Batttlestar Gallactica - The Original Series (1 Viewer)

There are many threads on Battlestar Gallactica that discussed both the old/new show. I only briefly watched the re-imaged Battlestar gallactica as i had difficult with some of characters.
The old series is still my favorite as i remember watching it as kid. I just watched Baltar escape, which as Lloyd Bochner and Lance Legault as the adversaries. I also liked Anne Lockhard's sheba character. Ann was a beauty in the late 1970s!!
I like shows such as Battlestar as it gives you different spin on universe. Yes, i know it is sci-fi, but still fascinating to understand why pyramids were created and/or fable kingdom of Atlantis or Ancient Greece.

Surely the original series would be a no brainer on blu ray?

I was watching the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" Blu-Ray and thinking the same thing, Simon. BSG in HD would be just as amazing to watch. It would still cost a pretty penny, but maybe Universal could do it to tie in to Bryan Singer's Battlestar Galactica movie.
I wasn't born yet when the original series first aired, but I'd watch it every Intergalactic Day (Wednesdays, I think) on Sci-Fi channel. They always included "The Return of Starbuck" (from "Galactica 1980") in those airings, which I liked a lot. I can't remember when Sci-Fi actually aired "Galactica 1980" again, but I caught a couple episodes and wished I didn't.

All of the original BSG was posted on film, so it should cost considerably less to release on BD than The Next Generation.

Escapay said:

I was watching the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" Blu-Ray and thinking the same thing, Simon. BSG in HD would be just as amazing to watch. It would still cost a pretty penny, but maybe Universal could do it to tie in to Bryan Singer's Battlestar Galactica movie.
I wasn't born yet when the original series first aired, but I'd watch it every Intergalactic Day (Wednesdays, I think) on Sci-Fi channel. They always included "The Return of Starbuck" (from "Galactica 1980") in those airings, which I liked a lot. I can't remember when Sci-Fi actually aired "Galactica 1980" again, but I caught a couple episodes and wished I didn't.

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I like the return of starbuck and wish they could have expanded on that episode. There was a site that talked about non-produced episodes and it mention the writers/director wanted to do another episode with Starbuck
I also read somewhere that Galactica 1980 was produced due to fans of the old series wanted the network to re-boot the show. The network tried to get Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict involved, but both decline and/or were involved with other projects. The Gallactica 1980 was weird series as it started with time travel then move into some weird episodes, i.e. kids playing baseball or farming, etc. The best episodes imo were starbuck and the night the cylon's crashed. I could care less about the other episodes as they really had no really meaning for me.

i still love the old series. dirk benedict was starbuck imho. i wish universal didn't use flipper discs however. galactica 1980 was released on single sided discs.

kingfish said:

i still love the old series. dirk benedict was starbuck imho. i wish universal didn't use flipper discs however. galactica 1980 was released on single sided discs.

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Yes, that is one reason i could not get into starbuck's character in re-booted version of the show.
I still like watching the a-team opening and the cylon going by dirk benedict, lol!!
Richard Hatch was also amazing as Apollo.

younger1968 said:

I like the return of starbuck and wish they could have expanded on that episode. There was a site that talked about non-produced episodes and it mention the writers/director wanted to do another episode with Starbuck

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Yeah, I think I read that too. It's too bad it never happened.

i wish universal didn't use flipper discs however

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Me too. Especially as Discs 3 & 6 puts 3 episodes on one side, and only 1 episode on the other.
Hopefully Universal will re-visit the series and just re-issue them as single-sided discs. They released "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" as dual-sided discs too (back in 2005), but re-released the first season this year as single-sided discs. Granted, I'd still prefer a Blu-Ray...

All of the original BSG was posted on film, so it should cost considerably less to release on BD than The Next Generation.

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That's good to hear! So they won't have to re-composite all the episodes together a la TNG.

Escapay said:

I
I wasn't born yet when the original series first aired,.

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Oh geez.. I wrote several papers in High School and College about John Dykstra, The Orignal BSG, etc. The general themes of the show and how it traced roots
back through 'modern' Science Fiction and Greek Mythology/General Religious principles, comparing the whole Cold War mentality and Vietnam War connections, plus the science of both Space
in general as well as the Physics of Space Travel/Space Ships, and Special Effects. There was lots you could do with the shows and concepts, but Ben Cartwright was still hard to keep
out of the narratives.
That said, I can't even remotely consider anything other the budge of the original series superior to the Reboot. On every level I consider the new series vastly superior even though I have
a very soft spot for the Original and always will.

What I think of GINO is unprintable. I hate that show more than anything else I've ever forced myself to watch.
Anne Lockhart is still a beauty today too!

Jack P said:

What I think of GINO is unprintable. I hate that show more than anything else I've ever forced myself to watch.
Anne Lockhart is still a beauty today too!

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Yes, she is, but so is Jayne Seymour, who was killed off early in the BSG original run. I am glad i have it on dvd. I may look at the re-imagined down the road, if there are some good deals for the set. I though there was another BSG series coming out that tracked Adamo through his first battles with the Cylons. I never watched Caprica and it was canceled

younger1968 said:

I though there was another BSG series coming out that tracked Adamo through his first battles with the Cylons. I never watched Caprica and it was canceled

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Yes, it is (or was) called Blood and Chrome. First it was going to be a TV series, then a digital series (via the web) and now there is still talk of a TV series. It's hard to say what is actually happening with it. The pilot has been filmed (at least that is what I read) but it hasn't aired yet. I don't think it will air. After the disaster that was Caprica, I think Blood and Chrome is finished before it even got started.
As for Caprica, you didn't miss much. It was a decent show, but it just seemed to drag throughout the first 10 episodes or so. It finally got going near the end but by then it was just too late. Viewers dropped off in droves and the show sank like a rock.

You may also want to invest in the stand alone dvd or blu-ray of Battlestar Galactica Razor. The extended version is on each and is fantastic.. The movie is included in a series pack or stand alone as i said. The reboot does a reboot showing our old cylon ships cylons and tell a good story. I like both series and wish they would put out an HD version. Friends this is what you wanted. Thank another BSG Fan for this not me.
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica:_Year_Two_proposal

Yeah, I've read the second season proposal and it really stinks. Sadly, if this had happened, I feel that like Buck Rogers, it would have been Galactica's last season. Too many changes and the loss of Sheba would have been a rotten choice. Loosing Baltar and Tigh is totally unacceptable. No big loss on losing Boxey, Muffit, Wilker, and Salik. The eintire proposed character arcs for both Starbuck and Apollo is ridiculous at best. It's pretty clear from this that Larson had really no idea what did and didn't work when it came to this show. Overall he would have ruined it and I'm glad that a second year didn't happen. The large cast wasn't the problem. It was the redundant stories. In the first year alone there were no less than three episodes with someone stranded on a planet with no apparant way to get back to the fleet. Ok, one of those stories is fine but three is a clear indication that they were running out of ideas early on in the series. Either that or these shows were used as filler until the better shows could be completed. Constructing a decent continuing story arc would have been the best way to go with this series. Cut down on the number of stand alone episodes. Focus more on the struggles to survive within the fleet. I mean, by the end of the first season they already had the course to Earth plotted and were following it so that problem was solved. The Cylons were pretty much finished after the end of the first season but given good writers with good ideas they could have come back for a few more rounds. The main focus should have been the Fleet and it's problems. This is something that the new series did rather well most of the time.

I can tell you that everyone in the Galactica fan community was shocked when we learned of that S2 proposal, especially on the senseless killing off of Sheba. One reason why the last episode "The Hand Of God" resonates so much with many viewers is that finally, there's some momentum in an Apollo-Sheba relationship and it's been the basis for a lot of great fan creativity in the years since. And you can't get rid of Baltar either, though reducing him to a more "Lieutenant Girard" type role where he shows up only one of every five episode would have been a better ratio IMO.
The writers I can tell you were under tremendous pressure to turn out scripts fast. Terrence McDonnell once recalled at a convention how he and his partner, Jim Carlson basically got 48 hours notice to write what became the lackluster courtroom story, "Murder On The Rising Star." I don't think it was so much a case of having no fresh ideas as having to deal with terrible time pressures, many of which were caused by the show becoming a weekly series, rather than a series of occasional two hour movies.
The amazing thing though is that in the end, despite those pressures, Galactica turned out some exceptionally good episodes that I would rate higher than the best episodes of "Space: 1999" and on par if not better than many a good classic Trek episode. "Living Legend" offers a fascinating insight into a clash of leadership styles that Trek never gave us in three years. In Trek, the dichotomy was always simplistic of "Kirk is always right; Starfleet superiors are paper pushing bureaucrats who don't know anything". But in "Living Legend", Commander Cain is the more "Kirk" like character whose impulsive style is the kind we want to sympathize with, but Adama, playing the role of Eisenhower to Cain's Patton, as the political leader as well, has to keep him reined in for the well-being of everyone else.

the second season scripts were bad imho. athena was going to be played by another actress wouldn't have been that bad but killing off sheba and having commander cain as a cylon android stinks imho. apollo and starbuck switching roles was absurd. fortunately hatch and benedict didn't return for that disaster. ironically the original galactica 1980 script has apollo and starbuck but they didnt/couldn't get hatch or benedict back. dr zee was dr zero. if galactica 1980 had continued benedict would have been back as a being of light. omg what were they thinking.

kingfish said:

the second season scripts were bad imho. athena was going to be played by another actress wouldn't have been that bad but killing off sheba and having commander cain as a cylon android stinks imho. apollo and starbuck switching roles was absurd. fortunately hatch and benedict didn't return for that disaster. ironically the original galactica 1980 script has apollo and starbuck but they didnt/couldn't get hatch or benedict back. dr zee was dr zero. if galactica 1980 had continued benedict would have been back as a being of light. omg what were they thinking.

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I had a good chuckle after i read the link on the proposed script. The 2nd season would have been a flop if they had went through with the casting change. Sheba was very important, especially to Apollo and eliminating her would have been a mistake
There are things they could have done:
1. More planet exploration - they cover a planet that was wild west. So, they could have encounter more planets that related to the lost colonies.
2. They could have went through a time portal to stopped the Cylon attacks
3. Could have reached earth (i.e. Gallactica 1980)

glen larson patented the pegasus universe after the living legend episode. cain was supposed to find earth and build up the defenses. another project that never saw the light of day.

""A Queen's Ransom", a one-hour show where Apollo and Starbuck investigate the planet Sirenus upon learning it has solenium crystals crucial to navigation. The society on Sirenus is female-dominated and their leader, Areola, offers the crystals: the price being that Starbuck offers his "personal services" as one of Areola's concubines."
Areola?? Really???

Ethan Riley said:

""A Queen's Ransom", a one-hour show where Apollo and Starbuck investigate the planet Sirenus upon learning it has solenium crystals crucial to navigation. The society on Sirenus is female-dominated and their leader, Areola, offers the crystals: the price being that Starbuck offers his "personal services" as one of Areola's concubines."
Areola?? Really???

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Gee, this sounds very similar to Lorelei Signal.
Return of Pegasus again would have been a great episode!
Let's face some facts the later episode started go different direction with less emphasis on the Cylons and more on finding earth. There were some strange episodes on the alliance that had me wonder what direction the show was heading. The show always emphasize the lost tribes, but the Gallactica encounter many planets that had links to the colonies.
Baltar was a key figure, but his role seem diminish near the end of the show. There was a great episode were Baltar!
Gallactica 1980 had a chance to pick up were Battlestar gallactica left off, but failed. Yes, i like the early episodes when gallactica found earth and they went back in time, but some of the other episodes were really bad!!