devising ways to help Earth's scientists and outwit the handful of Cylons that discover the planet.

Captain Troy and Jamie Hamilton

Cast

• Lorne Greene - Commander Adama
• Robyn Douglass - Jamie Hamilton
• Herb Jefferson Jr. - Colonel Boomer
• Richard Lynch - Xaviar
• Kent McCord - Captain Troy
• Allan Miller - Colonel Sydell
• James Patrick Stuart - Doctor Zee
• Robbie Rist - Doctor Zee
• Barry Van Dyke - Lieutenant Dillon

Greene (Adama) and Jefferson (Boomer) were the only major cast members of the Original Series to reprise their roles in the ten episodes, with Dirk Benedict reprising his role as Starbuck in the last episode.

Short life

Galactica 1980 had a promising start in its ratings with a three-hour adventure that saw Troy, Dillon and Hamilton sent back in time to Nazi Germany to save the future, but the series could not sustain this momentum. The series was unceremoniously canceled after only ten episodes, many of which were multi-part stories, or what would be referred to now as story arcs. According to Cole, the network's cancellation call came not long after the costly two-part "The Super Scouts" episodes—intended as a ratings-saving gambit—aired and failed to reverse the show's decline.

The final episode, "The Return of Starbuck," aired on May 4th, 1980. The episode featured the return of Dirk Benedict as Lt. Starbuck in a flashback episode. The episode's popularity was too late to save the series. Repeats were aired through August 17th, and the series was replaced by repeats of Fantasy Island beginning the following week.

Production

In the fall of 1979, ABC Television approached Glen A. Larson and Universal to bring back Galactica series. According to producer Jeff Freilich, as relayed by Cole, the network guaranteed Larson a minimum of $1,000,000 per episode to develop the revival, with provisions to increase that figure for special episodes. According to 1980 story editor Chris Bunch, neither Larson nor Universal wanted to do the series at all. Bunch claims that both parties were threatened to do the series for reasons which were not known to him, and attributes the reason that Larson agreed to do the series to "[whore] for the money with a bad attitude." This is also corroborated by Bunch's then-writing partner, Allan Cole. Neither Bunch nor Cole had previously been involved with the Original Series, and a separate, contemporaneous 1985 magazine interview with the pair corroborates their account of being pressured into the assignment.

Starlog #34, May 1980 issue.

All the parties agreed that the discovery of Earth would be a suitable vehicle for drawing back viewers. However, many of the actors had moved on to other roles, most of the sets had been struck, and the time available for completing the production before the proposed January 1980 airdate was short. Actors and production personnel who worked on Galactica 1980 describe a crazy shooting schedule that involved working on multiple episodes at the same time, last minute re-writes, and working days that extended well into the night.

Bunch notes that both he and Cole were "literally blackmailed into the gig because of ostensible expertise in SF." A fuller account from Cole describes the sequence in more detail: the pair first sold a freelance script, "Earthquake," to the production and were offered staff positions as story editors at the same meeting, an offer they initially declined, preferring to keep freelancing and finish their first novel. They were subsequently summoned, with their agent present, to a second meeting with Universal's head of production, Peter Thompson, who reminded the pair that he considered himself their mentor since their earliest days in the business and made clear that refusing the position again would cost them access to most of the studio's freelance work. The two accepted on the spot, under an option contract binding them to Universal for up to seven years, renewable annually at the studio's discretion, with an initial period of roughly ten weeks. They, including Robert L. McCullough, were story editors for the series, and would chant "Come on, 13" every morning. "13" was the ratings number that, should 1980 ever hit or go below it, would result in the series' cancellation.

Larson wrote or rewrote the entire series' worth of episodes from either Hawaii or Malibu. Further episode rewrites happened on the sets just prior to shooting. Additionally, there was no clearly defined purpose to the show prior to development, as the purpose of the show changed on a daily basis. Additionally, new characters were created for the series, and then subsequently dropped as though they never existed. The sole exception to Larson's direct hand in the writing was "Space Croppers," drafted under the working title "Harvest Home" and credited to Robert L. McCullough; the finished script was transmitted to the network by satellite only twenty minutes before the episode's air time.

Several other scripts written for the series were never produced. Bunch and Cole's own first draft of an episode titled "Earthquake," sold to the production before they were hired as story editors, featured Xaviar triggering earthquakes through artificial means; the character was substantially reworked in the second draft. According to Cole, the premise was worked out on the drive to the pitch meeting itself, and originally paired the earthquake plot with a subplot involving a geologist whose unorthodox earthquake-prediction theories—inspired by an article on traditional Chinese folklore about unusual animal behavior preceding seismic activity—had left him at odds with his professional colleagues. Although later approved for production, "Earthquake" was ultimately shelved during a standoff with Susan Futterman over an unrelated episode (see "Kiddie Hour" below). A separate comedic script, "The Money Machine," was written by Al Godfrey, a producer who served as an informal mentor to Bunch and Cole during the show's production that, like "Earthquake," was unfilmed.

As a result of having crews work overtime, the budget for the series continued to creep up in cost. That, in conjunction with ratings that went from historic highs with the first episode down to a dismal showing by April, spelled the early end of the program.

According to Cole, the two-part "The Super Scouts" episodes originated as a pitch by Larson to placate the network after the "meatball" standoff described below: in exchange for barring Futterman from the set, Larson promised a spectacular story in which the Cylons would nearly destroy the fleet's school ship while children's lives hung in the balance, budgeted at approximately $3,200,000 for both episodes combined. Lorne Greene himself was skeptical of the scripts being rushed into production, reportedly remarking that no rewrite could save them. During production, Larson's script for the first episode ran too long for the crew to physically execute the planned camera and lighting setups in time; Bunch and Cole were sent to the set to cut setups without touching dialogue, but the episode's director, Vince Edwards (best known for the title role in Ben Casey), objected that any cuts would undermine the cast's "motivation." Lorne Greene personally intervened, taking the script from the writers and restructuring the scene himself, telling them that any further complaints—including from Larson—should be directed to him.

Bunch and Cole have also recounted a costly special-effects mishap during production of "The Super Scouts, Part I," also directed by Edwards. During a dailies screening attended by Larson, Frank Lupo, and Jeff Freilich, a sequence depicting the Cylon attack on the school ship's bridge was reviewed: a stunt cue for an overhead steel beam was called late, after the actors had already reacted to its absence, and the beam crashed down narrowly missing Edwards; because the bridge set had been pyrotechnically destroyed during the take, the shot could not be reattempted, leaving the aired sequence noticeably empty. Jeff Freilich left the production not long afterward to launch Larson's next series, Battles, a Hawaii-set detective show starring William Conrad.

Budget hell

Despite what Cole calls "revisionism" from people, such as lead actor Kent McCord—who claimed that they needed a way to "economize" Battlestar Galactica, ergo 1980—ABC "knew very well that Glen [Larson] never met a budget that he didn't hate".

The series itself cost between $1.2 and 1.5 million to produce per episode, with the $1.5 million number being the budget that "The Super Scouts, Part I" used. As ABC only paid $600,000 to $700,000 per episode, Universal was left to pay the remainder for each hour of programming. In a separate, contemporaneous 1985 interview, Cole instead put the network's per-episode license fee at approximately $800,000, with Universal absorbing the difference between that figure and the show's actual cost as a budget overrun. A 2018 recollection gives yet a third figure, attributed to producer Al Godfrey: a network fee of roughly $750,000 per episode, with Universal deficit-financing an additional $300,000–$400,000 to cover the difference. The figures are difficult to reconcile precisely, and may reflect either differing points of reference within the production or simply differing recollections across multiple decades-later retellings.

Additionally, Cole notes that "there were almost as many producers listed on the show as secretaries. I mean, every day we'd be introduced to another guy who had just joined the staff as a new producer. I don't know what any of them did—we rarely saw them again—but they sure were collecting the bucks." He adds that this was Universal's decision as they "figured [that] if they were going to eat the big green slime anyway, they might as well take care of some obligations and dump all their losses into one (overflowing) bucket." This constant overflow of personnel to the series did nothing to alleviate the budget issues.

Ironically, the only episode that did not go over-budget was "The Return of Starbuck," and so Universal did not have to pay the remainder as, by that time, they were overspent.

"Kiddie Hour," Standards and Practices, and "kids crawling out of your ears"

During its initial run, Galactica 1980 was relegated to the 7 P.M. Sunday timeslot. Its only competition was that of CBS's "television news magazine" 60 Minutes.

This time-slot was deemed by Standards and Practices as children-friendly, and thus had restrictions as to the type of stories that could be told, or how they could be told. According to producer Al Godfrey, as relayed by Cole, the Sunday 7 p.m. hour had been designated by the FCC as a "public interest" period intended to enrich children's programming, and networks were expected to provide such content in order to justify renewal of their broadcast licenses; Godfrey suggested that placing a children's-hour series on ABC in particular allowed the network to continue running more risqué adult programming elsewhere in its schedule while demonstrating its commitment to family-friendly content. Susan Futterman held the position of ABC's Program Practices Vice President overseeing the requirement.

The content of shows airing in this time-slot needed to be educational, and thus the Galacticans' lack of knowledge on Earth cultures and locations, and finding out about them through their wrist computrons came to satisfy this.

Furthermore, there could only be so many incidents of violence per episode. These incidents included shooting Cylons, despite the fact that they were robots; blowing up trees with laser pistols was also forbidden by ABC's censor, Susan Futterman, who caused many of the series's problems according to Cole, making the show impossible to work on. In one such episode, a hero blasts a tree with a laser pistol so that it falls and blocks a runaway school bus from crashing through a bridge railing into a river, saving the children aboard; Futterman classified the tree-blasting itself as an act of violence regardless of the lives it saved. In another instance, Futterman ordered a scene cut in which child characters examined a security guard's holstered handgun, reasoning that a child who found a firearm fascinating would grow up to use one. Bunch later illustrated the network's "educational beats" requirement with a hypothetical example of the formula at its most absurd: a car-chase scene interrupted by one character pausing mid-pursuit to ask the other how their getaway vehicle's combustion engine worked.

Additionally, people in the series needed to be clean-cut and presentable, thus removing any ability to present realistic presentations of people. Furthermore, Standards and Practices complained to Larson that there weren't enough kids; according to Cole, Larson replied "Okay, I'll give you kids crawling out of your ears." This resulted in The Super Scouts and the episodes that they were featured in, notably "The Super Scouts, Part I," "The Super Scouts, Part II," "Spaceball" and "Space Croppers."

Unfortunately, shooting with large groups of children proved another major headache for the series, forcing the producers to hire child actors who were twins. In addition to the kids having reduced hours of availability, and the lack of professionalism exhibited by them, the cast and crew had to deal with the "stage moms, all of whom ought to be locked up" and the teachers for each kid. As Cole put it, "if the kid is a star you have to listen to the teacher as if she were speaking from on high" regardless of the reason.

Later, as told by Bunch, Futterman questioned the source for a line in the planetarium scene in "The Night the Cylons Landed, Part I" stating the number of stars in the galaxy; Bunch and Cole had cited a newly purchased set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which Futterman initially deemed insufficient until Bunch offered to telephone the encyclopedia's public relations department to ask why an ABC executive had judged its contents unreliable, at which point she withdrew the objection. Futterman separately believed the meatball joke in the same episode to be sexual innuendo, despite the writers' insistence that it referred to nothing more than a meatball sandwich, which resulted in Larson peppering additional meatball jokes in that episode, in addition to its conclusion, "The Night the Cylons Landed, Part II." Believing the joke still concealed some hidden meaning, Futterman refused to clear the episode for broadcast, and Larson in turn refused to shoot any further episodes until the dispute was resolved, leaving production at a standstill with Bunch and Cole's own approved "Earthquake" script sitting unused. Robert L. McCullough's "Space Croppers" was hurried into production as a stopgap during the standoff and, to ease the script past Futterman, the writers told her it had been inspired by Jane Yolen's novel Harvest Home, a title they privately used as the script's working name while joking amongst themselves that it was really "Space Crappers." Futterman eventually relented; Larson had already loaded the episode for satellite transmission to New York and held it there until clearance came at the last possible moment before air, and the meatball-laden episode of "The Night the Cylons Landed"—reported to have cost approximately $1,250,000 to produce—aired largely as written.

Syndication, VHS and DVD releases

The Battlestar Galactica title card used from "Galactica Discovers Earth, Part III" and onward when sold as a part of the syndication package.

The ten series episodes were rolled into the television syndication package for Battlestar Galactica and were given the same title as its parent program. Some of the episodes were edited together to produce a VHS home video under the title Conquest of the Earth. Very few out-of-print copies of the VHS release of Conquest of the Earth remain publicly on sale. Unlike its Original Series parent, Galactica 1980 was late to release for home video.

As of August 2006, the Sci Fi Channel in America and the SPACE Channel in Canada periodically air the series. The three parts of the pilot were featured as part of SPACE's 2006 New Years Day marathon of the Original Series.

In the US, a DVD set of the series was released in December 2007. In the UK Galactica 1980 was released on 18 February 2008 . The series was formally released on blu-ray in the US, remastered in both full-screen and widescreen formats, on 12 May 2015 alongside the Original Series.

Episode list

1. "Galactica Discovers Earth, Part I" – January 27, 1980
2. "Galactica Discovers Earth, Part II" – February 3, 1980
3. "Galactica Discovers Earth, Part III" – February 10, 1980
4. "The Super Scouts, Part I" – March 16, 1980
5. "The Super Scouts, Part II" – March 23, 1980
6. "Spaceball" – March 30, 1980
7. "The Night the Cylons Landed, Part I" – April 13, 1980 (guest-starring Wolfman Jack)
8. "The Night the Cylons Landed, Part II" – April 20, 1980 (guest-starring Wolfman Jack)
9. "Space Croppers" – April 27, 1980
10. "The Return of Starbuck" – May 4, 1980

Notes

Troy, Hamilton and Dillon

• The series suffered from what are now considered science fiction clichés. For some fans, the addition of the mysterious Doctor Zee, a prodigy child that serves as counsel to Adama, pushed their suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

• Many fans of the Original Series over the years since the series' conclusion have demonstrated scorn for Galactica 1980, often considering it apocryphal with the exception of one episode: "The Return of Starbuck," whose story of the fate of a popular character of the Original Series was considered to be well written and full of the same energy found in many of of the Original Series episodes. (Battlestar Wiki treats this aired series as its own canon for the purposes of this encyclopedia, given Glen Larson's subsequent comments regarding 1980 being "Starbuck's bad dream.")

• One curious Cylon character in the two-part episode, "The Night the Cylons Landed" may be the one significant contribution to the "Galactica" saga. In the episode, Cylons disguised in human form arrive on Earth to cause mayhem. Some 23 years later, the Re-imagined Series also introduced humanoid Cylons that wreak terror and havoc amongst the Colonies.

Official Statements

Allan Cole discusses his thoughts o­n the show to John Larocque:

Let's face it, Galactica 1980 was an awful show. It deserved to be dropped. At the time, I remember that I posted a big sign o­n my office door with the number 13 o­n it. We had been told if the ratings dropped to 13 or below that we would be cut. Every morning my then partner, Chris Bunch, and I would chant "Come o­n, 13!" Must have been a great mantra, because the show dropped steadily, week after week. [...] Because of the "family hour" timeslot, the censors were always making us put in "educational beats" for the kiddies. I personally told Susan Futterman, then head of the network's program practices, that they ought to open every episode of the show with an "educational" tag that read: "Why aren't you little bug snipes watching 60 Minutes." [...] Susan wholeheartedly agreed with our sympathies.

—Allan Cole,

Glen A. Larson discusses Lorne Greene's involvement with the spin-off in "Sciography":

Lorne Greene called me and said his heart was broken over the fact that he wouldn't be in it. I don't think I've ever told anybody that, but I... I... I, um, I guess I reacted somewhat sympathetically to how he felt and, uh, rehired him. But it probably would've been better in terms of the cleanness and clarity to have gone forward some generations, and continued the trek.

—Glen A. Larson

Anne Lockhart (Sheba) and Richard Hatch (Apollo) discuss their thoughts o­n the series:

Anne Lockhart: Well, I don't know…when Boxey grew up into Adam-12, I really got worried…and that long white beard o­n Lorne [Greene]….

Richard Hatch: And Herb [Jefferson Jr.]….

Lockhart: Yeah, the snow that went in Herb's hair! And everybody else died fighting the war. I thought it was pretty bad, frankly. I watched o­ne episode and was so offended that I never watched another o­ne. (to Richard) What did you think about it?

Hatch: I think you summed it up pretty well!

—

Narration

The first opening narration to Galactica 1980, spoken by Commander Adama, appears in "Galactica Discovers Earth, Part I" (it has the screen title Galactica 1980, and is the longer version of the narration):

Opening narration for "Galactica Discovers Earth, Part I":

"The great ship Galactica, majestic and loving, strong and protecting, our home for these many years we've endured the wilderness of space. And now we near the end of our journey. Scouts and electronic surveillance confirm that we have reached our haven, that planet which is home to our ancestor brothers. Too many of our sons and daughters did not survive to share the fulfilment of our dream. We can only take comfort and find strength in that they did not die in vain: we have, at last, found Earth."

—Commander Adama,

A second/shorter version of the opening narration to Galactica 1980 (same as the first version, without some of the monologue, and a very small difference in the tone of the punctuation dividing a middle sentence, in bold), also spoken by Commander Adama, appears in "Galactica Discovers Earth, Part II" and the following episodes until "The Night the Cylons Landed, Part I":

Shorter version of the opening narration:

"The great ship Galactica, our home for these many years we've endured the wilderness of space. And now, we near the end of our journey: we have, at last, found Earth."

—Commander Adama,

And there is a third version of the opening narration to Galactica 1980 (same as the second version, except for two very small differences in the tone of the punctuation dividing a middle paragraph, in bold), also spoken by Commander Adama, which appears in "The Night the Cylons Landed, Part I" and the remaining episodes of the series:

Third version of the opening narration:

"The great ship Galactica, our home for these many years. We've endured the wilderness of space, and now, we near the end of our journey: we have, at last, found Earth."

—Commander Adama,

Closing disclaimer

Disclaimer seen in "The Super Scouts, Part II".

Affixed after (or overlaid o­n top of the freeze framed) final scenes of the 1980 episodes, starting with "The Super Scouts, Part II" and ending with "Space Croppers," is a disclaimer regarding Jack Sydell's Air Force Special Detachment One:

The United States Air Force stopped investigating UFOs in 1969. After 22 years, they found no evidence of extra-terrestrial visits and no threat to national security.

A similar disclaimer appeared o­n NBC's Project U.F.O. (1978-79), placed at the tail end of the ending credits and superimposed over the official seal of Department of the Air Force:

The United States Air Force, after twenty-two years of investigations, concluded that none of the unidentified flying objects reported and evaluated posed a threat to our national security.

Central character absences

• Galactica Discovers Earth, Part I: Col. Boomer
• The Super Scouts, Part II: Col. Boomer
• Spaceball: Col. Boomer
• The Night the Cylons Landed, Part I: Col. Boomer
• The Night the Cylons Landed, Part II: Col. Boomer, Jamie Hamilton
• The Return of Starbuck: Cpt. Troy, Lt. Dillon, Jamie Hamilton

External links

• Galactica 1980 series overview at Sheba's Galaxy

• Galactica 1980 article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

 

Subject: Episode List