Sources:Glen A. Larson on Battlestar Galactica

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Introduction

In this video, Glen A. Larson discusses the genesis of his concept for Battlestar Galactica, originally titled Adams Ark. He elaborates on the premise of a global catastrophe leading to a space journey for humanity's most brilliant minds, drawing parallels with Howard Hughes's reclusive nature and the idea of a "covert" space launch. Larson also touches upon the initial struggles of Star Trek and how the success of Star Wars later opened doors for science fiction. He delves into his fascination with ancient astronaut theories, citing authors like Erich von Däniken and Graham Hancock, and the mysteries surrounding ancient civilizations' advanced knowledge. Finally, he reflects on the theological underpinnings of his work and the successful collaboration that brought Battlestar Galactica to life, emphasizing the simple, yet effective, narrative of a continuous journey, similar to Wagon Train.

Transcript

The Adams Ark Concept

One of the first projects that I attempted to take to Universal to a guy in business affairs who took a liking to me, was a project called Adams Ark.

My concept was there was a Time Magazine cover, I think, of everyone who had ever been on Time Magazine's cover, they tried to have a birthday party or something. It's a long time ago now. And it would have had everybody on there. It would have had from astronauts to sports stars to scientists, really the, if you knew that you had D-Day approaching or a nuclear disaster approaching. My premise was that Howard Hughes's computers have predicted that the end of the world as we know it within a finite period of time. And these people were all invited for this cover party at this massive something in the edge of the desert, Nevada. This is at a time when Howard Hughes was not, nobody knew where he was, supposedly up in that suite on the top floor and Mayhew and all these people. Very few people, I met, I interviewed a guy later and he said he only saw him three three times in 20 years he worked for him. Once was on a railway exchange car when he was on his way into Vegas.

Inspiration and Early Challenges (Star Trek)

So, but he was also the, the dean of aviation and science and all of those things. So I thought it made some sense. So he invited all these people and at some point they hear this kind of rumble and whatever. And someone makes it up to like the ridge, and they realize that they're in the air. That this massive modern building has taken off and is carrying off into the universe, the creme de la creme of the world's most brilliant people. And the idea is that this is going to be a, a journey. And Star Trek did not start off as the darling of the broadcasting world. When I was still in the preps and living out in Sierra Madre and just barely married, whatever. I remember watching a couple episodes of Star Trek and the first season was, was, uh, fairly fragile. And Gene Coon came in I think the second season and they did some of their more distinguished works with Harlan Ellison and a few others. Especially Gene, by the way. He was a real student of humanity. So he'd bring some really core values into a lot of these episodes. They weren't just monster of the week and so forth and so on. So that show went off the air, I think at the end of the third season or something. And the networks were not clamoring for the next science fiction show.

Post-Star Wars Landscape & Extraterrestrial Theories

A few years later, Star Wars comes along and every network desk has scripts on it. It now has the Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds. All of these things are on desks and I wanted to do my space journey, but instead of starting from Earth, I had become a big fan of a couple of books, but they all dealt with the potential of contamination here on this planet from other worlds. And, and, and today we're getting much closer to the philosophy of some of these theories that perhaps rocks that came from Mars had bacteria on them. And from that bacteria, we evolved eventually over billions of years and whatever and ever. And, um, so I, I love the idea of going all the way back out in space and and bringing the remnants of that world and trying to find Earth. It was like reversing the thing. And, and the battles and things that they would, they would, they would meet on the way.

Ancient Civilizations and Advanced Knowledge

And many of the concepts that I was playing with are are sort of being revisited now. And, um, I know what one of them was, I think it was Von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods and Graham Hancock's written books called Fingerprints of the Gods. And a couple of our episodes were even, you know, various things of the gods and something out in space. So my premise was simple, and again, it's like if you take something to the networks, can we put a Mercedes grill on it, you know, or this or that. Uh, I thought we had a, a pretty good premise because when you really examine it, nobody really knows to to a finite fact who or how they built the pyramids. They certainly have never solved the problem of, unless we, we have some anti-gravity device or something. You know, you, okay, you build a thing to get up to the top, but how do you build that, you know? And you, there's so many loose ends. The technology and the science of the stars that, that ancient civilizations like the Mayans and the Toltecs and the and Egyptians have, they still don't know what was the mother civilization that spawned these technologies. An Aztec calendar that is still plus or minus a few seconds after thousands of years. In which, by the way, I think predicts we all end in 2012 or something. Would be the end of the next big epoch.

Theological and Production Aspects

So I really love the mythology and the theology of there are those who believe that life here may have begun out there, beyond the stars where even now humans fight for their survival. Um, that was the premise. It's fairly simple. One of the most successful shows in the history of television was Wagon Train and it, it's just about the journey. You know, once in a while their scout would go ahead and get into some trouble the next town or try to ferret out some, you know, whatever. But I thought that was a very simple concept. It did fairly well proven to be one which you can do human values and it could be a successful show. Our our platform was good. John Dykstra being available to help us and Fox making Industrial Light and Magic available to us along with many other things. Um, I mean, it was just a dream come true that we could, we could put this together.