Battlestar Galactica (original series)

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(Redirected from Battlestar Galactica (1978))

This article is about the original television series; for other versions, see the main Battlestar Galactica page or Battlestar Galactica (disambiguation).

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Format	Science fiction
Running time	45 minutes per episode
Creator(s)	Glen A. Larson
Starring	Richard Hatch Dirk Benedict Lorne Greene et al.
Country	United States
Original network/channel	ABC
Original run	}}} – {{{last_aired\|}}}
No. of episodes	}}}
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction television series, produced in 1978 by Glen Larson and starring Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict. After its cancellation, its story was continued in 1980 as Galactica 1980 with Adama and Boomer being the only continuing characters. It was reimagined in 2003 by the Sci-Fi Channel with Edward James Olmos stepping into Lorne Greene's role of Commander Adama. A weekly series on Sci-Fi followed in January 2005. (See Battlestar Galactica (2003) for more.)

1 Narration
2 Pilot
3 Ratings
4 See also
5 External links

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Narration

The opening narration is as follows: (When this narration was spoken, the viewer could see scenes of nebulae and other celestial phenomena)

There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. They may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive far, far away, amongst the stars.

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Pilot

The pilot to this series, the biggest budgeted ($7 million) at the time, was originally released theatrically in Canada, Western Europe, and Japan in July, 1978 in an edited 125-minute version. (See Battlestar Galactica for information on the pilot.)

On September 17, 1978, the uncut 148-minute pilot premiered on ABC to spectacular Nielsen Ratings (attracting 65 million viewers). Two-thirds of the way through the broadcast, ABC interrupted with a special report of the signing of the Camp David Accords at the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and witnessed by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. After the ceremony, ABC resumed the broadcast at the point where it was interrupted.

In 1978, 20th Century Fox sued Universal Studios (the producers of Battlestar Galactica) for plagiarism, claiming it had stolen 34 distinct ideas from Star Wars. Universal promptly countersued, claiming Star Wars had stolen ideas from the 1972 film Silent Running (notably the robot "drones") and the Buck Rogers serials of the 1940's. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed in 1980 as being "without merit".

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Ratings

As the series progressed, the ratings began to decline, even though the show still consistently won its coveted Sunday evening timeslot. Although each episode had a budget of about $1 million, the show reused so many special effects shots due to budgetary constraints that many critics derided it as "overplayed into tedium."

In mid-April 1979, ABC executives cancelled the still strongly-rated show. Some sources indicate that the million-dollar-per-episode cost led to the show's demise. Others believe that it was a failed attempt by ABC to position its hit comedy Mork & Mindy into a more lucrative timeslot. (The ratings for Mork plummeted far below what they had been for Battlestar Galactica.) The cancellation led to viewer outrage, protests outside ABC studios, and even contributed to the suicide of Eddie Seidel, a 15-year-old boy in Saint Paul, Minnesota who had become obsessed with the program. [1] On May 18, 1979, the theatrical version of the pilot was released in U.S. theatres.

ABC executives have noted that the problem lay not in Galactica, but in the time slot. The four or five shows that filled that slot after the cancellation of Battlestar Galactica never reached the ratings of the last season of the original series.

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