MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

[JD]

So did anyone else watch the first Battlestar Galactica?
I've seen bits and pieces of a handful of episodes when they used to show it on Syfy, but this was the first time I've ever seen any part of the first three.
I enjoyed it, it was a bit cheesy, but that's half the fun of these kinds of old shows for me.
I was surprised how closely the Ron Moore miniseries actually followed it.

 

[Skipper]

I was surprised how closely the Ron Moore miniseries actually followed it.

Except for the Casino Planet. We are all grateful for that.

 

[publiusr]

I would think the Base Stars were pouring it on--but off camera.

The models are up for auction:
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Draconia from Buck Rogers was my favorite of the era:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/D'Kora_class

Oh--Im sorry--it's this:
http://www.profilesinhistory.com/flipbooks/Cannavo92/index.html#p=24
http://www.tombsofkobol.com/classic/buck/buck-draconian-01.html
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[RJDiogenes]

No, pretty sure we went to Cape Cod via 95/195 in southern CT, through RI, not going particularly close to Boston. If we had gone a more northerly route, we wouldn't have gotten any closer than Providence, at which point the most direct way would have been to swing down on 195: Map. We went out of our way to go up to Boston from the Cape on one of our vacays.

Ah, of course, down through Fall River and stuff. Makes sense now that I know it. This is why I relied so heavily on TripTiks back in the day (and GPS now).

So did anyone else watch the first Battlestar Galactica?

I was out watching David Bowie (with surprise guest Freddie Mercury), so I missed it. I wish the retro channels had an On Demand option. I was never a big fan, but it would be interesting to see what I think after almost forty years. I'll try to see it next week.

 

[Skipper]

I was out watching David Bowie (with surprise guest Freddie Mercury), so I missed it. I wish the retro channels had an On Demand option. I was never a big fan, but it would be interesting to see what I think after almost forty years. I'll try to see it next week.

I have to say that the FXs were top notch for a tv production. I watched "Saga of A Star World" in a movie theater when I was a Kid!
This is the original Italian poster

 

[Christopher]

I have to say that the FXs were top notch for a tv production. I watched "Saga of A Star World" in a movie theater when I was a Kid!

They were from John Dykstra and other people who'd recently worked on Star Wars. The stylistic similarity led a lot of people (who were too lazy to read the onscreen credits) to accuse Galactica of "ripping off" Star Wars.

 

[Skipper]

They were from John Dykstra and other people who'd recently worked on Star Wars. The stylistic similarity led a lot of people (who were too lazy to read the onscreen credits) to accuse Galactica of "ripping off" Star Wars.

Well, they found similarities in the plot, too. For example, Asimov in his review said:

Well, in Star Wars we had a whole galaxy in which the good guys are just about destroyed by the bad guys and it all came down to just a few doughty heroes to turn the tide.
But in "Battlestar Galactica" we have a whole galaxy in which the good guys are just about destroyed by the bad guys and it all came down to just a few doughty heroes to turn the tide!

 

[Christopher]

Well, they found similarities in the plot, too. For example, Asimov in his review said:

With all due respect to the Good Doctor, that's a pretty superficial similarity, given that thousands of other stories have used the same setup. It's actually a rather unfair comparison, because in SW the Empire merely oppressed and ruled the people the heroes were fighting for, while in BSG the Cylons sought their total extermination.

And Glen Larson had been trying to sell the basic idea behind Galactica since the '60s. The imitation wasn't on his part, but on the part of the network; they didn't agree to buy his idea until Star Wars was a hit and they wanted something that resembled it. The same thing happened later with Donald Bellisario's Tales of the Gold Monkey. It was accused of imitating Raiders of the Lost Ark, but in fact he'd pitched it years earlier and it had just sat on the network's development shelf until Raiders came along and proved that a period adventure piece could be commercially viable.

 

[JD]

After all the years of hearing it be called a Star Wars ripoff, I was actually surprised how much it was not like Star Wars. I was expecting a lot more 1-to-1 copying, but really other than the fact that we had people in space ships and bad guys in futuristic looking armor (who are robots here, and people in armor suits in Star Wars) there's really not lot of repetition between the two.
Does anybody know why they didn't have an Athena character in the Ron Moore series?

 

[Christopher]

After all the years of hearing it be called a Star Wars ripoff, I was actually surprised how much it was not like Star Wars.

Which just goes to show that, most of the time, you should ignore fan whining about "ripoffs," because it's almost never true. People who yell "ripoff" are almost invariably demonstrating their own profound cultural illiteracy and unfamiliarity with the common antecedents that are shared by all creative works.

Does anybody know why they didn't have an Athena character in the Ron Moore series?

They did, eventually.

Spoiler

The second Sharon Valerii, the one who married Helo, took the code name Athena once she was accepted into the crew.

Otherwise, the original character Dualla sort of filled Athena's role as a bridge officer, though maybe she was more like Lt. Rigel.

 

[JD]

Which just goes to show that, most of the time, you should ignore fan whining about "ripoffs," because it's almost never true. People who yell "ripoff" are almost invariably demonstrating their own profound cultural illiteracy and unfamiliarity with the common antecedents that are shared by all creative works.




They did, eventually.

Spoiler

The second Sharon Valerii, the one who married Helo, took the code name Athena once she was accepted into the crew.

Otherwise, the original character Dualla sort of filled Athena's role as a bridge officer, though maybe she was more like Lt. Rigel.

Oh right forgot about that, although I meant more the role the character played as Adama's daughter and Apollos sister. Now that I think about it more, I guess you could argue that Starbuck/Kara played was kind of a surrogate daughter and sister, so having a real one would be repetitive.

 

[Skipper]

And Glen Larson had been trying to sell the basic idea behind Galactica since the '60s.

Now I'm trying to imagine a '60s Battlestar Galactica...

 

[Christopher]

Now I'm trying to imagine a '60s Battlestar Galactica...

I believe the original working title was Adam's Ark.

 

[Christopher]

My brother was quite young (and sensitive) when GALACTICA first premiered. He was so much into STAR WARS he referred to Dykstra as ''that traitor!''

Huh? I guess he didn't understand that you have to work on more than one production to make a living in the industry...

And of course Dykstra worked on Star Trek: TMP as well, so that's three different major space-opera franchises he was involved with.

 

[Skipper]

I believe the original working title was Adam's Ark.

And according to this blog's post the original story was quite different...

 

[Greg Cox]

And Glen Larson had been trying to sell the basic idea behind Galactica since the '60s. The imitation wasn't on his part, but on the part of the network; they didn't agree to buy his idea until Star Wars was a hit and they wanted something that resembled it. The same thing happened later with Donald Bellisario's Tales of the Gold Monkey. It was accused of imitating Raiders of the Lost Ark, but in fact he'd pitched it years earlier and it had just sat on the network's development shelf until Raiders came along and proved that a period adventure piece could be commercially viable.

See also The Vampire Diaries. The original novels actually predated Twilight by several years, but only got turned into a TV series after Twilight hit it big and the studios went looking for similar properties.

Not so much a rip-off then as a cash-in . . ..

 

[RJDiogenes]

I have to say that the FXs were top notch for a tv production. I watched "Saga of A Star World" in a movie theater when I was a Kid!
This is the original Italian poster

Yeah, if I remember correctly they filmed the "origin" story specifically to be released in theaters internationally to help make back the huge costs (and used a different cut with footage not intended for TV). And they hired Dykstra so that it would look very similar to Star Wars, with all the big gray ships covered with meganooks and hypercrannies, to get all those kids who were hungry for the sequel that Lucas wasn't giving them.

 

[Skipper]

Huh? I guess he didn't understand that you have to work on more than one production to make a living in the industry...

Don't you know? FX specialists are like pyramid architects. After a successful movie, they must be buried with the film negatives and the miniatures used in the movie in a vault

 

[Noname Given]

At the time George considered Dykstra a 'traitor' too - but the fact was George didn't pay him much and Universal at the time offered him a lot of money and were going to build a film effects dept. around him, which he would lead.

The other interesting thing I recall at the time was that the whole reason that they didn't show 'laser bolts' coming from the Galactica handheld gun props was that George Lucas was claiming his 'look' of Laser Gun Fights on the ground was unique to 'Star Wars' and hence copyrighted. His big complaint about the Colonial Viper was that their stripe marking were orange/red, the same as the striped makings on the X-Wings in 'Star Wars' (Yep, Lucasfilm was attempting to sue for copyright violation on that level of specificity.)

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

After all the years of hearing it be called a Star Wars ripoff, I was actually surprised how much it was not like Star Wars.

The final product is the problem--and the accurately charged ripoff. There's not that many original ideas in the entertainment business, and jumping on the next big thing is a common, expected practice that continues to this day. It does not matter how long Larson had been trying to sell his oriignal idea--once that was bought and developed, it became a Star Wars ripoff in several ways as the clear copy+paste designs seen in BG would not go in so pointed a creative direction if Star Wars never existed--

Death Star...Base Star.--both off white/gray massive vehicles for the main enemy. The name similarity goes without question.
Cylons undoubtedly took 90% of design cues from both Vader and the Stormtroopers.
The X-Wing's appearance, right down to the single pilot cockpit and red/orange stripes on a white body. Well...
Take a Star Destroyer, add the U.S.S. Enterprise nacelles, and with minimal tinkering, you get the Galactica.

There are other examples, but this geta the message across that at the end of it all, the SW rips were approved. One can argue that a studio demanded it as a way to cash in on SW, but no matter how it happened, or who approved what, the end result is the problem.