• Directed by Richard A. Colla
• Written by Richard A. Colla and Glen Larson
• Starring
  • Richard Hatch
  • Dirk Benedict
  • Lorne Green
• Produced by John Dykstra and Leslie Stevens
• Executive produced by Glen A. Larson

“Hey,” you say, “you can’t review that on a movie review website! It’s a TV series!”

Not in Canada, I say.

I grew up in eastern Canada, and up there the edited-together first and fifth episodes of the TV series were shown in the theater as a feature film the summer before the series premiered. (Remember, this is the year after Star Wars set the world on fire; this time period was full of hastily-assembled product thrown up on the screen to capitalize on the space craze.) I saw the movie with my parents. I never did get to see the series, though; it was broadcast at some stupid time like Sunday nights at 9:30pm, much later than my folks were willing to let their seven-year-old stay up.

So to me, it’s an old b-movie. Nertz to you.

+Now, given the quality of some of the Star Wars wanna-bes that flooded the marketplace at the time (can you say Starcrash?), BG comes off pretty good, mainly because the story itself was pre-Star Wars. Glen Larson, writer and producer, had written a pilot called Adam’s Ark way back at the beginning of the decade, but the studios had passed on it; when Lucas hit the big time, the original proposal got dusted off and passed around, finding a home at ABC. Add John Dykstra, Star Wars effects wizard, as the producer and you have a movie that’s Star Wars-y enough to attract but not similar enough for Lucas to win the infringement case he brought against Larson.

So, for those of you who’ve forgotten, what’s it about?

There are these twelve human colonies out in space, see, and they’ve been fighting the Cylons for some time. Seems the Cylons are sort of a Borg-like race, eschewing creativity and individuality and conquering for the hell of it. Humans don’t like that, naturally, so there’s a natural enmity.

The quisling Baltar has set up an ostensible armistice, and the great Battlestars of the colonies — great honkin’ ships which, apparently, are one to a planet — come out into the middle of nowhere to ratify it. But it’s (naturally) a trap; Cylon raiders are hiding in a nearby gas giant to attack the Battlestars, and the base ships have circled back to attack the colonies while the Battlestars are away. When the smoke clears, only a relative handful of survivors are left on the colony planets, and Galactica is the only Battlestar left.

Rather than try to rebuild, the survivors get whatever operating spaceships they can and form a ragtag convoy behind Galactica. Their objective: To find the fabled “thirteenth colony,” a distant world of humans known as Earth.

Hey, it’s all setup for the series, so don’t expect any resolution, but it’s clever and doesn’t drag too bad. Lorne Green is appropriately pensive and galvanized by turns, and Dirk Benedict obviously has a ball as the Han-Soloesque Starbuck. The special effects aren’t quite up to Star Wars standards (and if you watch closely you can see them using some of the same battle footage over and over), but it’s quite impressive for TV of the period.

Of course, I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for Galactica; we Mormons can get a lot of throwaway lines and motifs. (Yep, we get Battlestar Galactica and Plan 10 From Outer Space — such are the entertainment benefits of my religious background.) But everyone else can still sense that there’s a fuller mythology behind this series than, say, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Alas, the series never filled its potential, and it’s no wonder — those episodic shows of people always trying to get home never quite work. (Yes, you Voyager fans, that was a dig at you. I think it’s disgusting that Voyager lasted this long when BS, its prototype, only survived 24 episodes.)

Anyway, if you need a blast from the past, look it over. At least rent it once so your local video store will mark it a keeper and not put it out to pasture in the previously viewed bin.