Galactica 1980 was, in essence,
Battlestar Galactica: The Next Generation. The original series was cancelled before it even completed a single season. The series started off with some seriously good press and some good ratings. It quickly slid. The ratings for the original series were not all that bad. However, it was, at that time, the most expensive series ever produced. A cheaper sit com that pulled down such middling ratings would be more profitable.
Battlestar Galactica was replaced by
Mork and Mindy. Then the
disgruntled fan letters came in.
ABC realized it probably made a bit of a mistake. But once all the sets are trashed and the production company has packed up its stuff and went home, resurrecting a series is pretty damn near impossible in the space of a few summer months.
It took ABC a couple years but then managed to create a new Battlestar Galactica series which turned out to be one of the worst entertainment abortions ever to hit our personality boxes.
Galactica 1980 is probably why
Battlestar Galactica 2003 fans were so critical about the new series up front.
Anyway, Boxey (the mop haired kid in the original series with the
robot dog) is all grown up and he's a
viper pilot. Battlestar Galactica has found earth. They're about to reveal themselves and start landings when their child prodigy leader, Dr. Zee -- who makes
Wesley Crusher seem like, well, like less irritating -- realizes the Cylons have managed to follow them. Earth is in danger. So Adama, who now sports a
mountain man beard, takes the ship away from earth. They decide to send Boxey and his pal to earth. Their job is to accelerate earth technology so it can fight the
Cylons.
The pilot wasn't particularly well received. ABC quickly reengineered the show and moved it to a 7 pm time slot. And they made it a kids show. It turns out some genius space children were
marooned on earth and Boxey has to protect them from evil
Project Blue Book types. Also the
Galactica 1980 title was dropped. The series was now simply called
Battlestar Galatica, in a vain attempt to convince the utterly alienated fan base that this was no Bobby's First
Space Opera series but the second season of
Battlestar Galactica. Yeah.
The core fan base wasn't fooled. The production values were incredibly poor. ABC, mindful that the original series cost a pretty penny to make, used every low ball trick in the book to keep costs down. The cheapest trick is simply "no space ships". Hence the back story about space kids who hang out around suburban LA locations and not Viper bays. Of course Battlestar Galactica without, you know, a
battlestar and Cylons is just
The Powers of Matthew Star with a bunch of mop headed kids. In a 10th hour move, before the 11th hour "bring back Starbuck" move, the Cylons were brought back to help boost ratings. And here again ABC couldn't
crowbar open its wallet to spend a lil on FX. A rather exciting scene where Cylon raiders
strafe LA was actually made by using footage from the 1974's
Earthquake disaster flick and then super imposing some Cylon ships shooting at stuff.
In a final act of desperation the
Starbuck character was resurrected. And that was it.
The ten (or six if you group together multi parters) episodes made:
1-1 27-Jan-1980 Galactica Discovers Earth (1)
1-2 03-Feb-1980 Galactica Discovers Earth (2)
1-3 10-Feb-1980 Galactica Discovers Earth (3)
1-4 16-Mar-1980 The Super Scouts (1)
1-5 23-Mar-1980 The Super Scouts (2)
1-6 30-Mar-1980 Spaceball
1-7 13-Apr-1980 The Night the Cylons Landed (1)
1-8 20-Apr-1980 The Night the Cylons Landed (2)
1-9 27-Apr-1980 Space Croppers
1-10 04-May-1980 The Return of Starbuck