Posted by Devin de Gruyl on Sep 16th, 2007
In yet another example that producers are scraping the bottom of the TV-nostalgia barrel for DVDs, Universal announced last week the release of Galactica 1980, the ill-fated follow-up to the classic 1978-79 Battlestar Galactica.
If Universal was actively trying to kill the Galactica franchise after a disappointing third season of the modern series — not that they are, but if they wanted to do it — they could scarcely have picked a better way than by pushing this travesty on an unsuspecting public. This thing was barely watchable even in 1980; today, looked at through modern lenses, it veers dangerously close to self-parody, particularly when a Cylon enlists Wolfman Jack (I kid you not) to aid in a takeover attempt. Sadly, G80 sacrificed the thoughtful storylines and imaginative space-fantasy of its predacessor in favor of fish-out-of-water comedy that probably appealed to ABC network executives stil high on The Love Boat and other dim-bulb fare of the era, but was a far cry from Glen A. Larson’s original vision.
Plus, the sight of Lorne Greene in a phony beard that makes his Adama look more like the Santa Claus of a low-rent shopping mall (a sight you can see in all its glory on the just-released DVD cover art) is laughable all by itself. And we won’t even discuss the “Super Scouts”…
The only saving grace of the revival was its final episode, a flashback story that told the final fate of Starbuck (Dirk Benedict), cobbled together from an abandoned first-season episode and script that was mostly completed when ABC cancelled Galactica. But even this intriguing tale of the maverick Viper pilot’s struggle for survival on a deserted planet, with only a rebuilt Cylon for companionship, is not enough to justify sitting through the preceding nine episodes that serve only as a mockery of everything Galactica had previously stood for.
For good or ill, Galactica 1980 will see DVD release on 26 December. I honestly cannot recommend this to anyone, unless you want to give the whole deal the do-it-yourself MST3K treatment. Or maybe you’ve never seen this crap yourself and want to find out if it’s really as Godawful as they say. Trust me, as bad as the current Galactica’s third season was (with the high proliferation of soap opera elements and redundant filler episodes replacing the tightly-written space drama of its earlier episodes)… this dreck might make you swear off TV sci-fi for life. It’s that bad. Be very grateful it only lasted ten episodes… but be very afraid that it lasted that long.
But what I want to know is, why is this garbage getting a release, while Max Headroom remains buried in the far corner of somebody’s tape vault? I’d actually pay for that!
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