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Battlestar Galactica Season Boxed Set? (1 Viewer)

Serega_M

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Aug 11, 2001
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Thanks, Jeff!
You are very informative, as usual - thanks a lot! Now I have no "backthoughts" and is eagerly awaiting this release :)
And now I have some concrete question about the series. Back in 80's here were floating some VHS copies of some series and I saw most of them - but I haven't seen the complete series for sure - roughly I saw about 50% or even less from the entire series as it seems. And cause I was young then I remember not much but the overall impression I had back then was positive - so - it is why I am so excited to buy the entire series on DVD :) Anyway - my question is: I do remember one episode (for me it seemed like a movie - maybe it was) very well with such plot: Galactica has finally located Earth, but their enemies have located Earth as well, and one fighter from Galactica was sent to Earth to give our scientists some new formula which will help earhtlings to fight against the invaders. I do remember that some "bad guy" had crashed on the Earth as well - and there was a robot with him :) Also - "our guy" had the technic which makes his starcraft invisible for some time to hide it from the eyes of the Earth locals. So - my actual question is - is this movie/episode a part of the series (and will it be in this box) or it is some kind of stand-alone movie and I won't find it in the box? :) Awaiting of your answer :)
 

Steve Simm

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Serega_M : The episode you are thinking of was part of the "Galactica 1980" series. The original series was canceled after only 1 season, actually less than that if I remember right. The series was cancelled due to the high cost of production, among other reasons, even though it had the ratings to carry on. There were a lot of people who tried to get the show back on the air to no avail. A year later ABC came out with Galactica 1980 that was basically a very poor attempt at cashing in on the originals popularity. The only good episode of that whole series was the one that dealt with the story on what happened to Starbuck. To answer your question though the episode you are thinking of wouldn't be part of the boxset. If I remeber right it was set on halloween night in New York or LA and had Wolfman Jack as a DJ for a radio station or something.....I don't remeber for sure. I loved the original but have spent years trying to forget the "1980" series :)
 

Jeff Kleist

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David, NOTHING can explain G80 :)
Actually, here's what happened. ABC, realizing that canning a show in the top 10 just becuase it was expensive was stupid, ordered a new Galactica telemovie where they find Earth. Of course, all the sets, props, etc were all gone by this time, which is why they only ever go onto a sliver of the bridge in G80. They told Glen Larson he had 4 months to do this in
Then they called him up and said they wanted it for sweeps, and he had 3 months
About a month later, theycalled up Glen and told him it was a series, and he had 6 weeks. And oh yes, it must have motorcycles, because CHiPS is popular.
They grabbed Kent McCord through a loophole in his contract (he was supposed to be in Galactica season 2) and a couple other guys, and managed to snag Lorne Greene (who really loved the role) and Herb Jefferson (who really needed a job) back.
I met Kent for the 10min he dared go to the Galactica reunion. He posed for some pics, signed some autographs, and split, positive there was a rotten vegtable cart around the next bend reserved just for him ;) He can be seen today occasionally popping up in Farscape as Crichton's father
I wouldn't mind "The Return of Starbuck" as a bonus on the DVD sets, but please, keep the rest! Lock it away for all time!
 

Dave Scarpa

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What Part was McCord going to play in the original plane for season 2. It certainly was'nt for an older Boxey.
 

Dave Scarpa

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Universal would never include the Return of Starbuck when they could create a Galactica 1980 set. Of course you'd have to really love ROS to sit thru the rest.
 

Serega_M

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Hi, again guys :)
Thanks for all kind of info you have provided. Heh... But actually - I can not see what is wrong with G 80... }:> The episode with Earth and Halloween (I do remember that this robot was seemed by everybody like a dude with a cool costume ;)) I did like back then - but have not seen the rest of this G80 stuff. The question is - what is SO terrible with this G80 series? Why everybody hate it so much? :)
P.S. And if there is a possibility for R1 or R2 set remastered.... Hmm... Now I have some thought to maybe wait some time... and maybe they will even re-mix the sound and clean up the picture for R1 debut? (Ohh, dreams, dreams...)
 

Eric Paddon

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To list the reasons why Battlestar Galactica fans hate and despise "Galactica 1980" would take up a volume probably a thousand pages thick. But here in a nutshell are some of the best ones.

1-G80 contained almost none of the cast members of BG save for Lorne Greene and a couple brief appearances by Herb Jefferson as Boomer. By jettisoning the main cast such as Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, John Colicos, Anne Lockhart etc. the chief reason why we loved BG, its characters, was no longer there.

2-G80 totally threw all continuity with BG out the window and was not presented in a way that the true BG fan could appreciate. The last ep. of BG, "The Hand Of God" (regarded as one of the best in the series) ends with a scene of the Galactica picking up the signal of the Apollo 11 flight (after everyone else has left the room). The Apollo XI flight was in 1969, and suddenly "thirty years later" they have discovered Earth in 1980. Um....no.

3-The budget was cheap beyond belief for G80. This meant the BG bridge couldn't even be reconstructed and thus almost all of the action had to be centered on Earth in boring stories. No space battles, no journeying through space, just nothing that could hold one's attention.

4-Horrible stories and bad writing, pure and simple. There wasn't a single quality episode of G80 to rival such magnificent eps. of BG like "Saga Of A Star World" (the pilot), "Lost Planet Of The Gods", "Living Legend" (Lloyd Bridges' memorable performance as Commander Cain), "War Of The Gods" (Patrick MacNee as the devil) and "The Hand Of God". Also, being stuck in a 7PM time slot, G80 had to be even more dumbed down for the kiddie audience and that meant none of the wonderful complexities that could be found in the great BG stories mentioned above.

5-G80 is also despised for the misleading way ABC hyped the show. Before its debut, ABC ran a series of misleading promos that hyped Galactica's return and showed a bunch of scenes of Cylon fighters attacking Los Angeles (all of which was accomplished BTW through dubbing in fighters over scenes from "Earthquake") conveying the idea we were going to see some knockdown dragout battle for Earth, and not a hint of suspicion that all the characters we loved so much from the original series would not be present. I will never forget talking to my fellow BG fans in the fifth grade the day after the premiere, all of us who had been excited, and we were going, "What the hell was THAT?"

To the true BG fan, story editor Terence McDonnell summed things up best at the 15 Yahren Con when he referred to "Galactica 1980" and in between the two words gave a contemptuous "PTOOIE" that was greeted with applause from all.
 

David Lambert

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Eric, nice summation. Highly accurate!
And THAT, my friends, is why we should never, EVER see a separate box set for G80. I'm a Galactica *NUT*, and I would ---NOT--- buy it! :eek:
If they threw it in free with the main BG eps, sure. But they only need to give us one of them...
 

Joseph Bolus

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Can somebody here tell me if The Return of Starbuck was actually produced as a Galactica 1980 ep? The quality of this episode was at least 10 orders of magnitude above anything else produced for that series. (It was like Enemy Mine for TV ... only better!)

Is it possible that it was actually produced for the Battlestar Galactica series? (The only part of the ep that had any G_1980 roots was the intro.) If so, it would make perfect sense for it to be included with The Complete Series Box.
 

Eric Paddon

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"Return Of Starbuck" was a G80 episode from the start. There were no produced for BG episodes that never aired or anything like that.
 

Jeff Kleist

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I don't think Kent's character had been given a name at the time the series was canned. That's the story he told me that I related.
 

Frank Doorhof

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Hand of God, and return of Starbuck are 2 of my alltime favourite episodes.

Talking about cheap and dumb.

Who ever saw the movie BG 80 ?

Just some cuts and scenes from the series and that's it.

However the original movie (released on DVD), is as far as I know followed up by another movie BG-II in which it appears there is another Battlestar left over, from the father of one of the main characters (forget her name).

Was this also a collection of episodes, or a real movie. It's along time ago I saw those.

Greetings from Holland,

Frank
 

Eric Paddon

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You're thinking of the dreadfully re-edited "Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack" which clumsily combined "Living Legend" and the next episode in the series "Fire In Space."

The re-edited Galactica movies, and that includes the theatrical cut of "Saga Of A Star World" which is out on DVD, are not regarded highly by BG fans except for the two-part episodes ("Lost Planet Of The Gods", "Gun On Ice Planet Zero", "Living Legend" and "War Of The Gods") which ended up gaining additional scenes not part of the original ABC broadcasts (which I think is a first in TV history). Other "telemovies" however clumsily combined different episodes to two hour length to very bad effect.

Even the dreadful G80 was made worse by such re-editing in the "Conquest of The Earth" home video release which combined the G80 pilot, the G80 episode "The Night The Cylons Landed" and then in a laughable attempt to make a connection with the old series, John Colicos as Baltar was brought back using footage from the regular BG episode "The Young Lords" (uttering the same dialogue).

And the other battlestar in "Living Legend" is the Pegasus, headed by the legendary Commander Cain (Lloyd Bridges). Commander Cain's daughter Sheba (Anne Lockhart) became a regular starting with that episode.
 

Serega_M

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Hi guys :)
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation once again, Eric -great summary! :) So - now I see that I really need to avoid this G80 series :) Heh...
 

Frank Doorhof

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Pegasus, that's right, that's the one.
I always thought there were 2 real movies, and the rest were only episodes. But I must be honest, I never really dove into the subject, because I knew that if I knew I would be looking for those movies, and a DVD release seemed so far away a few days ago ;) .
Over here (Europe).
We have had the series rerun for I believe 3 times, and on the German television they runned the 3 movies. In my memory the first 2 (original) were really good, the third was laughable.
I however WILL be buying the BG80 episodes (although I probarbly won't watch them more than once).
Greetings from Holland,
Frank
 

Jeff Ulmer

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the theatrical cut of "Saga Of A Star World" which is out on DVD
The pilot was released theatrically in Canada the summer before the show started airing on TV, so I don't know how it could be considered "reedited". I distinctly remember seeing the broadcast pilot episode and being confused by the ending - I was a kid and had never paid attention to anything actually changing in a film before. I hope this gets a revisit, including both the theatrical and TV cuts, perhaps with some SE content like a cast commentary.

Galactica shows up on the Space channel up here, but I have managed to flip by at the exact same scene three times in a row now. I do hope Universal puts some effort into restoring the series. I am awaiting the arrival of the Space: 1999 second season which promises to be a big step up from season one in terms of video quality.
 

Eric Paddon

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The theatrical version is almost 40 minutes shorter than what was broadcast on ABC and is missing a large number of scenes including (a) scenes of Serina (Jane Seymour) broadcasting the news before the Cylon attack (b) a confrontation between Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) and Athena (Maren Jensen) in the locker room regarding their relationship (c) a confrontation between Apollo (Richard Hatch) and Adama (Lorne Greene) regarding Sire Uri and the Council (d) Baltar being spared from execution (a change made in post production when it was decided to retain John Colicos for the series) and a whole host of other scenes that are shorter in the theatrical version. The theatrical cut is by no means the true version of the pilot show which would need to be released in its longer TV version. It was always a reedit job from the outset in terms of what was planned for broadcast on television.
For a close look at the differences between the theatrical cut and the regular broadcast version, check out:
http://www.kobol.com/archives/bgdiff.html
 

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